My wife was re-reading Castle Falcon on her IPod Kindle app, and discovered I had a duplicate paragraph. Not an exact duplicate, but one of those things where you rewrite a paragraph on the computer and then forget to delete the original one it was supposed to replace:
The First Among the Chosen turned the car onto Main Street and smiled. With the destruction of the Elder Seal, Crow and the pathetic remnants of the Snake Band could now be dismissed and ignored. When the Great Old One and its minions came forth, what would a few mortal enemies matter?
The Seneschal dismissed Crow and the pathetic remnants of the Snake Band. When the Great Old One came forth, what would a few mortal enemies matter?
Well, nuts. This flub has apparently been in there since last October. Not only was it in the Kindle version, it was in the Nook version, the Createspace version, and both hardcover Lulu versions. Weirdly, it wasn’t in the pocket book Lulu version or my original Word files. It had to have crept in during the Adobe InDesign phase of book production. I have separate InDesign files for each edition.
At least the corrections were easy enough if a little time-consuming: an evening on the computer updating all the files for various editions and then reloading them into all the online publishing sites. But sixteen classy-looking hardcovers containing the error have already gone out to reviewers and awards organizations. Maybe they’ll miss it too?
Maybe. But then they’d have to miss the second duplicate paragraph my wife found a day after I’d already updated all my files:
Before Sam could do anything at all, a large maple leaf fell from the tree she was under. Before Sam could do anything at all, a large maple leaf fell from the tree she was under.
Well, bugger.
This one was even in the pocket book version. This time I waited until my wife finished the whole book, and found no more problems. Then I spent another evening correcting all the files and reloading this last correction to three Lulu versions, Kindle, Createspace and Barnes and Noble. “This time for sure, Rocky!”
It’s not much comfort that I spot things like this now and then in books published by major corporations.
On the bright side, thanks to my publishing choices, at least I’m not staring at sixty cartons of books with these mistakes in them.
TomAlanBrosz 