Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
Like I said, bad management. When you get the list of mistakes from the beta-readers that should be sent to the writer to sort out. Then when that's done (and someone else has checked they've all been fixed) the original word processor file goes back to the print designer, and a copy goes to the ebook designer.
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@mr ploppy: {edited...I started out with a rant about clients. I'm human, but I'm over it now}....
When we do POD as part of our process here, that is precisely what we do; we do the POD version first; we send it in PDF to the author (we no let authors touch their books once we've had them in our hands--we have had some mighty bad experiences with that experiment), we get back a proof sheet,
we make the edits, author signs off, and THEN and only then do we export the html and make the ebooks. It's a pain, but that's the only way to be sure we conform the copies.
@JeremyR: Yes, they'll OCR it for $1.00.
That's not proofed. What I said was, to have a professional scanning company
scan and proof it was $1.50/page, because $1.00 page of that is
proofing. You can have BlueLeaf do a scan job for el cheapo, no problem. Trust me when I tell you that you either pay for the proofing, or you end up paying someone like me to make the nine bajillion corrective edits that didn't get made when you didn't proof the bloody thing in the first place. I
wish I had a dollar for every author that called
in hysterics over an el-cheapo scan & ocr job. (My use of "you" is generic, in the previous paragraph). If you, @JeremyR, want to proofread for minimum wage, please revert to me privately; I have any number of clients that would love to use your services. (Also: if you can
reliably copyedit epubs, revert as well). Of course, see the other side of the coin, next, with @RichL...
@RichL--QED. O'course. Wish I had an author that would pay that. My average line editor right now (super-proofer, IOW) is making $10-$12/hr.
@Cyberman tM: Yes, of course it sounds ridiculous, but the bottom line (no pun intended) is that print layout ain't just slap it in Word and bingo-boingo, a book pops out. There's a lot that goes into it. DT Publishers have had a process for dog's years, in which they send the book for layout, it gets put into arc's (Advance Review Copies) laid-out, and everyone proofs for everything. Typos, grammar, hyphenation, widows, orphans, you-name-it. The ARC's can be proofed manually (people use stickies, or write on them); tags; or can be annotated in Adobe. But note:
what's being edited is a PDF, really.
The source is not being edited. An output (generally) from InDD, or in rare instances nowadays, Quark. Now, because INDD's epub output is not great, one of two things happens: either a crappily-output epub from INDD is sent to the distribution point, OR the original Word version (or a text-only-output version) is sent to the conversion house, if the print layout person(s) don't "do" ebooks. If the former, the formatting may suck; if the latter,
it does not have the same edits that were made to the ARC's. This is one of the reasons that INDD is trying very hard (gentle cough) to make an "insta-epub" button, altho they are still a long way from that. And, as near as I can tell, nobody at Random House, Harper, yadda, have read Liz Castro's very fine book on ePUB's, specifically and primarily from INDD. Does that clarify?
@RDaneel54: I don't disagree with you. My position, however, is that I'm basically a modern-day printer. We're ebook producers-not publishers. As I tell my clients, (about which they b***h), we're not the publishers, it's not our job to
proof the books--it's
theirs. If I had to proof every book we do, word-by-word,
I'd have to charge a hell of a lot more. We try very hard to output quality books--but it's a little outside my purview to start editing the "badness" I see, and I see a lot of it. When I pop open a book for quotation, and the first thing I see is that it has a "forward,' I know I'm in the deep sheepdip. Is it my job to change that? Or warn the author? Or...? When the average fiction (or plain narrative text) title is made (in ebook formats), done and dusted, epub and mobi, for less than $200, and most for under $175? Can't be done. Oh, I'm sure someone (who is either doing books for love, or doesn't have to lpay employees) will pop back on here and tell me I'm full of crapola, but it's hard to make a quality book in anything less than 3 hours, and that's from
super-clean source--which we never get. Usually it's closer to 6 hours, and of course, let's not overlook all the cleanup we do because authors send us covers in PDF; or the publishers send the wrong book (happens at least once a week), or the source images are horrifically bad, or...the list, kids, is pretty endless.
Did I manage to respond to everyone? If I missed, my apologies...but I'm "away" from the office a bit too much answering this thread as it is...
Best, HTH,
Hitch