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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ourph" data-source="post: 3448517" data-attributes="member: 20239">Why do you keep implying that I'm trying to make this more than a zero sum game?  I said above, you assign priorities.  You don't need to make your employees work longer hours or hire more or leave anyone disgruntled.  You decide it's worth it to be 8 hours behind on writing, shipping, billing, filing, whatever in order to ship quality products.  You live with the consequences.  No one ever went broke because they lost 8 hours in the shipping department.  Is shipping important?  Sure.  Is 8 extra hours of shipping work worth gaining the reputation of a company that puts out sub-par products that aren't worth what you are charging for them?  Obviously some companies think so, but I would beg to differ.  The companies who have the worst editing problems average a new release per month.  Are you honestly saying they can't afford to lose 24-32 man-hours a month from other tasks to make sure their products aren't embarassingly sloppy?I'm not twisting any math.  I've been saying all along this is a zero sum game.  Companies make choices according to their priorities.  What I take issue with is the assertion that it's fiscally impossible for these companies to ship books that aren't full of egregious editing errors.  They choose to ship their products that way because they feel they can get away with it, not because it's impossible for them to do otherwise.This "consensus" changes every few years (which sort of calls into question whether it's an actual consensus).  Large hard-backs were supposed to be the flagship of the new WFRP line, but BI has since backed down on that and shifted much of their upcoming product line to smaller softcover books because they decided the hardbacks were just not economical enough.  Could it be that their reputation for poor editing is part of what discouraged consumers from buying the expensive hardbacks?  I think it's a pretty fair bet that it didn't help.  I know that, personally, I haven't paid full cover price for a BI Warhammer book since I bought the core book several years ago.  All of my subsequent purchases have been through discount retailers or from the used book market for the specific reason that I'm willing to pay $20-25 for a nice, shiny hardback book with poor editing, but I'm not willing to pay $40-45 dollars for it.I'm sorry, but what we're talking about here isn't on/off switches (can I afford it or can't I) but cost/return ratios.  To me, the fact that these companies are looking at the cost/return ratio of spending 4 hours to do a simple spellcheck of their product before sending it to printing and saying they can't afford it speaks volumes about how much they value quality in their product and the regard in which they hold their consumers.  If THEY don't think their product is worth that kind of investment, then it should come as no surprise if their consumers don't attach a great deal of value to the product either.</blockquote>

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