More Trek Novel Reprints!

[JWolf]

Now, one of the constant errors is that the ePub edition has an embedded font. This font is not properly setup in the CSS to be used. .

Okay, now you're just speaking in tongues . . .


(Don't mind me. I'm still suffering from post-traumatic tech support flashbacks. "It's very simple, Mr. Cox. All you need to do is defragmatize your hard drive, download a new operating system, register at our website, set up a wireless router, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, and your new printer will work just fine. It's easy. Anyone can do it!")

Embedding a font is when you put a font in with the ePub to be used at some point in the eBook. A font is what you see when you read the eBook. The fonts embedded in the ePub were to be used instead of the default fonts in Adobe Digital Editions. The fact that they didn't display meant that something wasn't correct. All it would have taken to see this is to just view the ePub and see that the embedded fonts were not displaying. That shows a real lack of care about the work the eBook staff are doing in regards to trek eBooks. Something that takes less then a minute to do and they don't do it. In fact, they let the same error happen over and over.

So what I want to know is that once the ePub version is created, does anyone at S&S actually look at it before it's sent out to be sold?

 

[Christopher]

^You keep asking the wrong people. How should we know?

 

[JWolf]

Well, I'm hoping someone who has contact with one of the editors can mention it and maybe the editor can then pass it on and maybe eventually things get fixed.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Have you actually tried writing a complaint letter addressed to Simon & Schuster?

 

[Deano2099]

^Like I said, it's easy for people who don't have to do a job themselves to assume it would be simple. But they're almost always wrong. I don't know what the job would entail, but I'm not so arrogant as to assume that my unfamiliarity with the difficulties means that no difficulties exist.

9 time out of ten I'd agree with you. But in this case we have the person complaining pointing out that they've actually removed the DRM from the eBook they bought, opened it in an editor, and fixed these problems in a couple of hours. With no formal editing training or qualifications.

Sorry, but the "if it's so easy, why don't you just do it yourself?" argument only works if the guy you're arguing against hasn't actually gone and done it himself.

Would it cost money, yes. Let's say three hours work at $10/hour, so S&S would have to invest $30 per book. If that's too much then we may as well all pack up and go home as S&S will be shutting down next year.

And the whole "well the economy is broken so you'll just have to live with it" argument is annoying, if true. But y'know, you wouldn't put up with it for other products. "There's a huge scratch down the side of your newly bought car, well y'know, the economy mate, it'll still get you from A to B".

I don't want to overstate the problem, 90% of the Trek books are good or at least fine. But from what I'm reading about 10% of them, were they to have those formatting errors in a paperback copy, you authors would be very pissed off. Greg (I think) mentioned he proofs his stuff at the final PDF proof stage. I don't know if that's a common process, but if it is then maybe authors will also do final checks on the ebooks in the future.

Whatever the process is that they use, it isn't working. They need to either find a better way to do it or find a better staff to do it or both,

All of which requires a budget bigger than currently allocated, I presume. Until eBooks become financially viable for S&S, such a budget will remain a very low priority.

That's not actually necessarily true. If you get a good system in place, at some initial outlay, you can actually make cost savings. Take it from someone that spends too much of the working day moving content from one format to another manually, because departments won't standardise on a single format.

As I keep saying, the bigger ebooks become, the more money will be spent producing them, and these problems will (hopefully) go away.

We're in state of transition. I'm not surprised there are some bumps.

Which is fair enough, but also strikes me as slightly backwards thinking. Sure, if more people buy ebooks, more money can be spent on them, and we'll get a better product. But what about, if more money is spent on ebooks, we'll get a better product, which means more people will buy them? Goes both ways.

Getting the perfect ebook would cost a lot of money, involve a lot of changes, you need a dedicated ebook proof-reader basically, spending a couple of days on each book. I get that this can't be done. But fixing the most glaring errors like line-spacing and this embedded font stuff would be cheap and simple. You can fix 90% of the problems for 10% of the cost. Then we worry about the other 10% of the problems later.

S&S's offices are a bit distant from me over in the UK, so I can't really march in there, but yeah I'll spend a couple of hours fixing up each Trek ebook in exchange for a free copy of the book.

 

[Greg Cox]

Greg (I think) mentioned he proofs his stuff at the final PDF proof stage. I don't know if that's a common process, but if it is then maybe authors will also do final checks on the ebooks in the future..

For print books, that's standard procedure. Typically, the author gets to review the book twice before it goes to press. The copyedited ms. is sent to us for review (and so that we can address any last-minute queries), and later we get to proofread the uncorrected galley pages. A freelance proofreader also goes over the galleys, just to be safe.

