My novel Birth Offering has been in release since mid-September. Like most other first time authors, I revised the work more times than I could count - and reread it a few more times than that figure (whatever it is). I thought I had captured every typo, every grammatical error, every homonym error, every misplaced comma, and every extra space. Then the publisher's editor read and reread Birth Offering and found a few more. Then I found a few additional ones after the editing process, and finally caught a handful more when looking at the proofs.
I thought I had found them all.
Alas, no.
As friends grabbed the first available copies, many gave me high marks for the story, but would whisper, "you know, there were a few mistakes, errors, typos... your editor missed a few..." So on and so forth.
I really am quite embarrassed about this. As a university professor, I get after my graduate students about catching this stuff. As a psychologist, I consider myself a pretty decent researcher and scholarly writer. So, to make these mistakes is rather humiliating. (As I write this blog, I am almost fearful of some hidden typos seeing the light of day after I hit "publish".) Some friends have said that "you need a second set of eyes" and have graciously volunteered to read the galley proofs of the second novel coming sometime in 2014 (Dead Works). I'll definitely take them up on it. Some say that my editor should have caught these errors. Maybe so. Probably so. Still my name is on the book, so I consider it my responsibility.
Over the past few months, I have offered reviews of numerous horror novels on this blog. In some of them I would indicate that typos existed - and even contact the author to let him/her know. I never did this to embarrass them. Rather, I thought they would want to know. At the time, I thought I would certainly want to know. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, I feel the embarrassment - and subsequently feel bad about possibly humiliating any other author by pointing out the mistakes.
Now that I know what it the experience is like to find out that your book has errors, do I still hold the view that I want to know these things? Actually, yes. As humbling as it is, how else are you going to improve your craft? I suppose knowing is better than not knowing.
I think.
I thought I had found them all.
Alas, no.
As friends grabbed the first available copies, many gave me high marks for the story, but would whisper, "you know, there were a few mistakes, errors, typos... your editor missed a few..." So on and so forth.
I really am quite embarrassed about this. As a university professor, I get after my graduate students about catching this stuff. As a psychologist, I consider myself a pretty decent researcher and scholarly writer. So, to make these mistakes is rather humiliating. (As I write this blog, I am almost fearful of some hidden typos seeing the light of day after I hit "publish".) Some friends have said that "you need a second set of eyes" and have graciously volunteered to read the galley proofs of the second novel coming sometime in 2014 (Dead Works). I'll definitely take them up on it. Some say that my editor should have caught these errors. Maybe so. Probably so. Still my name is on the book, so I consider it my responsibility.
Over the past few months, I have offered reviews of numerous horror novels on this blog. In some of them I would indicate that typos existed - and even contact the author to let him/her know. I never did this to embarrass them. Rather, I thought they would want to know. At the time, I thought I would certainly want to know. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, I feel the embarrassment - and subsequently feel bad about possibly humiliating any other author by pointing out the mistakes.
Now that I know what it the experience is like to find out that your book has errors, do I still hold the view that I want to know these things? Actually, yes. As humbling as it is, how else are you going to improve your craft? I suppose knowing is better than not knowing.
I think.
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