I love my beta readers, and because I do, I want them to get the cleanest MS (manuscript) possible – so I stated using a proofreader. This is fairly new to me; my betas used to catch all my typos.

Whether your betas catch them or a proofreader, an editor – let’s face it: when you write 50,000 words (or 80k or 100k) THERE ARE GOING TO BE TYPOS.

I looked at the following passage after the proofreader sent it back with an error flagged.

I looked at it a few times – I couldn’t see the error.

It was only because she pointed it out with a comment that I saw what I’d written.

Time wrap up this party

should be

time to wrap up this party

 

Well sure, YOU can see it – but I didn’t. Because I knew what I wrote. My eye saw the right words and my brain read them, even though they weren’t there.

That’s … annoying.

But it’s a lesson for all of us. OTHERS can see our mistakes better than we can, so encourage people to find them in your MS and point them out – including readers. Why not? We’re all human. I’ve seen typos in traditionally published paperbacks of major authors’ works. It happens.

It’ll happen less if you get people to help you.

Get ready to go terminal. Preorder now for just $0.99 – for a limited time. The price goes up to $4.99 with no notice sometime before release day, February 28, 2020