Aggravated
Published by Deanna Hoak July 28th, 2005 in blogI spent about two minutes thumbing through the new Harry Potter book last night and came upon the following on p. 10: “The site, therefore, of Fudge stepping out of the fire once more, looking disheveled and fretful and sternly surprised that the Prime Minister did not know exactly why he was there, was about the worst thing that had happened in the course of this gloomy week.”
Scholastic knows this book will sell huge numbers of copies. While they’re unlikely to lose many sales of subsequent books over typos, it would have cost them less than $1500 to have the book proofread a second time, and they could have had it done concurrently with the first proofread so that it didn’t add appreciable time to the schedule. Allowing shoddiness like that instead (or at all–maybe they had it proofread twice and just need better freelancers, though you would think they would have their best working on this project) is disrespectful to the multitude of readers this book will have and makes Scholastic look incredibly unprofessional to a very large audience.
25 Responses to “Aggravated”
Leave a Reply
Search
About
I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I was short-listed for a World Fantasy Award for my copyediting.
RSS FeedCategories
- blog (473)
- conventions (14)
- copyediting (54)
- food (12)
- grammar (2)
- kids (21)
- praise (14)
- SFnal (11)
- writing (23)
It appears as “sight” in the British edition.
The book was probably reset, then, for the American version, and the proofreader missed it.
At least one certainly hopes this was the case. The alternate scenario is that someone along the line actually changed it that way….
I caught that too, but it was the only one I caught. The rest of the copy seemed pretty clean, or else I got so caught up in the story I didn’t notice.
I’m reading The Elfstones of Shanarra to Fin at bedtime right now. It’s in its 25th printing or something like that, and I’ve found more typos and errors in it.
It would be a relief to think the whole book isn’t like that. It disconcerts me to see it seven pages in.
You know, it surprises me, too, that there would be so many typos in the Shannara book, because back when I was accepting proofreading, it was my impression that Del Rey had everything proofread twice and cold read in addition. It was something that always gave me a great feeling about the way they respected their readers and the pride they took in their books. I wonder if they’ve changed that practice. :-/ I’ll have to ask.
It’s just a couple typos. I think I marked them. I’ll send them to you when we’re done with the book and you can forward them to Del Rey.
I was *shocked*. Ick. And I thought of you! “Deanna wouldn’t have let this get by.”
I had the same reaction, and concur with Charlie: the rest is clean.
Except for one comma missing somewhere…about two-thirds of the way through.
What bugs me more is that the British edition has it correct…which possibly means some copyeditor over here changed it to be wrong. (I don’t know if Scholastic works from the manuscript, or from British pass pages. Under ordinary circumstances, I would think they use the British files, but given the timing of the book, that may be impractical.)
I had the same thought recently about a less well-known book: Patricia Briggs’ “Raven’s Strike”. Someone didn’t proofread carefully; there was at least one typo per chapter by my read.
Also, my husband handed me the latest Hamilton book and said, “I can’t read this. There are too many typos.”
My husband can’t spell and doesn’t notice the difference between ‘your’ ‘you’re’ and ‘you are’. But he does notice word repetition and ‘all right’ vs. ‘alright’. “The raven said said that it was alright to…”
This disturbs me.
I assume you mean Laurell Hamilton? Whoever copyedited the first 5 or 6 Anita Blake books sucked ass. Between that and the lack of plot, I had to stop reading them. I’m sorry to hear the trend continues.
Rumor has it the Merry Gentry books have much better copyediting.
Yeah, it is strange that the British version would have it correct. If the files were used and it was changed, I’d have to suspect the proofreader did it, because you’d think the proofreader would have caught it if it was a copyeditor change. Even then, though, you would think the managing editor would catch the proofreader’s error.
Heh. Well, no one is perfect, not even me, but it’s nice to hear the vote of confidence. :-)
It’s good to know I’m not the only person who will quit reading series because of errors. I liked the Piers Anthony books when I was a kid, but I quit reading them (while still a kid) because the plot inconsistencies were ridiculously bad.
I also remember refusing to buy books from a particular publisher because the books were so cheaply made that they fell apart.
I’m curious to know which publisher.
