What's the biggest editorial mistake you've seen?

The author's name was misspelled in the web URL on their bio page. I consider that one so heinous, I haven't counted anything else since.

I've read two descriptions like you. And one novel I guessed the MC to be around 50 cuz it was the series. In fact she never aged when her daughter did 15yrs.

A famous one is in Don Quixote where Sancho's pony Dapple is stolen but then he's riding her again a few chapters later.

I've noticed minor ones, like a character who was breaking into a building through a sky light threw his backpack into the building but then pulled a rope from it to repel down.

Being an editor/proofreader I've seen some doozies in customer orders, but I assume you mean errors in final products for this thread.

Misspelling the title. On the spine.

edit: This is a joke, since I doubt the poor editor was at fault for this.

I read a book - wait, I mean I read part of a book - where the hunky Arab hero was described as looking like Lawrence of Arabia. So totally not an Arab then? I stopped reading. I don't expect Her Hunky Sheikh category romances to be drenched in minute authentic detail about the life, politics and culture of the Middle East, but that was just too awful. I'd have literally thrown it at the wall if I hadn't been in Starbucks at the time.

I've done some corkers myself. I once typed a "her" instead of a "his", which made the context mean either:
a) a male character was secretly a woman
or
b) the goverment had arrested a horse

Apart from the error in Don Quixote, if I recall correctly, there's also one in Robinson Crusoe, where Crusoe swims out to the shipwreck naked, then once on board the ship, begins putting biscuits in his pocket.

Of course, that was 1719, so avoiding yellow fever was probably more important than editing for continuity...

I read a book with several instances where characters would meet someone or discover something, only to repeat the action 50 pages or so later, with similar prose and dialogue.

BenPanced said:

The author's name was misspelled in the web URL on their bio page. I consider that one so heinous, I haven't counted anything else since.

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Ooh, that happened to my published author friend on her page on the publisher's website. It took them weeks to fix it.

Worst mistake I saw was in debut litfic, author all Breadloaf and elite: a dead character mysteriously came to life in a later scene. It wasn't symbolic or a dream-sequence or imaginary or anything like that. This dead character actually came back for a (badly written) conversation. The gods and gatekeepers of the publishing world suddenly descended to earth and became mortal for me.

I haven't read it yet, but my husband read Howard Stern's Private Parts, and he said it would go from like page 1-62, then 42-103, repeating chapters. In the end, he was missing about 4 chapters of the book.

But that's more a publishing thing than an editorial thing, right?

Ok. This might not exactly be the place to complain about this. But I just recently picked up Dracula, My Love by Syrie James. As you can imagine, it's a fan-fiction kind of thing, where we focus on Mina's point-of-view during the classic Dracula story.
I don’t really read fan-fiction but I was open for something different, and willing to immerse in a good vampire story without giving in to the Twilight train wreck. So I take this one thinking I'm being innovative and clever. Only to get home and find a typo on every other page. And I don't just mean misspelled words; I mean an abusive misuse of "have" instead of "has" and little nuisances like that; that could’ve easily been corrected with just a little bit more care. Seriously. It's so bad that I feel like jumping off the couch and grabbing a neon highlighter.
To add to that, the story is just meh. (but that's OK, because it gives me faith that if such crap can be published, so can my brain secretions.)
This book cost me thirteen dollars. Thirteen dollars of my life. I was robbed. I think the editor owes me these thirteen dollars, Syrie James an explanation, and whomever he works for his god damned resignation.

Sorry, I've been meaning to vent about this since last night, right after I threw the book at the wall and attempted to scratch my eyes out. I feel better now.

In a book I recently read, the main character's age kept changing. He was "nearly 17", and then "a month away from his 18th birthday", with only a couple of days passing in between, and then he supposedly turned 18 (and this was a plot point) but two scenes later he was "only 17 years old" again. The same character also underwent an unexpected name-change for one scene.

Said The Sun said:

Ok. This might not exactly be the place to complain about this. But I just recently picked up Dracula, My Love by Syrie James. As you can imagine, it's a fan-fiction kind of thing, where we focus on Mina's point-of-view during the classic Dracula story.

