Comments on: The Dictionary of Bullshit http://www.kategriffin.net/2010/02/15/the-dictionary-of-bullshit/ Fantasy Author Kate Griffin Fri, 03 Sep 2010 18:29:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: Jenz http://www.kategriffin.net/2010/02/15/the-dictionary-of-bullshit/comment-page-1/#comment-181 Jenz Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:28:38 +0000 http://www.kategriffin.net/?p=430#comment-181 And how we are looking forward to this additional dictionary! I enjoyed the first one immensly. If it's as good as the first, I swear I'll pop over and cook you all another porter steak casserole. All the best Jenz And how we are looking forward to this additional dictionary! I enjoyed the first one immensly. If it’s as good as the first, I swear I’ll pop over and cook you all another porter steak casserole.

All the best

Jenz

]]> By: AdrianH http://www.kategriffin.net/2010/02/15/the-dictionary-of-bullshit/comment-page-1/#comment-143 AdrianH Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:54:44 +0000 http://www.kategriffin.net/?p=430#comment-143 Nice post, Kate, and your experience learned from your parents shows in the quality of your writing. As someone who's worked in publishing and print for most of his life, there is a person who I would say is just as important as the editor, because although a decision by the editor will be obvious to the author, but not nessessarily to the reader, a sloppy job by this person ruins the reading pleasure of the end user. That person's the proof reader. I've done a fair bit, enough to be driven nuts by a crappy proofing job when I'm reading a book: a big collected set of Arthur C. Clark's spoilt by an entire page left out near the end of a story, missing paragraphs, or paragraphs repeated, large numbers of literals and spelling errors and poor punctuation... Aaaarrrrrggg! You seem to be blessed with a publisher who's doing a really good job, I haven't had any mistakes leap out at me in any of your books, which is great, and long may it continue, but sadly publishers are not doing so well with ebooks. Your books are almost certainly digital right through to the printing press, so if they go on to be sold as ebooks, it should be simple to re-format a digital file. Older books, however, are really suffering. I bought a collection of Larry Niven's ‘Gil the ARM' stories via Stanza, and I couldn't finish the first story, it was just unreadable. More recently I bought ‘Diamond Age', by Neil Stephenson, via the Kindle app, which had errors all through the book, and it was the same ones cropping up every time. It's glaringly obvious that lazy publishers are getting an office junior to scan printed pages, then run the scans through OCR software, which is miss-reading certain letter combinations. It's very poor work, and the authors are being done a disservice by their publishers. Yours seem to be on the ball, but keep an eye open for things slipping, it's not fair on the author, and it's not at all fair on the customer. Nice post, Kate, and your experience learned from your parents shows in the quality of your writing. As someone who’s worked in publishing and print for most of his life, there is a person who I would say is just as important as the editor, because although a decision by the editor will be obvious to the author, but not nessessarily to the reader, a sloppy job by this person ruins the reading pleasure of the end user. That person’s the proof reader. I’ve done a fair bit, enough to be driven nuts by a crappy proofing job when I’m reading a book: a big collected set of Arthur C. Clark’s spoilt by an entire page left out near the end of a story, missing paragraphs, or paragraphs repeated, large numbers of literals and spelling errors and poor punctuation… Aaaarrrrrggg!
You seem to be blessed with a publisher who’s doing a really good job, I haven’t had any mistakes leap out at me in any of your books, which is great, and long may it continue, but sadly publishers are not doing so well with ebooks.
Your books are almost certainly digital right through to the printing press, so if they go on to be sold as ebooks, it should be simple to re-format a digital file.
Older books, however, are really suffering. I bought a collection of Larry Niven’s ‘Gil the ARM’ stories via Stanza, and I couldn’t finish the first story, it was just unreadable. More recently I bought ‘Diamond Age’, by Neil Stephenson, via the Kindle app, which had errors all through the book, and it was the same ones cropping up every time. It’s glaringly obvious that lazy publishers are getting an office junior to scan printed pages, then run the scans through OCR software, which is miss-reading certain letter combinations. It’s very poor work, and the authors are being done a disservice by their publishers. Yours seem to be on the ball, but keep an eye open for things slipping, it’s not fair on the author, and it’s not at all fair on the customer.

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