THOSE TROUBLESOME TYPOS...

 by (a somewhat embarrassed)  Me... Helen Hollick

"I'd rather readers and reviewers laughed with me - not at me!"

Back in the distant days when novels were written with pen and ink on paper, or laboriously tapped out on a typewriter, typos were a rarity in the published book, for the simple reason the print-face had to be set by hand – and usually a skilled hand. The person checking the ‘proof’ was equally as skilled. Add to that, their (sic) were no spellcheckers to accept their instead of there.

Inevitably, typos appear despite rigorous proof reading by editors and authors. What is annoying, for an author, is when he or she has diligently done his/her best to proof read for errors but there in the published version instead of being full of pride, said author is awash with disappointment because the book is littered with errors. I say disappointment, in fact the feelings range from acute embarrassment to outright rage. I know. I'm feeling it at the moment.

Indie and self-published authors have, for years, been mocked, abused, denigrated (choose a derisive word out of a substantial list) because (as those sneerers have oft said) the quality of writing and production is poor and editing is non-existent. Those of us who are respected indie authors (and in my case reviewers – I recently founded Discovering Diamonds, a review blog for historical fiction) have worked darn hard to prove these accusations wrong. 

We produce good books, we review good books. We expect and intend to publish  professional quality good novels. But we are only human. We are not machines. When I am writing it is the content, the plot, the scene, the character that I am focused on, not the right direction of an apostrophe or of/off - or whatever. I try my best to correct the errors. My team of beta readers try their best. My editors... well, you get the picture. But I hate to admit this, well sorry folks, I am not perfect!

I do take care with my novels. My original indie editions, published by a company which went bankrupt (the managing director turned out to be a con man) were a mess. The correct way to publish an indie book was, I can tell you, a very sharp learning curve! Things still don't always go right though.

I’m not saying there are no typos in – let’s say, Sea Witch, the first of my nautical adventure series, there are a few (possibly more than a few). Reading it through on the Kindle recently I spotted a couple of howlers:  james not James, and Jaw not jaw in the middle of a sentence, as example. (How on earth did they get missed?) But, sorry, I am not spending money on re-editing and reprinting. I can't re-edit myself, and it costs a lot to hire editors, money which has been set aside for the next book, not for one that has already sold several thousand copies and been in print for about nine years. The errors are there, they are now as much a part of the story as is my Jesamiah. I'm not proud of the errors, but, well they're there and there they'll have to stay. 

Having said that, the advantage for the indie writer using POD (Print on Demand – i.e printed when an order is placed, as opposed to many being printed in one go) is that it is possible to do a re-edit and reprint if desired. Errors, for us indies are our responsibility, and we really do try to ensure the end result is 'spotless', but as I have shown, not always  achieved. Some readers tut and moan and complain about typos, most realise they are not intentional errors or don't even see them because they are engrossed in the story. 

I've just discovered that the Kindle version of Pirate Code, for some reason has chunks of text in italics - the error isn't in the book, so I assume its down to technology. 

And then there are mainstream/traditional books. You would expect a professional publishing house to produce quality edited and published books wouldn’t you? Hence this article, my red face, disappointment and annoyance. The last two shrugged aside with  difficulty.

Book. Good.
Face. Red

My latest book Pirates:Truth & Tales, is not an indie book but was commissioned by a publisher, paid for by them, and in-house edited. It is littered with errors. All, so I have been informed by a 'reviewer', 249 of them. They begin on the copyright page, increase a few pages later and go downhill from there.

- in the Timeline 1685 comes before 1684.

- spelling mistakes: hansome, yeilded, acolade…

- verbs don’t agree with their subjects in terms of singular and plural: ‘the ship were in northern waters’, ‘The delight of this adventure story are…’

- ‘off’ and ‘of’ are confused

- apostrophes are misplaced and incorrectly reversed.

- sometimes there is no spacing between words: ‘July1726’

- the author twice misquotes the title of the book as ‘Pirates: Truth and Tale’

I have made light of this public exposure of my embarrassment on Amazon because, well, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it - the exposure or the errors - so no point in ranting and raving. And, I guess, out of 110,000 words the typos could be worse… (Can anyone do the math? What % of 110k is 249?)

I am NOT making excuses, and I am not whining or whinging  (well OK I am, but read on…) I made it VERY clear to the publisher that I have an acute degenerative eyesight problem. Believe me, trying to correct nit-pick errors on a printed page with distorted, misted vision is no picnic! Over and again I asked for assurance that the text would be edited, checked and double-checked. Over and again I was assured that it would.
Maybe I am the fool to have trusted the assurances?

Some of the typos are because of my sight (I can’t see that those ‘r’s and ‘s’s have crept in, and ‘. ,” and double letters ii or ll are hard for me to spot.) I rely on a good editor, although I hold my hand up to a couple of senior-moment bloopers: ‘Sloan’ should be ‘Sloane’, ‘Jeffries’ should be ‘Jeffreys’ and what on earth made me put ‘Marie’ Celeste not ‘Mary’ Celeste? Old age is creeping up, obviously. And my favourite treat is rum and raisin ice cream … the printed blooper is ‘as a desert’. *Laugh*. Well I blame that one on the rum!

Small publishers usually do not send out a final version for a last check. I only saw a pre-proofed PDF typeset version, I only got to see the final version once it was printed and published. So not my fault. I didn’t get to see it before publication.
That is not much comfort, mind you.

What do I do? What can I do? 

Not a lot.

I have contacted the publishers who have apologised, although that isn’t a great deal of help to me – the book is out there, for sale, dotted with highly embarrassing errors.

