What went before: Slow getting started, but once I got going, I managed to pull a couple words out of the keyboard.
+/-1050 new words, bringing the WIP to +/-65,200.
Everybody stay safe; I’ll see you tomorrow.
Thursday. Sunny and cool. Weatherbeans calling for the higher 70s-in-F this afternoon. At the moment, it’s too cool to open the windows.
This morning, I need to go out to collect an extension of the new prescription, which needs to be Tapered Off, who knew? And also to Agway for a couple of things, including fishing line.
I see, otherwheres, that KJ Charles is being victimized by someone who can’t read reporting to Amazon numerous “errors” in Copper Script (which is good — read it). These are, as it turns out British spelling, British sentence structure, British slang, and in a couple of cases Actual Words that said Arbiter of Error didn’t recognized and couldn’t be arsed to look up.
I grew up reading British novels in their native Britishness, back before US Publishing decreed that Americans were too stupid to accommodate a few extra “u”s and whatnot. Welp, US Publishing has got what it wanted, with a helping of “If I don’t recognize a word, it must be a typo, because I know All The Words.”
My reading of British literature reflects in my own writing, and I have once or twice had to gently inform people that, no, that is an ACTUAL WORD, GET A DAMNED DICTIONARY, WHY NOT? Ahem. And I really despair of us as a people. OTOH, ignorant people are easier to control, and we’re into control, this episode, so there’s a win for the bullies and the cheats.
deep breath
I said upstream that you ought to read Copper Script — that is, of course, if Amazon hasn’t pulled it for having too many errors, because Amazon has been known to do this. And, yanno, Ms Charles doesn’t have anything better to do except go through an already-published book, fixing errors that aren’t wrong, so it can go back into the catalog and start earning again.
I know some folks think they’re dong Good Things by “reporting” errors and typos to Amazon. Trust me — they’re not. As I mentioned, oh, maybe this time last week? There are no perfect books. There are errors and typos in all books. Mostly, they don’t hurt anybody (I’m not talking errors like “half my book is a scifi adventure and the other half is a cookbook” or “my book is 400 blank pages” or things of that nature). Certainly, they’re not worth pulling the creator away from her new project, and pissing her off, too.
I want more books from KJ Charles, and? Abusing authors isn’t the way to get more books.
Really, I ought to start a list.
Anyhow! Having ranted and perhaps educated — Good morning! How’s your day shaping up?
Here, have a picture of Rook inna sink:
Thanks for starting my day off with a good chuckle–not about British spelling, but seeing Rook inna sink did it.
I’m sending a second comment, because I wanted to express disappointment over the apparent misuse of Amazon’s rather convenient report system for misspellings and other perceived mistakes. I had always sanguinely assumed that authors would *want* to have the opportunity to make those corrections post-publication. Indeed, in the past I have received republished versions of books, which I (again) had assumed were accomplished because of this system. It is soo-o-o convenient to highlight a word in Kindle and report an error and its correction. I wonder if there’s any statistics to show how often the report is itself in error, or is malicious or is merely a nuisance, as opposed to providing welcome and accurate corrections.
I too grew up with British novels. In addition to learning a bit of British English, reading expanded my vocabulary as I learned words by context. This is also useful in learning a little Liaden.
I expect there are as many different “what authors want” as there are authors. I, for instance, DON’T want to have Amazon yelling at me that a reader said there were *gasp* TYPOS in my book. Especially since more than half the time, the thing that’s tagged isn’t a typo at all. Am I indifferent to the quality of my work? I don’t think so. What I am is jealous of my time.
This is what you have to do to fix typos in an ebook. You have to go back to the original file, find and fix the errors, recompile, and resubmit the book. Sounds easy. In Actual Doing, it can take a couple hours. Hours that I could be, yanno, working on something new. And, honestly, the world is not going to end because that comma doesn’t belong there. Says you.
Amazon also does its own “quality checks,” and it? Hates made-up words. So here you are cruising along on your new story and you get a nastygram from Amazon about how your book has Quality Issues and you have X days to fix them. You go over to Amazon, you look at the error tags. You tell Amazon, nope, that’s not a mistake, and neither is that — oh, and not that one, either. Takes a while, spoils the writing mood, and about a quarter of the time Amazon Quality Control takes leave to know better than the writer, and tags the cleared words ALL OVER AGAIN.
I’m glad you’ve had a delightful experience with elevated beings who wanted to fix typos in an already-published work. As for there being a database, I’m at a loss as to who would keep such a thing.