Public Mistakes

The other day I saw a typo in the title of a book listed for sale on Amazon.  Two letters were transposed in one of the words.  An easy enough mistake to make when your fingers are flying over the keys writing a book.  (One MS Word ought to catch and if not, then your editor, and if not, then you on your many pass throughs.)  Perhaps an easy mistake to make when you're getting everything typed in on the Amazon pages because you're both nervous and excited. 

But it's also an easy mistake to catch and fix.  Not only did this person not catch it when they were checking everything over (and rechecking), but they were sharing the link on FB and not catching it. 

I actually searched Amazon just now to see if any others had made the same mistake (and to see if perhaps the author had caught it, but Amazon was slow to update the link - they didn't).  One book, one MP3 album, and one set of pretend tattoos.  Won't nobody be finding any of that searching off the typographically challenged name.

Now, I know my regular readers and commenters wouldn't be caught dead doing this.  We're all checking and rechecking and double rechecking.  But for the newer self-publishers out there, please take note of this mistake.  And don't do it. 

Oh, I've made some tragic mistakes.  I've made so many mistakes I can't even begin to remember a specific one to use as an example.  Suffice it to say, they're there. 

We're not immune. Cuz, yeah, we're human and humans make mistakes.  It's kind of a thing.  But humans are also pretty good at catching mistakes if we take the time and put forth the effort.  The above?  I wouldn't think it would take much time or effort, but that's me.  Then again, shit happens.

If you catch me making a monumental mistake, please tell me.  (Privately, please*.)  Point your finger and laugh at me.  (Again, in private.)  It'll hurt and I'll learn from it.  Like stepping barefoot on a Lego because you didn't put your toys away, you'll never make that mistake again.  (Of course, if you're rude or snotty about pointing it out, you may find yourself getting the Anderson treatment**, but them's the breaks.)

Mistakes happen.  Be on the lookout for them and catch them when you can.  Constant vigilance will help keep you from making them publicly.  Privately?  Well, that's just life.

What say you? 

*Outing someone's mistakes in public and in such a way that everyone knows exactly who you're talking about is just cruel.  You'll note I try to scrub every identifiable marker from posts like this, so no one gets hurt.  And yeah, I didn't contact said author in private because people don't like when you point out their mistakes and can often get testy about it.  I'm not into confrontation.  If I'd known the person and felt comfortable with them, I would've pulled them aside and said, in the nicest way possible, 'hey, you have a typo there'.

** The Anderson Treatment - years ago, I had a particularly obnoxious neighbor whose last name was Anderson.  She was so bad that eventually I pulled down an invisible wall between us.  I no longer acknowledged her in any fashion unless I absolutely had to - like the day her friend's RV was blowing carbon monoxide into my house.  I had to deal with her face to face then.  Otherwise?  Whoosh.  It's an effective way of maintaining my calm.

Typos, Flaws, and Formatting Errors

Typos, flaws, formatting errors...  No matter how hard we try to scrub them all out, they still seem to pop up in any manuscript. 

As a writer, they bug the hell out of me.  I'm sure they bug the hell out of my editor, too.  The two of us try our damnedest to  get those buggers right the hell out of my books before they go to publication.

If you follow me on Facebook, you will occasionally see me point out where people have egregiously left one in a short FB post somewhere - usually the news.  The shorter the written item, the more irritated I get about it.  And the fact that someone somewhere was actually paid good money to write short paragraph or two with errors sends me 'round the bend.

Now, you may have seen a boo-boo or two in my blog posts or my FB posts.  :shrug:  I do the best I can but those things are usually written on the fly.  And no one is paying me to write them.  (Sure, in the bigger scheme of things, everything I write goes toward selling books so in a way, they are 'paid for', but let's not split that hare*.)  Hell, there are probably errors in this post.  I'm writing it on the fly at just before 6am, so it is what it is.

As a reader, I forgive a lot of typos, flaws, and formatting errors.  Provided the story is good.  I read one recently where the author kept using YOUR in place of YOU'RE.  But the story was enthralling, so I got over it.  Read another where the formatting was off and there was a space between every paragraph - like you see here.  They either forget to turn off the 'Add Space Between Paragraph' function in Word or they just didn't care.  I got over that, too. 

Hell, I've run across books that were totally screwed up on my Kindle Fire, but they were interesting enough for me to try them again on my old Kindle and they read just fine.  It's just how far I'm willing to go as a reader. 

As a writer, though... GAH! 

I read another book recently where there were multitudes of errors.  I stuck with it and the book was actually pretty good otherwise, so it wasn't a big deal to me.  But the reviews.  OMG, people were ripping the crap out of the poor author.  Telling them they needed an editor (when an editor name was actually listed on the product detail page).  I felt so bad for them.  Not that the reviews were wrong, per se, but I could never do that to another author. 

Finding a good editor...  But that's a post for another time. 

Ahem, where was I?  Yes, yes...  wrapping up...

So, how are you about typos, flaws, and formatting errors?  Fine with them as long as the story's good or do they drive you right up the freakin' wall?  Or both?


* Yes, I meant to write HARE instead of HAIR.  Everyone splits hairs, but few split hares.  It's just gross.  But it got your attention, didn't it?  =o)  Intentional typos... also a post for another time.