The very first copies of Huckleberry Finn had errors! Today these editions are considered rare and very valuable. Those copies can go for as much as $15,000 each and all because they had mistakes.

The dust jacket on Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises had an error stating that he was also the author of In Our Times. This led readers to think that In Our Times came before The Sun Also Rises. If you can find a copy with that error on the dust jacket and want to buy it, the price you would be asked to pay is anybody’s guess! But I am confident it would be in the 10’s of thousands.

So errors are made, mistakes too.

Recently, Nancy Jackson published her first novel – The Blood. She paid an editor to have it professionally edited. Then several sets of eyes also read for errors. Some were found and corrected. Finally, it was decided they had all been found, and it was good to go.

But, when the ebook came out, it was found that there were many errors still hiding like Easter eggs on a Sunday morning. More corrections were made. More readers were consulted. A sigh of relief came and the button was pressed to go to print.

The very first hard copy sent to Nancy to proof, had the spine printed upside down. The actual hardback had the letter ‘a’ missing in Nancy’s name. Everyone laughed. That book would be worth a million bucks some day.

Then as the corrected version fell lovingly into the hands of readers, a tell-tale hint of lost typo’s began to emerge. After so many readers, editors, and eyes, how could this happen?

Well, 89,000 words is a lot of words that fade into the background as one becomes drawn into the story, so much so, that they forget they are editing, every – single – person, every – single – time. This is a good problem to have.

Nancy has since signed up with Wild Ideas Press to be her full-service publisher, and her first draft and revision of book #2 – The Water, is done. The first round of edits have been made. It has now gone to an editor who will painstakingly go over each page again and again.

Once the editor has suggested revisions, there are plans for additional readers with keen eyes to review again. It is our goal at Wild Ideas Press to not allow mistakes to slip by. But if they do, and you are lucky enough to have one of those copies wind up in your hands, don’t be critical. Rejoice, because someday you may have a valuable and rare book worth a lot of money!