HW:Another HW Book?

[Arin Komins]

On Mon, 29 Sep 2003, Ian Abrahams wrote:

:Subject: Re: HW:Another HW Book?
:
:> hrm.
:>
:> IMHO, self-published authors tend to suffer fairly highly from what I call
:> "lack of editing" ;-)
:>

:Its a fairish point, Arin - though if Hawkwind were releasing their own
:records on their own label would you have the same problem with it? I'm
:guessing maybe not - and its this discrepancy between indie labels and
:self-publishing that Eric has quite rightly identified.

It's hard to say.

One thing that strikes me is that this is kind of like comparing apples
and oranges.

Books can be edited for grammer/spelling/punctuation without otherwise
affecting an author's work (imho).

Does music really work this way?  Do you get editors de rigeur?  Would an
editor = the producer, or the person who is "mastering" the disc
(I'm showing my ignorance for a moment, but is this the same person?)

Is it possible to have a "masterer" (or whatever you call this person), do
standard kinds of things to a recording without touching the artistic
integrity of said recording?

I'm curious, as we've been seeing huge amounts of "remasters" but we
don't tend to see books coming out with "reedits" (although we *do* have a
distressing tendency to see books come out later with *no* editing, for
popular authors (stephen king, the horrible rerelease of stranger in a
strange land, etc.))

Now there are plenty of book editors who do far more than just edit for
grammer/spelling/punctuation, and I'm grateful to them for that.  I've
found (at least in SF/F/H), that many editors help make books better
(although I'm sure many authors feel that this compromises their artistic
integrity in many cases, as an end consumer, I'm not bothered.)

So, in my head, apples and oranges.  Well, kind of ;-)

(ok. so this logic worked inside my head, but rereading it now, I see it
kind of rambles, and doesn't make its point well.  If I come up with a
better version, I'll post that later.)

: :Still, as somebody who *might* have to go down that road for a specific
:project I agree with the need for editing in-put. Fortunately, I;ve got that
:side of my project very well sorted  :-)

To which, we can only applaud!

Arin
(always a fan of decently edited written works.)
--
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Arin Komins                                   akomins at uchicago.edu
Manager of Web Systems Architecture
University of Chicago/ENSS/NSIT                 tel: (773)834-4087
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