Typos In and On Published Books

Jeff Hiller’s recent saga and book publishing’s recurring nightmare

Jeff Hiller (of “Somebody, Somewhere” fame) is holding a contest: help him feel better about the egregious typo on the spine of his new memoir, Actress of a Certain Age, and he’ll send you a free book. (Well, really only the top three people who come up with the three best ways to help him feel better, but still . . . this is a clever way to deal with a shitty situation.)

There in the comments you can see his publisher’s reaction. Simon & Schuster’s social media person says: “Hm. That’s certainly not great.” And then a joke: “I think we have a sharpie around here somewhere…” Not sure Jeff Hiller is laughing at that one.

Oh, typos . . .

As a publisher, I can tell you, we deal with our fair share. Ergo, recurring nightmare. This particular typo on a high-profile celebrity memoir by a Big 5 publisher is probably the worst I’ve seen, though, and I’ve seen a lot of bad ones over the course of my career.

The first typo I was ever responsible for embedded an obsessive awareness of the word “foreword” in my consciousness forever when an early book I worked on at North Atlantic Books went to print with the words: “Forward by Ken Wilber” on the front cover. Ken Wilber is a big deal, and a twenty-something newbie editor probably shouldn’t have been the final eyes on that cover. I learned a lot from that experience, though, and now I’m the final sign-off on every single cover at my own press.

The great Jack Shoemaker, who I was honored to work alongside for several years when he ran Shoemaker & Hoard and I was Executive Editor at Seal Press, once told me that typos are how we know that books are made by humans and not gods. I’ve always remembered that quote for its generosity and in-the-trenches wisdom because typos are gonna happen. And readers are not generous about them. And look, I’m not suggesting we should be generous about them. We should hold publishers to high standards, and professional writers, too, but as a person who works in words for a living, I will tell you that people delight in catching typos and telling you about them. And you have to carry on without getting overly mired in shame.

At Seal Press we had file folders for all the books, and “errata” went into those folders. I probably printed out an email a week, or we got letters from readers informing us of typos they’d caught. Into the file folders they went for the occasion that the book might someday be reprinted, error-free. These days those folders exist in Dropbox, which somehow doesn’t have quite the same psychic impact as the eight-foot wide filing cabinet. I miss that thing.

One of the reactions to S&S’s comment on Jeff Hiller’s IG post reads: “I’m an excellent copy editor and published author. My rates are competitive… Or is that ‘cmpetitive’?” This sounds like the kind of editor I get emails from occasionally. One of my least favorite category of email is from an editor looking for work who leads by informing me that there are typos in one of our books and they’d like to fix that for us. Just ask for the job, please.

Publishers work hard at not having typos, and I have my own checklist for covers to avoid such things (learned the hard way from another early and terrible experience at She Writes Press when a book went to the printer with no barcode 😩):

• Check that the title and subtitle and author name are spelled correctly and consistently on the cover, spine, and back cover

• Check accuracy (and existence!) of barcode and price point and ISBN

• Make sure all apostrophes and single and double quotation marks are what we call “smart” and positioned the right way (as these are very easy to flip for whatever reason, so you may see something like ”this on a quote”)

• Read all copy out loud

In our past publishing season alone, I caught errors on three covers “post-flight” (meaning the books had already been sent to the printer), which is why it’s essential that I get hard-copy proofs of every single cover to review. Two were small things, barely noticeable but worth fixing, but the third was a typo on the spine. It read: “A New Life One Step and a Time” instead of “A New Life One Step at a Time.” Publishers who catch their own errors don’t gloat; we feel nothing but relief.

The worst thing about serious typos is the environmental consequence. We have pulped entire print runs due to typos—a physically painful experience (as in it hurts your heart for the waste and expense of your mistake). I can’t speak to what S&S is doing right now about Hiller’s print run, but it’s likely the same thing we would do—which is to recall as many of the books as possible and then pulp and reprint.

My wife and I rushed to preorder Actress of a Certain Age as soon as I saw Hiller’s IG post out of curiosity—to see if we’ll actually receive the book with the typo or if S&S acted quickly enough to prevent people from getting these copies. If a publisher catches an error early enough, they can lock inventory and reprint. If the books have already shipped to retailers, it’s very difficult to retrieve them; if books haven’t shipped to consumers, it’s possible to get a lot or most of them back, but it also means the book will be out of stock on pub day—another publisher nightmare that almost always ties back to a printing or shipping problem.

Bottom line: publishing is a typo minefield. There are on average 80,000 words in a book and therefore 80,000+ opportunities to make a mistake. This is why I appreciate Jack Shoemaker’s words. It’s not to suggest publishers take errors lightly; it just means mistakes happen and we can’t beat ourselves up over it too much or we wouldn’t be able to stay in this industry.

To my own authors and to all writers and aspiring authors out there, please heed this best piece of advice to prevent typos: Read your book aloud before it goes to the printer. You will be sick of your book by then, but reading aloud (preferably a physical copy, like your ARC) is the only way I know to catch all the errors. My last book had been copy edited and twice proofread and only when I read it for the audiobook did I catch a couple more errors—one typo and one omission that made the sentence confusing.

Like I said, typos are gonna happen, so my strong advice is never to turn over all your trust and power to your publisher. Simon & Schuster doesn’t employ gods; She Writes Press doesn’t employ gods; and humans (including editors) make mistakes.

BTW, Jeff Hiller is coming on Memoir Nation in a few weeks. Grant and I are so excited, and we’ll ask him about this experience and report back on how S&S handled this whole thing.

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Speaking of Memoir Nation and publishing . . . tomorrow is the first-ever Memoir Nation monthly class, Publishing Your Memoir, and we’re offering it for free so that writers and denizens can get a taste of our community. All you have to do is sign up for any membership level (including our free Path #1) and you’ll receive the Zoom link to join me on Monday, June 9, at 1pm PT/4pm ET.