Errors, Errors Evrywhere
Something About My Journey
My publisher recently posted a Substack that highlighted typos and other errors she has experienced in her career. This was prompted because of a recent situation where Jeff Hiller’s spine of his new book, Actress of a Certain Age, read Actress of a Cetain Age. Here is a link to Brooke’s lovely post about errors in the publishing world. Brooke's SubStack Post. It is a fun, quick read.
Brooke’s article reminded me of my errata nightmare (I did look this up to make sure I wasn’t adding an embarrassing error into my post about errors). I was sent the final file for my book and asked only to confirm that it was the correct version—just a last check to ensure no one had accidentally selected an earlier draft. I verified that the most recent change was included and thought, Okay, this is it. The final version. We had already gone through eight rounds of what is referred to as “final pages” essentially edits and proofreads. On a whim, I decided to read the very first page of Chapter One—just half a page, really. And to my horror, this is what I saw:
“She knows her world will never be the same, as he really sees at her.”
Yeah. Sees at her.
How could that be? An extra “at”. Yikes! We were so close to the deadline to get the book to the printer that there was some discussion about letting the error go, but thankfully, all agreed that it may have been okay if the error was on any other page except the first page. Honestly, any error in the first twenty pages would have caused me to demand a fix. But page one was a definite. My Advanced Reader Copy still has the error, and occasionally, I flip open that version and stare at that offensive “at”.
I’d heard it’s nearly impossible to produce a 300-page book without a single typo, but still, I had held out hope.
One of the most famous and funniest publishing errors is the so-called Wicked Bible (1631)
Error: In this edition of the King James Bible, the Seventh Commandment read: “Thou shalt commit adultery.”
Impact: The printers were fined heavily, and most copies were destroyed.
My Summer Events
Here is an update on my events for the next few months. As always, I’d love to see you at one of them. I was thrilled to see Liz and Shirley at the Wethersfield Author Walk, which was the highlight of my summer events so far.
A quick thank you to all my readers who took the time to post a review. I’m thrilled to announce I have over 118 reviews on Amazon and 97 on Goodreads. It seems like a huge milestone and one I wasn’t sure I would reach. However, with your help, I was able to. Here is one of my favorites because it shows the potential that is out there if the stars align and some fairy dust is sprinkled liberally on my book.
For anyone, or if you have a friend who would like to listen to my book on Audible, I have three promo codes that you can use to receive your free audiobook. First-come, first-served!
Please enjoy a free audio review copy of Again and Again Back To You: A Novel, now available on Audible. Redeem the one-time use code below at https://www.audible.com/acx-promo
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My only ask is that you do a review on Audible after you listen.
While in college, I wrote a paper on the Ordovician-Silurian boundry. Yup, on the title page and about fifty other times throughout the paper I misspelled the word boundary. At the time there was no spell check, just a good old fashioned Selectric typewriter. After the first ten or so red slashes through the offending errors, the instructor gave up on correcting my error. I don’t think I made an A on that one.
When I was a newspaper reporter, it was all too common to find that "public" appeared as "pubic."