Stop the presses!

OMG–I just found a *major* error in my YA novel!  I’ve been working nonstop on the study guide, and found the mistake near the end of the book.  Crap.  What to do?  I just put production on hold, and will try to fix it and submit a “2nd edition” by the end of today.  And then I guess I’ll have to use this as a “teachable moment.”  This is why it’s worthwile, I suppose, to pay thousands of dollars for a fact-checker, though I wonder whether s/he would have caught this.  Anyone who’s knowledgable about American and African American history would probably spot it right away, but if all this is new to you…here’s the problem: in the 19th-century “back to Africa” debate, there were two organizations and BOTH have the acronym ACS.  There’s the American Colonization Society, and the African Civilization Society.  The former was set up by whites who wanted to repatriate freed slaves to Africa, and so they founded the colony of Liberia.  The African Civilization Society was run by blacks who felt African Americans had valuable skills they could contribute to the development of Africa.  These black folks weren’t ready to give up their American identities, and felt they should still fight for equal rights in the US.  The African Civilization Society was located in Weeksville, and I’ve already written Hengry Highland Garnet into the sequel.  The problem is that I use Liberia in my novel and that was actually the destination of the colonization society, not the civilization society.  And by 1863, when my novel’s set, the civilization society seems to have let go of its plan to relocate African Americans to what would be modern-day Nigeria.  How do I fix this?  Just because the novel’s fiction doesn’t mean I can make statements I know to be untrue.  Do I write an note about the error and add it as an appendix?  Write a new introduction explaining the error?  Or change the text itself?  The general idea is still accurate–Judah wants to get to Africa by any means necessary.  But which organization would he be most likely to choose?  Sigh…I can feel another headache coming on!  I just sifted through my stacks and stacks of photocopies and articles–I wrote this book more than 5 years ago, so I can’t remember what I was thinking at the time.  Well, will just have to dive in and do the best I can to repair it.  Really, I just need to remove references to Liberia.  And now the study guide will include a research essay requiring students to compare and contrast the American Colonization Society and the African Civilization Society…