On Fixing Your Old Work
Isn’t it funny how you can be reading along in some well-known, popular book and spot a typo? How can there be an error in this huge bestseller?
I’m always stumbling over problems in published books—and they remind me of problems in my own. For me these are major embarrassments. I know not a single other person cares.
In Rebel Bookseller, I say Greenlight Bookstore is a few blocks west of Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was several months after my book came out in summer 2011, and well past my book-launch event—which took place at Greenlight Bookstore—that I realized—wait! Greenlight Bookstore is a few blocks EAST of Brooklyn Academy of Music!
Nobody has ever said anything about this to me. It’s been fourteen years. But—I think about it.
Because I am not the publisher (Seven Stories Press is), I’ve had no mechanism for correcting this annoying factual error. Oh well.
I’ve self-published five books between 2020 and 2025. I’m the person controlling the version of the text that’s uploaded to the Ingram Spark print-on-demand platform. I can upload a new, revised version of any of my books, any time. It costs twenty-five dollars.
Now—during the first sixty days after the initial upload, Ingram Spark charges me nothing to upload a revised version. So…. I do try to wait until my book is PERFECT before I first upload it…. But—after all my experience with my own process, I do know that once I receive a sample, printed copy of the “final” book, I’m going to find problems. Then—each time I upload a “Correct, Final” version, I’m confident that this time, I am really finished....
I know that a time will come when I’ll stop working on the text—and I know that even then, I’ll notice another problem. And later, another one.
But—I will not go back and fix these. I have learned there comes a point when I will say NO to myself. I will instead move on. I have to write another book, not keep revising my last one.
I believe that one of the great things about a book is its fixed nature. Unlike a webpage, a book’s text is set and unchangeable. Its published form is stable and lots of different people can read it individually and then discuss their experiences with one another. The text has sailed away from the author.
There are famous instances of authors who’ve revised their well-known books, later in their lives. It’s usually gone badly…. Robert Graves “corrected” his bestselling war memoir, Goodbye to All That, and John Fowles rewrote his masterwork The Magus. Lots of people feel that the earlier versions are better books.
Maybe it’s inevitable that a mature, renowned author will feel a wish to fix his youthful work.
Benjamin Franklin took a different approach—which makes his Autobiography exemplary here. “Part One” was written when he was in his forties, well before the American Revolution. “Part Two” was done when he was in his eighties, after his more consequential years. “Part One” is lively, bouncy, full of egotism and heat. “Part Two” is more diplomatic and cautious. You might expect “Part Two” would be the more exciting and interesting, because of its world-historical subject matter. But it’s “Part One” that’s more fun.
Franklin didn’t publish “Part One” when he wrote it in the 1750’s. It came out, with “Part Two”—decades after it was written. It’s lucky he didn’t go in and tamper much with his earlier writing. He must have been so tempted! Franklin had the capacity to let his immoderate youthful expression stand—to our good fortune.
Maybe he just didn’t have time to rework the early stuff, since the events of his later years—1776; 1783—were of greater “importance.” But I’ll take his 1710’s, as a six-year-old carrying a big loaf of bread in the street of Philadelphia—over his 1780’s, as a diplomat in a boudoir of Paris. I’m so grateful he didn’t fix his own writing.
