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

[Cam Banks]

Jeez, Cam, is this really your very most favoritest error in all the world? I've lost track of how many times I've seen you bring that one up. Do we get any points at all for fixing it in the PDF update?

No, my very favoritist error in all the world was in one of our books - we misspelled "Aura of Calm" for the Forestmaster template in the Bestiary of Krynn as "Aura of Clam." Which, well, implies something totally different.

For the record, I think I've mentioned the Foreward thing, like, twice before. Once over on RPGnet and once somewhere else. Does it help that I otherwise adore the book and say that at every opportunity, too?

Peace,
Aura of Cam

 

[TarionzCousin]

Woah! That means there's like three or four people at Paizo who aren't actually employed by Paizo? Are they squatters? Hobos come in from the street seeking warmth? Hmmmm...

(AKA: Paizo's got more than 20 employees!)

It's the greater Seattle area, right? Those three or four people are called "barristas."

 

[Nikchick]

Does it help that I otherwise adore the book and say that at every opportunity, too?

It does take the sting out a bit.

 

[Ourph]

Can't say about ERP, but in the case of Malhavoc, I believe the answer to your question is; Sue Cook. The publisher is *married* to an editor.

A darn good one, apparently.

Every book I've ever seen that is chock-full of typos has had an editor listed in the credits section (most also have a proofreader). Are you saying you think Sue Cook is simply a better editor than most, or do you think publishers would get better work from their editors if the threat of divorce were in play?

That's just crazy talk. A writer who edits his own work is like the lawyer who represents himself, having 'a fool for a client.' A complete layman is *far* more likely to find errors in something that a professional writer has written than he is to spot them himself. The human mind fills in the blanks. It's designed that way.

I edit my own work every day and I find plenty of errors. I don't find them all (which is why I have others read the work too) but I'm perfectly capable of running my own spellcheck or recognizing that I've repeated an entire paragraph, which puts my work about 80% ahead of some of the stuff that comes out of Black Industries. Personally, with anything I write, the last thing I would do is allow someone else to have the final editing pass over the work. They might have the penultimate pass, but if it's my work, with my name on it, then my eyes are going to make sure it's perfect before it goes out the door. IMO, the writers who allow themselves to be excluded from the editing of their own work are the ones who are being foolish.

 

[guildofblades]

>>Where'd these numbers come from? Also, how do pre-orders and re-orders affect the profit margin? I thought the margin was set by cogs and distribution and shipping costs. I'm not being critical here, just curious. This is like, the most interesting thread I've read on ENWorld in years.<<

Margin is a complex thing and not easily calculated. In truth, you can never arrive at your true margin for producing and selling a product until you have both produced it and are totally done selling it. Everything before that point is a projected based on formulas and/or experience.

ALL COSTS that go into the design, production, printing, warehousing, advertising, PR, marketing, shipping, and overhead like leases, insurance, salaries, etc, etc, are all part of the figure. This all comes together as Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).

You then take all revenues from ALL the different ways you sell the product. Sales to distributors at 60% off or whatever your terms are, sales directly to retailers, sales direct to consumers over the internet, sales via conventions. You may chose to lump in royalties from licensing if you happen to have any licensing, just depends on the structure of the overall business plan. Anyway, to lump all these revenues together and get your "Gross Revenues".

Comparing your total costs vs your gross revenues and if your gross revenues were larger, then you at least turned a profit. How much larger will determine your "Margin".

This is obviously something you can not declare definitively until you have 1) all your costs and 2) all your revenues.

Now, realistically speaking, experienced publishers know how many sales they can project for and they use this to guide them when deciding what their budget for production and marketing will be. If they sell less than what they project, then they can easily lose money. If they happen to get surprised and sell more, then at the end of the day their project will end with with a higher gross margin.

Now, obviously, with some experience in publishing you can get a fair prediction of the market's response to a new product will be. I've been doing this 13 years and can peg a new release within within a couple dozen on projected sales over its first year. So you get get a realistic expectation of what your gross revenues will look like within a reasonable amount of time. That is the figure you have to play with with projecting and budgeting for your costs. It is based on all those projections that publishers must make the difficult choices of where to prioritize limited resources.

Someone on here commented that its clear that a publisher needs to re-prioritize its resources towards more editing efforts when everyone one here that is anticipating a new release from that publisher is discussing how bad the editing will be. However....based on their past prioritizing of resources, perhaps putting more of them into marketing, artwork, expensive hardback productions, convention support, etc, they have already achieved winning all of those customers. And those customers are "anticipating" their next new release. I gotta say, it sounds to me that the manufacturer in question has previously done a pretty good job in making those hard choices in resource allocation or else they would not a large customer base anticipating any new release, editing mistakes or no. Something to think about.

Ryan S. Johnson
Guild of Blades Publishing Group
http://www.guildofbades.com
http://www.1483online.com
http://www.1483online.com

 

[crazy_cat]

Do I wish the errors weren't there? Yes, I do.

Am I bothered by them? Not really.

*fast forwards 168 posts* QFT.

Although that said I doubt I'll ever buy another Mongoose Publishing product.

 

[Ourph]

Someone on here commented that its clear that a publisher needs to re-prioritize its resources towards more editing efforts when everyone one here that is anticipating a new release from that publisher is discussing how bad the editing will be.

Except that that's not what I said. I said...

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.

This was in response to another poster who claimed there wasn't an established "industry-wide" standard, so a company has no way to tell whether they are meeting minimum requirements. Even if the term "industry standard" is somewhat nebulous, I'd say if a company has earned a reputation for putting out poorly edited products it should be pretty obvious to them that they are definitely not meeting "industry standards", whatever those may be.

Whether they need to "re-prioritize their resources" depends on if they actually care about earning that kind of reputation and whether they believe it will affect their bottom line and that's not something I spoke to.

However....based on their past prioritizing of resources, perhaps putting more of them into marketing, artwork, expensive hardback productions, convention support, etc, they have already achieved winning all of those customers. And those customers are "anticipating" their next new release. I gotta say, it sounds to me that the manufacturer in question has previously done a pretty good job in making those hard choices in resource allocation or else they would not a large customer base anticipating any new release, editing mistakes or no. Something to think about.

When the company in question announces that it hasn't made as much money as it thought it would on the last few (very poorly edited) slick, high-production value, hardcover books it has put out and is therefore cutting back production value (paperback, smaller page count, etc.), I'd say that's something to think about as well.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Entirely too much "company in question", "another poster said", "someone commented", "they", "a publisher" in this thread now. It would help the conversation if names were attached to each example when specific targets are meant. If speaking in generalities, fine. But when speaking in specific, specifics should be used. Name names. Otherwise I'm just tuning out.

 

[Ourph]

Entirely too much "company in question", "another poster said", "someone commented", "they", "a publisher" in this thread now. It would help the conversation if names were attached to each example when specific targets are meant. If speaking in generalities, fine. But when speaking in specific, specifics should be used. Name names. Otherwise I'm just tuning out.

Black Industries, producers of (very poorly edited books for) WHFRP v2. Hope that helps.

 

[sniffles]

Okay, so I finally fixed my own error in selecting a category for this thread.

I guess part of what irritates me about the proofreading errors in many publications is that people rely too much on the grammar and spelling checkers in Word (or whatever application they're using) to do it for them.

In a way, I'm not so much irritated by the poor proofreading as I am by the failure of publishers to make certain their writers and editors know good grammar, syntax, spelling, vocabulary, and punctuation. (There, how's that for an ungrammatical sentence.)

I don't expect everyone to be good at all those things, but I do expect people who write and/or edit for a living to be good at them. :\