[Rant] Do editing/proofreading errors drive you mad, too?

[w_earle_wheeler]

And then you have to charge much more for the book than your competitors, and no one is going to buy it.

Or you can put out a high-priced product with glaring errors and risk the possibility that "no one" will purchase anything printed by your company for a long time.

The "cost" of basic proof-reading has been highly overestimated in this thread.

The real resistance to hiring competent writers and editors isn't a matter of increased cost, it's a matter of unfamiliarity and ignorance (ignorance in the sense of "a lack of information" NOT "a lack of intelligence").

 

[Ourph]

And then you have to charge much more for the book than your competitors, and no one is going to buy it.

So, to all those who demand high-quality proofreading: How much more are you willing to pay for books with it? 10% more? 20%? 50%?

An enquiring would-be publisher would like to know...

I'm willing to pay about $20 for a poorly edited book that normally sells for about $40 (and I can do so if I bargain hunt). If the same book were well edited, I'd be happy to pay full price. That's a 100% increase in price. So yeah, I'd say I put my money where my mouth is.

What if these companies did take a long, hard look at their priorities, and then decided on a level of proofreading they could actually afford instead of a level of proofreading that might have made all their readers happy but the company broke?

If Black Industries invested more than $5 in proofing Realms of Sorcery or Tome of Corruption they were ripped off. IMO the problem is not so much with the cost but that these companies aren't handling the editing/proofing process efficiently. Assuming you do at least SOME level of proofing and editing a product before it goes to print you should at the very least be catching obvious spelling errors like words with letters omitted or two words joined together with no space between them. When you've got 5-6 errors like that on every page it's not that you couldn't afford to do a good job editing your product it means that whoever was in charge of editing and proofing was asleep at the switch and not doing the job they were assigned to do. And note that we're not talking about some small, one man company here. BI is a medium-sized RPG outfit with a strong brand name (Warhammer) and a big company (Games Workshop) backing them up. The books in question have upwards of 10 people listed as contributors to the book with people specifically designated as "editor" and "proofreader". So it's not like these books were put out by one guy sitting alone in his cubicle working on his lunch breaks. These books are written and published by people who are supposed to be professional RPG publishers, so where's the freakin' professionalism?

 

[Odhanan]

What if these companies did take a long, hard look at their priorities, and then decided on a level of proofreading they could actually afford instead of a level of proofreading that might have made all their readers happy but the company broke?

Well, I would answer with yet another question : how can a company that isn't able to make its customers happy actually believe it can stay in business for long?

One would believe that customer satisfaction would be priority #1 for the sake of a small company's survival on such a small market.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I'm sure that will be a controversial question, but I'm also certain some people involved in this discussion think about it: what if these companies got involved in a business they cannot manage properly, then? What if these companies who can't put the resources into such things as editing and proofreading of texts made the mistake of getting in the business in the first place?

It's a catch-22, though. With a very few exceptions (WotC, White Wolf), a company that can afford to produce this nebulous "near-perfect" RPG product is too big of an entity to bother with RPGs, when there's so little profit to be made.

"The business" simply isn't big enough to attract the size of publishers you're talking about.

 

[Ourph]

It's a catch-22, though. With a very few exceptions (WotC, White Wolf), a company that can afford to produce this nebulous "near-perfect" RPG product is too big of an entity to bother with RPGs, when there's so little profit to be made.

It's a blatant straw man to use the phrase "nebulous 'near-perfect' RPG product". I haven't heard anyone ask for perfection, far from it. What I have heard is people complaining that there are companies who (in an industry where the error rate is already extremely high) release products that are far worse than average. Why exactly can't those companies publish products that at least come close to the RPG industry standard for proofing and editing?

 

[Mouseferatu]

It's a blatant straw man to use the phrase "nebulous 'near-perfect' RPG product". I haven't heard anyone ask for perfection, far from it. What I have heard is people complaining that there are companies who (in an industry where the error rate is already extremely high) release products that are far worse than average. Why exactly can't those companies publish products that at least come close to the RPG industry standard for proofing and editing?

