Authors Blog

Warning: perfection is elusive, maybe impossible, probably dangerous.

 

One of my books went on sale about three months later than planned. It went through hundreds of on-screen revisions, and at least a dozen printed proofs before I pronounced it “good enough” to be sold. I said, “good enough,” not “perfect.”

I know that it has fewer errors than most books I’ve read—even books from big traditional publishers with huge staffs of editors, proofreaders and fact-checkers. In its 91,086 words on 382 pages, it has at least three small errors that few people (or maybe no people) will notice.

Lots of books and other media have easily preventable, inexcusable errors.

Orange County Choppers: The Tale of the Teutuls by Keith & Kent Zimmerman has silly geography errors. It’s disturbing that three Teutuls plus two Zimmermans plus fact- checkers and editors at Warner Books could let obvious errors get printed. Paul “Senior” talks about his parents charging people to park in their driveway on Cooper Street in Yonkers, New York, to watch baseball games in Yankee Stadium, which was within “walking distance.”

The famous stadium is about 8.5 miles south. The 17-mile round trip is not “walking distance” for most people. I hope Paul calculates more precisely while building bikes. Twice on page 15, Paul mentions his house in “Muncie”, New York. Muncie is in Indiana. The Teutuls lived in MONSEY (which is pronounced like Muncie).

Principles of Self-Publishing: How to Publish and Market A Book or Ebook On a Shoestring Budget by Theresa A. Moore is one of the most-error-ridden books I’ve ever read. Theresa says that Lightning Source “is a full service publisher.” Lightning is not a publisher of any kind. It is a printing house that works for publishers. It did NOT provide services such as editing and page formatting, which a self-publishing company provides. Anyone who is advising publishers should know the difference between a printer and a publisher. Theresa complains that Lightning Source charges an “exhorbitant shipping fee” for a proof. Both her spelling and her assessment are wrong.

I learned the hard way that each time I make a correction, there is a good chance that I will introduce other errors. They’ll need to be corrected, and their corrections may lead to more errors, and the cycle never ends.

Perfection is elusive, and perfection may even be dangerous.

Warning: pursuit of perfection may lead to imperfections.