One thing I have noticed in the past year or so is that the more romance readers are online speaking with one another, the faster we all get a working understanding of the publishing process. We learn more about how a book is produced, in other words, the more we speak with writers, editors, and publishing professionals.
Remember Navarro’s Promise, where the promised sex scene was entirely missing? That scene is available as a download on her site.
But alas, it seems the error-filled Lora Leigh books continue: the reviews for her latest book, Midnight Sins, are cringeworthy.
But what is interesting is that some reviewers spread the blame for the terrible finished product across several parties, including the editors and the publisher.
She screws up ages, details, names & relationships to such an extent that the story is incomprehensible….
There are just too many more errors—I counted 78 in the entire book—almost 3 a page. She can’t keep Rafe’s height correct – he’s 6’3”, no he’s 6’2”.
And where the heck did the villain come from? Never met him, never heard about him, just appears in the last 10 pages.
Not going to bother reading Lora Leigh anymore until someone actually begins editing her books.
I am just about fed up with the inconsistencies in the time line. One minute it’s been five years since they’ve been together, the next it’s been two. Or it’s been twelve years since her sister was killed, the next it’s eleven. I have to stop and think of the back story in order to figure out what they mean.
And the editing job is awful. There are quotations in the middle of statements and missing commas. It forces me to stop for a second and try to figure out what is being said or done. Instead, I should just be able to flow through the story.
Overall, it had the potential to be a really good story. I think the editors dropped the ball when they should have caught this stuff before it was released.
If you are a fan of Lora Leigh you know her mistakes in her books are getting worse. And I’m not even going to hold it against her editors completely. I mean seriously? This is her career…one would think she would have a bit more pride in what she is putting out there. It is the editors job to cach mistakes here and there but they shouldnt be expectd to hold Ms. Leighs hand the whole time and watch over her shoulder to catch her huge mistakes. Thats her job. Its her story. She should darn well know the timeline of when things happen in her books. I really dont think I have the patience to ever read another of her books. There are just to many other authors out there who actually care about their writing and want to share a great well written story.
It’s like her editor was drunk. We’re not talking typographical errors…this is BAD. The storyline is all over the place, pieces are repeated over and over and then they change at a moment’s notice. Not just once or twice but throughout the whole book. It had a decent premise but it was dropped and jumbled up. I checked and fortunately Ms Leigh did not dedicate this book to her editor.
I wonder if there should be a raffle, like guessing the total number of jelly beans in a big ass jar, only in this case, guess the total number of continuity, editing, and grammar errors in the book.
Currently there are 16 1-star reviews, and six 2-stars on Amazon. Over at Barnes & Noble, there is a mix of 1-star angry reviews and squeeing 4 and 5 star reviews. Many of the 1-star reviews are angry and wonder what the hell happened. Some place more blame on the editor than on the author, and some vice versa. Still others absolve the writer, saying the editors should have caught the errors before the book went to print.
It is, in a word, embarrassing.
So who is at fault? My guess: everybody. My theory, based on unrelated conversations and a heaping spoonful of conjecture, is that Leigh turned in a manuscript that was likely extremely late, and it was full of the errors described above. But because the publisher had already sunk serious money into the promotion and marketing for the slot in the calendar in which her book was scheduled, they couldn’t reschedule her book to allow for editing. Plus, because it’s Lora Leigh, her books will sell on her name alone.
In short: better to make money on a flawed and terrible product than lose money and attempt to improve it.
What’s really freaking sad is that Leigh has an active interest, it seems, in connecting with her fans. She hosts the RAW Reader Appreciation Weekend every year, connecting authors and readers for four days in October, and authors I’ve spoken with say they love attending and meeting readers in an intimate gathering like that. Leigh also hosts a monthly book club in Hagerstown, Maryland, with a potluck and what looks to be, judging from the time reserved, one hell of a long-running and active discussion. That’s a tremendous amount of effort to make to connect with fans.
That effort is pretty awesome – and so I’m baffled as to why Leigh’s books themselves continue to be an utter embarrassment of errors. And, judging from the reviews, so are her readers.