If I were arguing your point specifically, it might be a straw man. I'm not. I'm addressing the overriding theme from some people in the thread that companies that don't prioritize proofreading as much as they (the posters) might like should not have gotten into the industry in the first place.

I agree that there are some companies--and some products from otherwise solid companies--that fail to meet even the "baseline" of the industry (though I imagine we couldn't get a consensus on where that baseline is, if we tried). I wasn't arguing that point at all.

That said...

If that was your main point, you may wish to go back and look at the tone of your posts. A lot of them do come across--or at least they did by my reading--as asking for something that is, while not perfection, much closer than even an industry baseline could account for. That may be why you're finding so many people disagreeing with you; there may be a fundamental disconnect between what you're asking for, and how people are interpreting your requests.

 

[Ghostwind]

Why exactly can't those companies publish products that at least come close to the RPG industry standard for proofing and editing?

Because there is no industry standard. Instead there are a multitude of individuals with their own perceptions of what is and what isn't acceptable as evident by this very thread.

 

[Odhanan]

It's a catch-22, though. With a very few exceptions (WotC, White Wolf), a company that can afford to produce this nebulous "near-perfect" RPG product is too big of an entity to bother with RPGs, when there's so little profit to be made.

"The business" simply isn't big enough to attract the size of publishers you're talking about.

What if it is the case, indeed?

I'm not trying to shoot at small publishers for the sake of it, far from it. I'm trying to ask a simple, straightforward question I'm sure many people think about but don't ask because they feel it would rub many professionals the wrong way. No matter how justified they may be in entertaining such feelings, I do think the question has to be asked, because it has -to me at least- a "reality-check" tone to it that may avoid similar mistakes -if we can qualify it as a mistake- from people who would think of starting a company with a similar type of activity in the future.

 

[Ourph]

If that was your main point, you may wish to go back and look at the tone of your posts. A lot of them do come across--or at least they did by my reading--as asking for something that is, while not perfection, much closer than even an industry baseline could account for. That may be why you're finding so many people disagreeing with you; there may be a fundamental disconnect between what you're asking for, and how people are interpreting your requests.

I've said several times that the types of errors I'm complaining about are obvious upon even a casual perusal of the page, that even a layperson with no understanding of the subject matter would be able to catch them... things like words with no spaces between them, sentences cut off halfway through or entire paragraphs being repeated verbatim. Catching those errors, plus doing a simple spellcheck of your document before printing it would eliminate 99% of the errors I'm complaining about.

Is that really being interpreted as asking for a product that's "close to perfection"?

Because there is no industry standard. Instead there are a multitude of individuals with their own perceptions of what is and what isn't acceptable as evident by this very thread.

On the contrary, I think there's an obvious industry-wide standard; one set by the consumer. It's pretty obvious by the reaction of fans which companies are falling below the acceptable line and which aren't. If every new release is preceded by your own fans speculating about how error-ridden it will be, it's pretty hard to miss that you're putting out sub-par products and need to get your act together.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

It's a blatant straw man to use the phrase "nebulous 'near-perfect' RPG product". I haven't heard anyone ask for perfection, far from it. What I have heard is people complaining that there are companies who (in an industry where the error rate is already extremely high) release products that are far worse than average. Why exactly can't those companies publish products that at least come close to the RPG industry standard for proofing and editing?

Straw man right back, Ari didn't say "perfection". Some of the complaints do sound like a strong demand for "near" perfection though from those who have worked in the industry. That is always a goal for publishers.

Also, there is a distinction between "industry standards" and "average". Regardless of the fictional Lake Wogeban where all of the children are above average, half of anything must be below average. Unless everything is equally bad and equally good and thus equally the same, it's the nature of "averages".

Why can't some companies achieve RPG standards? It doesn't sound like any explanation will be accepted or acceptable or understood from the shoes of those who make a living in the RPG.