As you may already know, the 6th edition of APA Publication Manual included a number of errors – including both typographical errors and some inconsistencies or errors in the use of APA style. We regret these errors and apologize for the inconvenience they are creating for Publication Manual users. We also hope that while the aggregate of these errors may look significant, manual users will note that in the majority of cases, the corrections are relatively minor and will not diminish the manual’s value and overall accuracy as a teaching tool.

We do however recognize that the existence of even small errors in a style manual present a customer relations problem for us. Executive staff, working in consultation with the Board of Directors, believes it is important for APA to provide some recourse to those who purchased the first printing of the manual and are unhappy with it.

Toward that end we have put the following in place:

APA is in the process of reprinting the soft cover edition of the Publication Manual; this reprint will correct the identified errors. We expect the reprint to be off press and available for shipment on approximately November 2.

We are currently offering anyone who purchased the first printing of the manual the following options:

Option 1: Corrections Supplement via the web: Go to the APA or APA style homepages on the web to find a link to the corrections supplement (www.APA.org or http://apastyle.apa.org). Purchasers can download or print the supplement ‐‐ the supplement notes all known errors. The PDF version of the corrections supplement is available now.

Option 2: Corrections Supplement by mail – We will send out printed versions of the corrections summary upon request. Please note that the supplement is currently in production, the printed version is expected to be available on November 2.

Option 3: Replacement Copy – After reviewing the corrections supplement and the nature of the text errors, if a purchaser still feels they want a replacement copy of the manual we will provide one at no charge. We expect to begin shipping these replacement copies on November 2.

IMPORTANT: In order to receive a replacement copy the purchaser will have to return their current copy of the manual (6th edition) to APA directly. The return must be in transit to or received by APA no later than December 15th, 2009. The returned copy requirement is to protect APA against those first printing copies reemerging on the secondary market and therefore hurting future sales.

We would like to make this return as cost neutral to the customer as possible. We are researching being able to provide pre‐paid postage that purchases can use to return their current copy of the manual. We expect to have this system up and running by November 2.

Obviously this free replacements policy will cost APA money but we believe is important to our long term reputation as a publisher. The good news is revenue from Publication Manual sales are $2.5 million better than budget to date. The number of returns we are likely to receive is difficult to estimate. If 50,000 copies are returned the cost to APA would be $500,000. A very worst case scenario is estimated to be 100,000 returns at a cost of $1 million. Both scenarios still leaves APA well ahead of budget in terms of manual revenue.

More on the Corrections Supplement and Process

As with the previous edition of the manual, we have a website that supports the current edition. When we confirm that a page has something wrong on it—no matter how small—we post the information. The corrections supplement has been organized into four categories in an effort to group like changes together:

Errors in APA Style Rules

Errors in Examples,

Clarifications

Nonsignificant Typos.

In the first three categories, each correction is followed by a brief explanation of the change that directs users to the relevant APA Style rule or section in the manual to provide context. Items in the fourth category, Nonsignificant Typos, are simply listed with no explanation, as the majority of these have no direct APA Style implications.

Additionally, the Publication Manual provides three sample papers on pages 41–59. In the first printing of the manual, these sample papers contain errors that have been identified and corrected in PDFs provided within the corrections supplement.