We reviewers receive ARCs – also known as galleys or advance copies – before a book is published so we can write the review in time for the book’s publication date.

Okay, with me so far right? So given that these are not the final versions of the book, ARCs come with dire warnings, warning the reviewer not to quote a single word from the book because you might quote something that has been changed in some way.

Okay, well, I get that. I also have heard that by the time it’s in ARC form, it’s nigh on impossible to change anything and it costs the publisher money and they hate doing it. That could be wrong, but I have heard that from some writers who really would have liked to change something – maybe they got a copy editor who switched something (we hear stories) or maybe they didn’t get the memo TO change something (we hear the stories.) Maybe, they have friends like me who email to say “um, er, um, did you know that X was wrong on page 41?” - something I rarely do but I do if I feel like the writer won’t want to kill me. (A couple times – blush – it was my name, which got misspelled in at least two different books.)

Okay so here’s the reason I’m kvetching. They warn us not to mess with their priceless prose, not to quote a single word, not to treat a galley as the final copy. It’s NOT , they say, and there might be changes made. This is, they tell us, the last chance to fix or change anything. Given that galleys seem to go out in swatchs, I know that I could get an ARC 6 weeks after the first reviewer got one and it’s probably too late to suggest a fix, but I still read the “do not quote our book” warnings on every ARC I get.

Okay, so if that’s the case, and IF in fact changes can be made to the text (we’re going to assume they still can – any of you who’ve been through this, please chime in if that’s so, or if not, tell me) – then why, pray tell, when you frantically email a publicist to say THERE IS A HONKING HUGE ERROR IN THIS BOOK PEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT LET IT GO OUT THIS WAY, TELL THE EDITOR) that, well, that the book is published with said error intact.

Back in July, I sent such an email. It was several paragraphs to a competent and nice publicist at a major house thanking her fro an ARC and explaining just why I was writing. I was, I said, very very familiar with the setting of this mystery novel, and I saw, not three pages into the book, a very major error in something. And then, I went on to say, I found a second one on the same page and would she please pass this on because if the book were published with this error intact, it would be a joke. I mean, not only would people like me find it irksome, but people who know something about this region of the country would know and find it well, wrong. And people who’d been to this part of the country would probably find the error annoying or laughable. I found that it threw me so far out of the ARC that I could not read the damn thing. Though I tried, but it kept making me twitch to wonder what other mistakes there were in this novel if two EASY-TO-FIX and should not have happened to begin with (this was not arcane knowledge but simple to discern on the internet as well as in any number of libraries).

The book was published with the errors intact. On page 5. And I cannot bring myself to read the book.

I begged for this correction because I knew the information was wrong and that a simple fix would make it right. Then I could read the book. Maybe I could recommend it. I don’t know how the track of something like this works, but I checked in the acknowledgements of this final book and I did not know the editor. If I did, I would have written to him or her.

I’m pissed off. If I can’t quote an advance copy, then they should treat the thing as the pre-publication book it is and when a reviewer of 8 years’ experience and knowledge sends an email pointing out two easy-to-repair patches that need to go into the book before the damn story even STARTS, well is it too much to expect that they might heed me?

I know. I don’t know how publishing works and it’s probably 10 times more complicated than I imagine. But the publicist vetted me – she sent my email on and someone at this house should know my name, at least long enough to bounce the email to an assistant to the assistant who knows how to Google. I know setting type – or whatever we do now – is expensive, but if in fact the book is not yet set in final, these absurd mistakes should have been fixed. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.