aka: This post is brought to you by the letter H
Today was going to be the day I announced that Waiting For Spring is available to purchase at amazon.com. I was going to be pretty excited about it. Then I took another, closer, look at my latest proof copy at work last night (while filling in – yet again – for the pinhead who took my place on third shift, after already having worked a nine hour shift yesterday morning) and discovered that there’s a typo. That’s right. A typo. To be more specific, the “H” is missing from the word “He” at the beginning of a sentence. Not just any sentence…it’s one that begins a paragraph.
I don’t know how it happened (although I’m guessing it was when I was fixing the indents). I suppose it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I need to fix the error, upload the corrected copy to CreateSpace, buy another proof copy, then approve it once it arrives. All this will take about another week. And almost $13.
I realize that every book, regardless of how it’s published, has at least one mistake in it. And I’ll be honest, if the missing “H” was just in some random place in the book, I’d grit my teeth and flinch every time I thought about it, but I’d probably let it go. I mean, I know I wrote a blog post at Publishing Renaissance last week about indie authors making sure our work is as perfect as we can make it, but really…$13 for the letter “H”?
However, this error is smack dab in the middle of an important, rather emotional, part of the book, and would – I know – rip the reader right out of the story. And preventing that really is worth the thirteen bucks. To be honest, it would be worth twice that much. Probably more. Even to someone as cheap frugal as me.
R.J. Keller 
Well, it is the letter H, after all. 13 bucks is a small price to pay for that fine alphabetical specimen.
I wonder how much other letters go for? Maybe it depends on how typographically fraught the letter is. “L,” for instance: I’ve personally prevented the organization I work for from laying claim to a “pubic” relations program more than once. I bet that’s worth more than a measly 13 bucks. Dang, they should pay me more. A lot more!
Obviously, an “L” would be worth a good $20 at least. Still, I think it would be great fun to work for a pubic relations firm. Where’s your sense of adventure?
Pubic relations.
Is that like marital relations?
I hate typos, too. One reason I hate reading over what I’ve written because I aways see the mistakes and then want to start adding ideas. But being frugal is one thing, getting something right is another.
Honestly, I was just re-reading my essay that was read and proofed by me. It was proofread by a brilliant editor. It was then proofread by a copy editor. I went through the proof-read copy with a fine tooth comb. Then they went through it again to reject or accept my changes.
I’ll be damned if I didn’t find a grammatical mistake in it. (Become instead of became.)
I have stuff at my little pubs that were only edited by me (my one pub does nothing), which have no mistakes.
So sometimes, I think it’s just the luck of the draw.
Oh! And I forgot! In the first edition, I found I’d referred to fall as the “new year,” being a teacher, LOL. So we fixed that between the first and second edition.
MoJo…that’s gonna be what I call it from now on.
Joe…me too! And yes, this is one thing in which frugality is not the way to go.
Spy…you’re so right. I think sometimes it’s easy to miss the mistakes because we know what it’s supposed to say, so our brain fills in the blanks.
And LOL at calling fall the new year! I called it that when my kids were in public school.
Exactly — that’s why the “fresh eyes” thing is so important. At work I’ve been known to read things from back to front on occasion to trick my brain into seeing what’s actually there (or missing) instead of the same old stuff it expects to see. But generally I don’t miss much; I’m naturally detail-obsessive when it comes to words, anyway.
Personally, when it comes to pubic relations, I’m totally in favor. The university I work for…maybe not so much. I’d join a program if there was one.