
The other day I went for lunch with my family. Our little dude kept himself busy with the kiddy activity page while we were waiting for our food. He got through the majority of the ‘Ocean of emotion’ words in the search as pictured but asked for my help with the last one – envy. Thinking this would be an easy feat, I scoured the search upside down while opposite him at the table. After no success, I then turned the search around for a more serious check. Still no luck. I managed to find ‘enny’ but not ‘envy’. Stumped, I then highlighted ‘enny’ in pink, determined to complete the search. Imagine being gaslit by a word search, ha ha.
The above situation was merely a bit of silly fun (hence my silly expression) but speaking now as an author, I think worrying about typos in print must be my biggest concern when putting any new book baby out into the world. I’m sure other writers out there can relate. It also happens rarely, but on occasion, I’ve stumbled across typos in big publisher books by some big name authors. Cringeworthy. Still, such things are reassuring for an indie author like me, especially having no publishing team, or even a street team – other than myself. If even the big publishers can make mistakes on occasion, considering how many people and how much money is involved in their big business book production, then it gives a bit of perspective to little folks like me. Aren’t we all human at the end of the day? Editing is as big a task as writing, in terms of literary endeavours.

It does indeed happen all the time, and I’ve found typos in the books of some of the biggest names out there–which, as you say, is heartening for indies like us. I try very hard to get it all right, going through the MS with a fine toothcomb before publication – but still they creep in. What bothers me most is that the so-called spell-checker on my version of Word (the most up-to-date) isn’t accurate. It picks up things it oughtn’t, which makes my job harder. Whatever, we persevere. 🙂
Sometimes Word even gaslights me too. I end up second guessing myself when I get the red wiggly line of doom, only to check the dictionary and find out I was right after all! 😂
It’s really frustrating, and it also has a nasty predictive texting habit of ‘finishing’ a word that’s as I want it. A sad thing when you can’t rely on Word for a simple and accurate spell check. 😦