Amazon had to pull, redo and reload Neal Stephenson’s latest title Reamde after readers complained about numerous errors costing Harper-Collins and Stephenson considerable money and causing bad publicity. Beta testers for JK Rowling’s Pottermore web site were so underwhelmed with it, the opening of it has been pushed back. Reading reviews on Amazon I find numerous books from the Big 6, like Dan Simmons’ classic, Hyperion, getting savaged in eBook reviews because of serious formatting errors.In his latest article, Bob Mayer talks about Experts making mistakes in publishing. Here's a link to the rest of his article, Reamde, Pottermore, Hyperion and other mistakes from publishing “experts”
I'm excited! Later this month I'm going to be taking a couple of Bob Mayer's classes at the Surrey International Writers' Conference. I attended last year and had a fabulous time. Not only did I meet dozens are people like me -- people I didn't have to explain myself to! -- but I learnt an amazing amount about the art and craft of writing. The keynote speeches alone were worth the price.
Okay, back to my blog post. Although Bob Mayer came at it from a different angle, some of what he wrote reminded me of Dean Wesley Smith's latest blog post: The New World of Publishing: Traditional Publishers Are Getting What They Deserve. Well worth the read.
