[Keryl Raist]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Trying to make a very simple point... it takes time, money and people to do it... you can't magically conjure up a large increase in the number of people capable of doing good proofing let alone editing and those that exist have plenty of work to do so everybody wants cheap ebooks and all backlists made available without paying for the work and with trained people that don't exist. It's not a matter of protecting bad practices,just a matter of realism but all of the "experts" on proofing etc seem to forget that these things don't just happen... and certainly not for free though, of course, ebooks don't cost anything...

Of course it costs money, but here's the thing, compared to what it costs to produce pbooks, it's a minor amount.

Look, I know first hand what it costs to have a 250k novel proofread. For me it ran about $2,500.00, and I don't have the cost savings of in house editors or piles of English Lit grad students begging to get a toe in the door at a publishing company.

Now, want to guess how much it costs to have 1000 copies of that novel printed and distributed? How about 10,000? Compared to that, getting it properly proofed it chicken feed. And, not to put too fine a point on it, if you actually get it properly proofed, you're a whole lot more likely to sell 10,000 copies.

I don't care who you are or how many people are clamoring for an electronic copy of the book yesterday, take the extra three weeks and get it properly proofed.