The pain of discovering typos in published work

ONLY GOD HAS NO TYPOS

Pride goeth before a fall

I know that. I expected that. And my typo rate was, I thought, rather low, especially considering that I ended up being, for reasons too long to go into, my own proofreader.

And I worked my tail off at it. It’s very hard to be critical of your own work. So? It’s part of the job.

Now, I have found egregious (well, to me) typos in traditionally published books – one major book on writing that I use almost daily has ‘principal’ (main, or the guy who is in charge of a school) instead of ‘principle’ (fundamental truth or morally correct behavior) not once, but twice – so the author got it wrong and the proofreader failed to correct it; or a proofreader got it wrong, changed it, and the author didn’t catch the incorrect correction. Or they both have no idea they don’t know.

I earmarked the place, and occasionally toy with the idea of sending a note to the author (which I don’t do – not my circus, not my monkeys). For future editions, you see. Because it is the kind of book that gets future editions.

But it amuses me to know it’s there. And I still love the book.

Proud of having low error rate, until…

I had found ONE wrong word, ONE extra ‘s’ at the end of a word, and a couple of places where, when doing the final formatting pass through MS Word (to get widow and orphan control, running headers and footers, and right margin indents for the print version of Pride’s Children), WORD inserted some stupidities (specifically, leaving –” as the only thing at the beginning of a line, 5 or 6 times) after I published.

They’re on my list of things to correct on the CreateSpace file (yeah, it’s on the to do list, somewhere in the 9000s). No one who reviewed has commented on those tiny typos, so they’re not all that significant in the flow (or my readers are being kind).

And all but the first two are not present in the ebook, which didn’t go through Word.

Acceptable. Imperfect, but not too much.

Possibly because my youngest daughter mentioned it (she finally read the book!!!), I was a little more attuned to a particular possibility when I was sitting in the doctor’s office yesterday, reading my own book.

And then, wham! I saw it. I’m not even sure if it’s the same thing my daughter mentioned (though it may be), and I now know exactly what I did, and it really doesn’t affect the story that much.

But I am now aware of a FLAW that I, as a perfectionist, can’t let stand.

Easy to fix?

Can’t let it stand.

You know me.

I moved the idea of putting an errata page on prideschildren.com up on the list – so those lovely people who purchase the first book in the trilogy in paper can correct their own copies (not that many readers, but still…), possibly now aware that they have the coveted First Edition – flaws and all.

Or I can slink away, offering (consider yourselves offered to, if you are one of these wonderful people) a corrected copy as soon as I can make them, and being aware that they were either too kind to point this out to me, or, better, too engrossed in the story to even notice.

The ebook will be corrected (again, asap – not a fast possibility, either), so that anyone who downloads it again will automatically get the corrections. If they care. Because this new little typo is in both versions. [hangs head]

The good side

There’s ALWAYS a good side.

I caught it (before I had a chance to look up my daughter’s questioning whether I had it right). From reading it myself in a relaxed way, with nothing else to read. Rather than from it being scornfully pointed out by a reader. Rather less painful – or is it?

Because I’m indie and self-published, it is both my responsibility and my right to fix it (so I don’t have principal for principle for all eternity of this print run).

CreateSpace and Amazon make it easy to fix (haven’t done it yet, so that’s ‘easy in principle’ for now): I upload the corrected files (I believe), wait, and within a couple of days, I can hold my head up in public again.

I have added (mentally – that darn To Do list is so darn long) a few things to the ‘look out for’ list for my AutoCrit editing passes. Especially since my brain appears to be losing its mind, I will now examine every single ‘s in each scene because the world not understanding that plurals don’t have apostrophes is its problem, not mine. I will speak sternly to the brain, and it will whine that it’s so overburdened already, and I will remind it that I’m in charge.

Etc. I.e., I will improve my skills based on this little irritating contretemps.

And because I’m indie, I don’t have to deal with a proofreader about the whole thing.

So why am I making a big deal of this?

Because professional means that you worry about these details, and that you try to make the next one have fewer (not less) errors.

It’s good for me to see where improvement is necessary (believe me, there is a whole new process in place so this particular little error won’t recur).

And it actually bolsters my belief that self-editing, and learning from your self-editing how to be a better writer is critical.

I stand behind my own work, even in the tiny places.

For the future

It’s okay to point typos out to me if you notice them. I just got a wonderful email back after my beta reader read – and liked – the next chapter. I strive to send her finished work. And her wonderful nitpickiness tells me what she likes, asks questions which lead often to some wonderful back-and-forth, and always mentions the little things. She found two. I love her for that.

It also reinforces that doing the beta reading one chapter at a time has some significant advantages for me: a chapter is a reasonable size chunk of writing to deal with at a time. Things get noticed.

And I can’t see how this would possibly work with a traditional publisher, the timing, and the diffusing of responsibility. All while the writer is supposed to be writing the next book. Not for me, anyway.

So there it is. And no, you won’t find out from me what I did wrong (at least not until the Errata page comes out). If you didn’t notice, I’m not going to be the one to point it out. Nope.

Welcome to the wonderful world of independent writing. PLEASE feel free to contribute your own stories.

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Thanks to Stencil and Quozio, my go to places for images. I’m resonsible for the silly words that appear in them.

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