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asked
Mary Kingswood:
Mary, that was honourable of you to owning and notifying us about the error in titling Nell in The Widow. Lots of respect to you for that. I consider mis-titling Nell very minor to some obvious unresearched mis-titling I've often seen. When it's throughout entire story, for all the titled characters, should a writer feel obligated to make any corrections and release another version of the book?
Mary Kingswood
I'm such a stickler for historical accuracy, especially titling errors, and I've criticised authors for not getting it right, so it would be hypocritical of me not to own up to my own errors.
As to being obliged to make corrections, I will always try to fix errors in my own books, and I've already corrected The Widow, but it's not always easy to do. Being self-published, I can upload a new version of an ebook or paperback very easily, but many of my books now have an audio version, and making changes to those once they're live is not easy (or cheap!). For any author with a regular publisher, there's no way they will agree to changes, unfortunately. In those cases, all an author can do is to learn from their mistake, and try to get things right in future books.
As to being obliged to make corrections, I will always try to fix errors in my own books, and I've already corrected The Widow, but it's not always easy to do. Being self-published, I can upload a new version of an ebook or paperback very easily, but many of my books now have an audio version, and making changes to those once they're live is not easy (or cheap!). For any author with a regular publisher, there's no way they will agree to changes, unfortunately. In those cases, all an author can do is to learn from their mistake, and try to get things right in future books.
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