A few months ago I read Adult Assembly Required by Abbi Waxman. Let me start by saying that I enjoy the books that Waxman has written, including this one. They are charming and fun and full of heart. I was so looking forward to this one, I preordered it.

Waxman loves quirky characters, which is one of the reasons that I like her work so much. Her characters are real, multi faceted, interesting and fun. In this particular book her protagonist is a woman who loves baseball.

Great. I love baseball. OK- I love the Mets, but as they play baseball we can run with an if/than…

Well, she has her baseball loving character refer to the guy in black who stands behind the base as a REFEREE.

REFEREE?

REFEREE?

For those who don’t understand my consternation, the officials who preside over a baseball game are UMPIRES.

I immediately find her contact info and I email her. My tone was probably incredulous- I said something like- you’ve set women who like sports back to the stones ages… I was mad, and I am positive it came across that way.

Within minutes of me sending the email, Waxman wrote me back.

First off- she was completely apologetic and couldn’t comprehend how that little tidbit was missed in the editing process.

She thanked me for alerting her to the error.

She wrote me a few hours later to tell me that it had been fixed for future editions of the book, including the paperback version. Again she gave apologies on behalf of herself and her publishing house.

So now, I have complete and total respect for Waxman not only as an author, but as a person. And I feel a little bad that I went a little crazy in my email.

I’ll ask you all to read at least one of Waxman’s novels, to show a little support and solidarity to an author who responded quickly, acknowledged the mistake, and writes a tidy little novel.

One of my blog friends posted this yesterday and I thought it was something interesting to think about: https://bleuwater.me/2022/07/19/something-to-scratch-your-head-about/

and

One of my blog friends posted this http://myricopia.com/2022/07/19/hangin-on-the-line/ and I thought it was just fun and cool.

41 thoughts on “Official Ruling: Error- Editor”

  1. Things like that drive me crazy. I’m impressed she wrote back and got it fixed for future editions.
    Grisham wrote a basketball book recently and had so many things wrong about how March Madness works. I couldn’t tell if he did it on purpose for dramatic effect or if he just didn’t care. I didn’t email him.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. This irked me because it was such a bad error (no pun intended) but she was so gracious and apologetic and truly distressed about it, I can’t help but admire her and think she’s got integrity, which is something lacking these days

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

  3. I don’t understand why we seem insistent on negating our sexes. This is just another step toward fiction becoming reality. I loved the hummingbird nest I’ve never seen one. I’ll check in on your Author. I am glad you got such a timely response.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  4. Definitely a fail on the part of the editor. Especially now that many publishers feel the need to have the book reviewed for political correctness now prior to publication. Here’s an interesting article on this idea: https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/09/23/how-political-correctness-is-about-to-kill-the-novel/

    I believe it’s a credit to the author that she replied to you so quickly. I hope she does a little more research on her own for her next topic and not leave it to the editor to find the errors.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I was impressed with how quickly she took action. How many authors would totally blow this off. I give her kudos. FYI..if you get a chance, read the blog post I linked by bleuwater. I think you’ll find it…let’s just say…mind boggling

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. I read a headline about that and am increasingly disgusted with the gender identity wars being waged now. I can’t think the majority of people are dwelling on this….or even really care.

        Liked by 1 person

  7. Well done on her part! I haven’t read any of her novels, but will do so now.

    I had an eagle-eyed reader spot a plot hole in my most recent publication and was so grateful. It’s so easy to fix such things these days.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  9. Thanks for the link! I am surprised and glad to hear of the author’s response. I have not ever written to an author about a published error, though they irk me. I’m sure people will point out errors in my book, too. I accept that. No one is perfect. We had an email discussion on a writer’s organization I belong to about one who is having a historical fiction work read for accuracy and what the reader told her. Some of his “catches” were correct, but one was way off. It’s a tough call on how much to research and how many reviews to get before publishing.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  11. Her response is impressive – I’ve not read any of her books, but feel inclined to check them out now.

    That type of research is important. British author, Ben Aaronovitch, posts on Twitter to check on correct terminology and language usage in any geographical or specialist knowledge area he’s writing about. I think it’s something a writer needs to take personal responsibility for when doing their research. Either that, or they can seek out a beta reader with that particular passion, as it’s not in an editor’s remit to pick that kind of thing up, because they’d need to have encyclopaedic levels of knowledge and more time that you pay them for to check every detail.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  13. Wow! That is great that she responded to you and corrected the glaring error! Cheers to her and I will look for her books. Don’t think I have ever read any by her but want to now. Thanks for sharing!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  15. Speaking of baseball-themed editing snafus, when I first published my book, I was horrified to discover I had inadvertently changed the name of one of the most storied baseball franchises in history to the Boston REX Sox. I ended up paying $100+ just to change that one word so future editions would be correct. I guess I just believe that the little details really do make a difference if you want to be taken seriously as an author.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Agreed! But I’m less annoyed by a spelling error than an error of fact. I totally get the simple mistake…the other fact based error I’m harder on

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s