Names changed to protect the rude

Disclaimer: I'm still in a snarky mood. Take everything with a pound of salt.

I got an email this morning, very much like I get about once a year, from a reader who first gushes about the Hollows, usually telling me what they have done to help promote my books, generally trying to make me feel like I owe them a debt of gratitude.

Then they say "however" and I sigh and grit my teeth.  Following the dreaded "however" comes a tirade at my editor for the typos and errors in the text, sometimes pointing out page numbers and corrections.  In closing, they offer to proof my pages, or better yet, tell me to get a new editor.  "seriously…consider it.  lol"  as if the lots-of-laughter should make me feel all warm and cozy again after they just punched me in the mouth.

Sometimes I can find errors in their text, like no spaces between the four pairs of  ellipses, or the over abundance of exclamation points, but these are easily overlooked because only a professional copy editor or someone in the field would know the correct usage.  Besides, I have yet to write the page where I've not screwed up on something, and we are all human.

Editors are not there to catch grammatical errors and typos.  That is the job of the copy editor, a faceless person that often changes from book to book.  It is generally not a high paying position, and turnover is fast.  I'm not guaranteed of getting the same person twice, and they don't even tell me his or her name because some authors will often look them up on the net to try to check their credentials when they start to see inconsistencies.

My editor is the person who loves my work, who gets me the good covers, the money for the tours, the promotion dollars.  She finds my logic issues, fine tunes my characters, and keeps my writing from going astray.  She is my in-house champion in a highly competitive war-zone.  She is not my typist, and that you suggest I get rid of my editor . . . seriously . . . tells me that whoever is writing me with their helpful suggestion to ditch my editor and hire their services might be able to conjugate a verb and find typos, but they don't know jack about the publishing business.

Yeah.  I'll get right on that.  lol  Seriously.