I got this book from the library and gave up on the 5th or 6th
page. I couldn’t understand the family info on the 3 guys the
series is about. It made no sense whatsoever. I thought I
might pick it up as I read along but the next page had more
errors and I just decided I wasn’t going to waste my time.
When I give up on page 6 it’s bad, very bad.
I also enjoyed Lora’s EC books—and never found them to be error-filled, a credit to her diligent editors. But yeah, her NY books have gotten worse and worse. I don’t buy her anymore, but a friend passes them on, and we often goggle at the errors. It’s got to start making an impact on her sales eventually, or maybe not? You have to understand good grammar, punctuation, etc. to recognize when it has gone wrong, and not every American reader has that level of awareness. Aside from that, the last one I read was so over the top with the sex, it was almost a parody of erotica.
LL is not the only one. Michael Korda (former Simon and Schuster editor) in his book comments on one of Harrold Robbins’ books where the second half was significantly different than the first. Korda also speculated why readers bought it anyway. Korda’s book offers little romance, but some interesting insight into the editorial side of publishing.
I don’t disagree that we should expect a clean product. I’m just wondering if the higher prices for books are making people more sensitive to the fact the books they are buying are not worth the extra cost.
LL used to be an auto buy for me – at least with her Bound Hearts series – until she screwed Khalid over in his book (although once that series went mainstream it wasn’t as good or entertaining). Gave up on the Breeds at Bengal’s Heart and never read past the first book in the Elite Ops (hate to tell her, but if you are a SeAL you don’t live elsewhere and only go out on missions/and live more than three hours from the closest base)…I may get her books from the library but definately in no rush to do so
@ Kathleen – thanks for that! I heard a radio interview with Michael Korda ages ago where he mentioned that Harold Robbins incident. This thread reminded me of that and I’ve been trying all day to remember who the heck that was. Now I know – Michael Korda (his book is Another Life; a memoir of other people). I think one of the female characters had a different name in the second half of the book, but Harold Robbins refused to change it and they published it.
I didn’t read Korda’s book but the interview was fascinating. He also worked with Jacqueline Susann on Valley of the Dolls. His stories about fact checking Ronald Reagan’s memoir were hilarious to me – Reagan told several anecdotes that happened to other people as actually happening to him (my grandfather did the same thing, now that I think about it). But they caught those errors.
I have been a Lora Leigh addict for at least 10 years. I dealt with the errors, even as they got progressively worse, because I loved the characters and the world she made with her Breeds series.
But I stopped reading her Elite ops series almost as soon as I started, mostly because they were ridiculously unrealistic, at least as far as the love scenes go. I am one to completely go with the flow with unrealistic love scenes. Sex for hours? Sure. Adrenaline spiked sex in a doorway while running from bad guys? Love it. But using words like “flower”, “sweetest juices”, or “beautiful as a summer rose”? I can’t stand. I even gave her a the shadow of a doubt for at least 2 or 3 books, thinking “maybe its just that character”. NO! Apparently all Navy SEALS and Mossad agents make up bad sexual poetry during sex, and I could no longer ignore it.
Now with the Breeds, I hold a different standard, because they are in a different world. One with uncontrollable sexual hormones and humans spliced with animal DNA. I love the Breeds series, but she (yes the author herself) has severely turned me away from it with her blatant disreguard for producing quality work for her customers. I drew the line at missing paragraphs from her final copy.
And thats not my only bone to pick with her either! Yes she reaches out to her readers, not only with what has already been mentioned, but also her online forum. She is great about answering questions and even getting online as her characters to interact with her “Ladies”. But despite that, I wonder at her motives. She has been known to make fans wait for more than 10 YEARS for a HEA to come out for certain characters. If it was something along the lines of “these characters show chemistry or promise for a HEA”, it would be one thing. But she has certain characters mate and then kept apart for reasons that are completely unknown to me. It seriously just makes me feel like a horse with a carrot on the end of a stick, and the only reason I am even reading these books is to get a glimpse of other characters.
I give up. The last and only book I am going to read from her is Cassie’s story, whenever she decides to write it. There are plenty of other writers who care more about their work and respect their readers.
I love LL’s books—all of them, but I don’t read with a critical eye. I read to enjoy the story and the characters. Trust me, there are a lot of readers out there who don’t know or care that there was supposed to be a comma there. I’m betting that most of readers aren’t writers with a separate agenda to see how fast we can pick apart another’s work.
