They range from misspellings and repetitions to grammar and formatting errors. Some are more noticeable than others. I see Facebook posts all the time about how “errorists” win when there are typos like an unmatched parenthesis. Writers and editors try to catch all of them before publication, but they’ve been slipping past for centuries, even with famous works, to the point where they’ve become the fascination that they are.
Mystical Greenwood it turns out is no exception. I spotted some after going through a copy from my first order. I’ve notified Mockingbird Lane Press and we are working on making corrections for future copies. Certainly, there is a benefit of second and third editions and so on: typos can be caught and fixed in between, although the initial copies remain as they are.
Certainly, for any writer, it’s a frustrating feeling to see your work in print with errors. But good friends have given me encouragement, feeling typos won’t be a big deal, and the overall story will outweigh them. Well, certainly classics, even modern classics, are still around and people continue to read and enjoy them. To you reading this right now, if you’ve bought one of the early prints of Mystical Greenwood, let me express my hope that you will still enjoy the story.
The simple truth is perfection is impossible, but we still try to get as close as we can. It’s fair to say that future books I will write will no doubt have some typos in their first printing. Lesson learned.
Further Reading
- Ellis-Petersen, Hannah. Go Set a Watchman books missing text from final pages after printing error.
- Heffernan, Virgnia. The Price of Typos.
- Van Huygen, Meg. 15 Famous Typos in First Editions.
Leave a reply to eliza rudolf Cancel reply