Publishers Usually Fail to Fact-check Their Nonfiction Books: So how can you know what to believe? Is published more credible than self-published?

A recent book review in The New York Times vehemently denounced a well-known nonfiction author for making factual errors in book after book. But the review had no criticism at all for the publisher. Why?

Two reasons. First, publishers advertise, and newspapers may not want to bite the hand that feeds them. Second, supposedly, everyone knows that publishers usually don’t fact-check.

But many readers probably do assume that published nonfiction books are more credible than self-published nonfiction books, because only the published books would have been fact-checked. After all, if they had not been fact-checked, why would they deserve a premium price?

Do the authors of published nonfiction books have better professional credentials than self-published authors? Not necessarily. Published nonfiction books may misrepresent the author’s credentials or misrepresent their sufficiency to understand the matter at hand.

So knowing what to believe may be difficult, especially if what you are asked to believe may not be in your financial interest.