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| The front cover of my book Lost2bFound |
On Wednesday I received an email from David over at PublishNation to inform me of the pricing for the hardcover edition of my book. David
also attached a file of the finished draft.
On Thursday with nothing better to do and as I was feeling a bit ropey with
this ulcerative colitis I decided to read through the final draft. Imagine my
horror when within the first couple of chapters I discovered errors.
Immediately my OCD kicked in and I began getting proper stressed. What I did next was
real stupid and I am still berating myself. I read all the way through my book
to try and spot more errors, in which there were a few, however I didn't bloody
write down where they were, what a complete tit. You see I have lost count of the number of times I have gone over my work. I think a lot of what has made things incorrect is trying to use two different computers with different operating systems, these being my Apple Mac and my dads Windows PC.
On Friday after a restless night I decided to contact David and inform him of
my mistakes. I also checked the e-book and paperback editions of my draft, and
sure enough there were errors in the same places. This is a major problem as
those two editions have now gone out for publication. To correct them is an
additional £75 per edition, as they need to be re-published.
The errors are not huge, the thing is I know they are there. I dare say even
when I correct the errors there will still be a few in there that people will spot. I have
leant that writing without making the odd mistake in either punctuation or in
grammar is very difficult. I couldn't afford to get a professional proofreader,
I mean it would have cost me thousands.
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| Lost2bFound inside cover |
So,
what to do? Well, I went over the draft all day yesterday trying to spot errors
and remember some from my previous days reading of my book. MY dad who is a
legend helped me, as he could see I was having somewhat of a meltdown. One positive thing I can say is that when my dad was reading he was having the odd chuckle, so I thought "Hey I must have got some parts right, as it's making my dear old dad laugh to himself". Hopefully this is the case for other readers.
As I read through I became aware at some point in my writing I must have tapped the "s"
key on my keyboard instead of the "a", so there was a kind of
incorrect and spare "s" floating around in my text. OMG! both my dad
and myself were on almost all day yesterday trying to discover this mislaid
"s". We eventually discovered it on page 38, chapter 4. My dad using
a search believe it or not for every "s" contained within my book,
just imagine how many there were in a book of over 80,000 words.
So where I am at now. Well, I can either leave the books as they are and hope anyone
who purchases a copy understands this is a self-published book. As such it has
been completed by a complete amateur author, and hopefully cut me some slack. Or I can pay
the £150 and have the books re-published, bearing in mind I dare say there will still be some minor errors in various areas, which won't impact on the story.
