Mistakes in recently published fiction books

[Danascully2]

Has anyone else noticed poor proofreading in published books recently? I'm not talking about the finer details of colon vs semi colon etc but words in the wrong order, or in one case the same sentence twice in a paragraph (I'm confident it was an error rather than some sort of artistic choice). My 8 year old could have spotted them. I understand it's tricky to proofread a whole book but I presume it is somebody's job to do just that (editor?).
Or have mistakes always slipped through occasionally and it's just chance that I've had quite a few recently?

Some of my oaks don't lose their leaves until the new ones push them off in early spring. Maybe the author has the same kind? 😁

Typos/ spelling mistakes annoy me more as there is absolutely no excuse for them, especially from a major publishing house.

I’m noticing them more and more now, there was even one in one of the recent Booker shortlist (I think it might have been Flesh, but not 100% sure!)

I also read the digital versions of a couple of publications and notice a 0 where a o should be, eg w0rd. I see it so often I’ve wondered whether it is actually deliberate!

I have worked in publishing for more than 30 years and my team has never been more stretched than it is at the moment. Deadlines are crushing and the time allowed for manuscript development, copy editing and proofreading is continually being squeezed and it is more and more difficult to do the job properly. It is not possible to pick up every error - there will always be something. And while it’s easy to say there is no excuse, you have no idea what state the manuscript might have been in to start with. My company doesn’t use AI for editing and proofreading but I fear it will happen one day.

Not sure how true it is but i have been told this can affect the author if they get reported enough and amazon in the past have taken down the book.

A lot of the problem is authors are pressured to put out books at a stupid rate compared to the one a year or longer that it used to take.

Two errors! 😁

On of my favourite authors changed a characters name for at least a third of a book, before changing it back and carrying on. And it wasn't a new character, the book was part of a series, the character was in the first one and is still there 60 books on! I re-read the series on and off, and it irritates me every time.

A well known series of books, where the parents of one character suddenly came back to life, very irritating, they were dead in a previous book.

Long thought ghost writers had taken over, and the books weren’t as good anymore.

That’s not an error or plot error though, whether a supermarket exists in real life or not.

Poetic license surely applies.

A plot error might be saying it existed on page 4, and changing its name by page 62, surely

Yep I posted when I found the first one then finished the sentence.

The protagonists ‘ footwear was described as “Dr Martin’s”. The footwear brand is actually “Dr Martens”.

There was a book I read a while ago, can't remember its name, thriller with an impoverished single mum as protagonist. It opened with her taking her newborn baby home from hospital, and a big thing was made of her not having a car seat to put in the taxi - argument with taxi driver and so on.

Next scene, she was entering her house and the first thing she did was 'put the car seat behind the sofa' 🙄

You can imagine the editor suggesting the first scene to really ram home the woman's poverty, which is fair enough, but surely someone should have checked continuity in the very next scene.

Maybe they were a very badly done fake 😂

All big publishers still employ proofreaders. They may not pay them much, but they do use them, alongside copy editors.

I seem to remember Richard Osman did talk about the invented Waitrose - possibly it was the interview at the end of the audiobook or maybe in the acknowledgements bit. I can see that would be annoying if you are familiar with Tunbridge Wells but it didn't bother me (in the same way maybe if you rarely take trains the sleeper train issue wouldn't have bothered you!).

If you only spot three errors in a book, that’s good going!

And many people don’t have good general knowledge. That helps.

That reminds me of one of the Jennings books, where Jennings has written a short story about a detective, containing the lines: "As he looked round the room, his eye fell on a piece of paper. He bent down and picked it up." Darbishire is quick to point out the double-meaning.

The problem with reading a book is that you only see the errors that are left. You don’t notice the 5000 changes the editor and proofreader made!

There are various reasons for errors being left.

Speed - the publisher is on a deadline, which doesn’t leave the proofreader long to work.
Brief - the proofreader may be told to change essential errors only.
Author - The author may change back some of the proofreader’s changes, reintroducing errors.
Time - the desk editor may be in charge of dozens of books, so they can’t give each much time.
Fact checking - fact checking is not included in editing or proofreading. It’s the author’s job to ensure their book is accurate… so things like train routes, dates, Waitroses are down to them. Of course editors and proofreaders change errors if they notice them, not it’s not up to us to check everything!
Money - many publishers have low budgets and pay poorly, do they don’t attract the best freelances.

Oh yes, eyes doing all sorts of things is one thing editors look out for. I tend to change ‘eyes’ to ‘gaze’.

Interesting to see Robin's mother in law's funeral mentioned - she was the one supposedly travelling on a sleeper train to Yorkshire for the funeral.

(Robin not the mother in law!)

A 60 book series 😎What is it please?

I’ve certainly noticed the occasional minor error in the Kindle edition comparatively recent books I own in both hard copy and Kindle versions. Nothing major, just a duplicated or omitted word, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in the paper copy.

I had a book where a whole paragraph was repeated at the start of following chapter. I thought I was going mad for a minute.
Years ago I read a book with so many errors I actually wrote to the publisher offering my services as a proofreader. Never got a reply funnily enough!

Which in turn reminds me of a certain sea creature in a certain William Golding book. A 'mistake' seeded by the author of the book for the purposes of the story. It's not Lord of the Flies,btw. The mistake in that is an actual mistake I understand.

I used to love the Jennings books when I was a child. I remember that the author said that Derbyshire sounded as though he always spoke in capital letters. I took that to mean, not that he was shouty, but that he was always anxious to speak with a kind of super-precise articulacy. And perhaps with excessive literalism. So it was a lovely touch to have him spot that error on Jennings' part.

BTW, to all Kindle users, I have on a couple of occasions complained to Amazon customer services about scanning errors and formatting errors and got my money back.You have to wait until you've finished the book, though, as of course they remove it when they issue the refund.