Measure once, cut twice?

My day job is in design and construction. For over a decade, I ran a combination design/build construction company (I scaled back several years ago to focus on the design side), and I have spent a lot of time working directly in construction. The carpenter’s adage of “measure twice, cut once” was of course part and parcel of everyday construction work. Little did I know then that I should apply the same lesson of exactitude to writing — and more specifically, to proofreading.

I am a terrible proofreader. I’m told that’s not unusual; when you write something, your brain tends to see the words as you mean them, not as they appear. Still, that’s no excuse…

Before False Assurances was released, I had it proofed by a professional third-party proofreader, and I poured over each page. I was convinced that it was perfect. Ha! Not even close. There were about fifty errors in it.

For Subversive Addiction, I took a different approach, which I’ll go into in much more depth in a future post. Today, however, is my admission that the first error in that book was located, by a reader named James, who sent me a note late yesterday afternoon.

He had been looking at the graphic of Almaz and noticed a discrepancy. Sure enough, to my utter dismay, there it was: a ridiculously obvious error.

This book was my first attempt to include graphic files. There are three of them. At the last minute, just prior to creating the final printing files, this particular graphic needed adjustment, so I reworked it. The worst part? The previous file was correct, and in my recreation work, I created an error, and totally (obviously) missed it.

After receiving James’ note, I fixed the error, and uploaded new files for distribution. They went live overnight on Amazon, Apple, and elsewhere, so anyone who buys the book today will get the correct version. (If you have a e-book version, simply delete the current version, and “sync” your account again; a new version will download and will open to whatever page you were last on.)

I suppose that’s an advantage to being independent; I can repair my errors. It’s also a disadvantage: I’m an army of one, and I have no one but myself to blame! (And by the way, I’m quite certain that there are other typos lurking within. I just don’t know about them … yet.)

As always, it’s another good lesson for me. And for those of you who have the print version with the error, let’s call it a collector’s edition!

Thanks for your support and for humoring my mistakes,

Christopher