Why everyone needs a proofreader

I'm going to try not to rant.

I don't want to be a cliché. I have no desire to be a grumpy old man before my time.

But, as I was playing a board game the other day, I came across the following:

1. 'Name someone whose advise you would normally accept.'

2. 'Name something, apart from exersize...'

Perhaps we shouldn't get too wound up about this sort of thing. Perhaps it doesn't really matter.

Personally, though, I think we should, and I think it does matter.

For one thing, this was the type of game that gets played by people of all ages, children included.

A bit of dodgy typesetting is one thing, but 'exersize'?

Anyone who has tried to proofread will know that it's not nearly as easy as you might think.

But these weren't tricky grammatical points, nor were they errors buried in thousands of words of text. These were things that anyone with a basic education should get right or be able to pick up if someone else has made the mistake.

It's all too easy to cut spending on proofreading in an effort to balance the books. After all, nobody really notices the work of a good proofreader.

Bad proofreading, on the other hand, will get your company noticed for all the wrong reasons.

Treasure or Trash? A fabulous conference from UCF

Publishing in the UK is undoubtedly rather London-centred. Just ask any recent graduate looking for a job in the industry. So sometimes I feel a bit isolated living on the coast. Don't get me wrong – it's very nice here. It's just that attending a publishing event normally means a late-night trip back on the last train from Charing Cross or St Pancras.

I was so pleasantly surprised, then, to be able to go along to a wonderful conference organised by the University Centre Folkestone (UCF) last week. Titled Treasure or Trash? Artistic freedom and quality control in a digital age, it was free to attend and boasted some excellent speakers, including the inspirational Chris Meade from if:book and Danuta Kean, whose insights into copyright certainly made me stop and think. There were also talks from a number of entrepreneurs who are starting to publish in truly innovative ways.

All too often, events such as this fail to live up to expectations. Not this one. Every one of the speakers clearly had a real passion for their work – an infectious enthusiasm that left its mark on me and, I suspect, many other delegates. The organisation was also superb, despite some major problems on the roads that held things up a little at the beginning. All in all, a fabulous event.

Perhaps I don't need to move back to London after all.

Sock puppets, anonymity and big brother

In case you don't know, 'sock puppet' is internet slang for someone who assumes a fake identity online, especially with a view to giving extra credibility to something they've written under their real identity.

The phrase has been in the news recently, following the revelation that one particular famous author had been exposed as posting positive reviews of his own books online under different identities, at the same time as posting negative ones about other authors.

Of course, one of the great things about the internet is that it does, within limits, afford a certain degree of anonymity. It makes it easy writers to publish to a mass audience without revealing their true identity (although there's nothing new about the nom de plume). People use fake profiles to say things they would never dream of saying if they thought their true identity might become known.

On the one hand, this can be seen as dangerous. It means that extreme and abhorrent views can gain exposure. But on the other, it surely fosters creativity. It gives writers the chance to explore and try new things. They might get shot down in flames, but it won't matter.

The trouble is that the inevitable abuse of this kind of freedom tends to lead to calls for tighter control. We may find that verified accounts have to be used for people to be able to post reviews on prominent website, for example. I think this would be a step too far – perhaps verification could be used to give some reviews a certain amount of added credibility, but I believe there should always be a place, within certain legal boundaries, for that ultimate freedom of expression that anonymity allows.

Because there's another fascinating phenomenon that could die with growing regulation of the internet. People are complex creatures, and many are using the internet to explore different facets to their personalities, sometimes through the use of avatars in virtual worlds. It is a chance for many to escape the confines of the role that real life circumstances have imposed on them and ask 'what would I be like if...?'. It's a kind of creativity that's almost entirely new: the chance to lead an entirely safe secret double life, and I think it would be a shame if it were lost.

Fear: the proofreader's friend

Will the digital publishing revolution inevitably lead to a decline in editorial standards?

There are two reasons why I think it might.

One is connected to the notion of agile publishing, in which some people feel the focus should be on getting the product on the shelves (real or virtual) even if all the rough edges haven't quite been smoothed off.

The other is, frankly, about the fear factor.

The great thing about content published electronically is that it can be corrected easily and, for the most part, at any time. It happens with software all the time, and there's no reason why the typo spotted in your e-book shouldn't be corrected in just the same way.

But, of course, it's different if the book is going to print.

If you know that there's no turning back once the book has been sent off, it does tend to set the adrenaline racing when you do those final checks. The costs of having to pulp and reprint will be huge. No-one wants to be responsible for that! And it's rather nice to think that, in years to come, no-one will have to be.

But I do wonder if it gives copy-editors and proofreaders licence to be just a little less assiduous in their error-checking..?

The problem with agile publishing

This new publishing model – with a focus on user feedback, short lead times and successive iterations of the same product – takes its cue from software development. This is hardly surprising, since that's what a large part of book publishing is turning into.

But is it right for book publishing? Is it even right for software development, for that matter?

It's normal for successive iterations of software to be released in stages. Often, this relies on a community of dedicated beta testers, happy to put up with the various flaws (and even find fixes for them), just to get their hands on something new. The software itself is easily updated, as patches and new versions are released.

This is all very well. But I think there's a much greater tendency for users to show patience with small companies or with open source developers than they are with multi-million pound corporations. You only have to look at some of the reaction to Microsoft's upgrade from Hotmail to Outlook (purely as an example of how users can turn against a big company – I can't comment on whether the grievances are genuine).

And when it comes to book publishing, I think we have to be especially careful. People are already asking whether we need publishers. I happen to think that we do. But the reason we need them is that they provide exceptional quality control. We know that a well-published book from a good publisher has been through some painstaking processes to ensure that it's written, structured and presented in the best possible way. If it's a reference book, we feel we can trust the information in it.

