A Telling of Typos

Good morning and happy summer!

If you follow me here on WordPress or other social media platforms (thank you!), you know that I am a published author, surviving in the writing trenches for twenty years: fourteen books, four plays, and one musical. Six books are published, and I am currently submitting my latest play to regional theaters. Not only am I published, but I am SELF-published. Although I have a great literary agent, and we have come so close too many times to count, he has not yet sold me to a large house, so, with his blessing, I self-publish the books overlooked by the big guys. 

Self-pubbed authors are buried under the weight of the many hats we wear. We take notes, create outlines, take workshops, and read other works to see what great writing looks like. We conduct research, fact-checking every single detail. We write, re-write, edit, re-edit, and re-edit again. We design everything a book needs: chapter breaks, glyphs, cover art, back matter, blurbs, summary, synopsis, page number location, author photo, font style and size, book size, book cover, and then format it all to work as an epub, Kindle, and PDF. The start of a book to publication can take anywhere from many months to many years. Each book! And this doesn’t include uploading, finding reviews, and the never-ending thrill of marketing. 

What I really want to get into today is the ugly truth about typos. 

Obviously, a writer can hire someone to edit their book. You can find one anywhere, from Fiverr to writers organizations, to private websites. Some private editors have at one time worked for large publishing houses or magazines, while others are former English teachers or journalists. Editors can charge anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 per book, depending on the specifics. This is a lot of money to invest, especially if you end up with an editor who is not on the same page as the writer, or one who is simply not that talented. Yes, a bad editor can end up costing a writer money as well as time, and, well, time is a writer’s enemy.

If a writer is lucky enough to find a literary agent, and the agent is lucky enough to connect his client with a traditional publisher (Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Penguin, etc), she is then teamed up with experienced editors, perhaps ones who have edited dozens or hundreds of books before hers. These editors live and breathe words, inhaling the publishing industry like pure oxygen. They work with writers to take an already wonderful book to a higher level. 

I once worked with an editor from HarperCollins on a Young Adult novel. Before she and my agent signed on their respective dotted lines, she spoke with me on the phone, handing me four full pages of notes. Even though the notes were spot-on, they caused me angst beyond comparison. For thirty days, I cried each morning and threatened to throw my laptop across the room. It was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. But I trusted her. And she trusted me. If I could prove to her my worth, it could be the beginning of a long and successful editor-writer relationship. For a month I worked on the changes, strengthening some characters, adding a secondary plot line. Once I had incorporated all of her notes, my agent sent it back to her. She loved it. And so did I. Sadly, as sometimes happens, the editor changed houses and shifted to a romance line and could not take the book with her. I share this story because my novel only became as good as it is due to the incredible insight of this one talented editor.

If I had signed with HarperCollins, that first editor would have been followed by line and copy editors. In a large house, these additional editors work to make sure every line has correct punctuation, including those often missed end quotes! They make sure that simple words aren’t accidentally misspelled, like “through” instead of “threw”. They check for capitalization, misplaced metaphors, too many adverbs, eye rolls, or shoulder shrugs. For the most part, these final editors are there to make sure the book is as clean as it’s going to get before going out into the world; before a reader takes a chance with their dollar and their time.

So, what happens if a typo sneaks under the radar? What happens if a semi-colon is misused, or if the word french fry has a capital F? Well, nothing, really. It’s almost an anti-climactic event. I have discovered typos in Pulitzer Prize winning novels, famous memoirs, textbooks, and classics. I’ve seen them in local newspapers, online magazine articles, medical journals, and cookbooks. I’m sure you will find a few in this content, as I am writing it on a sleepy Sunday morning with hopes of posting it by Sunday afternoon, before my pancake breakfast throws me into a sugar crash.

Typos. They are all around us, all the time. Even with computer programs to help us with spelling and punctuation, those little devils rear their ugly heads–and sneaky as they are, they are only spotted after the book has been printed! As long as they don’t take us out of the story but for a millisecond, then really, who cares?

My four-time award-winning YA novel, Upside Down in a Laura Ingalls Town, has typos. I used the word “reigns” instead of “reins” and “in tact” instead of “intact.” Since the book’s release in 2016, my readers and I have found about ten! I am not using my self-pubbing as an excuse, but I do want you to know that since I pay to have my books formatted by someone else, if I decide to go in and fix all these typos, I will need to re-do the word doc, then send to the formatter and have him re-do in epub, Kindle, and PDF. This is doable, even affordable. The difficult part is re-uploading the new version to all of the places where this book is sold, from library systems to Amazon to Smashwords, among other venues. I promise you–and I promise myself–to do this one day. But it will have to be a day when I’m not conducting research, writing, editing, designing a cover, digging for reviews, uploading, wordpressing, reading, marketing, housecleaning, tutoring, or living in general. When that day comes, I will jump in between the pages of all of my books and clean them up for my readers.

So please, save the gallows and the burnings for those who should have never written a book to begin with and not those who write well but make little boo-boos from time to time. Be kind by sharing these mistakes with the writer personally, like via DM or email. Don’t chastise them in a public forum. Be forgiving, as self-published authors are expected to do it all, and do it all perfectly. Treat us like your children, with honesty and care. Use your inside voice when explaining the difference between “bundt cake” and “bunt cake.” And don’t worry. I’ll eventually fix those typos. Just keep in mind I only have two hands, and they are super busy at the moment.

: )