Errors, Editing, and The Bottom Line in Publishing

This past weekend I experienced a bit of an oops moment in one of my latest publications. The TTRPG supplement 100 Gangsters, Gun Molls, and Goons came out from Azukail Games for the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and it details a list of characters to add to the town of Arkham for players who want to explore the use and effect of organized crime in the city during the Roaring 20s when campaigns in the core continuity are set. I wrote it partially because I've always liked the idea of the mob going to war with the mythos, but also because there seemed to be an uptick of players who were trying out this particular game.

However, someone pointed out a rather glaring flaw in my original. You see, a gun moll is a slang term used to describe a woman who was a gangster, typically as the partner of a mob boss or gang leader. But for some reason I was certain that it was spelled "mal" and not "moll"... as such, an edit was necessary to the document.

I expected better of you.

Rather than just try to bury that (admittedly embarrassing) mistake, though, I wanted to try to use it as a teachable moment. Because there are a lot of misconceptions about editing in the publishing industry as a whole, and I think this makes a good jumping off point to talk about them.

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Perfect is The Enemy of Done

There's a meme I've come across several times that explains the best way for an author to find spelling mistakes and editing errors is to go through their manuscript a dozen times, publish it, and then to open to a random page once they have a hard copy in their hands. If you've ever published a book (or even a short story) then you know just how true this is. Sometimes, very rarely, the layers of editing will catch all the mistakes, weed them out, and leave a perfect, pristine product... but that's far from the norm.

And as with a lot of stuff in the publishing industry, it has far more to do with time and money than it does with talent and skill.

As is often the case, sadly.

As a for-instance, when I write a TTRPG supplement, there's typically a 3-step process. First, I write it by hand. Then I type up what I've written, proofreading and editing as I go. Then, once it's been typed, I review it for edits and further changes. Once I've finished that, I send it in to my publisher, who handles layout, art, etc., and puts it up for sale.

Now, Azukail Games is a relatively small publisher, and there isn't an on-staff editor. Nor, for that matter, is an editor contracted to go over every supplement that gets turned in. The reason for that is first, that would add a lot of time to the process (probably a week or more, at least). Secondly, editors aren't free. An average supplement should sell about 50 copies at the low end of things, to 100 copies in the initial release (which won't rack up to much more than $100 or so in initial profits for the publisher), with occasional copies being sold down the line as the catalog grows.

Adding extra time to every release, and spending far more than a given supplement is likely to make in sales to give it a pass by an independent editor doesn't make for a good business strategy. As such, it's a step that usually gets left out of things... however, even companies who can afford editors still have issues with their books and releases.

Gonna name a name here...

Not to call out anyone specifically, or to throw shade on folks who worked hard on their books, but White Wolf had quite a reputation for this during the hey day of the World of Darkness. While the games were very popular, a lot of players often criticized them for errors in the glossary, spelling mistakes, or rules that didn't quite seem to match up in examples in different sections. And the constant refrain was always, "Would it have killed them to give it one more editorial pass?"

And the answer is, actually, yes. It probably would have.

We tend to think that bigger publishing companies (Wizards of The Coast, Paizo, White Wolf/Onyx Path, etc.) have gads of spare funds just lying around, but that really isn't the case. They're already paying for artists, designers, layout, printing, shipping, and initial editing, along with many more costs on tight deadlines, so they probably can't afford an extra round of edits just to be sure that products are perfect. Because that extra round of edits might eat deeply enough into the spare time and profit margin for the release that it won't make enough money to justify the next release, and sustain the company.

Or, at the very least, it will increase the amount of books that the project needs to sell in order to break even, and justify the release of future content.

Would the extra edits catch some spelling mistakes, and align the numbers in the guide? Sure, it could, but when you look at the raw numbers (both the extra costs of additional editing passes, and how many typos and errors slip through the process on average even with those extra passes) it just isn't worth it to your bottom line.

Digital Tools Help (But Sometimes It Still Isn't Worth It)

Let's back up a moment and look at the mistake I made in my latest TTRPG supplement. If it had been released back in the 90s as a hard copy, and that spelling error had survived through editing to be released as a product sold in game stores, the publisher would not have recalled the supplements and released a corrected version. If it was released with a mistake, it would be left in the wild to sink or swim on its own... if it did well enough to justify a second print run, then the mistake would be fixed, but more likely it would just go down as a flawed product, a victim of a single (albeit major) error. Or perhaps a collector's edition, if it did well enough to justify more being printed.

But in the digital age, and the age of print-on-demand, we have the ability to fix errors as we see them, or as they get reported to us. In fact it was less than a day between the mistake in that title being reported, and the text and cover being fixed by the publisher. If someone points out a mistake in a blog or article like this, I can just go in and fix it with minimal sweat. Even if someone finds errors in a book of mine like my short story collection The Rejects, I can update the text of the manuscript, re-submit it to Amazon for approval, and the new version will appear in 24 hours or so, no muss, no fuss.

Even with all these options and tools on-hand, though, there is still a single, deciding factor when it comes to fixing errors in your work... how much that effort is likely to improve your bottom line.

Consider the video for my short audio drama Whispered Words Sharpen Knives, which is taken from my supplement 100 Rumors to Hear at The Freehold for Changeling: The Lost. While the title appears to the right of the display image in this video, it's extremely dark due to something going wrong with the applied filter. The text was supposed was be white on a black background... but by the time I caught that mistake, it was already published on the Azukail Games YouTube channel (which, if you haven't subscribed yet, please consider doing so).

So while it is certainly within my power to fix the video, resubmit it to the publisher, and then have them reupload it to fix one error, it doesn't really feel worth the effort to to do... especially because the title of the video appears directly below it any time it's displayed on YouTube or linked on social media, so folks can still see what it is, and determine if they want to click it.

If there was an outcry from regular viewers to fix the video, it could certainly be done. However, with only 79 views at time of writing, it isn't exactly something being seen by a huge number of fresh eyes. There aren't a string of comments requesting the edit to be made, nor is it something that a lot of folks are being turned off by. Even though the channel isn't monetized (though we're hoping to change that in the near future), that kind of outcry from the viewers would warrant the edit being made... but if no one is noticing, the effort it would take to fix the mistake could better be spent making new content.

And those are really the three lessons I want people to take away from this. First, that no matter how hard you try, or how many times you look, it's always possible for mistakes to slip through your editing net. Secondly, that there is always some form of editorial, but even putting your manuscript in the hands of a professional is no guarantee that they're going to catch everything. And, thirdly, mistakes are not the end of the world in the digital age of publishing... you can usually fix them quickly, and efficiently, if the mistake is serious enough to warrant doing so.

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That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects! You can also check out my Rumble channel The Literary Mercenary for free audio dramas!

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