Monday, October 02, 2006

Typographical Errors as Metaphor for Life

I'm starting to get packed for my trip to London this week for Fanderson's SECTOR 25 convention in Borehamwood. Grabbing things to take to England, I picked up my personal copy of The Future was FAB: The Art of Mike Trim, so I can have Mike sign it for me when I see him. It's still too new for me not to flip through it everytime I pick it up, and in doing so I found two more typos. On the first page of the chapter on Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, David Essex is misidentified as "Davis Essex", and Thin Lizzy becomes "Tin Lizzy."
Sheesh.
I checked my manuscript; they were correctly spelled there.
In fact, most of the typos in the book aren't present in the original manuscript.
This is disheartening, as the book was proofed several times by eyes other than mine, but I never saw a final galley before it went to press.
That won't happen again, no matter how close we are to the release date.
If by some chance the book goes into a second printing, all the typos will be corrected. I just hope that in doing this, new typos aren't created.
Ah well, I think of it like a Top Secret Classified document - maybe the typos are there intentionally, to identify which printing your copy of the book is from.
That's what I like to call "adventure rationalizing."
Hope to see some of you at the Fanderson convention this weekend. Bring your books for Mike and me to sign.
We'll try not to mispell our own names.