Edits to The Dead Beat
A while back, I got a bug up my butt to hire professional editors for all of our published books. It’s (sadly) cost us more than the books generally make, but I can sleep a lot better at night. These novels are my babies, snaggleteeth and all. Maybe that’s a bad metaphor, because I bought that ugly baby some braces.
But I have to admit that that’s a facet to these edits that’s incredibly awkward. Our editors, the awesome Hache Jones and John McClain, send us great ideas and catch all sorts of stuff for improvement… But we’ve already published the stories. The Dead Beat has already been recorded in audiobook! While through the wonders of self-publishing, we can make any and all changes to our titles that we like, Aron and I aren’t really comfortable making any major alterations to books that people have already bought.
On one hand, you might think that fixing the book would be the best idea ever, but I can’t help thinking of The Gunslinger, by Stephen King. A few years back, King decided to “fix” his book, expanding and changing it to better fit the rest of The Dark Tower series. It’s his art and his prerogative and I absolutely support his right to make it what he wants it to be… But I have to admit that it was just like the Star Wars special editions. I just never liked it as much. The big, empty, dead world felt suddenly crowded with stuff like taheen, which would figure into later books. The updated slaughter of Tull included Allie asking to be killed and that just diluted Roland’s hard heartlessness for me. Don’t get me wrong, The Gunslinger is still a great book, but I wish King hadn’t changed it so much. And it pisses me off to this day that I can’t buy an ebook of the old edition.
I don’t want to accidentally stumble into the same thing. I want people to be able to download the book they bought, not suddenly some new one that they may not like as much. But on the other hand, I really do feel like we owe our readers the very best book we can create. So I’ll be spending today figuring out how to balance not altering The Dead Beat too much, but making it a slightly experience book for everyone. Wish me luck!
