The other day here, I noted my observation that when an author receives his or her first printed copy, that author will always open to a random page…and find a typographical error. My pal Neil Gaiman just sent me a message with the subject line "Great minds" and directed me to this post from his weblog of April 15, 2005. Here…I'll quote the relevant passages and save you a click…
My copy of MirrorMask the script-and-storyboards book was waiting in the mail when I got home — it's huge and heavy and, really rather wonderful. (Gaiman's law of picking up your first copy of a book you wrote held true: if there's one typo, it will be on the page that your new book falls open to the first time you pick it up. It never fails. It used to make me sad or frustrated. Now I half-expect it.)
Neil is an optimist compared to me on this. I absolutely expect it. The part I haven't figured out yet is whether some cosmic force compels you to open the book to a page with a pre-existing typo…or if the typo just magically appears on whatever page you first open to. If I get my book and decide to open it to page 47, was the typo there on page 47 before I opened to it? An interesting philosophical question.
And I just realized what I should have done when I got my copy of the book. I should have opened to the foreword…which was written by Neil Gaiman. I would much rather that typo was on one of his pages.