Welcome back to another Open Book Blog Hop!

Today’s topic is: Have you ever regretted ‘hitting publish’ on a work realizing you could have done more or tweak something to make it an absolute banger?

And remember to visit my fellow writers to see what they have come up with. You can find their works here!

This week’s subject is pretty on point for me. As the Crow Flies is my second novel, and the first I did all of the design and formatting work on. Somehow I missed a bit of a glaring error before I hit publish. I was using a new piece of software, so it seems something went awry when transferring my manuscript from one to the other. It seems that part of the text got duplicated and placed in an incorrect place.

This was part one of a small catalogue of errors that ended up costing me a small chunk of money. I’d done all of my edits and reads using the manuscript from the previous piece of software I used. THEN I copied it into the new one. So I didn’t spot the errors. I’d done so many read throughs that when I ordered my proof copy, I skimmed through it, somehow missing the crucial error. Then I ordered a stock of copies, costing somewhere close to £200. Take a guess at which point I discovered my error…

I live and learn – I’ll be more thorough with my checks going forward. If I’ve done my checks before it makes it into the final software, then I’ll redo them. And most of all, I will be damn sure to check the proof copy in depth to ensure the final look and feel of the book is spot on before I hit publish.