This blog post was published on and may be out of date. Visit starshipsmage.com for current information on the Starship’s Mage universe.
It is a general strike against independently published authors (a crowd I am slowly coming to realize I’m part of) that the editing quality of the e-books we release is not the same as the editing quality of a professional purchased and edited novel. This is one of the reasons e-books from traditionally published authors still cost more than indie books: these services do cost money.
While I like to think that I was always a cut above the rest on this topic (I read a lot of independently published fantasy and science fiction, and some otherwise extremely well-written pieces have some noticeably grammar and spelling errors), one of the reviews for Starship’s Mage: Episode 2 mentioned that the editing had been a little shaky. Taking a second look through Episode 2, there were a few typos and grammar issues that I had missed, so I decided I needed to take a look at how I was editing my work.
I’ve now assembled a process that I hope will get me close to a professional level of editing, at least in terms of grammar and spelling. In terms of pacing and other concerns, I have beta readers, but I really don’t expect them to catch those kinds of petty errors.
The first step, on completing a novella, is to run the full gamut of Microsoft Word spelling and grammar checks. These checks aren’t perfect, and I’ll toss a lot of what the grammar check especially comes up with, but it will make me stop and think about things.
The second is now to run it through the Pro Writing Aid software, which scans for a lot of things that the regular grammar/spellcheck misses. One of the things I adore it for is it that it looks at my Canadian spelling and goes “you’ve used 40% UK spelling and 60% US spelling here, which do you mean to use?” so I can standardize on US spelling.
Once the software has its merry way with my work, I print it off and read it myself with a pen to hand. Then I type up the edits from the hand-editing, and send out this edited version to the beta readers. They read it over, and send back their comments. I incorporate all of those, and then I print the episode and hand-edit it again.
This is the process that Starship’s Mage Episode 3 has passed through, and I think it’s stronger for it. I also went back to Starship’s Mage Episodes 1 and 2 and re-edited them through this same process (skipping sending them out to the beta readers this time around).
Those revised editions have now been uploaded to Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo and Google Play. It will take a few days for the revisions to percolate through to the various other retailers from Smashwords, but if you’ve bought from one of those four, you should be able to download the revised versions now. The edits are mostly minor, small wording, spelling and grammar changes. No one lives who originally died, no one died who originally lived, but the Chief Engineer’s name has stopped changing every page!
While a re-read of Starship’s Mage Episode 1 and Episode 2 isn’t required for the edits, you may want to anyway! I am glad to confirm that Starship’s Mage: Episode 3 will release on June 15, one week today.
I will, of course, post here and notify the mailing list (that’s the box at the top on the left!) once Episode 3 is available.
I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
I won’t pretend I enjoyed editing it. XD
Glynn Stewart
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