I’m editing my book, A Rake’s Reward—for perhaps the… well, I don’t even know how many times I’ve edited this book. And not only me, but I’ve had a professional editor read it through twice, three beta readers have had at it and two other proofreaders as well. That’s seven times this book has been read by others and numerous times by myself. So why am I still finding mistakes?

Can you tell how frustrated I am?

I was so thrilled when I had thousands of downloads of the book after a Bookbub ad, but then the reviews started coming in each saying how much they loved the book (yay!) and how horrible the editing was (huh?). Again and again I got reviews saying as much.

But I’ve had the book edited! They must be wrong.

And then I started getting emails.

One was from a very kind reader who found four mistakes in the book. Oh, well, four? Really? That’s all? Not a problem! She sent them to me. I put them aside for another day to correct.

And then I got a second letter from a reader saying there were too many mistakes to count. I asked her to send them to me, but she said that she hadn’t noted them when she’d read through the book and it would be too much work to go back and do so now.

Okay… that rang some alarm bells in my head.

I pulled the physical copy off my shelf and started reading.

Holy *@$$! I found mistakes on nearly every page of the first chapter! How did that happen? How were these not caught? Some were word repetitions (“She crossed her arms across her slender body.” – I’ve corrected to “She folded her arms…”). Some were commas that just looked wrong (I’m no expert in commas, but I’ve got a feel for where they should be—yes, a lot of the time I’m wrong, but still…). On the first page of the book I say the hero is the fifth Viscount Reath. On the fifth page he’s now the fourth.

I hang my head in shame!

And this book is with thousands of readers! What can I do?

Well, nothing but read through the whole thing again very slowly and carefully.

It’s been a while since I’ve read through the book, so at least I’m actually able to focus on the words and see my mistakes—something I can’t do soon after I’ve finished writing a book. So, I have time on my side and a fresh pair of eyes. But still, I wonder how I can correct this from happening for my next book before I publish it?

I’m thinking of additional proofreaders. Wondering about sending it to more people. There’s got to be a way to get rid of these dumb mistakes!

The problem is our eyes see what we expect to see. It takes a very detail oriented person with great eyesight to catch all of these things. And it takes going through a book slowly and carefully—what I’m doing right now. It’s going to take a bit of time, but hopefully I’ll catch a good number of these mistakes. Perhaps I’ll invest some more money, after I’ve made my corrections to send it to a professional proofreader. I know that I will do so for my next book, despite the fact that it’s been edited a number of times already and is currently with my fan proofreaders (two wonderful fans who have eagle eyes and have offered to proofread all my books for free).

But it’s still a horrible thing for a writer to be facing. I try so hard to put out a professional book and then… well, this.

So, how many times do you have your work proofread? I have a good professional proofreader I’ve used in the past (Alicia Street at iproofreadandmore), but do you have any recommendations for someone who has been exceptionally good at catching these things? Clearly, I need help.