Imagine that you are driving to your local Ford dealer to buy a new car. On the way, you see a billboard that shows your chosen model. Unfortunately, it has a mis-spelled word. Would you buy a Ford Fucus?
No. They are advertising incompetence. If they can't even spell the name of their own car right, what else did they get wrong? You know that it wasn't the factory's fault, that was an advertising wage-slave that did that, not the workers in the factory, but the mistake made it all the way to the billboard.
It shows a serious lack of care about integrity, getting everything right before their name goes on it, at the corporate level. The marketing people, the advertising people, all the people who paid for the ad and all the people who set it up, none of them cared enough to check that the work was correct. With that level of 'care' at the decision-making level, you know that no one is checking the actual car, either.
Nope, I ain't buyin' that! Instead, you turn around and go to the Chevy dealer to see what they have, right?
Here on SOL, the author chooses the title. The author chooses the 'teaser', or the text that is displayed that describes what he or she wants the reader to know about their work. He is advertising his work just as much as any corporate executive does. His customers pay in time spent reading their work. There are a lot of people writing stories here. Readers have to pick and choose what they want to read. They choose based upon what they see first, the title and the teaser.
For God's sake, at least get the title right! A couple of years ago, I saw one story here on SOL with a screwed-up name in the title. I opened it up just to see....Nope, the character is named something else. The author mis-spelled the name in the title! Who would have read my last story if I'd titled it "Jasen's Tale?"
Then, the teaser. Just a couple of sentences. Take the time to make sure they make sense. They should draw the reader in, not repel him.
What Tony Tiger is trying to tell another author is that if the author can't even be arsed to get the TITLE right and the TEASER right, the two things that a prospective reader will see first before downloading or opening anything, you know what quality of work went into the actual story.
Nope, not buying that Ford Fucus. I'll go to another car lot and see what they have.
-ZM