Authors certainly have a lot more tools at their disposal these days to quickly go back and check little details like that.
Yep, and my personal theory: as mentioned in the ST III novelization, it was USS Firenze took the injured cadets back to Earth while Kirk limped to Ceti Alpha V, to rescue Kyle. So Janice Rand (who was in the ST II novelization but not the movie) must have travelled back with the cadets because she gets to Earth well before the Enterprise - and gets to see the damage done by Khan and the adventures the ship had in the comics between ST II and ST III. Strangely enough, her job in "Flashback", revisiting ST VI, emphasises her responsibility for the supervision of younger crew members, such as Tuvok.