Quote:
Originally Posted by igoturgeld
Miikka,
Here is a proper review of the book.
The content was extremely entertaining, it was very nice because it reminded myself of when I was growing up, I too used to bet on many things with my friends. On top of that I also had a bankroll at one time for lottery scratch offs. ( I wish I would've kept that money) haha. I really like how detailed you were and that you managed to keep your thoughts organized.I also enjoyed the small suspense that you created by not speaking a word about poker until later on in the book, that really had me hooked, as it is obvious that I picked up the book because of the poker aspect in it. Whilst reading the book I did encounter some syntax errors. Some were very obvious. Regardless of that the book was very well put together. If you are in need of a proof reader or an editor, I would love to help out.
Keep on writing, I feel like you can make a lot of stories based on your adventures.
Good luck.
Quote:
Originally Posted by avatar77
Just finished the book today. I really enjoyed it! Although one must get through quite a bit to get to the actual poker part, I actually enjoyed the first half. Author was very authentic and I admire how open and honest he was about his childhood and addictions.
I look forward to Vol. 2. When can we expect it?
There were some typos and minor grammatical issues. However, it did not detract at all from the book entertainment or readability wise. Great read and recommend.
Hey guys,
And thanks so much for the well thought-out reviews. It especially warms my heart to hear that you liked the non-poker bits - the other two books are ~90% poker when in the first book that number would only be 40% or so (although still with lots of additional stuff on other forms of gambling/degening). Making the beginning of the story work was by far the biggest challenge for me in the project, so it's great to hear that it, too, worked for you.
Regarding the typos - it's honestly a little surprising for me to hear that there were any grammatical issues sticking out. I don't mean to get all defensive - quite the opposite, I'm very glad for any issues people point out, as it's not too late to fix them for the paper version. But I'm mainly surprised because we really went through the whole thing SO many times. My editor has a journalistic degree from UNC and does editing for a living, and she worked her ass off on the project so I'm not entirely sure what we've screwed up. I read the book myself over 20 times cover to cover before putting it out, and by this point it had already been edited three times. (I'm just including this to point out that we definitely had a very perfectionist attitude, and put a LOT of effort into ensuring there are no grammatical errors in the text).
Having that said, I'm aware of a few issues specifically regarding the Amazon version. Originally when we put the first edition out (only as a PDF), over the first month or so we discovered (/were reported) a total of 11 typos/grammatical errors if I remember correctly. As an example, at one point in the book the word "orange" was spelled "orance". I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw it. Not only have I known the correct spelling since I first learned English on third grade, I obviously ran every possible automatic spelling check before even sending it to my editor. Then she edited it, assumedly going over the thing many times, then I read it 20+ times. And the same word appears in the book a few times spelled correctly, but in that one spot... I have no idea how that possibly made its way through every possible check. Anyway, once we learned about these, we fixed them for the PDF, but fixing the Amazon version is significantly more difficult since updating the file requires re-formatting the whole thing as well as going through a very long/annoying process with Amazon themselves. So in the end we decided that going through that whole process wasn't worth it just to fix these typos - just part 1 has something like 400k characters, so having 11 of them wrong didn't seem like a big enough deal.
These SHOULD all be fixed for the PDF version, and especially if anyone who's purchased the PDF after mid-March has found any typos then it's very concerning and I'd love to learn what they were.
And really, if anyone finds any typos or grammatical errors from any of the formats / parts of the book, I would hugely appreciate if you could point them out via PM/email (address is on the book's website). I really don't want anyone to read the book the first time around with the intention of finding typos, because I think that would take away from the experience quite tremendously, but you know, if anything sticks out that you still remember after reading, I'd absolutely love to learn about them. I would also be very happy to give you proofreading credits for any future editions of the ebook and for the upcoming paper version (if you wish to be credited, please include your name or whatever screen name etc you want to use in the email).
Something we did regarding part 2 was using a few outside proofreaders. This was something we didn't do with part 1. I think the reason why errors like "orance" can make it to the book despite so many checks is precisely because when you read over the same thing too many times your brain just becomes accustomed to it, and an outsider view can help to point out potential errors.
Anyway, Part 2 is now available for pre-ordering (links on the website/twitter/facebook etc). The official release date is October 30, pre-orderers will likely get it a few days in advance unless I get overly neurotic and keep going over and over it until the very last second in search for typos