I've recently read a couple of books published by what must be a rather small company called The Wild Rose Press.  I looked at their website and it's mostly e-books but some print.  In each of the two I've read, there are numerous punctuation errors (mainly misplaced commas) and several homophonic errors, including the one that was in both books ("lessoning" instead of "lessening").  I'm tempted to contact them and offer my services, in return for reading free books.   It really bothers me to see such glaring errors (well, glaring to me).   

A number of years ago, I did call our local newpaper and ask if they needed a proofreader after the following header to an article was printed (no joking):

"Sex Offenders Pray On The Young"

Makes you wonder why more of them don't just invest in MS Word and call it a day.  I wouldn't write professionally without it.  It can make the village idiot look like a literary genius:P

Am about to finish the second book, and in no less than three places, it says "fall head over heals in love".   The heroine also calls the hero her "knight in shinning armor".   *groan*

Easy on the editors now!! :)

Wth is "shinning armor"?  Armor that only covers the shins?

I recently read a book that  I actually really liked, but it had a few errors that drove me crazy.  A couple were spelling, but some were just plain old incorrect information.

This one made me want to bang my head on the wall.  The heroine could see Lake Michigan from a hotel room in Detroit.  She must have amazing sight...Lake Michigan is 200 miles away on the other side of the state!!!!!

Too many times I see 'loose' used when it should of been 'lose'. Reading 'she wanted to loose herself in his eyes' just takes you right out of the moment!

Ugh, I agree, editing mistakes just glare out at you and totally ruin the mood. I think some of the books that are published only as ebooks are the worst. I've seen where they alternate between italicized and nonitalicized text to indicate the characters' thoughts. Some of the thoughts were italicized and some were not, so I spent the entire book irritated.

I have found so many errors in EVERY book I have read lately!      except   instead of    accept.    avent   instead of   event,  What?                    affect   instead of   effect.   And my personal favorites   than   instead of   then.    Also,  not    instead of    knot !     

Not to even mention the vampire "exhaling sharply"  in the next sentence after reminding the reader that vampires don't breathe. 

It just goes to show what lack of an education or what our education is not teaching...

I think it is more reflective of the overreliance on technology.  If you just do a computer spellcheck, most if not all of those errors will NOT be flagged.  I would bet back in the day of actual human proofreaders, these errors would not be as prevalent. 

This one made me want to bang my head on the wall.  The heroine could see Lake Michigan from a hotel room in Detroit.  She must have amazing sight...Lake Michigan is 200 miles away on the other side of the state!!!!!

Rachel Gibson book, right?   LOL   I too was horrified by that statement.  Especially since I am a "Detroiter" .....  sort of.  :-)

 A friend of mine has a co-worker that drives her nuts with his spelling and grammar errors. After a round of this guy using 'are' instead of 'our'  she walked up to him and asked if he had ever heard of homophones.... he replied that he was not gay. 

I can't live without spell check, so I wonder how professionals get away with it.

Kim, use MS Word to spellcheck is part of the problem, many of the small ebook pubs don't have much staffing and I'd wager that's all some of them do, run spell check.  Well, heals instead of heels won't get caught then, both are real words.  Fine to do this for an initial pass, but then you need someone's trusty eyes and who knows something about grammar to read it through, lol. 

Dawn I did a few for proofreading and some other editing for a publisher at one time as a favor and she did give me books.  Many of the small epubs have done that.  You might try emailing them, they might take you up on it.  I have to say, though, it breaks up your reading some when you are doing it for proofing and or editing, often you want to read it again after, so it can take some time.

Hmm.  I though MS Word did grammar and syntax too?  I have this medieval Word Perfect crap on my Dell, and I hate it, but I used to have MS Word with my old Gateway, did some newsletters with it, and I thought it was wonderful.  If it didn't like your sentence structure it would offer alternatives.  Smartest word processor I've ever used.  Of course, I could be remembering it with rose colored glasses because I hate Word Perfect:P  I thought about buying it, but cripes, the edition I wanted is expensive.

It is about education and the English Language, IMHO.  I have watched employees spell check their letters .  They click right past a mistake like "there" instead of "their" because to their Phonics driven brains (instead of good old grammer and spelling) they don't see the mistake.  Sounds rite to them theirfore it must be rite rite?!