Do publishers fix typos in later printings of books? Or is that usually only done in a new edition?
I can’t say they do in EVERY case, but it does happen.
In one of my copies of Larry Nivens “Ringworld”, Larry specifically mentioned in the foreward that if you had one of the original copies of that book with all the typos it was worth money.
This was just a reprinting with a foreward added, not a new addition. This was probably a 10th printing or more, but it indicated the most of the typos were corrected by the second printing.
In the “Ringworld” case, it wasn’t typoes. Niven accidentally had the Earth turning in the wrong direction.
Whether typoes are fixed – that depends on the publisher. It’s not likely for the publisher of a novel to reset the book just to fix typoes, unless there were a hell of a lot. It’s just too expensive, especially back in the old days before computers.
If a new edition is put out, then they’ll sometimes go to the effort. But multiple printings don’t usually rate the change.
Nope, not in my experience. It’s just too expensive to do. A publisher probably would pay for the typesetting for a major error that affected the argument the book was making but for a simple typo, it’s very unlikely to happen.
Maybe the Ringworld case is unique. Maybe they went through the trouble because of the Earth accident referenced by RealityChuck, but they did fix MANY typos between the 1st and 2nd printings with this book. Maybe this would not have happened without the big error.
There is a rather annoying error in John Keegan’s The Price of Admiralty which appears to have survived from the 1989 hardback I first read all the way to edition I now have, which reads:
Published by Penguin Books, 1990
7 9 10 8
Does that mean it’s the eighth print run, or was it printed in 1998? I don’t know how to read these things. Whatever the case, this is my third copy of the book (all different editions, all with the same error).
Anyway, here’s the error, page 225 of this particular edition:
“The Japanese version was the Aicha D3A, or Type 97, known to the Americans as the Val; its American equivalent was the Douglas Dauntless. Val’s speed was about 200 mph and its range 800 miles; the American Devastator, an inferior aircraft, had the same range but was much slower.”
This passage is so wrong it is difficult to discern exactly what the hell Keegan was thinking when he wrote it, for a number of reasons which do not bear discussion in this thread.
Geek that I am, I’ve written both Penguin and Keegan (c/o Penguin) about it, with no response.
[fixed coding]
[Edited by bibliophage on 10-16-2001 at 11:53 PM]
This seem to make sense to me. Just putting alot of info into a small space. What I take from this.
- Japan had a plane called Aicha D3a or Type 97 by them.
- America called Japan’s plane Val.
- America had a similar plane called the Dauntless
- America also had an inferior plane called the Devestator (which was slower than the Japanese plane)
:: Scarlett temporarily removes her copyeditor hat and replaces the former-prepress-tech hat ::
The lowest number showing indicates the number of the printing of that edition (no revisions). In this case, we are looking at the 7th printing.
Print codes can be arranged in several ways, but always for the same reason, so that the stripper (stop sniggering; that’s shop talk for “prepress tech”) can easily opaque out (with opaquing solution or red litho tape) the previous code from the film; alternately, if the old plates are being used, the codes can be honed off the plates.
Two common arrangements are as follows:
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
In either case, we are looking at the first printing. For the 2nd printing, the “1” would be taped or honed out; for the 3rd printing, the “2” would be removed, and so on.
(And yes, I’ve heard all the mistaken “stripper” jokes there could possibly be. 
)
Well, your observations are mostly accurate, scotth, but Keegan isn’t.
In the quoted paragraph, Keegan is comparing dive bombers–the Val and the Dauntless (I didn’t quote the whole paragraph). In the next paragraph, he discusses torpedo bombers–the Kate and the Devastator. But in the above quote, he confuses the name and the characteristics of the Dauntless and the Devastator from one sentence to the next, and makes the erroneous conclusion that the American dive bomber (the SBD Dauntless) was inferior to the Val.
(The errors appear to be compounded later in the section. It’s a big whiff on the part of the most prestigious living military historian, and he oughta fix it.)
But let’s not drag ourselves into this here. SmackFu has a good question and I don’t want to pollute it any further. I’ll start a new thread elsewhere, if you insist.
Through an editing error, the first printing of a book I wrote several years ago came out with the name “Stephen Spielberg” on the back (he was one of the people featured in the book). The second printing corrected it. OTOH, this is the only example I can think of in my books. OTOOH, this may have been the only book of mine that went into a second printing 
Ah! So it’s the seventh print run without revision. All they did was change the cover,
(drum roll, please)
which I was unwisely judging things by.
Thanks for the skinny, Scarlett67.
In college publishing, it is not uncommon for errors to go out in our texts. This is a major complaint of professors and students so we will try to make corrections in the following printings. (If there is a second printing. A lot of texts, especially the upper level courses, only go through one print run so their errors are never fixed.) A lot depends on the author and editor finding out about the errors and then getting the changes in place.
The majority of errors are typos that are simply missed during the production process. Other problems include colors being off or photos and tables with incorrect notations.
If the first printing has major errors we may publish an errata sheet to package with the text. We recently started posting corrections to the text websites. Both are an inexpensive way to correct problems in the answer sets or tables without recalling a print run.
Occasionally, the errors are so egregious we have to pull the entire first run and destroy it. This happened recently with a language text. We recalled the old texts and trashed them, then reran the first printing and assigned a new ID number to the corrected text to prevent confusion.
Some authors are scrupulous about fixing errors, for example, Donald Knuth is offering a “binary dollar” ($2.56 IIRC) to anyone who finds a typo or error in his series “The Art of Computer Programming.” But Knuth typesets his own books, so it’s easier for him to make corrections, and for that matter, to prevent errors.
Note that there are other ways to fix typos and errors, it is common to issue errata sheets, and now some authors are using the web to issue errata. I like web errata sheets. I’ve read some web errata sheets that are more informative than the whole book they’re correcting.
Now if you want to hear some REAL horror stories about typos, someday I’ll tell you about my college calculus textbook. We met 3 times a week, the first class of the week was always spent correcting typos in the textbook.
“Depends” is right. How huge is the error? Will common sense allow the reader to correct it in his/her head?
If the error is spotted when the advance copies ship, there are ways to handle it:
We sometimes publish medical books with errata (noun, plural: notices that an error appears somewhere in the book). A loose sheet pointing out the error is tucked into the book.
Sometimes the manufacturer does a rip and tip: the offending page is cut out and a new corrected page is glued in.
We also manufactured stickers of missing art that the manufacturer would insert over the blank art “window” in the book.
Generally speaking, if someone connected to the author or editorial staff is made aware of the error and continues to bring it up, the change will get made in the next edition.
Eight bits. Can I just say that this is the nerdiest thing I have ever seen. I nominate Knuth to be King of All Geeks.
If someone notices an error (either an ordinary run of the mill reader or, more likely, the author) and brings it to my attention, I send a copy of the complaint on to the Production Department. Or if Rachel’s wearing one of her miniskirts that day, I deliver the message in person.
If/when the book goes back to press, the error will be rectified in the next printing.