Do book publishers care about quality?

Consider the following passage from page 94 of Cusp (Robert A. Metzger, Ace Science Fiction, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0441013015):

The room smelled of dirt and sweat and had three doors — one entrance and two exists. Christina knew that one of these exits led back to the Co-Op’s eastern entrance….

I’ve very carefully checked my transcription of the book’s text, and you can even confirm it against Amazon’s “search inside” feature. I think that you’ll agree with me that what is printed here does not reflect the author’s intent. I have no intention of criticizing Mr. Metzger — his book is 517 pages of highly inventive text and will not collapse on the weight of this or even several other mistakes in the printing. However, I do find that my enjoyment of the reading process is diminished by having to pull myself past such errors. It’s even worse when they are not so blatant, since I have to stop and puzzle over whether a clumsy construction is subtly meaningful, or just another annoying cock-up on the part of the publisher.

Now, I read primarily mass-market paperback fiction. I go through a reasonable number of books, and I’d estimate that I trip over stupid errors like these in more than 80% of them. In every case, it seems clear to me that the errors could have been discovered easily by a human proofreader or copy-editor, and that they are almost completely undetectable by a computerized spelling and grammar checker. Alas, it is my suspicion that the latter is all that most publishers bother to use these days. Interestingly enough, a lesser fraction of my intake consists of small-press trade-paper editions, and I almost never find any errors in them.

So let’s look at the economics of the thing. I’m no expert in the field, but I can wield a browser and hope that the snippets I find are accurate. The most interesting overall summary I’ve found is an article by Deanna Carlyle entitled “The Price of One Book: Or, How Come My Advance is So Low?“. She breaks out the various costs, as relayed to her by her publisher, and they seem reasonably in line with what I’ve been able to find from other sources. In this listing, the proofing is listed as roughly $1500. This is 3/4 of the roughly $2000 for typesetting and less than a third of the $5000 for the cover art. The actual printing of an initial 50,000 copy run (which seems to be a minimum for any of the books that you will actually ever see on the shelves of a B. Dalton and the like) is $25000. Now I’ve seen quotes from one company which would put full copy-editing for a typical 100,000 word novel at closer to $1000, but maybe that’s not a typical estimate. Now it looks to me as if, out of all of this cost, the publishers are deciding that their best way of improving their profits is to get an extra roughly $0.10 cents per copy (after correcting for discounts and returns) by completely cutting out the proofing/copy-editing phase (or, perhaps, by placing it in the inadequate hands of a computer).

Note: If anyone with better knowledge with me can give evidence that I’ve got the numbers wrong, or that the companies really aren’t skipping out on essentials, please let me know.

Now frankly, I don’t think they are getting a bargain. I don’t care how spiffy that cover art is — and frankly, much of it isn’t, these days — shouldn’t the companies be taking pride in accurately conveying the words that are the reason for the book’s existence? If they’ve already got us conditioned to shelling out higher and higher prices every year — and it sure seems to me that paperbacks are outstripping inflation — can’t they push some of those price raises towards improving quality? Don’t they care? Don’t the readers care?

Sadly, the answer is probably no. Most of us have gotten used to the status-quo, and we know we don’t have much choice. We can go to the small publishers who do seem to care, but we pay a lot more; we have to special-order since we can’t find them in our local bookstores; and we’re not going to have as big a selection. For most people, this just isn’t going to happen. Should I send a letter to Ace (who, you will recall, published the error that started this rant) and threaten to boycott them in favor of a more diligent company, but they know that they are the sole supplier of a product I want, so they just have to relax and wait for me to come crawling back to them.

I believe, given the conclusions that I’m drawing here, I am going to make an effort to redouble my buying from my favorite small presses. (For example, I would recommend Meisha Merlin to any science fiction readers.) Since they have demonstrated that they care about doing things right, it will be an honor for me to shell out a bit of extra money to support their worthy endeavors.

No “Da Vinci Code” for Me

For all I know the writing is perfectly competent.  I suspect that the movie is well acted (though many critics seem to have their doubts).  Nor do I have any problems with the possibility that the plot is derivative, nor fear that religious organizations will crumble under the onslaught of its fictional claims.

So why am I going to avoid this sterling work?  Simply put, I am offended by the title.  It is, as far as I can tell, an ungrammatical bit of complete gibberish.  It cannot be a reference to a great renaissance artist, for then it would be named “The Leonardo Code”.  If it were a reference to a small town in Tuscany, it would simply be “The Vinci Code” or “The Code of Vinci”.  However, it is none of those — it is the “Of Vinci Code”.  Quite frankly, I don’t think that this is what Mr. Brown meant, and if he can’t be bothered to get a 3 word title right, I’m afraid I just don’t trust him with the intricacies of a tightly plotted novel.

Now, I did for a moment think that I had cracked the code when I noticed that many people are spelling the name as two words rather than three.  Aha!  This must, in fact, be a reference to ‘Davinci’, a small town tucked in between Davignac and Davenport.  Alas, I was unable to hunt down any natives to confirm for me that the novel was set in their fine town; nor any maps to show me the location of this sub-city; nor, indeed, did I find any references to it at all.  So unless “The Davinci Code” is investigating the code of silence that allows this micro-metropolis to stay so well hidden, I fear that another truly brilliant theory must be consigned to the waste bin.

As will my plans to read the book or see the movie.

Let’s hear it for acid-free paper

Last weekend we were cleaning out the garage, where we had stored (amongst other things) several boxes of books.  Unfortunately, the garage had proven to be a lot damper than we had originally thought, and the boxes turned out to be breeding grounds for mold and mildew.  We ended up throwing out quite a few books, which is a heart-rending experience for any book lover.  (We hadn’t been expecting to be re-reading most of them, but we had been expecting to find new homes for them.)

However, that’s not the punch-line to the story.  About the only things that we didn’t end up losing were various graphic novels (a.k.a. comic books, for the uninitiated) and a few hardcover books published before 1940.  We had to dust off the covers of these, but they were otherwise totally fine.  Note that these were not buy-in-mint-condition-and-place-in-mylar-under-sterile-conditions graphic novels.  These are books that I had read and enjoyed like any other book, and then stored away to be read again in a few years.

Now, I’ve always known that we started using lesser quality wood-pulp paper during WW2, and that limited edition comic books use specially treated paper so that they’ll still be collectible in 20 years, but it had never before struck me how much difference a high quality paper makes in real household conditions.  The books that failed the garage test are exactly the same ones that are going to be yellowing and smell musty in 10 years, while the winners are going to be pleasant to have around. 

So what would it take, I wonder, to get mainstream publishers to go back to using high-quality paper.  I’m guessing that costs aren’t the big issue.  My understanding is that the cover costs more to print than the actual content, and publishers are perfectly willing to let resellers destroy unsold books rather than pay the cost of shipping them back.  This implies that the paper is probably expense number 4:  behind the cover, the transport, and the advertising, but probably (alas) ahead of what they pay the authors.  (Please, somebody, tell me that I’m wrong about the last point.)  If we could convince one of the publisher’s to start giving us an improved reading experience by giving us better paper, would we change our buying habits enough to convince other publishers to do the same?  Might authors have enough clout to jump ship to publishers who cared enough to package their books well?  That’s what I thought — just wishful thinking.  Still, a fellow can dream.

In the meantime, if anyone can give me a list of the small publishers who do use high quality paper, perhaps I can start voting with my own wallet.