Usually, by the time a book sees print, I'm sick to death of reading it!

It may be that we'll be enlisted to proof the ebooks at some point, although there are technical difficulties. Would publishers have to provide all their writers with free ebook readers? And I'm not sure that all of us have the technical know-how to fix any glitches in the first place.

(Like I explained before, when people start talking about "embedded fonts" and "CSS" and "DRM," my eyes start glazing over. That's just gibberish to me. I have no idea what those terms mean.)

 

[JD]

Ebooks can also be read on a computer, all you need is a program that uses whatever file type the book is.

 

[Deano2099]

It may be that we'll be enlisted to proof the ebooks at some point, although there are technical difficulties. Would publishers have to provide all their writers with free ebook readers? And I'm not sure that all of us have the technical know-how to fix any glitches in the first place.

(Like I explained before, when people start talking about "embedded fonts" and "CSS" and "DRM," my eyes start glazing over. That's just gibberish to me. I have no idea what those terms mean.)

Well you wouldn't need to, just like how when you read the galleys you're not expected to get your copy of Adobe or whatever and fix them. Of course, marking them up with a pencil is also out for ebooks.

But yeah, that's the stage that's missing here it seems. It seems the manuscript is finalised, then it gets converted into a paperback and an ebook. The paper book gets two extra read-throughs, the ebook doesn't. Though I assume any errors caught by you or the proof reader in the paper copy also get corrected in the ebook.

IF all those assumptions are right (and that's a huge presumption) then actually all they'd really need to do is keep the authors proofing the galleys, and have the proofreader do his proofing on the ebook.

 

[Greg Cox]

(Like I explained before, when people start talking about "embedded fonts" and "CSS" and "DRM," my eyes start glazing over. That's just gibberish to me. I have no idea what those terms mean.)

Well you wouldn't need to, just like how when you read the galleys you're not expected to get your copy of Adobe or whatever and fix them. Of course, marking them up with a pencil is also out for ebooks.

.

Alas, the red pencil thing seems to on its way out. Increasingly, pubishers want me to deal with copyedits and page proofs electronically, using something called "Track Changes." I stubbornly persist in using paper and pencil whenever I can get away with it, but I suspect I'm fighting a losing battle . . . .

 

[Therin of Andor]

But in this case we have the person complaining pointing out that they've actually removed the DRM from the eBook they bought, opened it in an editor, and fixed these problems in a couple of hours. With no formal editing training or qualifications.

And since customers are not supposed to remove the DRM, we aren't really supposed to know that there happens to be an unused, embedded font in the template used by the S&S eBook division. In the original download agreement, do customers click "Yes" to not illegally distributing our purchase (including things like stripping out the DRM)?

Maybe when S&S first produced a few eBooks, it was decided that having an embedded font was disrupting some eBook readers or computer browsers, so they deactivated it without removing it altogether, so that it could easily be reactivated if/when the problem was solved?

Maybe the complained-about unsuccessful chapter breaks work on some eBook readers and not others?

Not all websites and embedded graphics and fonts work properly on all Internet browsers and yet we've had the Internet since the early 90s. In these early days of eBooks, I wouldn't expect all eBooks to work on all eBook readers.

But yeah, that's the stage that's missing here it seems. It seems the manuscript is finalised, then it gets converted into a paperback and an ebook. The paper book gets two extra read-throughs, the ebook doesn't. Though I assume any errors caught by you or the proof reader in the paper copy also get corrected in the ebook.

Huh? No, the eBook would not be created from a version still to get two more read-throughs. The eBook would be created from the final, revised, edited, "ready for press" version. One copy of the manuscript goes to the presses, one goes to the eBook division. The tricky thing with eBooks is that any words hyphenated to fit justified text in the paper book, or scene breaks that would normally fall at the end of a physical page, don't always look correct on the virtual pages of an eBook, where the words can be more fluid when the customers alters their device's preferences.

Ebooks can also be read on a computer, all you need is a program that uses whatever file type the book is.

But the way to check a website for formatting errors is to look at the pages on every kind of computer, and every version of browser. I was horrified that one of my Mac-designed sites looked absolutely terrible on one particular brand of PC and a certain browser, and had looked that way for a decade.

A eBook's appearance on a computer can be different to how it looks on any number of eBook readers, not to mention all the personal preferences people put into them.

 

[JWolf]

But in this case we have the person complaining pointing out that they've actually removed the DRM from the eBook they bought, opened it in an editor, and fixed these problems in a couple of hours. With no formal editing training or qualifications.

