@ukjetsfan, I enjoyed your book. It brought back many memories of things I remembered and forgot about. I also left you a review on Amazon. Thx!
I left you a review but last night the wife informed me that a review had been deleted for bad language/sexual content? The word they didn't like ( I presume) was DUMB Yup, DUMB I started the review with "If you're a Dumb old Jets fan you will love this book, Unfortunately, it will also remind you of better times" There was a little bit more but it seems they take the hardline on Amazon in the review section, makes me wonder how I've read all those funny ones in the past?
The Amazon review system is weird. A few years ago I wrote a history book with a legitimate publisher. Some guy wrote a review saying my book was ‘mostly fake’. I complained over and over again to Amazon that this was a serious criticism for a historian and was damaging to my reputation, especially as there was no evidence offered to back up the claim… Amazon said it wasn’t against their review policies. But apparently ‘dumb’ is! Thanks for trying, though!
I got the book. I am traveling to UK in 10 days. Between May 27th and June 7th. I will be in London between May 27th and June 1st then in Chippenham between June 1st and June 7th. How can I make you sign my book?
Well, you could MAKE me sign it by kidnapping one of my kids or something? But I’m sure we’ll find an easier way! I will be in touch with an idea I have…
Guys, I have an issue I would like to raise here. I recently read over my book and was really disappointed to see a lot of errors in it - mostly typos but also a couple of factual things. This is one of the pitfalls of self-publishing - it is very difficult to proofread your own writing and it was only when reading the book again after six months that I noticed the mistakes. I did pay for a professional proofreader to look over the manuscript but it would appear that they missed a lot of stuff. I feel really bad about this. The support and kind words from everyone here was very gratifying and I feel I have let you down. If anybody felt that their enjoyment of the book was spoiled by errors, send me a private message on here and I will get you a new copy. I have spent the last couple of weeks reading it thoroughly and have uploaded a new, edited version to Amazon. I'm afraid my editing has not changed any of the actual events - the Jets still lose their last five regular season games in 1986 - but I did what I could...
I would bet that the first offering of any writer or artist in general is always full of things they would do differently, or mistakes they would correct. Mostly things that only they notice, because they spent so much time trying to make it perfect without having gone through the process successfully before. For what it's worth, I did notice some mistakes in spelling because I write myself and am in the middle of the editing process. I don't think I noticed more than I would have in a book published by Stephen King or Michael Crichton. Nowadays I think bookhouses are feeding people's work through LLMs to find stuff, I'd rather have something that wasn't massaged by AI. Also, considering the staggering amount of research you did as evident by the abundant sources you list, the odds of you having a mistake in that area are pretty good. Give yourself a break UK, you wrote a really good book. And you learned a lot of lessons for the next one.
I used to be an art director for a magazine.... lots of shit falls through the cracks. Worst ever was a piece that I wrote once, that an extra "editor" decided to ADD a stupid line that I didn't write (a big no-no) that made me sound stupid. The real editor loved the original (and I wrote it on the fly) actually worst ever, was kinda my fault... I often would use filler placeholders for layouts while waiting for info. I once used "Some chick that sucks" for a photographer credit (it wasnt a lie).... 4 people looked at it and never changed it. it went to print LMAO. Didn't matter longterm. Magazine was bought out by it's competitor, (just to kill it) and I as an independent contractor was sent packing.... anyway... I got the book from my pops, will give it a read soon.
Thanks Byz, I appreciate those words. I hope your own project is going well, and if you ever want another pair of eyes on it (I promise I am better at editing other people's work than my own, I worked as a copy editor for years!) I would be happy to help.
There are so many great stories about that kind of thing. 'Placeholder text' is so dangerous! I know someone who worked on a major newspaper over here just as desktop publishing was starting. One of the editors ran a whole page through a primitive spell-checker and just automatically accepted every change rather than checking. Instead of Nigel Mansell racing at Silverstone, the piece was changed to Niggle Mainsail racing at Silverside. Fortunately, someone spotted that before it was printed.