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I heard about this story. It bothered me, Dracula is something close to my heart. I don't mean vampires, just Dracula and I disliked seeing this story published. My mind was screaming leave it alone.

I was debating reading it because I really don't like being negative about something unless I've read it. I guess you've just answered it for me.

Well there is this book that has a scene where a group meet in the MCs hotel room. Included in this group is a couple about to be married. After the meeting the guy about to be married asks everyone to leave so he and his intended can have some whoopie time. Everyone leaves and it wasn't his room!
This is a published book! It's sales are quite good! No one has caught it--yet! Thank goodness! It's mine!
C

Alitriona said:

I heard about this story. It bothered me, Dracula is something close to my heart. I don't mean vampires, just Dracula and I disliked seeing this story published. My mind was screaming leave it alone.

I was debating reading it because I really don't like being negative about something unless I've read it. I guess you've just answered it for me.

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Yep. It's a knock-off. It makes you feel cheap as you read it. But still, I love Dracula, and I thought it'd be interesting to perceive him from a different angle. I've never read anything else from Syrie James, so I can't really judge. Here, she writes very much to Stoker's style and she keeps to the original outline, but it just isn't doing it for me. I might pick it up again (I'm halfway through) I hate starting a book and not finishing it.
So far, it's mostly Dracula's side of the story, second Mina. It has interesting theories and "what if's" and a sexier side to Dracula, but it lacks the "wow-factor" of the original, and makes Dracula quite frankly, seem kind of lame. I like my Dracula hard-core.

Oh, I read a book recently where a minor character's name kept switching between Hatcher and Thatcher.

In recent years I tend to notice errors (a misspelling, a logical error in a sentence) when reading books where I don't recall finding them before. I suppose this comes from learning a little about writing and having a more critical eye, and most especially expecting a published book to be perfect.

BenPanced said:

The author's name was misspelled in the web URL on their bio page. I consider that one so heinous, I haven't counted anything else since.

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I recall Isaac Asimov, in a memoir or one of his "Opus ..." books, complaining of one of his books published with his name, in really large type on the front cover, spelled wrong.

Alpha Echo said:

I haven't read it yet, but my husband read Howard Stern's Private Parts, and he said it would go from like page 1-62, then 42-103, repeating chapters. In the end, he was missing about 4 chapters of the book.

But that's more a publishing thing than an editorial thing, right?

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Yeah. That's more specifically a printer thing. I've got a book with the pages messed up like that, I've been tempted to email the publisher and ask for a replacement.

Trying to think offhand, there are many books I didn't read all the way through for various reasons, but in relation to this thread, I thought up the question "Is there a book which it was a mistake to be published?" It only took me a few moments to think of one.

Alpha Echo said:

I haven't read it yet, but my husband read Howard Stern's Private Parts, and he said it would go from like page 1-62, then 42-103, repeating chapters. In the end, he was missing about 4 chapters of the book.

But that's more a publishing thing than an editorial thing, right?

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That's a printer error. The publisher wouldn't have seen it until after the book was on its way to stores.

Biggest editorial mistake I've seen: my name in the middle of a paragraph, with a question for me.

I wasn't reviewing manuscript for that project. I have no idea why someone thought to ask me a question, or why the copy editor and proofreader both missed it, but the memory entertains me - and makes me cringe.

Oh, another one. My published author friend, bless her heart, accidentally said "David Duke" instead of "Buck Duke" (father of Doris) in her biography of a southern tobacco icon! Some reviewers caught it, but nary an editor nor proofreader all the way up and down the editorial chain did.

I've come across at least two different books, each from a different author, where a character was misidentified with the name of another character. This was in the narration and was not a case of the POV character mistaking identity. In one of the books, this happens for an entire sequence.

I ran an article a few months back that basically said Vietnamese people eat dog instead of cow. It was a typo I made that got compounded when the copy-editor shifted some sentences around. The girl being quoted was... angry. Just a little.

<Slinks away>

Parametric said:

Misspelling the title. On the spine.

edit: This is a joke, since I doubt the poor editor was at fault for this.

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The blurb on the back of a book about Mary Tudor that had Oliver Cromwell doing Thomas Cromwell's job.