Think that errors in printed books is a new problem? Read about Melville’s lamentous experience with Moby-Dick. Or was it The Whale?
This is a tale of
- arbitrary content slashing,
- copyright shenanigans,
- “technical errors,” and
- the interminable progress of the publishing process.
Oh, and it’s a tale of “reviewers may not even read the book” too.
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll think “guess publishing isn’t going down the tubes, after all.”
Also see the data and science on error detection rates, or the “save percentage.” — The Smithsonian magazine has a great roundup of the Yale library’s 2026 exhibit on five centuries of errors in published works. “Visitors will see corrections that were listed inside copies of works by James Joyce, Upton Sinclair and Nicolaus Copernicus”.
