Une fois n’est pas coutume, I have a question for you today.

I recently reviewed a book with major editing problems. The paperback copy I received says nowhere it’s an ARC. I was told later this was not the final copy. Well, that’s a major problem in itself! How come it would be out without any ARC sign on it if it’s not the final copy? Then here is what I found:

1. many typos
2. many words missing
3. some quotation marks used instead of apostrophes – this reminds me of my most funny story as a teacher. I had given the assignment to my students learning English in France, to invent an ending to a story we had studied together. When I got the papers my students had written, I suddenly started to see weird numbers, 66 and 99 showing up here and there, and could not understand why these numbers were used and what it meant. And then I found the copy of the smart one who had inserted a dialogue with quotations marks. Well he was writing with large letters and characters, and his quotation marks did actually look like 66 and 99. Of course all the stupid kids who copied from him had no real clue what quotation marks were and they had put these numbers 66 and 99…
4. more seriously, a character dies in chapter 39, but he is alive and talks in chapter 40. I had to reread these pages several times to believe my eyes! And of course the book is NOT about the undead…
5. The whole first part of chapter 49 has nothing to do there. I was puzzled when I read it. But then light came when I found it repeated, at its correct place, at the beginning of chapter 57.

So my question to you is:

How do you react in front of major editing problems of that sort?
Do typos bother you? Do you just ignore them? Do you throw the book to the other side of the room?

I’m curious, let me know