A big part of agile publishing seems to be the idea that it doesn't have to be perfect first time. But I think an equally big part of book publishing is the idea that it does.

The economics of regional book pricing

It's been reported this week that Waterstones is considering different book prices for different regions. This is nothing new in this in retailing, and in bookselling it's not unlike the difference in price between hardbacks and paperbacks.

It is, of course, all about selling more books, but it's not just about that.

It's also about finding each individual's price point and eliminating what's known as the 'consumer surplus'.

Essentially, we all have an upper limit on the price we'd be willing to pay for everything we buy. Every time we buy something for less than that price, we effectively get something for nothing - a bit of a discount if you like. That's the consumer surplus.

Retailers would love to be able to charge us according to our individual price points. But it's not that easy. Most don't have the option of sizing us up and switching their price labels as we enter the store.

So they opt for the next best thing. It's possible to work out profiles for people living in different areas, which then allow you to make educated guesses: the individual price point for book X for people living in area Y is likely to be around £Z.

The trouble is that once someone knows they're being asked to pay a higher price just because someone's worked out that they'd be prepared to, the willingness to pay that higher price is in danger of evaporating.

Manufacturers can get over the problem by repackaging essentially the same product and giving it a different brand - two very similar cars, made by the same company, can attract very different price points thanks to the badge on the front.

But if the consumer knows that their local shop is charging more for exactly the same product than is being charged in another area, you have to wonder what this will do for customer loyalty.

So perhaps a different approach is required for the publishing world. Now that the ebook revolution is gathering momentum, there's already talk of doing something a little different with printed books - of making them more beautiful - more a luxury item. And the answer in terms of differential pricing may be to take the hardback/paperback distinction a little further and to push the more beautifully packaged books in some areas, while offering cheaper, more basic, products in others.

Google and the social media lottery

... and what it means for search engines as publishers. Google's acquisition of PostRank (a social media monitoring service) has got SEO specialists speculating. Is search engine ranking for a given web page suddenly going to have a lot more to do with readers' engagement with online content?

At first sight, this all sounds very reasonable. You can understand why Google would want to increase the extent to which the actions and interest of independent third parties affect search engine ranking. These things are (usually) much harder to manipulate.

But if this is the way we're heading (I say 'we' - I'm nothing to do with Google and I've no idea what they're actually planning!), I'm slightly worried.

Because while Google et al don't do quite the same as traditional publishers when it comes to adding editorial value to written content, they do, through search engine ranking, apply the same kind of quality control as any traditional book or journal publisher. In other words, they effectively get to decide what we read.

And if (it's a big if, of course - as I said, I don't know what's being planned) what we read is going to be based on what gets commented on (celebrity scandal, anyone?) or discussed in social media, I don't necessarily think the cream will rise to the top. It would equate popularity with quality, and five minutes of reality TV should be enough to convince anyone that they don't always go hand in hand...

Are we plunging into a new dark age without realising it?

And can the publishing world help to drag us out of the mire if so?

Apologies for the mixed metaphors, but they both seemed to fit somehow.

Exhibit A: Paul the Octopus. Of course, it's not Paul's fault (and in fact, for all I know, the creature may be a genuine miracle of nature – it's not my place to say otherwise!), but he's the latest in a constant stream of stories that put me in mind of medieval levels of superstition.

To me, they're the modern equivalents of 'two-headed cow in next village predicts doomsday'.

And we seem to love it. My guess is that we've always loved it. And we always will.

It almost seems now as if the 20th century was a brief renaissance – a flirtation with enlightenment, where intellect and learning were respected, but that now we've reverted to type. Give us psychic octopuses (not octopi, by the way!), miraculous images on bits of toast, faces on Mars...

It's not that we didn't have all this a few years ago. Of course we did. But two things have happened to give this kind of thing more prominence and more credibility.

One is, obviously, the internet. You can now publish all kinds of pseudo-science and conspiracy theories online without having to go through any kind of review or approval process. A lot of the nonsense falls by the wayside, destined to be ignored.

But some of it gets noticed.

And some of it does more than get noticed – some of it wins the 'social media lottery'. People set up Facebook groups, start blogs. Before long, the tabloids get wind of the story, then the broadcast media...

And so many of us seem to be taken in. I think it's partly because 'giant spiders could be living on Mars' is just more exciting than 'geological features on Mars slightly resemble spiders' (I did just make this up, by the way).

But I think there's more at play. It's the same phenomenon that means you're guaranteed a great job if you can confidently come up with a lot of meaningless business-speak in the face of a rude and/or aggressive interviewer. Forget whether you can do the job. Just do the interview. If you can talk in a certain way, it almost doesn't matter what you say.

I don't know whether to love or hate the film, but we seem to be hurtling towards Idiocracy with alarming speed.

What's all this got to do with publishing?

Well, I think we really, really need publishers now more than ever.

We need trade publishers to look after our language, to nurture genuinely good writers, to thrive and to produce work that will not be lost in the sea of online material that hasn't been through the rigorous editorial processes that you will find in a publishing house.

And we need academic publishers to be just as vocal in debunking some of the crazier unverified pseudo-science as some bloggers are in proposing it.

This comes down partly to understanding the value of information. The trouble with the internet is that it has led us to believe that information costs nothing. That good writing is free. Journalism is facing the same problem. People don't want to pay for news, and as the traditional business models become unworkable, good quality journalism is in danger of being replaced by pure rumour. Because we've come to see rumour as just as valuable as real news.

To be fair, I think much of the book publishing world is doing itself a lot of good. Publishers are using social media and other technologies to show off the value of what they do. And there seems to have been some movement towards publishers strengthening their own brands, now that it's no longer enough to rely on authors as brands. The message has to be: you can trust this to be a good read – or to be accurate – because we published it.