Oh, all those mistakes...

There is nothing worse than mistakes in a book. May it be grammar or spelling. I know people hate them. Trust me, we authors hate them, too, but there's something I'd really like you to know.

When we read a book by J.R. Ward or some other big-name author, we realize there are mistakes, too, but honestly, I never heard anyone complain about that. It's not that I think everyone should be allowed to release books splattered with mistakes, or things that make you pause while reading. Trust me, it happens to me, too.

But really, Diana Galbadon's Outlander (a book with 150+ editions) has mistakes eight (8!!!!!) pages into the book. EIGHT. Someone should've seen it by now, but no one did. Guess why? Because no one goes LOOKING for it. Isn't that the problem all indies suffer from? People go looking for mistakes in Indie author's books, and that's what really makes life difficult for us.

You would never think about going to look for a mistake in the big books, with the amazing authors. We Indies pay editors to check through our file, we read them and re-read them over and over again, have betas look for the spelling mistakes and then our ARC-readers before we red the story one last time and then get it formatted to put it out in the world. I'm not saying people should throw out the stories and readers should simply love them. I'm saing that maybe all the readers should stop going into an Indie book, expecting to find piles of mistakes. If you look for them, you certainly will find them. I'm saying go into the book and maybe, just maybe, the story will knock you on your ass in a good way, swiping you away in a wave of euhoria, tears and excitement, making you overlook the one or two mistakes that actually ARE in the story. We all make mistakes, and sometimes mistakes escape us because we've written that story, and our Beta-

readers have been so caught up in the story, they simply haven't noticed it. It hurts us, too. We stand there, thinking: CRAP! You just uploaded the final file and you open it just because you want to look something up and there it is ... stupid f*cker that escaped each and every person who looked over it.

So next time you read a book by someone who was brave enough to throw their heart out like that, remember to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you won't even notice the very few mistakes that are in there. Maybe you'll love the story so much, you just stare blankly at a person when they tell you there was a spelling mistake in chapter two.

Maybe, just maybe, you made an author's day because you looked for a story instead of a mistake. ;-)