Production seems to have gone awry because the editor looking after my book left shortly before the final stage. Errors such as ‘the ship were in northern waters’ and ‘The delight of this adventure story are…’ were introduced because of this editor’s editing. My original sentences were cut, and the remaining words not double-checked for continuing to make sense. So not all of these are my fault - even if they were they should have been corrected by the publisher's copy editor and the proof reader. According to my notes the ones I picked up from the PDF file were corrected.

The publisher’s representative has said:

“I’ve put a note on the file so that before it goes to reprint or paperback the book must be proofread before being released again. In the rare instances where I’ve seen a book with no proof corrections, we tend to find that the corrections are made but then the version that gets uploaded basically just isn’t that corrected version. We have all kinds of checks to make sure the right version goes up – which is where I figure the staff turnover might come in… so it looks like this was some unfortunate combination of errors our end.”

He goes on to say: “[in such instances] Options are recall, pulp and re-release (prohibitively expensive for small publishers in these straitened times) or wait until reprint. And if you print a lot [usually 1000 or so] because you think the book will do well, you can inadvertently let down the author because it means more copies to sell before reprinting.”

And:

 “Sorry again about this – one of the worst things in publishing is how the good things in a book are rather invisible and the errors are glaring, so to have situations like this where you have a bunch of errors makes me very sad, and you have every right to be annoyed. “

So it’s good that the publisher thought the book would do well and have done an initial large print-run – but that means a lot of books with a lot of errors in them. Luckily, judging from Amazon I have some lovely reviews (and I will be delighted to get some more – even if they do mention the (not my fault) typos…) 

So it looks like an incorrect file was uploaded for printing, but the damage is done, not helped by one review on Amazon.co.uk by a company called 'Proof Professor' savaging the book for what is blatantly a promotion for business gain. I don’t mind the mention of these errors – they are there, they are an uncomfortable and highly embarrassing fact, but this particular person from this company makes a regular habit of dissing various authors in exactly the same manner and style. These authors receive spam emails or messages offering a proofing service. When the spam is ignored – surprise, surprise, a bad review appears. A couple of weeks after I ignored him… guess what appeared? Yep. A ‘review’ highlighting the missed errors in 'Pirates'. Errors which I already knew were there, I didn't need his 'kind' offer of telling me about them!

But don't take my word for the nastiness of this person! ALLi (Alliance of Independent Authors) has issued this warning click here :"The threat implicit in these reviews felt clear to their victims: pay me to fix your editing, or I will hurt your reputation. The actions we observed in the course of our investigation and the overall pattern of Proof Professor’s reviews seem to confirm this interpretation."
"While it’s evident that some of the books in question did have errors, that’s irrelevant to the manner in which Proof Professor solicited business. Harassment has no place in the business model of a reputable service, especially when it escalates to invading someone’s home and personal life."

And another puzzle: why did Proof Prof pick on this particular book of mine? He had to buy it, I don’t give freebies. Why didn’t he ‘review’ the cheaper (much cheaper) Sea Witch, or Harold the King, or any one of my (much cheaper) books?

I wonder… could it be because there are not so many typos in these books, so he couldn’t pick on me, make his harassing hurtful and potentially damaging trollish spammy unpleasant comments about them? (And promote his business into the bargain?)

 Just a thought…

Fortunately for Pirates Truth & Tales, the publisher’s bad job of production hasn’t stood in the way of my entertaining writing. The queen of pirate book reviews, the highly professional Cindy Vallar gave it a very fair 5 star review – AND she mentioned the typos, but realised them for what they are: “There are enough misspelled words – not including the differences in spelling between British and American English – and missing words that readers will notice. But there is far more to recommend this book than these minor problems.”

But I now have a dilemma. Do I shrug, smile and take it on the chin, making light of this almighty cock-up, or do I sit here and wring my hands, not mention the book ever again? Like heck I won’t! I enjoyed writing it – and all I can suggest is, buy a copy and laugh at the silly typos. Maybe I should run a competition for ‘spot the bloopers’?

Oh, and yes the title was muddled. Again, not my fault! The publisher didn’t decide on a final sub-title until  the book was ready to go to print. In fact, on Amazon, Goodreads etc, it initially appeared as a completely different sub-title! I only knew the final version myself when the book was delivered to me.

One huge comfort about all this, I am not alone. The big publishers have been slammed for messing up with errors: Penguin, Harper Collins, Bloomsbury, Simon and Schuster... so have the big authors. Fleming's first edition of Moonraker is worth a bomb because of a typo. So is a certain first edition Harry Potter novel. Maybe one day I'll become a really famous author and the books with errors in will become collector's items!

The most famous blooper was in the 1631 edition of a Bible when the word 'not' was missed out from that commandment about committing adultery...  One of Henry Miller's novels is littered with typos (had I better check... is that Miller or Millar?) Twilight has typos, and so does one of the Game Of Thrones novels. Well, frankly if the Starks, Lannisters and Daenerys Targaryen can live with bloopers, then so can I! (Or rather, if the people who made the bloopers manage to stay alive, despite the revenge of the Starks, Lannisters and Daenerys Targaryen... )

I’m wondering, though, perhaps my pirate book was perfectly OK when it went off to be printed, but I do say some not very nice things about some famous pirates such as Charles Vane, Blackbeard and Edward Lowe… 

Hmmm. I wonder if their ghosts sabotaged the file?

"Errors?  I don't care... as long as you mention me...!"

Please do feel free to leave a comment below 

(preferably supportive and encouraging *laugh*)

and if you feel brave enough to read my books I have no objection to an Amazon review mentioning the typos, but maybe mention the entertaining read, the story, the characters etc., as well?

All errors is my own and are probablee delibrate. (sic)