To continue, if belatedly. (Hey, I’m sure it’s still morning somewhere.) James R. Strickland’s Looking Glass is a story I very much enjoyed, despite some technical quibbles to do with world-building and others, which I’ll mention here, to do with style. Additionally, the book is one of Flying Pen Press’s debut titles, and as such represents its publisher.

And this is where I wish POD-dy Mouth were still an active blog. I am no POD-dy Mouth and cannot hope to be. I would very much have liked to see her review an FPP title. That’s what her blog was entirely about: finding the diamonds in the publish-on-demand rough (albeit mostly in the self- and vanity-publishing circuit).

She’s a hard act to follow. Here is my unworthy attempt to do so.

When evaluating a publisher in light of the books it produces, several factors come into play. Roughly speaking, we can speak of the book’s quality in terms of…

• the story
• the physical product
• the cover art
• the layout
• and the editing.

I’ve already gushed about the story, so no problem there. FPP aren’t by any means publishing slush. It’s a little soon to tell about the physical product, since the pages haven’t had time to fall out or the binding to crack; so far it feels durable. The cover art is, to my mind, stunning. As for the layout, the only thing I can see that could stand improvement is the somewhat overly narrow gutter between the main text and the running head. Meh. I got used to it by page 10.

That leaves editing.

One thing that publisher David Rozansky has made clear is that FPP will respect the vision of the author. Regulars of the AbsoluteWrite.com Bewares Board have heard that phrase before, and it tends to make them cringe. Why? Because, in a certain breed of dishonest vanity publisher, “we respect the author’s vision,” like “hey, every book has mistakes in, why pick on us?” is code for we don’t edit. And, well, vanity presses don’t. Nor should they be expected to. But a certain breed of dishonest vanity publisher doesn’t want you to know they’re vanity publishers.

(Sometime soon I’ll do a post on “verbiage that makes scam-hunters wary.” Because there are so many scammers out there flapping their lips, even honest small publishers begin to pick up their linguistic markers. Check back for a short course in avoiding these phrases.)

Let me make it abundantly clear that Flying Pen Press are not in that category. They’re not vanity. They do edit. However, in attempting the delicate balance between respecting the author’s work with making it the best book it can be, it’s possible to err overmuch on one side. Which is the long way around to saying that there are ways in which I think the editorial phase could have made Looking Glass an even better book, but missed those opportunities out of respect for the work as it stood.

That sounds pretty harsh. I’m sorry. But let me get specific. There are four (4) things, and only 4 (four) things, that I can recall jarring my reading experience. In order from most subjective to least, those would be

1. Overuse of ellipses (”…”)
2. A narrative voice that drops literary quotes frequently enough to be mildly annoying
3. Chapter breaks placed “in the calm” rather than during rising action, having the effect of diminishing rather than heightening tension
4. Consistent mispunctuation/miscapitalization issues involving direct quotes followed by multi-clause dialogue tags

The first two I readily own as being my own stylistic bugaboos. Anyone who’s ever had me critique their manuscript at critters.org knows I have a low threshold for dramatic punctuation. As for the literary quotes, I’m the sort to take the red pen and scribble “Yes, I can see the author is well-read, thank you, you’ve made your point” in the margins of manuscripts. This does not win me points in diplomacy.

The third I think is more problematic. Not every chapter needs to end on a cliffhanger, but there should be enough tension to keep the pages turning, especially at the beginning of a book. From that standpoint, I think it’s a missed opportunity that when the fatal network attack occurs, the first victim starts screaming two paragraphs into Chapter 2 instead of in the last sentence of Chapter 1. I’m open to debate on this, but most books I’ve read that start with a “day in the life” chapter try to give enough of a clue that Something’s Not Right to get the reader to turn to the next chapter.

“It’s the fourth thing that has me concerned,” said the pompous blogger, worry furrowing her brow as she spoke.

That’s an example of how I was taught to punctuate and capitalize dialogue and dialogue tags. Using the same sentence, here’s an example of how I saw analogous sentences treated in Looking Glass:

“It’s the fourth thing that has me concerned.” Said the pompous blogger, worry furrowing her brow as she spoke.

This is exactly the sort of mechanical error that needs to be caught in the copy-editing phase. That it wasn’t, and that it shows up fairly consistently (at least three times in the middle of the book), indicates to me that someone doesn’t know it’s an error. Which in turn makes me a bit concerned.

I’m assuming, like I said, that some of this is owing to an ideal of respecting the author’s work as it stands. The balance between that and improving the book can itself improve over time, though; given what very few and picky things I’m complaining about, and how little an impact they had on my reading enjoyment, I’m not too worried. It’s a C+/B- grade that can be improved to an A. And it’s just as likely that this represents not so much an over-respectful editor as an editorial phase cut short by Opening Day deadlines.

Also, this publisher does use print-on-demand technology. These sorts of mistakes (to the extent that the author and editor consider them mistakes) can be corrected in the next micro-print-run without significant expense.

So though I have concerns, I’m not writing off Flying Pen Press, not by a long shot. When the June 1 book release comes around, I’ll pick up a copy of Gaddy Bergmann’s Migration of the Kamishi; I’ll be interested to see how the editing of that text compares. It may be an apples-to-oranges comparison; I think the two books had different editors. And obviously it’s a different author. But I think the side-by-side may shed further light on how the publisher’s editorial philosophy affects a book’s editorial quality.

*sigh* POD-dy mouth, I’m not. I’m just not in her league. But here’s hoping this all-too-lengthy review was at least useful.