I want to talk about one of my pet peeves. Typographical errors. I’ve read a lot of indie books lately, and that’s been one of my biggest problems with them. Do my books have them? Yep. My mother was reading one of my books the other day and caught two. She’s the best “typo catcher” I know. I have no idea why I haven’t used her as one of my proofreaders. That book that she caught the errors in had already had three different sets of eyes on it and still had at least two errors. I can live with two without freaking out, but I need to fix them and reload the books. (The beauty of ebooks!)
When I read a book published the indie way or the trad way, I expect to see errors. Today’s books have them, regardless of how they’re published. I don’t know if paid editors are getting sloppier or if this world is getting so rushed that everything sufferers. But I don’t mind if I see three or four errors in a book. Not a big deal. But I just finished a book last week that really disappointed me in the amount of typos I found. This book was long and I lost count of the typos. I would guess 50 or more. Seriously. I have only read one other book that had that many. I’m not going to mention the name of the book or author, because…well, you understand why. I wouldn’t want to embarrass an author that I like so well. This book was absolutely wonderful. Well written, interesting, great action, great interaction of the character. It was imaginative and well thought out. An outstanding novel. But the typos….wow….
Whether you pay someone to proofread or have people that will do it for free, I would suggest having more than one person look at it. I saw a review on a book by a really well known indie author that said that the book was full of typos (this is true because I read it and saw them, too), and the author’s response was that she paid an editor. So even paid editors aren’t perfect, although whoever it was shouldn’t have let THAT many errors go through. That’s why more than one person should look at it.
I really, really want to tell this author about all the typos. But I’m sure he already knows it by now. And I don’t want to alienate anyone, especially someone I seriously like and whose books I love. Sometimes, I guess it’s just best to keep your mouth shut.
lauralynnelliott.com 
Sure, they probably already know but it doesn’t hurt to shoot them an e-mail and tell them. Nobody wants typos in their work and I think all the writers I know work hard to make sure there are as few as possible. I know I do and there are still a lot of typos in Glimmer. I think at least 8 people had their eyes on it. I’ve hired a proofreader to give it a once over and then I’ll upload again. I’ll do the same thing for Glow. I found it was too much pressure on my editor (and BFF) to expect her to catch all the typos. She gets into the story on almost the same level as I do, and while she’s better with punctuation and spelling than I am, once you read a story 20 times you can’t see the typos anymore. (That sentence, for instance, probably had too many commas. :)) She’s good at helping me figure out weird sentences and things that don’t work. Paying someone to go through it specifically for typos seems like the way to go.
Sorry for the longest comment ever. 🙂
Actually, that sentence you mentioned didn’t have too many commas. The punctuation was correct. LOL
If I knew the author better, I would feel more comfortable telling him. I just don’t know how he would react. Hopefully, he would take it as helpfulness, but you never know. He actually had a review that mentioned the typos, so I’m sure he knows. I just hope they were fixed before the paperback was released.
I’m usually a good proofreader, but I’ve noticed that it’s harder to catch mistakes in your own book. I”m definitely going to let my mom be one of my proofreaders from now on. She’s really good at catching errors. I just didn’t realize it. LOL
I’m struggling with the dreaded typos issue right now. I’ve uploaded one of my novels 2 additional times to fix typos. Shortly after the second time, my husband read it and found a few more. (@#!@!!#) Now, he has to be one of my proofreaders in round 1! (I also need to get my mom in on editing. I’ll forewarn her about the zombies and violence, but she might be a little shocked and worried about me…) One reviewer who gave it 4 stars, said they would have given it 5 if typos and formatting errors weren’t an issue. Right now…I’m so time-pressed (I’m going to be working at the office a good chunk of the day on Sunday) that I don’t know if I should set aside my current writing project to try to fix this book. Or spend the next few days finishing book 2, get it out to my proofreaders, then go back to book 1 and fix it. What would be your priority in this situation?
If you already know where the errors are, it shouldn’t take that long to fix it and upload again. If that’s the case, I would go ahead and fix it. Also, it depends on how close you are to finishing your current project. If you’re very close, you might finish that first and get it out to be proofread. I guess it depends on timing.
I lost the paper where my mom wrote down the two errors she found in Guardian Vampire. So I’m trying to hunt that down to fix it. This is why I’m a little worried about putting something out in print. It needs to be perfect. No typos.
You know, I thought I caught them all, but there are always things people miss, no matter how careful they are. One thing that really helped me catch last minute stuff–especially things that spell and grammar checker won’t catch–was to turn on Text To Speech on my Kindle and listen to my novel. The TTS won’t make mistakes or glaze over a word like my eye will. I was amazed at how many mistakes I caught, even after I’d read the dang thing several times, had my DH read it, and read it out loud myself.
But on the flipside… My husband and other readers I’ve talked to say that they catch the occasional error in traditionally published books all the time. Like you, I’m not worried about a few… But still, if someone alerts me to them, I’ll fix them! 🙂
Amy
I’ve always done my last proofreading on my Kindle. But I never even thought about the text to speech option! That’a a great idea, Amy!