My connection to the industry is that I'm the production person who deals with this stuff. :-)
The big bestsellers with all the errors typically happen because the publisher is in a tremendous hurry to get the book to press and have it start earning its keep, rather than dawdling through an 8-to-10-month production cycle.
The other problem is that publishers of big bestseller fiction typically have long lists and short staff. People start cutting corners. The big bestsellers sometimes get short attention from lazy production people because "the book will sell anyway."
At my previous place of employ, we in the paperback division were contemptuous of certain people in the hardcover division because they printed slop. (Not everyone, just certain teams.) We were forever cleaning up after them and making a million correx for our editions. It was clearly the individuals, because they didn't have heavier workload than anyone else. They were just plain bad at that part of their job.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that anything dependent on human input is only as good as the humans doing the work.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-04-08 06:46 pm (UTC)The big bestsellers with all the errors typically happen because the publisher is in a tremendous hurry to get the book to press and have it start earning its keep, rather than dawdling through an 8-to-10-month production cycle.
The other problem is that publishers of big bestseller fiction typically have long lists and short staff. People start cutting corners. The big bestsellers sometimes get short attention from lazy production people because "the book will sell anyway."
At my previous place of employ, we in the paperback division were contemptuous of certain people in the hardcover division because they printed slop. (Not everyone, just certain teams.) We were forever cleaning up after them and making a million correx for our editions. It was clearly the individuals, because they didn't have heavier workload than anyone else. They were just plain bad at that part of their job.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that anything dependent on human input is only as good as the humans doing the work.