One of the issues with using an editor as an author of publications related to diving is finding an editor that knows what you are talking about. Finding an English major is easy. There are plenty of them working at Starbucks and in restaurants. This is a niche market. So small that 500 copies of a work is right up there as a best seller when it comes to non agency publications. 1000 is like a John Grisham when it comes to scuba.
I get an offer for editing services every other week in my emails. Anywhere from 189.00 on up. The fear though is that the person(s) doing that editing would have no idea what a SAC rate, deco stop, kit, rig, or other term used by divers was. It is liable to result in a work so butchered up by the editor that it no longer makes sense and does not convey what I wanted to say.
Many don't seem to realize that mainstream authors don't edit their books. The publishing house has a staff of researchers, editors, publicists, etc. that back up the author's work. Authors of books on scuba often do not have that. I was very fortunate to have mine edited by a diver and one that was always asking questions and making suggestions that improved my own use of the written word in other publications. But I still make mistakes. Not as many but when you sit down and start putting thousands of words on paper or on the computer, and are not a person who actually writes for a living, things slip by. You don't want them to but they do.
What does happen though is that you are more aware of them and they gradually decrease. I am working on my second book off and on. I had a forward and chapter outline in process. Then I spent a week doing Technical Instructor training. It changed my whole outlook and now I, as a result, have to rethink the direction I want to go.
I have around 100 scuba related titles in my library from agency materials to books by divers to works of fiction. I can go through and find an error or two in just about every one. Some are actually painful to read at times due to errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling, and sentence structure. Yet when I put them in the context of getting the message across effectively those errors are not so bad. I also have to look at the question of whether or not the author wrote the intro to it on amazon or other site. They might not have, or may have and found out that it would not work. You only have so much room to work with and, on some once it's done, changing it can be a pain in the hind end.
I tend to cut scuba authors a break because they are scuba divers and instructors first in many cases, not full time authors. There are a few works in my collection that have my own handwritten corrections in them. Does that make them any less valuable a resource? No, not in the least. In some cases it has added to my knowledge as I have had to do a little extra research to make sure my corrections were accurate. I know there are typos in some of the stuff I have out there. I've gone back and taken a look at articles I wrote years ago and found mistakes that make me shake my head. Stupid little things. I correct and resave them. The important thing though is that out of all of the ones I have given away no one has come back and criticized my use of a comma when a semi colon should have been in there. No one has come back and said something I hyphenated that did not need it detracted from the message.
I wish they would so that I could correct it!
To disregard a work because of an error in the on line description of it seems unfair. I have also found that there are differences in language use depending on the authors origin and when they grew up. I recently started reading Robinson Crusoe again that I downloaded to my new tablet. Not the sanitized and cleaned up version. But a Google scan of a publication from 1866 of the original 1719 version. Looking at the first page from a 21st century perspective it would seem, on the surface, to be full of errors. In fact it is not. You just have to drop back 400 years to the language and terms of that period.
If it sounds like I may be making excuses for some of the work out there it is because I am. We are not, as previously stated, full time authors with the resources that are available to those that are. We do this out of a desire to pass on our experience, knowledge, and love of the activity. I have heard some criticisms of my work from those who can't put together a pair of complete sentences or have a marked lack of grammar or the use of punctuation. They have also never spent weeks, months, or years putting together a published work. It's not easy and is work.
If you don't believe me try to put 70,000 words down without a mistake.