On Free-eBooks.net, our readers often comment that the spelling and grammar errors in books are far more than annoying – sometimes it is positively off-putting.  In fact, there have been comments that the number of spelling and grammatical errors have dissuaded many a reader from even finishing a book.

The problem

As I understand the print publishing industry, books are proofed by a team of editors and/or proofreaders who are usually adept at finding the spelling and grammatical errors.  But I am willing to bet that the expenses that these teams incur is part of what made the publishing industry so expensive and so exclusive in the first instance. If you have to pay someone for each book they proof, then you are likely to keep the number of books you send to them to a bare minimum – which by extension means you are going to be more selective in what you choose to publish.

Frankly, as somewhat of a perfectionist myself, I believe this proofing should fall on the writer. In a perfect world, the writer will read and re-read [ more ]