I was very happy with the quality control on the first five novels in the series, but I’m starting to despair about The Endless Forest. Today somebody at Bantam/Random House sent me digital copies of the family tree and the map to post here on the website (a reasonable reader request I’ve heard a couple times), and what jumps out at me immediately?
On the galleys I corrected a doozy of a typo. In the family tree you’ll find Nathaniel Booner instead of Bonner, something I not only marked VERY clearly in the galleys, but also talked to one of the production people about. That’s already taken care of, I was told.
Hah.
Google tells me when “The Endless Forest” Donati shows up someplace, and I usually go look. Well, people are noticing the typos. Really noticing them. It’s especially frustrating because I can’t drop in on discussions out of the blue and say, HEY, that’s not my fault. Because that would be peevish and childish and whinging (as my Brit sister-in-law says). Really, I just have to let it go. But first, loud and clear:
Something did go wrong, but it wasn’t on my end of things.
It just makes me sad. About 1.5 million words in the series, and Booner is the one that will stick in my head the longest. Maybe I coould just preteend that it waas intentioonaal, an aartiistiic floooouriish, aaall thee vooooooowels reeeprooooooooooduuuuciiing liiiiikeee raaaaaabiiiiiitts.
Yeah, that’s the ticket. That’s my story, and I’m stiiiiicking to it.
Now that I’ve got that out of my system, I will be posting larger copies of the family tree and the map sometime over the weekend. This is primarily for those who are reading the ebook or kindle version, or listening to the audio edition (the ones who miss the map and family tree entirely, but don’t have to endure the typos).
I’m determined to get every one of those mistakes fixed for the next edition, so if you spot something (or I should say, WHEN you spot something) please leave a note about that in the comments to the last post or this one.
Update:
First, a word of explanation: I never open a new hardcover when it first comes out; I wait for a year and sometimes more. It’s a silly superstition: I’m sure that if I open it, some dog-awful error will jump out at me.
So it turns out that the person who sent me the image of the family tree did not send the most recent one, the one that actually went to press — in which Booner has been mercifully changed to Bonner. If I had opened the book I would have known that, so the onus is on me. In summary: the family tree page does not have a typo on it (unless one spontaneously generates). I was just working off an earlier draft, and didn’t know it.
So I will post high quality versions of those two images here, sometime this weekend.
*this innocent bunny comes from DK Images.