And since customers are not supposed to remove the DRM, we aren't really supposed to know that there happens to be an unused, embedded font in the template used by the S&S eBook division. In the original download agreement, do customers click "Yes" to not illegally distributing our purchase (including things like stripping out the DRM)?

Maybe when S&S first produced a few eBooks, it was decided that having an embedded font was disrupting some eBook readers or computer browsers, so they deactivated it without removing it altogether, so that it could easily be reactivated if/when the problem was solved?

Maybe the complained-about unsuccessful chapter breaks work on some eBook readers and not others?

Not all websites and embedded graphics and fonts work properly on all Internet browsers and yet we've had the Internet since the early 90s. In these early days of eBooks, I wouldn't expect all eBooks to work on all eBook readers.

But yeah, that's the stage that's missing here it seems. It seems the manuscript is finalized, then it gets converted into a paperback and an ebook. The paper book gets two extra read-throughs, the ebook doesn't. Though I assume any errors caught by you or the proof reader in the paper copy also get corrected in the ebook.

Huh? No, the eBook would not be created from a version still to get two more read-throughs. The eBook would be created from the final, revised, edited, "ready for press" version. One copy of the manuscript goes to the presses, one goes to the eBook division. The tricky thing with eBooks is that any words hyphenated to fit justified text in the paper book, or scene breaks that would normally fall at the end of a physical page, don't always look correct on the virtual pages of an eBook, where the words can be more fluid when the customers alters their device's preferences.

Ebooks can also be read on a computer, all you need is a program that uses whatever file type the book is.

But the way to check a website for formatting errors is to look at the pages on every kind of computer, and every version of browser. I was horrified that one of my Mac-designed sites looked absolutely terrible on one particular brand of PC and a certain browser, and had looked that way for a decade.

A eBook's appearance on a computer can be different to how it looks on any number of eBook readers, not to mention all the personal preferences people put into them.

Here's the thing, the ePub S&S has on their website uses Adobe's Adept DRM. There is only one program that can handle this DRM. That program is Adobe Digital Editions. Any portable reader that can handle Adept DRM is also using ADE. So, there should be no issue with the embedded fonts. So the fact that the embedded fonts may not work in some other reader isn't an issue as the DRM would have to be removed to use this in different reading software.

As for customer agreements, I never did click on anything on S&S's website to say I agree to an EULA. ANd I don't think it's much of an issue to strip the DRM as long as I am not uploading the ePub to the net.

I'm not saying the source used is out-of-date with the source used for the pBook. You notice it was said that a PDF was sent out to be read/checked. Well, if that PDF is approved to be OK as is, I think then that PDF goes to the eBook side of things to be used as the source. That is the problem. You cannot currently take a novel length PDF and convert it to another format without errors. Since this is so, the resulting ePub needs to be checked for errors. Because the PDF has words that are hyphenated at the end of lines, some of these hyphens get converted into words that come out like Star-fleet. Also, other misc. errors can crop in and since it's obvious that these eBooks are not being checked after the conversion, we can get things like missing section breaks.

This is why we need the eBook to also get some read throughs. Sure, the source used is fine. it's been read a few times. It's been proofed. But the conversion process adds in errors that were not originally there. This is NOT a budget issue but a processing issue. It's not properly processed and then it's not at looked at properly.

I do not have a any sort of degree relating to being and editor. And you don't need to be an editor to work with eBooks. All you need are the skills to work with the tools and understand eBooks. With the DRM removed from the ePub, it takes me less then an hour to go in and fix the errors I've found while reading. Sure, I might have missed an error or so. But then all the errors I've caught are ones I've noticed doing and ordinary read. And because some of the errors are the same in different spots, I do pick up some missed errors by doing a search/replace. One such error that is very easy to miss is the space in front of the period that sometimes happens after an italics. But a search/replace fixes all of them.

Maybe S&S should get the eBook staff to do a read through, correct any errors found and then send the eBook onto the author for a read through and then any errors caught there can be fixed. That may or may not eliminate 100% of the errors, but I think it would eliminate 90%+ of the errors.

So because these eBooks have DRM, and the DRM can only be accepted with the correct reading software. The ePub is only usable with ADE and the Kindle edition is only usable with a Kindle or Kindle software. The eReader version (if such still exists) is only usable with eReader and if there is a Mobipocket version, it will have the same errors as the Kindle version as they are the same except for the DRM and the Mobi version can only be used with Mobipocket.

So no, these Trek eBooks can only be read with the appropriate software given the DRM. There is no using the ePub in say Stanza for the iPhone/iPad as it won't work with DRM and since the original has DRM, there is no reason to complain that it looks funny in Stanza since it was never tested in Stanza.

