Four For Friday - The Author

This former A- list tween actress who was on a very very hit iconic tween show used to be an author. She wrote several self-published books. Her work was legendary within the company.

As background, when a manuscript was submitted, it went through an internal "Editorial Evaluation" where an in-house editor would give the manuscript an honest reading. Now, a long version of this is shared with the author to help the author shore up weak parts of the manuscript, and, dirty little secret, to sell the author additional editing and marketing services. (FYI, Self-Publishers NEVER make money on selling books to the public, it's the printing and marketing services that make them money.) 

A brief overview of the EE would be placed in the internal iUniverse system under the author's name so that the production, editing, marketing and sales teams could access them to get an idea of what additional services they could sell to the author. These evaluations are not available to the author or to the public. These evaluations are either positive, neutral, or critical with the final write-off that the described book is for "friends and family only" which meant they weren’t worth the time to contact for services.

I probably read a couple thousand of these evaluations when I was there. None matched the greatness of the first evaluation of the former tween actress.

An internal e-mail made the rounds of her editorial evaluations.

This was the evaluation from the editor:

"This manuscript is horrendous. It is so awful, I am left wondering if the author was seriously trying to write a novel, or if this is a joke on her part to see if she will be able to get this published. For one, she makes up a lot of words, and many of the sentences don’t make a bit of sense. The punctuation is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It is apparent that the author has name recognition; however, publishing this manuscript would not only be an injustice to her fans, but it is my opinion that it would tarnish her reputation as a well-respected actress. I did my best to be tactful and provide the author with helpful information. Though my inclination was to X off every No column, I did manage to throw in a few Yes’s. However, these are very weak. I would have no objection if a decision is made to change them. It is my opinion that this manuscript would not currently benefit from any of the suggested services. Though, given the circumstances that the author is insistent this manuscript go to press, I would at the very least suggest a Content Edit and a Cover Copy Polish. This recommendation is more out of the desire to protect the IUniverse label than anything else."

This was the evaluation of her 2nd book:

"When the assignment instructions included the statement that "the author states that the comma use is a stylistic choice," I assumed (uh-oh) that it dealt with the serial comma. Hah! No ... it means the author uses a comma after EVERY word! Every, one, like, this.

We've already tried to dissuade the author from this style with her first book, so she should probably just move to publication."