Typos: Are They Here To Stay As The New Normal?

Nowadays the typos are cropping up everywhere with increasing frequency, especially with all the independent presses and self-published e-books. The worst typos are sometimes so outrageous, they are comical. They certainly can change the meaning of a sentence. As a writer, I have to cringe a little at seeing these pesks. But then e-books can be fixed and uploaded again fairly quickly and painlessly to fix them. An opinion editorial by Virginia Hefferman in the New York Times describes how some readers "find humanity in orthographic quirks" like the typos and misspellings. Gone now are the legions of copy editors and proofreaders who once ensured the printed works produced by the big publishing houses were almost pristine and mistake-free. Nothing is more frustrating to a reader than tripping over typos in a book, especially after paying good money for it. (I use a beta reader and proofread my novels several times before I send them to my publisher. Typos still sneak in.) But I have to wonder if readers are becoming immune and resignedly accepting typos as the new normal found in the book world. I once worked with a technical editor who thought typos were "the hobgoblins of small minds" (of course, he was quoting Emerson's famous statement). Have you ever read a printed book and found where a previous sharp-eyed reader has corrected the typos in pencil or ink? Maybe they are a dying breed. Maybe today's readers just gloss over the typos, and they don't infuriate readers as much as they once did.  

Link to the New York Times opinion editorial cited in my blog:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/the-price-of-typos/?_r=0