It never ceases to amaze me that no matter how many people read through a book before publication, things always slip through the cracks. For example, the address listed in NSSWM 2008 for the Southwest Writers Contests is correct, but the one for their conference is wrong. Thanks to Southwest Writers for letting us know.

Just to be clear, the address for Southwest Writers (the contests and conference) is 3721 Morris NE Ste A, Albuquerque NM 87111.

Mistakes like that can be maddening, even though we do everything we can to prevent them. I'm sure you've had the experience of discovering "they're" instead of "their" or "an" instead of "and" while reading. One of my favorite typos is in my dad's old edition of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider's of Pern (which I borrowed almost 15 years ago and he is never getting back), where the name of the main protagonist is spelled incorrectly. I remember reading that as a teenager and scoffing at the ineptitude of the editor who let that slip by. I decided I would become an editor and one day work on Anne McCaffrey's books, and I would NEVER be so careless as to let a typo like that get through.

Ah, the conceit of youth. I didn't realize then how much editors have to do in a day. Most editors are actively working on 3-7 books at a time (that's not including the ones in the early stages or already sent out to production), plus working on other things, like finding new books. An editor does a lot more than look for typos.

Anyway, it's not purely the editor's fault; the books don't just go through them. A basic editorial process has the manuscript go from the author to the editor, back to the author for any changes, returned to the editor, then on to the copy-editor, then to the editor again. Next the manuscript it passed to the book designer (to get the manuscript formatted), then back to the editor, sent out for proofs, back to the editor, and then to the editor's supervisor for final approval before getting sent to the printer. Of course, some presses and books have more, or less, editorial review than others, but you get the picture.

This isn't for excuse mistakes, because they're not fine to have, but just to show that no matter how diligent we are things are missed. Hopefully it's a rare thing.