While my degree almost certainly qualifies me to write articles for the most prestigious dick joke-themed websites, I'm probably less prepared to expound on the nuances of phlebotomy, even though I've totally done exactly that. The fact is, every word you're reading in that high school-level textbook was probably written by someone who is only a couple years older than you with approximately the same dedication to the subject matter. You're taking that class for a passing grade; they're writing that book for a paycheck.

"But you're working for a textbook company," you might be saying, "surely there were special resources available?" Yes, sometimes I was given some help, but the vast majority of the time, that "help" was just another textbook, most likely written by another textbook freelancer (a different, less attractive version of me). More often than not, all I got to work with was an outline, and outlines by their very nature do not contain content, just a list of subtitles that will fill out my chapter. I still have to find the information myself, and since I'm no expert on interdisciplinary research practices in the modern nursing profession (another actual topic), then here I go a-Googling; a-Googling I go.

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"If it's good enough for Yahoo! Answers, it's good enough for Vassar."

Which is why we're getting fourth grade history textbooks that claim slaves fought in the Civil War on the side of the South. Some overworked freelancer based their research on a racist source, and no one bothered to fact check. Because ...

And it's not like I'm some exceptional super-writer who never needs to be corrected -- the simple fact is that these "expert" fact checkers have neither the time nor (in some cases) even the actual expertise to do so. The "expert review committee" for that history book I mentioned in the last entry turned out to be nothing more than three elementary school teachers.

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"'In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blu-' I paid $250 for this shit?"

Of course, most elementary school teachers are brilliant, noble, and underappreciated champions of education -- but that doesn't mean they know any more about the role of Virginia's slaves in the Civil War than they do about luxury yachts or those "emojis" the kids keep talking about.

Fact checkers are employed only for isolated portions of a given text. This means that the lady who reviewed my chapter on tornadoes is not in any way affiliated with the dude who looked over my chapter on hurricanes. So if you've ever picked up a brand new textbook and found it to be rife with contradictions and errors, the reason is probably because you're the very first person to bother reading it all the way through.

There was a particular project I worked on that had already been through the proofing stage and was moving on to publication. To say that there were errors is like saying the Hulk might have an anger management problem. The course in question was about geography, and a key list of nations read:

Gremany
Suisserland
France
Angeland
Pershogal

Gremany. You know: where gremlins live.

"Unfortunately, Europe ignored the warning about not feeding them after midnight."

At least this was due to shoddy quality control. Sometimes there were much more sinister things at work ...

I once worked with the Texas School Board, writing a middle school text. One of the topics was Texas ecosystems. I did my research and came up with a dozen or so unique ecosystems that exist in the state. Unfortunately, the deadline was looming like a massive schoolyard bully waiting to pummel me into cryptobiotic soil, so I contacted the publisher and had the following conversation:

Me: Hey, friends, I don't think I have enough time to really flesh out all of these ecosystems for the students of the great state of Texas. It may be best if we push the deadline back a day or two."

Publishers: Whhhaaaat? Miss a deadline?! You'll never work in this town again, you shameful harlot!*

Me: Oh God, oh no!

Publishers: Haha, nah, we're just messing with you. Fuck it. Just pick four and do those. The kids'll just have to pick up the rest of their ecosystem information on the street, like we did.

*Not an exact transcript

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"Yo, you want some of that marshlands, some of that tundra, some of that rain forest? What you need? I got you."

So that's how it came to pass. I picked the ecosystems I thought were coolest, and that's what we went with for the official textbook. If you are in middle school in Texas, I'm sorry that you have no idea what a prairie is. That one's on me.

It works like this: The school district hires the publisher, who outsources the actual content creation to a writing company, who hires a contract writer like me to make all that "not book" into a big steaming pile of "book." If your textbook said "By Joe Schmo, Some College" on the cover, there's no way you'd shell out a car payment for that sweet, succulent knowledge. But thanks to the industrywide ghost-writing system, you end up buying books from experts in the field who not only had nothing to do with the textbook, but may actually be horrified to discover the kind of ridiculous (sometimes plagiaristic) crap that is being attributed to them.

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"Apparently I'm vaguely racist against Swedes now."

But it's not like the industry is hurling this stuff out there en masse without paying any attention -- they pay a lot of attention. To the updated "new" editions, at least ...