Errors and errata

[Jason Morningstar]

Hey all,

I'd like to hear from those of you who have published about your experience with errors.  We've found six in The Roach so far, including two that could be perplexing to players, and that's after it went through multiple iterations of copy editing, including one round by someone who is not a gamer and is a professional copy editor.

So ... is one error every 13 pages for a first printing good, bad, or average? 

And more to the point, how do you handle errata?  Thanks for your input,

--Jason

[Thunder_God]

I'd like to add another question:

How do the people who do Layout deal with errata requests?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Jason, that's a pretty good record for the first printing, based on my own experiences with my books as well as seeing tons of others first-out-of-the-gate. Spelling and grammatical errors are aggravating, but they're also reality. I proofread Sorcerer nine million times, and diligently followed the advice I'd learned to respect long ago, to have others go through it as well, including one very professional run-through. And of course, upon proudly cracking open that first copy, a number of minor errors appeared, any of which I considered evidence that this (my) book had obviously been written by a fourteen-year-old and proofread by a blind monkey.

No one escapes. Not Dogs, not Polaris, both of which underwent the finest-toothed combs I've ever heard of for role-playing games. The only solution is to suck it up, post the fixes on the website, sell the books, make a note, and fix the text for the next printing. Perfectionism is a virtue, but so is resilience and the ability to move forward. Again, I think the errors in the Roach were eensy-teensy compared to some I've seen.

Best,
Ron

[Josh Roby]

In a 976 page textbook, we had 428 pages with errors.  Now, given, first printings of textbooks generally don't ever see a classroom; they're samples for adoption processes and only second printings get into the hands of students.  And the textbook in question is the most complicated we make.

But dude, 13 pages?  Nice job.

[jeremycoatney]

     Wow. Only every 13 pages?! That really is good, I congratulate the editors and writers of that book for getting it down so low!
     On the other note, I haven't really dealt with the errors in my game(s) yet, except to address frequently asked questions and post the answers on my site, but I am planning on starting an errata page for each book on my web site to help to clarify things. Also some companies add an errata section to the back of new printings of the same version of their books.

[Jason Morningstar]

Well that's reassuring, thanks again.

We're fixing the known errors for the second printing, which (happily) is going to be Real Soon Now.  I've got an errata sheet to send out with our remaining first printing stock, and we've noted it on our Web site as well.

[Luke]

Hi Jason,
There will always be a few errors.

Facts I have learned in the publication of 6 books in 3 years:
Gamers don't count as editors. They may catch stuff, but it's just not the same a professional.
Professional editors are fallible. Shocking, but true.

If you want your game clean, hire multiple editors to do multiple passes. Even then, they are going to miss bits and pieces.

I remember sending out BWC to the printer and my ardent hope was that I hadn't dropped a negative from any important rules: "You cannot use Faith without a Belief tied to the attribute" vs "You can use Faith without a Belief tied to the attribute." I had a bad habit of doing stuff like that. Oh! I also read and reread the cover copy and intro dozens of times. Errors there are BAD.

Anyway, a handful of errors is nothing to sweat  about. Correct the small ones, post the big ones to your website.

-L

[Matt Machell]

My experiences in tech publishing taught me that every book has errors. You will never catch them all. People accept a few minor problems and expect an errata (it's worse in tech publishing, where info dates horrendously fast).

Some just get missed. Late night writing always leaves you with a dozen or so mistakes you wouldn't usually make. Some will slip in as editors correct something they assume they understand. Some will creep in when peer reviewers "correct" items with their opinions. Some will creep in as a proofreader fails to read the styleguide and thinks your special term is actually a general term that sounds similar.

As long as you don't have too many, peole are pretty forgiving.

-Matt

[Josh Roby]

Also some companies add an errata section to the back of new printings of the same version of their books.

In the professional editorial world, this is called being a punk-ass bitch woosy editor... okay, that's just what I call it.  Except in some very rare cases, any good editor can fix the error on the page without forcing lines to reflow onto the next page.  And if it's a big enough error that it affects reflow... well, (a) you screwed up big and you deserve it and (b) time for a new edition, anyway.

