Chasing Chevin

[Mick]

I have just finished reading ''Chasing Chevin''. I found it a thoroughly good read, but I am afraid that Little Egret Press has got to get it's act together and clean up it's typesetting. Obviously they only use a word checker as there are so many mistakes, not necessarily spelling mistakes, but the wrong word, word spacing before a comma and why, oh why do they insist on laying out the page format in double column? At £35 a chuck I think they could do a lot better. Gripe over. It is still an enjoyable book to read!!!!

[Paul F]

Pretty much the same story with LEP for years.

But they do give amateur anglers an opportunity to publish their own works, and they have some good noted anglers in their portfolio.

I enjoy them for what they are

[DaceAce]

Proper proof readers cost money; I had dealings with a couple when I wrote books with The Crowood Press and they were excellent but probably cost upwards of £1000 per book, and as LEP do everything on the cheap (not sure authors get much more than a free book) they omit this part of the process. I've just submitted a short chapter to a new book with LEP and I worry what will be printed won't be what I sent in!

[Tengisgol]

I’m sorry but there really is no excuse for 99% of the mistakes. I know that Wayne has taken over, and it’s a great little publisher in many ways, but this just should never happen.

I offered to Tom O’Reilly all those years ago, through sheer frustration, to read through before sending to print. I told him I didn’t want anything, not even a free copy, I just didn’t want to get stopped on every other page by ridiculous spelling mistakes.

Can’t believe it’s still happening.

[Robbi]

i wish there was a "like" post button.

[Dave Burr]

I can only agree with the above. When you buy a book it should be near perfect. I accept the odd mistake as humans are imperfect but, some of the modern publications are ruined by needless errors.

[Pallenpool]

I wouldn’t know where to start regarding editors - they cost a fair few pennies - and even in the mainstream publishing houses grammatical errors, punctuation and spelling are still present - so in relation to a very small print house producing publications on a shoe string I am not sure we could expect much more. £35 for a good quality presentation on a low print run book is surely superb value - even when the blatant errors are still prevalent.

Authors are notorious for writing and writing without recourse to ‘how it reads’ in the grand scheme of things this has always been the editors job to put right and convey the tone - in some publishers editors are designated authors to edit. The LEP will never be able to do this and moreover in the case of small run ‘quality’ titles perhaps the author should take more responsibility towards the quality of the writing and certainly read over the finished draft issued by the publisher - as has already been mentioned.

If we look at this another way - without houses like LEP our quota of fishing related books would be very close to zero, so for the time being let us hope something can be done at LEP and most of all the others in trying to overcome the error laden text. I tend to gloss over it now and accept it - i’d rather have a book in front of me than none at all.

[Marks7]

The errors are irritating and frustrating. As a (now retired) newspaper editor who spent a great deal of his working life proof reading copy and pages, printed mistakes in any publication bring out the Victor Meldrew in me.
I’m sure there must be others with a similar background who would be willing to proof read manuscripts in order to improve these otherwise excellent products in future.

[Jeremy Croxall]

nouw u nowe wy i send my copee 2 Mick too chek ova wen ive ritten sumfing.
ees verri gud at spottin mistaykes wot i erkaziunlee mayke..
fanx mik ure a soopa staa.

[Mick]

Ha ha!! Very good Jeremy!! Maybe I should come out of retirement and continue my proof reading career!! I completely agree that LEP do produce some very interesting books, I just think they lack a bit of quality. It's all down to prices and budgets I suppose. If you want a good chub fishing book, this is one for your library, despite all else.