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..?

Why does writing get called 'bad' as soon as it's popular?

What makes poor writing? We've seen a not entirely unpredictable backlash against Fifty Shades of Grey from some quarters. It's the reaction that seems to kick in whenever a book (or in this case a trilogy) reaches a certain level of popularity. And I don't think it's completely justified.

It isn't just that it looks like snobbery, although there is, I think, an element of that. The idea that if you are genuinely to appreciate the joy of reading, you must have had a certain level - and a certain kind - of education. If millions of people are enjoying a book, it can't be that good because there can't be that many people with that kind of education. Our 'club' is more exclusive than that ... isn't it?

I said it's not just snobbery because, to be fair, what you think of as good writing will of course be affected by how widely you've read. My reading tastes have certainly changed over the years, and now I would cringe at some of the things I read and enjoyed in my teens and even in my twenties: books full of cliché-ridden characters and hackneyed turns of phrase.

It's also true that we live in a world in which winning a publicity lottery can bring undeserved success - we have celebrities who are famous for nothing more than being famous. And, thanks in no small part to phenomena such as YouTube, people and things can gain incredible popularity (or notoriety) for the most trivial of reasons.

But even if a snowball of hype is how Fifty Shades of Grey achieved its initial success, people are still reading it and they're still enjoying it.

And that's the point: if a particular writing style succeeds in firing your imagination, taking you off to another reality, painting pictures in your mind ... then that writing is good for you. A cliché is a cliché only if you've encountered it many times before.

What's more, if it fails to do those things for someone else, I don't think that person can legitimately say that it's objectively 'bad', even if it's bad for them.

Of course, you may be able to apply all kinds of objective measures to a piece of literature. You may be able to dissect it, analyse it and come up with the conclusion that it's either good or bad. But if your conclusion is at odds with the reaction of millions of readers, might not the flaw be in the analysis, rather than in the readers?

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.

Rebuild the English language from the bottom up?

English is a poor choice for a lingua franca.

Despite its relatively simple grammar, it has so many quirks and special cases that it must be fiendishly hard to learn for non-native speakers. Those of us who have tried to explain some of the rules (or exceptions) must be used to the confused stares and protests of 'that desn't make sense'. Because very often it doesn't. There's no logical reason, for example, to prefer 'I don't drive' to 'I drive not'.

It's clear that it's history, not common sense, that's led to English being the common language for so much of the world's population. And while the very things that make English a great choice for literature – the vast vocabulary, the flexibility and the potential for ambiguity all make it a wonderful language for storytelling – those same characteristics make it a terrible choice for law, commerce and mutual understanding among non-native speakers.

And it made me wonder. Given that attempts to create a new, common world language generally seem doomed to failure (Esperanto, anyone?), might we be better off giving English a proper clear-out? Do away with some of the more bizarre quirks. Simplify the rules. And the spelling for that matter – the idea that English is sometimes spelt phonetically and sometimes not must be very confusing, especially for speakers of languages that are not written phonetically, such as Chinese.

There would be enormous obstacles to any such venture, of course. Who would be in charge of it, for one thing? And there are, I understand, already non-native English speakers, especially in the Far East, who do use a slightly modified, simpler and more logical version of English for business. So perhaps more radical, wholesale, change is just not needed.

More to the point, though, language tends to be pretty democratic, and attempts to dictate widespread rule-changes from on high are often doomed to failure. And perhaps that's the way it should be. English has been influenced by vast numbers of people and has borrowed words and expressions from all over the world. It is not logical, and it is not straightforward. But then neither are people...

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.

Why aren't politicians speaking our language?

It's long been the case that politicians and those in the news media tend to speak a slightly different language from the rest of us. Ministers and journalists each have their own set of stock phrases, which they seem to adopt en masse, almost as if they'd all attended the same seminar... 'Let's be clear about this' seems to be the phrase du jour among the former.

But alongside these words and phrases there's also a way of speaking – one that seems to want to avoid strong language at any cost. You can understand this in the news media, especially those for whom impartiality is important. But aren't the politicians supposed to be speaking on our behalf?

Talk about the recent riots brought it home to me. I've heard rioters and looters being described, rather tamely, as 'youngsters', which somehow conjures up images of mischievous children stealing apples, rather than deranged morons burning down shops and homes. Rioters' behaviour is said to be 'unacceptable'. No – poor customer service may be 'unacceptable' – most of us would use stronger language (which needn't involve expletives) to describe what's been going on. It's almost as if the Westminster elite are shying away from expressing the anger that the rest of us feel.

There may be good reasons for this. The obvious one is that Ministers and MPs are being careful to avoid fanning the flames – a violent reaction to a violent situation is the last thing we need, and it could be that politicians are wary of making things worse with inflammatory language.

However, I think we're left with the impression that those who run the country don't really speak our language. Don't speak on our behalf. Don't understand what we feel. And I think that in itself is more likely to breed anger and frustration among the general population.

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...