Another thing that sometimes slips in (again due to the source) is something like * * * for a section break when most section breaks are just some amount of space to denote section breaks. The eBooks do not need * * * as that is where the section break is demoted in the print copy when the section break falls at the end/beginning of the page. So because of this, my guess still stands at a PDF used for the source.

PDF when used as a source for an eBook has been named PrettyDamnF**ked as that's what happens when PDF is used. I've seen other eBooks sourced from PDF have different errors. One book I read no too long ago has a missing space at the end of every italics where there should be a space.

ePub is designed for ADE. eReader is designed for eReader. Kindle/Mobipocket are designed for Kindle/Kindle software and Mobipocket. And no other software is considered so if there are errors in viewing in other software, that's not S&S's fault.

So overall, the process of getting a few read throughs for the print edition also needs to apply to the eBook edition giving the process to convert from PDF is buggered big time.

 

[Deano2099]

Alas, the red pencil thing seems to on its way out. Increasingly, pubishers want me to deal with copyedits and page proofs electronically, using something called "Track Changes." I stubbornly persist in using paper and pencil whenever I can get away with it, but I suspect I'm fighting a losing battle . . . .

Ah it's not so bad, I only started as an editor a couple of years ago, and I print stuff out, mark up on paper, then go in to Word and make those changes with "Track Changes" while also doing a second read.

The simple truth is that you spot stuff on paper that you don't on screen. Whether that's learned behaviour or something inherent to the medium I don't know.

Huh? No, the eBook would not be created from a version still to get two more read-throughs. The eBook would be created from the final, revised, edited, "ready for press" version. One copy of the manuscript goes to the presses, one goes to the eBook division. The tricky thing with eBooks is that any words hyphenated to fit justified text in the paper book, or scene breaks that would normally fall at the end of a physical page, don't always look correct on the virtual pages of an eBook, where the words can be more fluid when the customers alters their device's preferences.

Ahh, that'll be the problem then. As once you start the actual typesetting, you're typesetting for print. You're introducing a load of data about page breaks and column width and font size in to the text which the ebook version doesn't need, and in fact will only confuse the conversion process. You're right, this is how a lot of people do it: make the paper version then go back and make the electronic one.

No-one thinks that this is the ideal way to do it, it's just a huge process change that putting in to practice is tough. Pretty much everyone agrees that you should split off the two production paths before typesetting. Putting it in to practice is a lot harder however.

 

[Greg Cox]

Maybe S&S should get the eBook staff to do a read through, correct any errors found and then send the eBook onto the author for a read through and then any errors caught there can be fixed. ..

You mean I'm going to have to proofread the damn book another time?

(Whimper.)

 

[JWolf]

Maybe S&S should get the eBook staff to do a read through, correct any errors found and then send the eBook onto the author for a read through and then any errors caught there can be fixed. ..

You mean I'm going to have to proofread the damn book another time?

(Whimper.)

Well, S&S won't do it. So if you don't, nobody else will before it goes out for sale.

 

[Janos]

Does anyone know if reprints of The Lost Years, Spock's World and Sarek will be reprinted?

 

[Therin of Andor]

Does anyone know if reprints of The Lost Years, Spock's World and Sarek will be reprinted?

What usually triggers a reprint of an old title is demand, or perceived/anticipated demand. Shops getting requests to order a particular title from customers and those tallies, if sufficient to make a reprint financially viable, come to the attention of a number cruncher. Or, an author gains notoriety/popularitly in the non-ST genres, making the whole backlist of that author viable again.

"The Lost Years", "Spock's World" and "Sarek" were all early hardcovers and, if I recall, bestsellers. There were many, many copies made, then each title went into MMPB and many more thousands were sold. I'm pretty sure they all went into multiple reprints at the time.

"Spock's World" and "Sarek" were both last reprinted in 2004, in the trade omnibus Signature Edition, called "Sand and Stars".

See http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Sand_and_Stars

 

[Janos]

"The Lost Years", "Spock's World" and "Sarek" were all early hardcovers and, if I recall, bestsellers. There were many, many copies made, then each title went into MMPB and many more thousands were sold. I'm pretty sure they all went into multiple reprints at the time.

"Spock's World" and "Sarek" were last reprinted in 2004, in the trade omnibus Signature Edition, called "Sand and Stars".

See http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Sand_and_Stars

Thanks. Sand and Stars appears to still be in print.

 

[JWolf]

Does anyone know if reprints of The Lost Years, Spock's World and Sarek will be reprinted?

You'd be best to see if these are available as eBooks and buy them that way. POD versions are way way too expensive if they even exist.