Dear humans,
One of my favorite hobbies includes climbing onto the female’s desk and trying to steal things. I do this approximately two or three times a month, after giving sufficient time to lower her defenses.
How annoying I am about it is directly related to how hungry I am when I stage my assault of her professional life.
We are supposed to be recommending a book today, but we’re really tired, and our brain keeps going bwuh? bwuh? What are books? Why we book?
The female is proofreading The Run Around. Proofreading transforms her brain into mush. Poor female. You might survive. Maybe.
The female is surviving. Bonds will be on sale for $0.99 next week. If you haven’t followed Susan Copperfield on Bookbub yet, now is a good time. They will notify you when the book is on sale!
Quoth the Female: “Dah! They changed wordpress!”
Female, calm yourself. It’s fine. They made the one button easier for you to reach. Change will not kill you.
Quoth the Female: “It really might today.”
Stop being a baby, female.
The next chapter of The House Lost at Sea is up in the Fantasy Worlds of RJ Blain facebook group in case you missed it. We’re about halfway through the novel now. We hope you’re enjoying it.
Now the female has to get into the book trenches, as losing a large chunk of yesterday to stress and anxiety thanks to some ‘helpful’ reader reporting typos got a quality flag added. And the very ‘helpful’ reader neglected to understand or comprehend regionalisms and their uses in dialogue.
(The Furred & Frond Management is really unhappy that Amazon flagged a book for severe quality errors over 14 typos in a 150,000 ish word novel. And 3 or 4 of those ‘errors’ weren’t even errors. It was a reader who had zero business trying to dictate writing style of dialect poking his or her nose where it didn’t belong.)
Yeah. How to upset an author in one easy step.
In case you didn’t know, Amazon dictates the changes that they want the authors to make before they will remove the quality flags. The female appealed to have the dialect usage ‘errors’ removed along with the flag.
We understand you’re probably trying to be helpful, but please don’t bring Amazon into this sort of thing.
Amazon is draconian. You may have meant to report errors with the best of intentions, but you ultimately do a lot of damage to the authors you supposedly like to read.
The female would like to have that tool removed from the planet–and have a nice little label of “As you feel this book is full of errors, to ensure customer satisfaction, we have barred you from purchasing any other titles by this author.”
That is the female being really upset over having lost an entire day of work yesterday due to a ‘helpful’ reader.
She really does kind of hope they implement that button, though. It would make her life so much easier. (Books are not to be written or edited by committee. Period. The female automatically discards suggestions on what she should write by default because if she DOES use something suggested, she is opening herself to a lawsuit. She will accept yes/no answers for “Would you be interested in this?” but the instant a reader starts giving ideas for a story, that is how the story just never gets written.
She does not want to be sued or bothered by someone who feels their idea given online gives them any form of entitlement to the resulting story.
(So, please don’t come to the female with your ideas. If you would like to write a book in your own world with your own ideas, please do so–but don’t ask the female to write your ideas.)
In conclusion, if typos bothers you that much, the female’s books may not be for you. But unless she starts charging $15 a book to justify paying even more staff… you’re getting the female’s best efforts with the paid staff she can afford. And at $5.99 a book, that is typically two paid editors and a team of volunteers who also help locate and destroy typos.
She needs to put food on the table and pay her rent, and $5.99 a copy only goes so far.
And her staff always gets paid first. Always.
Good for you. These are your worlds and your livelihood. My son and I so enjoy your books all of them. I read them via kindle and then purchase them in paper form and audio formats so if and when we travel we have them to access. Try to get healthier and yes allergies suck. Thank you for thinking of us who have to work in the trenches( doctors, nurse, grocery workers). We appreciate being recognized when we are usually ignored for the work that we do. If you post this. People don’t let yourselves get down just try to do things that make you happy at home only leave if you need the essentials. If you live in the country take a walk where no one else is. Life is hard for everyone right now but it is worth keeping yourself and everyone else safe. If you need human interaction I know there is computer programs out there that let you see and talk to people face to face. Please do that instead of going to places and seeing and touching other people. Thank you.
Dear human,
The male and female live in the Bay Area in California in a tiny apartment, and they were born training for quarantine. Alas, the male does have to venture forth today for essentials. A treat for the female may be acquired should one cross the male’s path on his route to doing the essentials. He ventures forth one or two times a week depending on the circumstances.
Thank you very much for your hard work! You are appreciated.
People need to learn to ignore minor typos (ex: to vs too ). Use context when you read? The original writer will often not see their mistakes. After 40+ years of teaching I know what I’m talking about. People, enjoy the story! Don’t sweat the small stuff!
The last book, the female had a staff of two paid people and twelve volunteers.
They all missed stuff.
Human brains do not make spotting typos easy.
It’s like a really bad scavenger hunt with misery upon failure to locate the incorrect object.
Then you add in the regionalisms and slangs of various areas, and people who *think* they are correct… are not.
Example: to be is dropped in numerous places in the United States, especially in spoken word. Example: The clothes need to be washed. This becomes “The clothes need washed.” In many regions, this is correct.
This is the regionalism the ‘helpful’ reader simply did not understand, that was used very deliberately.
It is very annoying when ‘helpful’ readers report errors… that aren’t actually errors.
Or are regionalisms they just didn’t understand.
Typos, who cares if there are typos! Love the books, love the emails. It’s keeping me sane right now. 16 days in lockdown and working 12 hour days from home, these books are my salvation.
I just don’t get it – why would any numbnut report to the book *seller* typos (or assumed typos) made by the book’s *author*? Me, I’d be directing any comments I felt compelled to make to the author or the publisher. Frankly, I think Amazon is getting above themselves, interfering in the creative process. In this sort of circumstance Amazon needs to keep their nose to themselves and refer the oh-so-“helpful” customer to the publisher / author to report their issues.
Ditto! Someone needs to get over themselves. If I knew who it was I would send my eldest brother over with a copy of his beloved Horseclans series. He he
Wow. I guess that reader better not ever try and purchase Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn. Those novels would be barred forever from Amazon if you started pointing out ‘grammar error’.
I guess some people have no life and sucking the joy from others is the only way they can find any. I’m sorry you had to waste time fighting over how your characters speak. Rather petty of Amazon (and that reader).
Thank you so very much for your daily news. I love your books, even subjects I thought I didn’t like. Your books are a must purchase for me, and thoroughly enjoyed.
And I love the furred management.
People, People, People, please just read the books and count yourselves lucky that you can read at all! Leave the authors alone and auto correct in your own brain. Really, try it . It is not too hard to do.