I only discovered LL a couple of years ago and have only read her Breed books. I liked the first few books in the series, but quit reading them as the series progressed. I don’t think I noticed a ton of errors, but I did get really tired of the hot steamy sex superceding the romance. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some hot steamy sex scenes. Love to read them and imagine the specifics, if you will.
But I get really tired of the characters having sex for pages and pages, then talking for like a minute, then getting it on for pages and pages and pages, then spending a minute declaring their love, which developed for each other BEFORE the book even began, then they hop back into the sack for more sexy lovin’. Meanwhile, I am wondering how they went from fighting each other or fighting the irrestible mating pull to falling in love. I really like the falling in love part where characters discover they have FEELINGS for each other beyond lust. Come on, don’t skip the tender moments where the characters actually connect to each other. After that, they can hump each other til the cows come home. Really.
No, Kitty DuCane, most of us just want to read something with grammar at least at the 5th grade level and continuity that can be reasonably followed. No matter how good a storyteller LL is (and her success mystifies me, even though I’ve tried several of her books), if her books appear to be written by someone’s who is illiterate, it reflects poorly on her. Has she no pride in a job well done? You’re not doing her any favors by stating that you’ll buy her stuff no matter how poor the quality is. Makes you sound like a rabid fangirl who will do anything for her hero(ine), not like an educated reader. I’ll bet you’d think her grocery list is fascinating, too.
Would you be satisfied with a new car with a splotchy paint job, a hole in the muffler, and no windshield wipers? Sure, it’s missing some stuff and the quality sux, but it’s driveable.
@Crystal
You forgot “tastes like sunshine.”
Gee, I wonder what I’d find if I read any of Kitty DuCane’s work. Because someone sounds seriously defensive.
I’m not a fan either, but not because of the error filled books. She truly believes her readers will forgive her. Readers may be getting wise, though. From what I understand, Jo is having to call in alot of favors to get authors to RAW. After all, who wants to attend a conference where the hostess is drunk the entire time?
Sad to say, I have to agree with Kitty. I have several friends who are avid readers and have very comfortable budgets for their Nooks and Kindles. They unashamedly admit they couldn’t spot a grammatical error if it jumped off the page and poked ‘em in the eye. They see a character’s name as Jessica on one page and Jasmine on the next but it doesn’t register because all they know/care is that it’s that person.
They generally forget a book as soon as they’ve read it, so similarities of plot lines don’t even register. They are not invested in the story; it’s a pastime, literally. One woman who has both a Nook and a Kindle (don’t ask me why; obviously she has more money than she needs) read the same book on each about a month apart and didn’t recognize it until another friend gave her the paperback version. She was halfway through it before her husband pointed out she had it on her ereaders.
The savvy readers are far outnumbered by the others. Writers like Lora Leigh sell, and the publishers are in the business to make money. They do not care about the quality of the work as long as it sells. They will start fixing LL’s writing when it no longer sells. And then they may decide it’s too much work and they won’t do it at all. In the meantime, they publish her because she makes money for them.
Please keep the discussion on the work itself—not on the other commenters or on the author’s personal life. Thank you.
I think we all carry some blame, the author for not being careful, the editor for not double checking when they know the author has a history of errors, and the reader for buying bad stuff.
Sad to say, it’s not like this is such a big surprise. Her stories have been consistently riddled with errors and weird plots for the past several books, this 1 happens to be the worst of them all, so far.
It feels like going to a favorite restaurant and find the menu’s been changed, the service and food quality have gotten progressively worse and now I’m at the point where there’s no way I’m wasting my time & money to eat there again.
At the end of the day, it’s Leigh’s name on the cover, she’s responsible for the story she writes. She’s not a rookie author and was producing polished products up until 10+ books ago. Her readers, me included, have been pretty forgiving putting up with her half ass work. Her stories have only gotten worse and worse, but the fact that she’s on a lot of people “auto buy” list haven’t hurt sales one bit. Why should she spend extra time & energy polishing stories when she can laugh all the way to the bank with the unpolished ones?
