Beginners Mistakes - Appearance Part II

I'm reading this book... Yeah, I do that sometimes - as often as possible. This book is obviously a beginner's book. Since I started swimming in the waters of writing and publishing, what with the advent of easy self-publishing, I've seen some pretty poor examples. Fortunately those were few and far between. Perhaps it was with the ease of self-publishing came the ease of hiring an editor - I can't say on that one.

We are all fallible. There are few books out there that are totally error free. I just finished Changes by Jim Butcher (an awesome read) and I think I spotted a typo in there, but heck I don't even remember what it was at this point and I just finished the book. That goes to show you how trivial it was. This book I'm reading now, also has very few typos. Such being mostly in the form of two words that should be one or hyphenated, or vice versa.

If such were the only problem, I figure it could be overlooked, but when I came across the first hyphenated word, the hyphen was an underscore. Well, this is a beginner's book, I can overlook that too. Now that I'm around half way through the book, I have yet to encounter a hyphen that isn't an underscore. How can a writer, even a beginner, allow such a mistake to escape their notice?

Another thing I've noticed, especially when reading a few samples of eBooks. Occasionally I've seen paragraphs intents either doubled or missing entirely. This book has that too. It's not a big thing, but it's there.

There are other more normal beginner's mistakes. Things like extra and/or repeated information, characters jumping to the desired conclusion way too easily and for no apparent reason, and decisions made by the characters that were totally out of character. I'm sorry, military people should think in terms of security and they don't in this book - not even remotely.

I was going to review this book - and I may still - but that's not the point of this post. I can understand beginners mistakes, but in this day and age, there's almost no excuse for these kinds of errors. If you can't afford an editor, there are tons of knowledgeable people out there who would be willing to take a look, if not at the whole document, then at a sample - a chapter or two, and for free.

My book, King by Right of Blood and Might, is my first book, and I'll admit it could have been better. I wasn't so confident in my skill that I thought I could bypass an editor. And though it pains me to admit, there are some appearance goofs in there too. A font change that didn't get changed and a sizing issue that also didn't get changed. One of the issues I discussed with the guys who were putting my book together was what font to use on the cover and for the chapter headings. Another issue was the size of the text for the body of the book. I was rather stunned that they didn't do a 'select all' and change the text size, or 'modify style' and change the font for my chapter headings. Sadly, I didn't catch everything they missed so it's still in there.

Live and learn. The beginner's issues with this book I'm reading, I will take up with the author privately. As for the story, beginner issues aside, it has a lot of potential. I like a good quest.