The Curse of the Typos

As we get further and further into the world of self-publishing and small publishers, more and more typos are going to be showing up in books. These aren’t missed typed words, but rather a missing letter or word that screws up the sentence. I’m sure you all know what I mean: the missing ‘s’ that leaves you with the wrong verb tense or a missing article or some other anomaly that no one’s caught.

More books are also being published for the first time as paperbacks. Errors that might have been found in the original hardback edition aren’t going to get caught by readers who then send e-mails and letter to make sure that future editions are corrected.

How big a problem is this? Well, it depends on how picky you are and how much the errors bug you.

I’ve got to say with all of the proofing I’ve done on “The Wise Planner” (coming very soon from WiseGuy Press), it continues to amaze me that we can still find a word that isn’t correct. The latest is weight vs. weigh. How many people have already read the book and missed that? At least 8 or 10, and yet, no one saw it!

I’m hoping that, when it’s published, “The Wise Planner” won’t have any mistakes. But the reality is that we probably will miss something, and life will still go on.

© Judy Kane 2009