Nobody’s perfect. And neither is any book.

by Jay Hartman

Let’s face it, we all want any books we put on the market to be the best they can possibly be and free of errors. Punctuation and grammar should glisten with perfectionism. Every word and phrase should sparkle with fairy dust. Chapters should flow like a rainbow through the sky.

And then…reality sets in. Living up to that kind of standard is exhausting. For some reason, we expect perfection from books when we don’t expect any other creations to live up to the same standards. How many (as I age myself) CDs have you listened to where you didn’t like all the songs? How about a favorite artist who does a painting that doesn’t speak to you? Is a wayward brushstroke or a messed up lyric any worse than an improperly written paragraph?

The statement “nobody’s perfect” is absolutely true. Another great adage is “sh*t happens.”

I recently read an ebook written by a major author from one of the Big Five publishing houses. I finished the chapter, clicked to go to the next one and realized it jumped 20 pages. Turns out, the publisher accidentally left a whole chapter out of the ebook.

Over the 15 years in which I’ve run publishing houses, I can tell you sometimes titles make it to market with errors in them. In the end, you have to weigh whether or not you can live with the error or is it of such a grievous nature that it requires a do-over of the files? If you’re working with ebooks and print-on-demand, your cost for fixing it is far lower than someone who is doing giant print runs.

As I type this, I’m dealing with what I’m calling a “cursed” manuscript for publication. It seems as if something has gone wrong at every turn. The book was supposed to be formatted for 5×7, but the finished PDF ended up slightly bigger. As a result, printed copies had the author’s name across the literal top and page numbers across the actual bottom of the book. It looked like it had gone through a remainder process. Not to mention somehow the author’s last name became misspelled in the headers after the first chapter. To top it all off, a bit of needed info didn’t make it into the final version. Would the average reader have spotted any of these things? Maybe not, but the point is, I want to be as accurate as possible. Stuff like this makes me want to crawl under my desk and cry. How did this happen with all the years of experience I have? Did I fail as a publisher?

Nope. I need to give myself permission to mess up from time to time, because nobody’s perfect. And sh*t happens. The best you can do is reduce the chances of things getting screwed up in the first place.

Here’s a few solid “Do’s” and “Don’ts” to work with.

1. Don’t be your own developmental editor/proofreader. You work so long and hard on a manuscript, after a while it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. Hire professionals whose job is to find these mistakes and areas of improvement to get the manuscript in the best shape possible.
2. Do let multiple eyes look over the finished product. The more people who read the final version, the better your chances are of discovering anything wrong. These people aren’t looking at the story itself, but more from a layout/formatting perspective.
3. Don’t play The Blame Game. It really doesn’t matter whose fault it is if a book goes to market with mistakes. It’s important to own the fact there is a mistake. The most vital action is to decide what to do about it. Do the found errors warrant redoing the book files? Does the one instance where you used Joe instead of John for the character name mean pull the book from sale? Is this something the average reader (not one of those readers who purposely look at books to see how many errors they can find) would discover on their own or would it have to be pointed out to them?
4. Do forgive yourself. Just remember, sh*t happens. Nobody’s perfect. Don’t put unwarranted or unnecessary pressure on yourself. Don’t beat yourself up because things didn’t go right or feel like you let yourself or someone else down. Stand proud that you created something and released it out into a world that can be harsh all on its own, without you whipping yourself in the process.

Publishing isn’t about perfection. It’s about taking great stories and sharing them. Sometimes the delivery of the story works in all the possible ways a book can go. In other cases, the final product may contain flaws. In the end, the fact that you’re willing to put your story ideas out to the worldwide reading audience is what truly matters.

Knowing your book can be flawed, like the human being who wrote it, is one of those things that can make you a winner in The Publishing Game.

Join the discussion! Send your questions to jhartman@mistimedia.com with TPG in your subject line.

WPN Vice President Jay A. Hartman has worked in the publishing industry for more than 30 years. For 13 years he served as the creator and editor-in-chief of Untreed Reads Publishing before the company was acquired in 2022. In 2023 he created Misti Media, a company dedicated to book publishing and author education.