It’s hard to lay such issues on a publisher now, particularly paperback publishers. All of the Big Publishers use the same printers.
Paperbacks can “age” faster and fall apart if the publisher’s warehouse isn’t properly temperature controlled. But sometimes it’s an intermediary warehouse. I once received about a dozen complaint letters accompanying copies of Rebecca, all with the covers falling off. They had been purchased by high school students for their English class. The books were from different printings, so I knew it couldn’t be a printer issue. They had been puchased at two different bookstores in the town where the kids lived. We finally traced it to a central warehouse for a Big Bookstore Chain. It was in Texas, and the books hadn’t stood up to the heat.
Virtually all mass market paperbacks in the US are printed at one printer in Pennsylvania. Trade paperbacks and standard hardcovers are done at three or four different plants in Virginia and West Virgina. But those plants are owned by only two diffferent companies.
That’s the habits of the Big Five publishers, who account for some 70% of the books published in the US. There are scads of smaller printers who do books for smaller accounts, but if the publisher you were boycotting is one of the Big Five, you might want to check them out again. They can’t be any worse than anyone else.
Honestly, at this point, I don’t remember which publisher it was–just one of the science fiction ones when I was younger. I always kept my paperbacks in pristine condition–no creases in the spine or anything–and with that particular publisher, the pages kept falling out anyway.
A friend of mine’s daughter wrote to J.K. Rowling about some typo in one of the earlier HP books and received a personal reply from the author! Maybe you can too…
At any rate, you might want to call it to Scholastic’s attention so they can fix it in subsequent printings–an easy enough process. More than one publisher keeps files with corrections to be made in later printings. I’ve sent in corrections several times (for example, on Ballantine’s pb of a Charles Willeford crime novel), and in fact this reminds me I have several of their Perry Mason books with flags all over them to mark typos–must send them in sometime.
You might even end up getting some freelance work from Scholastic if you play your cards right!
I’ve always been hesitant to try to get work from a publisher by pointing out what they’ve done wrong. I found a large number of typos in an Ace book by a friend of mine once and gave him the list but asked him to please not mention where he’d gotten it. Since I to date don’t work for Ace, despite being on their freelancer list (I suspect they won’t pay my rate), that may not have been the best tack to take, though. :-) Your way might work better.
If I read the rest of the book and find more typos, I may point them out to someone. I read for pleasure at such a speedy rate (close to a hundred pages an hour, I think) that I’m always amazed when I find any typos at all, though. And I’d hate to send in a “correction” list if I didn’t feel certain I’d caught every error. That perfectionist thing, you know. :-)
I’ve never cold-called a place with this approach, but I’ve found that managing editors, who tend to be a conscientious bunch, are generally glad to learn of errors in their books. If you take the right approach, it might work. I couldn’t say.
It’s been a while since I did any work for Ace, and I’m not sure who’s there anymore, but the people I knew back a few years would also, I think, have been receptive to such an approach.
Whenever I’ve sent in corrections, I always preface them with a standard statement something like, “Let me emphasize that I read this book for my own pleasure. I make no claim to have professionally proofread it, nor do I claim to have found all the errors there may be in it; these are simply the ones I noticed.”
How about Chapter three, page 42 in the first paragraph: “The misty fug his breath had left on the window sparkled in the orange glare of the streetlamps outside…”
Unless “fug” means something I’m not aware of.
Oops. That last one was me
Hmm…”Fug” doesn’t actually bother me there: “a stuffy or malodorous emanation.”
Yeah, I don’t think I’d hesitate to do that with managing editors I already knew. It might be a gamble with ones I didn’t, but I guess it couldn’t hurt too badly; after all, I’m already not working for them. :-)
Yes, it does, apparently, and it’s not a shout-out to Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg.
From M-W online:
Main Entry: 1fug
Pronunciation: ‘f&g
Function: noun
Etymology: perhaps alteration of 1fog
: the stuffy atmosphere of a poorly ventilated space; also : a stuffy or malodorous emanation
- fug·gy /’f&-gE/ adjective
It’s perhaps a bit archaic, but perfectly correct in the sense Rowling is using it, i.e., “a…malodorous emanation”; and the nineteenth-century feel of it perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the HP books.
This is not a new word to me; I understood it right away.