Well, she’s off My “auto buy” list. I’m not wasting my hard earned money and precious time on her books anymore. There are plenty of authors who do care about what they write, who work tirelessly to make sure they produce polished work to the best of their abilities, book after book after book. I’ll spend my time and money on them instead.
lookit, Candy and Sarah got themselves another Smart Bitch!
Kitty: the end result of ignoring the conventions of written language is that it becomes unreadable, impossible to understand at all. The conventions of spelling and punctuation are the things that enable us to communicate with each other accurately and effectively. Misplaced commas can quite literally alter the meaning of a sentence.
Writing is one of the greatest achievements of the human species; it enables us to communicate with people whom we have never met in real life, people who are now dead, people who lived centuries and even millennia before we were born. This is a magical thing.
We all have a duty to write as well and as correctly as we can, because if we do not, we are slighting the achievements of our ancestors. For someone who writes professionally, who actually makes her living as a writer, to take a cavalier attitude towards clear and correct writing is unforgivable.
I place blame first and foremost on the author who should send in the cleanest work possible and then the editor and finally the copy editor. There is no excuse for sloppy work especially if I’m paying money for something that is bad. I would want my money returned to me.
When I think of how I, my fellow authors, and editors toil so hard over getting plots, characters, spelling, continuity and enjoyability exactly so, it’s disheartening to know that Linda’s friends probably constitute the majority of readers (and book buyers.) Fanfic authors tend to complain they’re treated like vending machines, and increasingly, so are original authors. Just so the product hits the spot, the buttons, for the small amount of time it takes to consume it, the ingredients and the effort involved aren’t important.
Why should Lora Leigh change what she’s doing? Sounds like she worked out early on how to put in minimum effort for maximum return, and if you’re in the writing game to make money, that’s the easiest way to do it. The longer you take to write and polish, the fewer books you sell, the fewer books are in your vending machine.
Excuse me while I head off and cut my throat at the thought of the years and years I’ve wasted trying to create something memorable 🙁
Unfortunately this only adds to the vast pile of evidence which I have accumulated since 2008; namely that the mainstream does not care about what they put out. As long as they have a name to hang it on, and Ms Leigh has a name (albeit one I really haven’t had much contact with), her books will sell even if they are poorly written crap. If you care so little about the story that you cannot keep even the basic character facts straight in your head, why bother to write in the first place? I certainly would not waste my money on such a book. Ms Leigh has been writing for years, after the recent (highly publicised) public meltdown by a first time author over her work’s manifest inadequacies, you would have thought that the mainstream would be more careful when it rushes into print. Clearly this is not the case. Printing this book, in this state, cheapens us all, and it annoys the reading public.
Bless your heart, CCoward.
Anyway.
What I find discouraging as a reader is that nothing has to change in this scenario unless the buying public changes enough and stops buying. Leigh will get contracts for new books. She will turn in manuscripts with a plethora of errors. They’ll be published and they’ll sell well enough and make big pots of money. Lather, rinse, repeat. Why should any of the parties involved make any effort to change so long as those who will forgive Leigh anything will continue to buy her books without question?
The “point of no return” for really, truly die-hard fans is variable. For some it’s one or two bad books—Jane and I asked this question at a reader roundtable at RT last year: most people said it took one good book for most readers to add an author to their auto-buy list, but two bad ones for them to fall off that list. Readers are, by and large, eager to enjoy books and also very forgiving.
But every now and again there’s a kerfuffle about a(nother) horrible book from an author with a devoted and eager fanbase, and the outrage and anger is palpable, like it is here and in the reviews for Leigh’s latest book. I wonder if the outraged and angered fans number enough to make a dent in sales.
At this point, I doubt it. Leigh is ubiquitous wherever I see books for sale on more than one shelf – i.e. at the grocery store, I don’t see Leigh books, but in any bookstore or Target with a larger books section, I see her titles. She’s everywhere, errors and all.
I will still continue to buy her books and enjoy the heck out of them. I’m certainly not one who will throw someone under the bus because she’s successful with errors.
Feel free to read my books. My editors at LI, who I love and can’t do without, work their butts off to polish my work. Instead of reading to enjoy the plot and characters, I’m sure if you try real hard, you can find mistakes. And I personally claim all those errors as mine.
