I received a Kindle for Christmas. Of course, the first thing I did was to search for Cher books. Second thing I did was to search for Goodnight Loving Trail books for some poems. I read three books on that first. Then I came back to my Cher search.
One book just came out, called “Cher Unauthorized & Uncensored.” I could tell by the sample that this book was really awful and when I went to delete my sample, I accidentally purchased it! If you have a Kindle, you know how this happened. You have to double tap an object to delete it. They conveniently place the Buy option right below where your finger is already pressed to activate a purchase or a deletion, resulting in accidental purchases. I'm now out three bucks on a lousy Cher book. Since I was tricked into buying it, I decided to review it.
The intro makes copious claims about fact checking. Actually, there are so few facts in the book, incorrect facts are not the issue. This book is a school paper turned into an eBook. You have to beware of such things in the world today. The eBook revolution encourages easy money. If I were this writer’s teacher, however, I would mark it up for being poorly conceived and full of grammatical mistakes. Titles lack italics, quotes are missing quotes. Each chapter contains one paragraph. Random videos are inserted that lead you to YouTube. My Kindle can’t play YouTube videos so this was pointless. I did find one factual mistake. The book says Cher won an Oscar for Silkwood and an Academy Award for Moonstruck. I began to think our author was from another country. In one funny part, the book states that “By 2000, Cher recorded a few albums.” Yes, a few. A section on her personal life gets 7 lines. At least the book is timely, including news from January 30, 2014. The lesson here is you, too, could put out a crappy Cher eBook (and some dolt might accidentally buy it).
I knew I’d be in better hands with M.A. Cassata’s eBook released last fall. Also “unofficial and unauthorized,” at least Cassata is a journalist and can write a good sentence. I always enjoy how she organizes subjects around her Cher fandom, as she did in Cher Scrapbook. Although be warned: this book also has many typos. Some as innocuous as missing commas and italics, some as large as a missing answer in her 50-question Cher quiz. Hopefully these will be fixed in upcoming editions.
Speaking for myself, it is hard to catch all your typos. My blog has them (turnaround is too fast for proofing and it’s free, for Chrissakes!). My zines have them (also an underground, low-rent publication). But when I did my first book for sale on Amazon in 2012, I went and paid for a professional proofreader. Costing only 50 bucks for shorter material, I would recommend it to all eBook publishers.
Cher News is reporting that Cher's single "I Hope You Find It" entered the Adult Contemporary chart last week at #24 based on radio play.
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