To the Editor:

In her essay regarding accuracy in books (”The Corrections,” Sept. 25), Nora Krug used my decision to publish a corrections section in my recent book about fabrication, plagiarism and management failures at The New York Times as an example of how ”putting a statement between hard (or soft) covers does not make it more reliable than one published in a newspaper.”

What a delightful way to miss the point. My desire to include corrections in the paperback edition of ”Hard News,” and to fix the small number of relatively innocuous errors (such as incorrectly identifying the floor of The Times’s executive dining room or calling Danny Meyer a chef instead of a restaurateur), was to show that, while mistakes are regrettable, they’re also probably unavoidable and should be treated in as forthright a manner as possible. My decision to fix whatever mistakes I had made was not only something I considered my journalistic responsibility but also a gesture toward helping to restore readers’ faith in the printed word and the publishing process by showing them that some authors are more concerned with getting it right than saving face.

I’m surprised Krug didn’t get this. In her 1,200-word essay, one error had to be corrected before the Book Review even hit the streets (Krug misidentified the imprint of a falsified memoir). In comparison, I had 10 errors in a 90,000-word manuscript. But who’s counting? It’s the principle that really matters.

Seth Mnookin

New York