I discovered something very cool about Amazon kindle books yesterday. There’s a feature where a reader can report a word that is incorrectly used or mis-spelled. One of the hardest things about quality control is finding where I’ve used a homonym (sounds the same, different meanings). Good examples are their, they’re and there, or too, two and to.
I tend to mess up words like defuse vs. diffuse. I just type it in, don’t think twice about it. I’ve some amazing beta readers and editors who generally catch these, but let’s be real. We’re talking 600,000 words in Privateer Tales (give or take) even the army I have looking at these things are going to miss once in a while.
What’s great is a reader can take the time to highlight the word and type in a note that gets sent to Amazon, who chooses weather (see what I did there?) to notify me about it.
Initially, you might think I’d find that annoying.. Not at all! I’m not a big fan about being called out in public, but a private message, I’m all over that. Because of Amazon’s fantastic tools, I can literally find, fix, upload and release in less than half an hour.
So anonymous readers who found and reported a problem to Amazon, I have one thing to say. Thank You! Your contribution is much appreciated!
photo credit: 2008-01-26 (Editing a paper) – 22 via photopin (license)
