I hate reading negative reviews of my books. Who wouldn’t? So if I hear about one that is bad, I avoid reading it – the knowledge alone that one is in print is enough to depress me for weeks.
However, the temptation to take a small peek is often great – just like that irresistible urge many of us have when looking at a really bloody wound on our own bodies, the kind that’s better hidden by the bandage until completely healed – and no matter how bad I know I will feel, I read it anyway.
So recently, after a week of ignorance-is-bliss denial, I read the ID magazine review of Anatomy of Graphic Design by Mirko Ilic and myself, and indeed it was, as warned, a devastating indictment of our book, and a stinging rebuke of me.
Yet truth be known it was a review I probably would have written myself. Sadly – indeed ashamedly – the criticism hit the Achilles heel, and boy do I hate having that heel exposed. In this case the anonymous reviewer (I don’t understand why the mini-ID reviews are unsigned) was profoundly annoyed by the surfeit of careless typos – and indeed there are too many.
Although I would have preferred reading a review that focused on the many virtues of our book’s content, rather than its technical deficiencies, typos are more than fair game, and the reviewer was as indignant about the admitted lapse in professionalism as I would have been. A book is a lasting document and as such should be held to the highest standard.
That’s where copy-editors play an integral role. In fact, I’ve often said that copyeditors were put on earth by a higher power to save authors, often from themselves – their occasional missteps and bad speellings. In this case, however, the proverbial life preserver didn’t work (nor apparently did spell-check).
A friend of mine is publishing a book called “The Holy Bibel” wherein every sentence of the bible has a typo. The point: Even God needs a good copyeditor. After seeing how many typos made it into our book, all I can say is I’m decidedly embarrassed.
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