I’ve had a few questions recently about if I want to hear about typos or small formatting errors. Yes, I do! This post explains more about how to let me know about typos. I’m embarking on a larger project to do some tidying in 2024 that includes all the tiny errors that somehow creep in.
Short version:
If you spot typos or other minor formatting issues in my text, I’d love to hear about it.
You have your choice in how to let me know. I’ve set up a Google Form with all the information I need to track down the problem. (There’s an option to share your contact info in case I have a question, but only if you like.)
Otherwise, feel free to email me (reply to any newsletter!), use the contact form on this site, or DM me on Discord, and let me know the following:
- Which book
- Which chapter or what’s going on in the scene.
- A short phrase (something identifiable I can search on or skim for) to help me find the right paragraph.
- What the actual typo or problem is.
Useful to know
I do write in British English. I’ve also made some deliberate choices about spelling and language use when it comes to Albion as a magical community. But it’s my job to make all of that consistent.
If you’re not sure if something’s actually an error, please let me know. I’ll take it from there.
Longer version:
My books go through multiple sets of eyes. I do multiple editing passes on my own, including an automated grammar and spelling check. Kiya goes through it multiple times. And then there’s my early readers, who note things as they spot them. (And then me again once or twice.)
Despite that, typos sneak in anyway. Rereading a few things recently, I swear some have generated in the file while I wasn’t looking.
What that means
First, please do let me know about them if you spot them and you’re willing (as above).
And then second, I’m planning on doing a review for typos (and other small formatting things, making some stylistic choices more consistent, etc.) However, this is a logistically complicated project.
Because of that, I’m putting out a call for typo spotting. However, I expect the fixes (and the uploads) to be a project that takes me a fair chunk of 2024 to complete.
What does that project look like?
Reviewing all the books
First, I’ve got to read all of the books again (and at 30 novels and novellas as of last week, that’s a lot by itself.) I also need to do that when I’m at my computer with the final files, not on any other device, so I can see how the file is theoretically displaying on different ereaders.
As part of that, I have to make the actual edits, though finding them is much more work than fixing them.
Preparing the files
Second, I’ve got to regenerate the final files for upload. While I’m in the files, I’ll likely update backmatter, add later books to the author’s note as relevant, etc. This part is actually fairly easy in the software I use. However each of the major retailers has slightly different preferences so I end up with half a dozen separate files.
Uploading the new copies
Third – and this is the challenging bit – I’ve got to reupload those books to the various sites I use for distribution. Right now, that’s seven different places. (Kindle, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Kobo, Draft2Digital which handles a bunch of other places, Gumroad, and I’m about to add one more.)
Each distributor has their own user interface quirks. Most of them involve at least a couple of places in the upload or revision sequence where you click something, wait (sometimes a minute or three) for it to process, and then go on with the next steps. These days, I usually work through two of the sites at a time. I swap tabs between the two while the other is processing. I put a movie on or something else I want to watch, but it’s a particular kind of tedious task I can’t do in vast amounts at one go.
If all the websites are behaving properly, it’s about 15 minutes a book. That ‘behaving properly’ can be a big assumption though! And obviously, getting the time to upload 30 books (or 10ish hours) can also be a trick, so breaking this into smaller chunks is the way to go.
Because even small page count variations can make a difference for paperback books, I either need to correct just typos (nothing that affects page count) for the paperbacks or decide not to edit. (Revising paperbacks also has some other limits – the distributors I’m using right now allow limited revision uploads in several cases. So I need to figure out how to handle that.)
Getting the revised copy
The other problem with this is that getting the revised copy to your device can be tricky. Most of the distribution sites won’t push a new version to you unless you go through some steps to request it. (That process varies a bit distributor to distributor or device to device). The changes I’m making don’t count as a new edition – they’re far too minor for that. So you won’t, as a reader, get the new copy unless and until you go through the necessary steps.
(Usually that’s deleting the file on your ereader and downloading it again, but sometimes that doesn’t work. Mysterious are the ways of the ereader.)
I can’t help directly with that – there’s far too many devices and routes for getting ebooks for me to know all of them! What I can do is let you know (here and on my newsletter) when all those cleanup steps are done and the new files are available.
If you’ve got questions, get in touch whichever of the ways above works for you, and I’m glad to explain more (or clarify here if it helps others).
