Re: future of publishing

Disclaimer: All comments are my own and should not be
taken to imply that Ooligan Press supports, endorses,
or affirms these opinions.


--- joseph harris <[email protected]> wrote:

> 
>   From: Jon Noring 
> 
> 
>   Marion Gropen wrote:
>   > Jon Noring, ...transition from filter then
> publish to publish then filter:
> 
>   <snip>
> 
>   > Do you think that the untrained will be able to
> publish (as in
>   > secure editing, copyediting, cover images, and
> text design/
>   > composition) as well as those with years of
> experience and
>   > education behind them?
> 
>   Yes. <smile/>

I have to disagree. I am not a "seasoned" professional
with many years in the business, but just form the few
years I do have under my belt I can spot atrocious
design (cover and interior) and bad copyediting. I
attended the EPIC event in Portland a few weeks back
and there were a few horribly designed and edited
books. There were some great ones too.

I will not give names, titles, or publishers, but the
few bad ones that stood out were released by an ebook
publisher who offered POD copies. The cover and
interior was identical for both versions, so it wasn't
a special anything for the printed copy I saw.

The cover was a blurry photoshopped piece that had to
have been from a 72 dpi image. And the interior text
had scare quotes instead of curly quotes. Widows and
orphans hit every other page or so, and just from a
quick glance, I spotted a few typos. Glaring ones. On
the order of "their", "they're", and "there".

I'm sure this was one of the most extreme examples,
but it did draw comments from my fellow publishing
students who practically winced when I pointed these
things out.

I am absolutely in love with ebooks and the potential
they offer to widen the variety of authors that
readers can be exposed to. However, I am also
concerned that the overall quality will suffer. Not as
a result of the writing per se, but because of the
ability of anyone really to call themselves a
publisher and set books loose upon the world. In the
past, as mentioned by others here, the investment of
capital required to print a book meant the publishers
would necessarily have to be extremely picky about the
books they chose to publish. With ebooks, at times,
depending on the distributor, you might not even need
an ISBN. You can literally post anything with no
assurances or quality control.

As a slush pile reader, I know that the number of bad
submissions far outweighs the mediocre. And the
mediocre far outweigh the good. In my, admittedly
limited, experience we have only turned down 2-3 books
that we liked, because we didn't have room in our
schedule or they didn't fit our editorial direction.
In six years we have published 16+ books and have
received, on average, 30+ submissions per month. The
huge pile that remained simply were not fit to print,
and the vast majority of those appeared to have been
first drafts, judging from the simple mistakes. Again,
the "their", "they're", and "there" issue, and many
worse ones.

In my vision of a perfect world, the editorial
standards of the big print publishers will transfer
over to the ebook publishers, but the absolute need to
"publish only blockbusters to cover the cost of
printing" mentality will vanish. When I first started
researching ebooks that is what I expected. I have
found that some claims about lack of quality are true.
That is not to say there are no good/great ebooks,
there are, and a lot of them. But the economics
involved that allow so many more good/great books to
reach the general public also allow an even greater
proportion of mediocre/bad books through.

I know that a quick dismissal of quality claims is
easy, but without taking a long, hard look at the
state of the ebook industry, there is no way to fix
the problems that exist and move forward.

If I have offended, please forgive. But please also
remember that this is the opinion of one man. (See the
disclaimer at the head of this post.)


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