"Losing the Peace" typo...

[Christopher]

And typos that really make a huge difference (such as lied vs died) are easy to spot while editing/reading and would most probably not occur in the final print.

Not when it comes to numbers. It's very easy to overlook the difference between 2367 and 2387. People do it all the time. The numerals 6 and 8 are so similarly shaped that it's easy for the eye to gloss over the difference. Someone who's read over the text a dozen times expecting to see 2387 may overlook it if it gets accidentally changed to 2367 late in the process. It doesn't matter how competent or conscientious the observers are; it's an artifact of how the brain's perception functions. People make mistakes like that all the time. Heck, just last night, someone in another thread on this very forum posted 2287 when they meant 2387. It's a very common kind of mistake, one that everybody makes from time to time.

 

[JarodRussell]

Heck, just last night, someone in another thread on this very forum posted 2287 when they meant 2387. It's a very common kind of mistake, one that everybody makes from time to time.

He should get banned for this terrible blunder.

 

[rahullak]

And typos that really make a huge difference (such as lied vs died) are easy to spot while editing/reading and would most probably not occur in the final print.

Not when it comes to numbers. It's very easy to overlook the difference between 2367 and 2387. People do it all the time. The numerals 6 and 8 are so similarly shaped that it's easy for the eye to gloss over the difference. Someone who's read over the text a dozen times expecting to see 2387 may overlook it if it gets accidentally changed to 2367 late in the process. It doesn't matter how competent or conscientious the observers are; it's an artifact of how the brain's perception functions. People make mistakes like that all the time. Heck, just last night, someone in another thread on this very forum posted 2287 when they meant 2387. It's a very common kind of mistake, one that everybody makes from time to time.

Yeah, you're right. I was actually trying to say that 2361 vs 2381 isn't that big an issue, especially given that the rest of the sentence makes clear when the events of the novel are taking place, and stuff like lied vs died would stand out from the context.

 

[Scout101]

Why does it happen? Surely someone got fired for that? Okay, it's not vital to the story, but it's a single "character" which makes a huge difference. What assurances do we have that this doesn't happen to things that are very important?
E.g
"Captain Picard is dead!"
"No, it's okay, during that scene there was a typo, and Captain Pacard was the one who died. Picard got out alive and well, we just didn't 'see' it."

Of all the typos that have come up over the years, this is not exactly a back-breaker requiring someone to be fired. Unless the reader has a big timeline spread out in the basement, and is writing down every event in the timeline as it happens, sure most people either caught the mistake and self-corrected (fairly obvious when in the timeline it happened, specific dates aren't really that important, as the events relative to each other were fine), or just skipped over it completely.

Hell, did anyone get fired over the Janus Gate series (and the other 'lower deck' series attempt)? Those ones were loaded with mistakes, to the point where the blurbs on the back described completely different things than they contained, or the pictures on the front were of people not featured in the book, etc. Or there was the Garth of Izar book, where in the middle of a description of Klingons, a Romulan ship attacked (or something like that), only to go right back to being Klingon

Mistakes are going to happen, especially when they're pumping out books this regularly, and from all different authors. This is pretty minor, really...

 

[David cgc]

Or there was the Garth of Izar book, where in the middle of a description of Klingons, a Romulan ship attacked (or something like that), only to go right back to being Klingon

I never found out if that was intentional, a clue that the events were a dream sequence.

My favorite was always in "The Sundered," when a certain lost starship is described as having a saucer connected to "a bulbous secondary hell."

 

[mattburgess]

Seriously? You would seriously argue that a person should lose his/her livelihood because of a single-digit typo? Seriously?

Of course I wasn't being serious.

I'm of two minds on this subject, especially after reading everybody's comments. Part of me says "it's all just a book, let's not give it a second thought," but another part of me agrees with Braxton who said "it costs $7.99 for us to buy so typos shouldn't really be there IMO" (and it costs more for us in England - £7.99, which translates to about $13).
Especially after Bill's assurance that he got it right, and when it comes to an historian's note, you'd think extra attention might be paid, because that's where a typo can make the biggest difference.

 

[Christopher]

^It's easy to say "typos shouldn't be there," but humans are fallible. There are lots of people who read every manuscript over and over again, trying to catch every error, but the sad fact is, the very same process that catches most errors sometimes introduces new ones. And if those errors are introduced late enough in the game, sometimes they slip through. Everyone's trying their best, but that's never a guarantee that there will be zero mistakes -- just that there will be as few as possible.

 

[mattburgess]

Well now I just feel awful

 

[PaulSimpson]

^It's easy to say "typos shouldn't be there," but humans are fallible. There are lots of people who read every manuscript over and over again, trying to catch every error, but the sad fact is, the very same process that catches most errors sometimes introduces new ones. And if those errors are introduced late enough in the game, sometimes they slip through. Everyone's trying their best, but that's never a guarantee that there will be zero mistakes -- just that there will be as few as possible.

Case in point - the new issue of STM that's just going to print. It's been read by about 8 different people during the production and approval process. I took 10 days holiday, came back to it after that break - and spotted 4 typos that we were in time to change. That doesn't mean there won't be any in there in the final issue, just not those ones.

