8 Year Old Editor
The last six weeks have been interesting and rewarding. I’ve learned I am able to write more than I thought, in a given day, and I’ve discovered how difficult it is to catch everything during editing.
For Two Decades and Counting I hired an editor who did a very good job of finding a whole pile of errors I had made. We got them fixed up and then Mom, Dad and I took one more stab at it. We found a few more, but felt like we had a pretty clean book.
We were wrong. Not only were there a number of errors to names, there was a blunder in the table of contents. Go ahead, check your copy, you’ll see it.
This is the sort of thing that could cause a writer to spend his royalties hiring a shrink. Still, I tell myself that there are errors in every book. In fact, now that I’m writing and trying to edit, I see them all the time. Usually, it is something small, like the incorrect use of a comma. These I struggle with, so I never let it bother me. The comma is a tricky little guy and the rules are many. I just keep reading and enjoying the story, knowing that one must be ever vigilant with their work.
The best thing about being a self-publisher is that when an error is spotted, I am able to quickly make the change and upload the corrected version. This takes some of the sting out of the errors for me.
When we launched on February 4th at the Iowa vs. Penn State game I ran into a friend of mine with his son. We talked a bit and I showed him a couple of the errors that were in my book. I also mentioned that while it was unfortunate, I could fix it for future copies. His son, who is eight, wanted to buy a copy of the book. He even promised to write a review!
I happily sold them a copy and later got a few autographs from the team. Father and son seemed very pleased.
Tonight, after delivering an order of 20 books, I got a call. My friend’s son had been reading the book. He was half way through and enjoying it very much. Well, tonight he was reading along and found a mistake. As I said, he is eight. He told his dad that they needed to call me right away, so I could fix it.
I noted the mistake and went home and did just that. It was a very impressive find, too. I had left an ‘r’ out of a name.
I could stress out about it, but I don’t. Each time it happens, I just think, well, that is one more way to tell the early copies from the later ones. It makes them more collectable.
So, if you want one of the ‘Original’ copies of Two Decades and Counting, then you best buy it tonight, because in 12 hours, that first pack of mistakes will be gone.