[David "Czar Fnord" Artman]

Couple of reinforcing points:

1) 13 errors is trivial. Your current solution to finish selling the current print run is fine, in my opinion (errata sheet). Heck, those "first-first edition" errors will help make it all-the-more rare and (potentially) valuable to collectors, as you will not be reprinting with those errors, even if you still enumerate the new releases as "First Edition" (which, I feel, they would be without substative changes).

2) This is one of the BEST reason for print-on-demand and laser printing (as opposed to screen printing), especially for us "indies" who can't just throw out a "bad" run of a few hundred. Most (all?) on-demand/laser printers can swap out page-by-page (on their printer/database) or the whole darned PDF.

3) Too bad you didn't opt for ring binding (as I have recommended in a past thread). ;-)

4) For typoes and simple omissions, you should be able to change an individual page without causing a reflow. Only changes near the very end of a page (or to a page with only one paragraph) run that risk. So even if you screen print, you should be able to have just the affected signatures re-screened, not the whole she-bang. Then again, if your errors have the worst possible distribution, you will have to re-screen the whole thing anyway; in such a case, I would seriously consider doing a major revision or expansion--and calling it a Second Edition.

5) I agree with Joshua: Errata sections are amateurish and significantly outmoded, in modern printing and, thus, current buyer expectations. Given the cost of new screens amortized across even a small print run, there just isn't any excuse for not revising the actual pages. But an errata sheet is an acceptable way to salvage an already-printed and -bound run.

(Note: Yet another great reason to use print-on-demand: you can often wait to bind, which means that you can go into each ready-to-bind stack of print runs and replace individual pages, to salavge the First Run Editions before they are bound. Of course, with the right agreement with your printer, this can be done even in an "old school" printer: they run your signatures but they don't fold, cut, or bind them until you are ready to take delivery on a "part" of your order. Then, if you find errors, you replace the affected signatures. Again, though, that could be all of them....)

6) Try this trick the next time you are copy editing: print a couple of copies of the book with a different font size settings and styles (easily adjusted, if you properly use Styles in your editor). The way this forces the book to reflow and re-line-break can often make errors more visible: things that you usually gloss right over (end of lines, page breaks, etc) change, and that can help you spot more errors.

7) Never hire a "generic" professional editor to copy edit a game manual. Sure, you can hire them to proofread it, or check it against a style rule set, but you are dreaming if you want an editor to successfully catch fundamental flaws in the rule writing (your example of inserting/forgetting "not" is one). That's what you get your gamer friends, with their experience, to do.

8) Never let someone directly edit source (or a deliverable copy, even) to provide edits to you: always require mark-up, notation insertion (ex: in a PDF) or other means to non-destructively and obviously revise the content. Your job, as a consumer of editorial work, is to approve or deny those edits--not surrender your content to an editor to directly change without you being aware, and not hunt through the whole book for added commas (if there is no way to track changes).

9) Never highlight the correction in a reprinting. Change bars, revision marks, editorial parentheticals: none of these things are appropriate to a game manual. You MIGHT want to include a "Changes in This Edition" section in the front matter, to help current owners find the corrections. But you must assume folks will only ever by one copy of a give Edition (i.e. a release with substantive changes)--99% of your buyers never knew of the errors (and why clue them in?) and the remaining 1% will be buying BECAUSE they want an edition with those corrections and, thus, probably are already aware of their significance and don't need them highlighted.

There may be more, but this is what popped out of my head in an intial pass;
David

[Jason Morningstar]

2) ...Most (all?) on-demand/laser printers can swap out page-by-page (on their printer/database) or the whole darned PDF.

Yes, I was surprised when RPI asked us to send the revised pages individually rather than a complete corrected manuscript - they'll re-assemble and we're off to the races.  I'm deeply suspicious and we'll get a proof, but they do it all the time. 

Thanks, David, for all the advice!

[Thunder_God]

Thanks David, that also answers my question, mostly! :)