I was talking with my friend Mary the other day and she was telling me a tale of behind-the-scenes frustration in publishing. They happen frequently to many of my nationally published author friends. An example of the sort of snafu that occurs is Mary’s story about how one of her books was released without its first sentence. Mistakes happen and they can be terribly frustrating to the people they happen to.
I’ve never had someone else mess up one of my books. This does not mean that Cobble Stones, Hold on to Your Horses, Strength of Wild Horses, XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, or the Schlock books are error free. Far from it. They all have errors. Every single book that I’ve helped to make has something about it that I would like to fix. Even the books that we’ve re-printed. You’d think that on a reprint we could fix all the errors. We try to, but we still miss some or accidentally introduce others. All books have flaws.
So as I listened and commiserated with Mary’s story, I wondered whether it was better to be frustrated and helpless, or to be frustrated and responsible. I don’t have an answer to that. Neither situation is enviable.