Publishing concerns

[HyperD]

Recently I saw the Young Wizards books are now available to Canadian customers through Kobo. After purchasing SYWTBAW, I had a few thoughts concerning publishing:

How is an ebook printed? I've been reading through SYWTBAW, and found numerous spelling mistakes in the prologue. I'm sure they were not in the edition I read (The one with the cover art of Nita and Kit walking across the cloud bridge).

Is there any difference between "digest" editions and a "standard" printed copy from the shelf? I've noticed that the Kobo store lists SYWTBAW and several of the others as (Digest).

[Lazy Leopard]

DD's written a couple of items on her blog about the Canadian eBooks recently. If you've not seen them, they're here:

In the ebook department: O Canada

Young Wizards in Canada, Part 2: Thank you, Kobo!

They may partly answer your questions, and maybe raise others...

(I'm not in Canada, so don't have any direct experience of this.)

[HyperD]

That does answer that first question mostly. But now I'm wondering if the publisher does manage to fix the errors, if I get an upgrade for early adoption. Though I suppose that's wishful thinking as well.

[Lee Enfield-Burke]

Recently I saw the Young Wizards books are now available to Canadian customers through Kobo. After purchasing SYWTBAW, I had a few thoughts concerning publishing:

How is an ebook printed? I've been reading through SYWTBAW, and found numerous spelling mistakes in the prologue. I'm sure they were not in the edition I read (The one with the cover art of Nita and Kit walking across the cloud bridge).

Is there any difference between "digest" editions and a "standard" printed copy from the shelf? I've noticed that the Kobo store lists SYWTBAW and several of the others as (Digest).

I can talk about the above issues a little since I've been assisting DD with some of the technical stuff.

Apparently the process varies from publisher to publisher. Though it happens in two ways, depending on whether the book being converted is new or old, in nearly all cases the publisher doesn't do the conversion itself: it's shipped out to a third-party company that specializes in ebook conversions.

The first way is the simplest. If the book is new enough to exist in some electronic form at the publisher, the file that's the last one in the editing process -- the one which would normally be sent out to be printed -- is the one that's sent to be converted into ebook format. Normally this is a file in one of the major typesetting formats like Quark Express (though sometimes a publisher will use a PDF version of one of these files if necessary). The cropping and register marks and any line numbers are stripped out of the file and it's imported into whatever software the ebook conversion company is using. When the ebook files are created, they're then sent back to the publisher, and after that the publisher's IT department handles the business of sending the books to the ebook retailers (Amazon, B&N, Kobo etc) to be released.

The second way is more difficult. If the book is old enough that no version of it exists at the publisher except print, then a printed book is scanned by the third-party ebook production company, and the ebook file is created from the scan. This is then sent back to the publisher, which handles release as above.

The problem in DD's case is that at least half of her books, and maybe more, fall into the second category. So everything from SYWTBAW through at least TWD has had to be scanned: maybe even AWAL and WH as well. I think that WAW still exists in electronic form at the publisher: I'm pretty sure that AWoM does.

The trouble after that lies in two areas: (a) the scanning process, no matter how good it is, introduces new errors to the text, and (b) the checking process at the outside conversion company, whatever it looks like, isn't catching the errors. I haven't heard much detail about how much checking happens before the books come back to the publisher -- I think DD hasn't either -- but plainly it's not enough.

In any case, HMH is now going to be introducing another layer of checks. DD says her editor has told her that her books have been moved up the re-checking pipeline, and she should be seeing the newly checked versions at the end of April. After that DD has to go through them all, doublechecking the content and formatting (as well as getting other work done...), which is going to take her most of the month: and then those files will go back to the publisher and be sent on to Amazon and all.

Oh, one other thing: the digest editions are simply the thicker, larger-type editions of the YW books that started coming out starting in 2001 -- the ones with the Greg Swearingen covers. Though the type is larger, their contents are identical to the massmarket editions of the mid-90's and later (the ones with the covers by Cliff Nielsen: he did the SYW cover you described).

[dorotheia]

Speaking of digest editions, are there plans to convert Wizard's Holiday, Wizards at War, and A Wizard of Mars to digest format? I can't find the other editions for those books. (I would rather get the whole series is one edition, even an unremarkable one, than chopped up with covers in two different styles. Although several series have gone and changed artists mid-series... like Artemis Fowl or the Squire's Tales).

[Lee Enfield-Burke]

Speaking of digest editions, are there plans to convert Wizard's Holiday, Wizards at War, and A Wizard of Mars to digest format? I can't find the other editions for those books. (I would rather get the whole series is one edition, even an unremarkable one, than chopped up with covers in two different styles. Although several series have gone and changed artists mid-series... like Artemis Fowl or the Squire's Tales).

As far as I know, the publisher has no plans to go to digest on the later books. DD mentioned to me some time back that the publisher's rationale was that the digest format is pointed at younger readers, and the later books (i.e. after WH) seem more oriented toward older readers.

I'm not sure whether this is actually the reason they're not going for the digests, though. In the present economic climate, publishers have been looking for every excuse to cut back on costs, and it's possible the YW books simply don't sell the kind of numbers (compared, say, to the Potter series) for the publisher to justify the extra outlay for reformatting, commissioning new covers, etc.