I don’t understand why people would pay money for extremely poor work when they could read better written fan fic for free.
I can’t tolerate poorly written work. It is distracting, confusing, and ultimately destroys my enjoyment.
If a book is not grammatically correct 99% of the time, I don’t bother. Also, even minor plot inconsistencies turn me off. At a minimum a book needs to be grammatically correct and consistent. Beyond that it also has to have an interesting plot.
I vote with my money and demand a great product.
I am all over the suggestion that those of us with at least a third grader’s grasp of spelling, grammar, and punctuation need to dumb ourselves down so we can enjoy the work of writers who do not meet our lofty standards.
Remember, kids, the only difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse is a couple of well-placed capital letters.
This is depressing stuff for most authors to read about. Amassing popularity and wealth through incompetence? Why even bother striving for quality when tens of thousands of readers don’t give a rat’s patooty about quality?
As Sarah implied, responsibility for the existence of inferior products rests squarely with consumers. As long as buyers settle for crap, it’s crap they’re gonna get. End of story.
@Kitty DuCane: No one is “throwing Leigh under the bus”. I’ve come to hate that expression because it’s so over-used and in this case it’s worse because it’s not even accurate.
People are saying that she produces bad product and they don’t like it. LL is not a charity or her readers’ buddy or that annoying cousin they have to support because she’s family and what can you do? She’s a person offering a product for sale to the buying public. That product has been consistently poorly made and the quality is getting worse.
Being annoyed because a product is of low quality and deciding not to buy it as a result is a perfectly reasonable consumer decision. It’s no different than deciding to stop going to a restaurant that has bad food or stop buying a brand of shoes that pinches your feet and has the heel snap off if you put one foot wrong. Acting as if it is, is IMO ridiculous.
@AgTigress & Ann Sommerville, thank you. You both say it so much better than me.
@Kerry Allen, I love you!!!
Kerry, that was the vivid example I was trying to think of, and couldn’t remember! 😉
@KittyDuCane, I am sorry, but to put out a piece of work crammed with errors, as this one seems to be, is just insulting to her readers. It says, “people will buy any damn thing, and I can’t be bothered to give them a good experience”. People were quick (and right) to slate the author of that ghastly self-published work for it; Ms Leigh should not expect an automatic pass because she has fame and a mainstream publisher.
I heart you, Kerry.
I don’t think good grammar and plot consistency are lofty standards.
They are standard, to think they are not affirms the stereotypes about romance novel and readers. If the very basics cannot be followed, then why complain when the literary value of the genre and the intelligence of its readers are maligned?
Thought you’d all like to know that Midnight Sins reached #11 on the NY Times paperback this week. So, look for pretty much of the same to be published in the future.
As an afterthought, there is an agent whose blog is riddled with misspellings and incorrect homonyms. I know it is not his job to edit the manuscripts sent to him, but it does make me wonder about his personal sense of quality control. I know, sometimes when I am commenting and I am irate, I make way more typos. But I always notice them, don’t you, the second I click the submit button.
I realize now that this statement was meant to be ironic.
I also noticed an ‘s’ missing in my previous post. Oops, what a way to make my point.
Sorry, Kim. I’m well into the “people who write for a living shouldn’t be expected to have an understanding of the fundamentals of written language” drinking game, and adequately conveying tone requires greater cognitive dexterity than that of which I am capable at this present juncture. *hic*
You would think that anyone who has written as long as LL has would have improved over the years. Most people who are serious about their craft, whatever it might be, tend to learn and refine as they mature.
LL hasn’t and that is what annoys a lot of us. It’s a definite slap in the face to her buying public that she just can’t be bothered to try.
It’s a matter of respect. LL should have enough respect for herself and her readers to produce as polished and refined a book as possible. And we, her readers, should have enough respect for ourselves to to demand a quality product.
With all the ways a book can be published today there are so very many to choose from and if authors like LL (and lkh) don’t want to respect their reading public then a lot reading public will be more than happy to give their hard earned book buying money to an author that they feel is giving them the best value.
@KerryAllen stop, please, you’re killing me! I’d offer to get in my car and drive many miles to meet you for drinks, but obviously you’re way ahead of me. Mmmmwahhhh!