Yet a flood of inaccuracies, over time, erodes confidence in books and slows sales. Worse, over the long term, inaccuracy pollutes society's pool of common knowledge. Some authors, agents, publishing executives, acquisitions editors, and copy editors downplay errors when their own books are involved. They argue that writers can get small facts wrong yet portray a larger truth, just as they can get all the details right in the telling of what amounts to a lie. The problem is that, when judging a book's overall verity, readers must start at a reasonable place.
Factual accuracy is such a reasonable place.
Many current best-sellers have been charged with various sorts of inaccuracy. A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger Junger, on land, experienced a storm in October 1991 that caught the Andrea Gail, a fishing boat from Gloucester, Massachusetts, off guard, sending six crewmen to their deaths. Outside magazine published his article about that storm and its aftermath. Then W.W. Norton offered a book contract. Like Midnight , The Perfect Storm lacks an index, bibliography, and source notes, making it hard to gauge the depth and care of the reporting.