My favourite story regarding that, though, was in the pre-email days (yes, I am that old, sadly). I used to edit Dreamwatch and we'd prepare the news pages, and send them between editor and publisher by fax for checking. VERY late one night, I receive a fax of stuff that had to be at the printers physically the next morning - and realised that my beloved publisher had somehow hit "AMEND ALL" when proofing the page.

First Contact now had new stars: Robert Piracy, Dwayne Schmaltz and Ethan Phallus....!!

 

[Christopher]

Spellcheck is evil!!

 

[PaulSimpson]

Spellcheck is evil!!

There's an evil part of me that wishes it hadn't got noticed

 

[JB2005]

Seriously? You would seriously argue that a person should lose his/her livelihood because of a single-digit typo? Seriously?

Of course I wasn't being serious.

I'm of two minds on this subject, especially after reading everybody's comments. Part of me says "it's all just a book, let's not give it a second thought," but another part of me agrees with Braxton who said "it costs $7.99 for us to buy so typos shouldn't really be there IMO" (and it costs more for us in England - £7.99, which translates to about $13).
Especially after Bill's assurance that he got it right, and when it comes to an historian's note, you'd think extra attention might be paid, because that's where a typo can make the biggest difference.

You pay £7.99? You're being ripped off my friend, come to the north where we pay £6.99 for our Trek

 

[mattburgess]

Lol, okay okay, perhaps my memory was a pound out!
If I'm totally honest, I get them for much less than that on amazon, or amazon marketplace I even picked up Losing The Peace, brand new, on A-marketplace for less than £3.00 the other day. Reading it now.
Cheaper entertainment is so much more enjoyable!

 

[LightningStorm]

Lol, okay okay, perhaps my memory was a pound out!
If I'm totally honest, I get them for much less than that on amazon, or amazon marketplace I even picked up Losing The Peace, brand new, on A-marketplace for less than £3.00 the other day. Reading it now.
Cheaper entertainment is so much more enjoyable!

Indeed it is! Just this weekend I picked up David Mack's The Calling brand new from Borders for a whopping 38 cents! And no, it wasn't an error and I didn't steal/cheat them for it!

 

[PaulSimpson]

this weekend I picked up David Mack's The Calling brand new from Borders for a whopping 38 cents! And no, it wasn't an error and I didn't steal/cheat them for it!

You do realize that Mack will now have to choose which fluffy animal doesn't get fed properly for the next two weeks as a result of not getting the proper royalties for that sale?

[For the benefit of those who just heard a whooshing noise going over their heads, that was not a serious comment. Well, not that serious]

 

[rahullak]

^
Oh, assuming its partly serious, I thought authors get fixed royalties on their work? So, in this case wouldn't it just be Borders selling David Mack's book at a loss?

 

[mattburgess]

Not even at a loss, book markups are huge (although not as huge as DIY markups)

 

[LightningStorm]

Heh, I intentionally didn't specify how I got it for so cheap wondering if anybody would ask my secrets.

It's actually a really good deal and it's all good for all parties involved. Borders didn't sell it at a loss, Mack get's his royalties for the whole $15.00 cover price and I get a book for $0.38. Here's how it worked.

I'm a member of Border's Rewards program where you can earn "Borders Bucks" after having spent a certain amount at the store over a period of time. With this purchase I had $5 in Borders bucks.

I also have a Border's Credit Card which you earn Borders Rewards points monthly based on what you use the card for. I use my Card for just about everything and as such get about $10 every month in Borders rewards. I had several of these at the time but used only 1 of them. That's 10 of the 15 dollars there.

At the time of this purchase I ALSO had a 40% off coupon for any paperback book. Used that which brought the price down to $9. Uh oh, now you can't get change back on either the borders bucks or the rewards points so I added two of their little pieces of candy to get the total up to 10.38 with tax. And voila, I have a $15.00 book (and a $1 worth of candy) for $0.38.

Also worthy of note is that I earned that $5 borders bucks NOT by actually spending my money at Borders but by using my previously earned Borders Rewards from the Credit Card. I've been doing this sort of thing for years BTW, it's just that this was one case where three different things really came together and made it really good. Unfortunately Borders is discontinuing the credit card agreement, so now I've set up one with Amazon (which is even better).

 

[William Leisner]

Wait... you found Mack's book at Borders?

 

[KetracelWhite]

Typos happen all the time. Even a book that's had half a dozen pairs of eyes go over it half a dozen times is probably going to have two or three typos.

By my word processor's count, the manuscript for Losing the Peace contains 374,000 characters of text. This is one wrong numeral, a single character. Nobody's going to lose their job for bungling 0.00027% of a manuscript.

Chris---

I am editor and I've been in the publishing industry for 20+ years. I worked for Simon & Schuster and now for John Wiley and Sons. What you say is absolutely true. There is no such thing as a typo-free book. We try all the time to make sure every book is perfect, but typos do slip by. This typo wasn't even a word...it was a number. A die-hard Trek fan *might* notice but no one else would.

I'd suggest submitting this error to your publisher's cover or reprint department, and they could probably fix it in the next printing.