Written by Stephen Thompson | 29 January 2010

Recently The Specuspherehas had to think about how to proceed with self-published books and books from vanity presses. The reason being that we are seeing more and more books that obviously haven't been edited  – or perhaps they have been edited, but by a cousin's friend's mother who once got a good mark in English at school forty years ago. By being edited, we mean, of course, by a professional editor.

It is easy to spot an unedited book because they have a host of obvious problems with regard to expression, grammar, spelling, redundancies (like reverse backwards, trained specialist, lights shining down from above), and they often have spatial problems as characters move around (or don't, as the case may be), confused sentence structures and wordy descriptions – 'orb of fiery light' instead of 'sun'

Now that doesn't mean to say that people can't enjoy an unedited novel. For all I know it may be a great read for some. I personally find it hard to ignore writing flaws and find it difficult to concentrate on the story. In fact I don't even bother reading them past the first few pages – once I discover the absence of an editor.

Why can't self-publishers mention the editor and give details on the preliminary pages? I know why vanity publishers don't – there prob'ly ain't one.

So The Specusphere had a problem: should we promote these sorts of books?

The negative view is: if you are publishing a book that you haven't taken the time to have your best efforts properly edited then you should not be self-publishing, and those vanity presses that offer expensive publishing and leave all editing and proofing in the laps of the author should not be encouraged. By giving bandwidth to vanity presses we are giving tacit approval to their greed and, perhaps, compromising our collective and individual standards. And let's not forget the humble editors of this world, who already work for peanuts and can never get enough work.

Further, if a novel has not been edited then it is, essentially, nothing more than a glorified manuscript-in-progress – glorified because somebody has gone to the trouble of paying for a cover design and an ISBN, and probably a barcode (maybe even some marketing). If The Specusphere reviewed this manuscript-in-progress, the review could be seen as a kind of de facto manuscript assessment. And we don't do manuscript assessments at The Specusphere.

However, we have never been a place for high brow writing; we are, in the main, more interested in entertainment. The zine is there to explore all the ways that speculative fiction interacts with the world. Writing is one such aspect. Publishing is another. Writers who publish their own work fall easily within our brief, as does the vanity publisher.

So, how can we accommodate self-pubbers and vanity presses? They are part of the scene and ignoring them won't make them go away, and desperate writers (usually newbies) will always see editors as unnecessary intrusions on their valuable words. And from personal experience I know that many writers are loath to actually pay an editor for their services – goddammit, man, you should work for the love of it! Irrespective of that, publishing (and writing) is a wild world and who are we to deny someone their place in the sun?

Do you see the dilemma? On the one hand we don't want to promote bad practise, but on the other we don't want to stifle writers' passions.

There are a few categories of self-published books.

Unedited
By not having the novel professionally edited, the author signals that they are not serious about providing the best possible quality product to readers. If an author believes that they can get away with producing something sub-standard, then it reflects on their professionalism. Actually, it probably reflects on their ego.

These manuscripts should only be made into book form so that the writer can give/sell his/her books to friends/family for birthday/Xmas gifts or, perhaps, they might want to give them away to a focus group and pick up some free proofreading. And there's nothing wrong with doing that.

Vanity presses
An unedited book published through any of the vanity presses is merely a variation on the manuscript-in-progress. It may well be that some cursory editing goes on here, but I wouldn't bet on it. Vanity presses have a reputation for doing things like paying people to say good things about a book so that they can get a quote for the back cover – I know of at least two people who write such things for a well-known vanity press (that's where a bit of the 'marketing' money you pay goes). I think it highly likely that they might do something equally facade-ish with an editor. 

Edited
These people are doing the right thing. Presuming they have a professional editor who has helped them through the process, through the re-writes, through the inevitable arguments about why certain passages (and perhaps chapters) have to be cut or severly culled, then the book will most likely be a much more enjoyable read. 

And let's not forget that this sort of experience can (should) help you improve your writing. I won't say that it will be an enjoyable experience (not in the sense of you belly-laughing your way through life, anyway). No, most likely you'll feel abused, affronted, intimidated and much more besides; you'll hate the bastard, know-it-all, anally-retentive mother-pedant and all that red ink on the page, and who the hell gave this guy the divine right to tell me my words are full of crap anyway?

But the book will be better than the unreadable slurry it was beforehand.

Yeah. Ahem. (Sorry, sorry – <shakes dark fug from mind> – I have this problem, Doctor Freud —)

Professional self-publishers
Another category of edited self-published works are those where the author is so serious and professional that they even go to the trouble of setting up a publishing company and do their damnedest to get the product out there. These people deserve to be treated like any other traditionally published writer – nay, better. These people are great clien — er — heroes and revolutionaries.

Then what —?
If you are a self-publisher and haven't by now left this article in a fit of pique, then here's your reward.

As I said earlier, The Specusphere is a forum open to all forms of speculative fiction expression. Self-published books are acceptable forms of expression, irrespective of the quality inside the cover. It could be in Klingon, it wouldn't matter. So we invite self-publishers to self-market themselves. The Specusphere can offer you room to display an excerpt from your novel in our fiction section, with a link to wherever you want. We leave it for the reader to decide on the quality of the prose. We might also run with your media release on a page yet to be devised; or the author might want to write an article about their experience, or one aspect thereof, or something on the theme of the book, or something that utilises the research data used for the backstory; or you can send us some money and we'll set up your advertisement on our pages. 

There are ways and means to get your product out through this webzine. Just don't ask us to read it if it hasn't seen an editor — unless you're hiring us.