Resubmitting For Errors

Mistakes happen.  They’re part of life.  In writing, they come off as more pronounced, because now your mistakes are on display for the world to see.

Every single one of my books has had errors after submission.  Every.  Single.  One.  Even after hours and hours of proofreading and editing by outsiders, errors still creep in.  That creates frustration as I find errors in work I thought was complete.  It also creates a lazy dilemma for me – do I resubmit the work and get it fixed, or do I let it slide.

Readers are a savvy bunch who pick up on spelling and grammar mistakes.  In fact, it’s kind of a point of pride.  Of course, that also turns the reader into an English teacher rather than a reader and detracts from the story, which isn’t desirable.  So do I let stuff go, or try to fix it?

In an ideal world, I’d correct every error the moment it comes to my attention.  However, it isn’t a perfect world, and sometimes there’s a real question of whether or not the juice is worth the squeeze.  There’s also sometimes a question of money, as numerous resubmissions can cost money(usually the first one or two is free, but formatters need to make money too, and constant resubmissions without more payment makes the pricing inefficient).

Honestly, one or two errors are things I tend to let slide(find them if you can, kind of like a scavenger hunt).  It’s when folks find enough to make that the focal point that I grudgingly comply with the mob and resubmit with the errors corrected.  Sometimes pride and shame overwhelm me, as has been the case with Akeldama where I found a pretty prominent error involving a restaurant I’d lobbied to get permission to use, misspelled their name, and was so mortified I never sent them a corrected copy.  I’ll need to get past that.

So is it pride, or is it laziness.  Maybe it’s a combination, and the circumstances decide.