Vanquishing the indestructible typo.

It’s been said that a cockroach is one of the only things that could survive a nuclear war, along with scorpions and other simple invertebrates. I think you could probably add the typo in any published book to the list.

Typos can survive editors, the attention of beta readers, all kinds of spellcheckers and even being read aloud. In fact, their ability to stay hidden until the book is available to the general public is unsurpassed.

However, as if by magic, once anyone can buy the book they become instantly visible and glaringly obvious.

I’ve seen online that the traditional publishing industry considers up to three errors per 10,000 words as an acceptable level.

Click the link below for an interesting article about the subject.

Typos in Published Books (Why Are There Grammatical Errors?)

When you publish a book, your wish is to have work that isn’t littered with grammar and spelling mistakes. But… To err is human. Even the best writers have, at times, fallen victim to the confusing trio of “they’re” “there” and “their,” or have mistakenly slotted an “it’s” where an “its” was suppose…

However, I’m on a mission to eradicate them from my work, it’s a big job but one that gives me great satisfaction, especially when I get reviews like these.

I’m helped greatly in this task by the fact that I’m self-published. When I find a typo or other error, I don’t need to contact publishers or go through any fancy rigmarole.

I can correct my ebook and re-upload it in a matter of minutes.

Not only that, as paperbacks are printed on demand, correcting them is just as easy. Just upload a new interior file and the next time the book is printed, the problem is solved.

Here’s a recent example (from a different book to the examples above) of just how easy it is to make a correction.

I learned of the problem at 1014, a friend had been reading the book and spotted it. I was in the middle of doing something else, once I had finished that, I got straight onto the case.

I fired up my trusty ebook editing software, loaded my master copy and corrected the error. The correction was uploaded at 1052 and accepted by Amazon as an update in review at 1055

The corrected version of the eBook went live at 1218. The paperback version and the box set were next, they were also finished and live on the same day.

So, in a little over two hours, I had erased all evidence of the error.

It’s a bit like the way the news is constantly being edited in George Orwell’s 1984, only in a good way.

Now, I just have to wait until I (or more likely, someone else) find the next one. Because they are always lurking out there.

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