This Time It's Really Done
By the time I finish a book, I’m sick of looking at it. I have huge passages of text memorized because I’ve read them so many times. Even when I love the book, which I always do or I wouldn’t call it finished, I just need to put it out of my head for a while.
This was a good thing with my first book. That was all the way back in 2007, before ebooks came into the mainstream. The cost to make changes in print was prohibitive. If a typo had clung on long enough to appear on a page, I didn’t want to know about it.
Things are a little different now that all my books are available as ebooks. If someone tells me that it says “him” instead of “his” in the third paragraph of chapter twelve, I can correct it with a simple upload. Hopefully, before anyone else notices. My ideal is to offer only books that have no mistakes, so I have embraced this change. But the relative ease of modifying the books opens up a new problem.
If, for example, I give a copy of my latest book (Weathering Evan) to my sister and two days later I get a text message from her that says only “Is it too late to suggest changes?” I have to think about that. (After I get over the disappointment of that being her only response to months of hard work. It’s a good thing I have to love her anyway.)
Is it too late for changes? I could change something. But should I? What if she believes I overused a particular adjective? What if she has a quibble with a major plot point? What if I agree with her? When do I get to call the book done and really done?
Though ebooks can be more fluid, I think it is important that everyone who reads one of my books is reading the same book. I am glad that I can fix typos in the ebook versions and I’m glad there haven’t been too many. But I have resisted the urge to make unnecessary tweaks, thinking it was best to leave well enough alone. Until now.
In the five years since I released that first book, the most frequent criticism has been that the ending was cut short. Five years being long enough to renew my interest in the project, I recently reread Dear Jane Letters and came to a similar conclusion. There could have been a longer ending. I wrote one. I couldn’t resist. And once I wrote it I couldn’t resist sharing it. Instead of simply replacing the ending, however, the ebook version now has both endings. Thanks to everyone who checks it out.
And thanks especially for any feedback!
This was a good thing with my first book. That was all the way back in 2007, before ebooks came into the mainstream. The cost to make changes in print was prohibitive. If a typo had clung on long enough to appear on a page, I didn’t want to know about it.
Things are a little different now that all my books are available as ebooks. If someone tells me that it says “him” instead of “his” in the third paragraph of chapter twelve, I can correct it with a simple upload. Hopefully, before anyone else notices. My ideal is to offer only books that have no mistakes, so I have embraced this change. But the relative ease of modifying the books opens up a new problem.
If, for example, I give a copy of my latest book (Weathering Evan) to my sister and two days later I get a text message from her that says only “Is it too late to suggest changes?” I have to think about that. (After I get over the disappointment of that being her only response to months of hard work. It’s a good thing I have to love her anyway.)
Is it too late for changes? I could change something. But should I? What if she believes I overused a particular adjective? What if she has a quibble with a major plot point? What if I agree with her? When do I get to call the book done and really done?
Though ebooks can be more fluid, I think it is important that everyone who reads one of my books is reading the same book. I am glad that I can fix typos in the ebook versions and I’m glad there haven’t been too many. But I have resisted the urge to make unnecessary tweaks, thinking it was best to leave well enough alone. Until now.
In the five years since I released that first book, the most frequent criticism has been that the ending was cut short. Five years being long enough to renew my interest in the project, I recently reread Dear Jane Letters and came to a similar conclusion. There could have been a longer ending. I wrote one. I couldn’t resist. And once I wrote it I couldn’t resist sharing it. Instead of simply replacing the ending, however, the ebook version now has both endings. Thanks to everyone who checks it out.
And thanks especially for any feedback!
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