Greetings all, it’s been a while.
BG: I’m an editor at a publishing company, specialising in history.
Just before Christmas we sent the page proofs of a book to an author who I’m going to call TG (Total Git). It is a book about mediaeval archery, and TG is a total archery nut, makes his own bows etc. That in itself is no problem, except that he can’t really write and is an all-round idiot. I didn’t edit the book myself, UberBoss (a publisher who is my immediate boss) did it in a great hurry because we were swamped. We figured that we’d pick up any little errors once the book had been paged (put into a Mac programme, made to look like a real book etc).
However, one thing I did do was tell the designer where to put the pictures (each is given a number and that number is typed into the Word document near the paragraph where it is relevant). Because I hadn’t read the book, I placed the pictures by going by the image names the author had assigned. Therefore, if a picture was called ‘14a ARROWSMITH CHAPTER’ then I gave it the official number and keyed it into the chapter called ‘The Arrowsmith’. Pretty straightforward, no? No.
Just after Christmas UberBoss gets a seriously angry email from TG. Top of his list of complaints is that most of the pictures have been put in the wrong place. ‘Why has a sea battle picture been put in a chapter on artillery??? It should be in the chapter on warfare!’ ‘Why has a picture of a crossbow been put in the Arbalastier chapter, it should be in the chapter on crossbows!!!’ I go through all the pictures he originally sent us, and sure enough, the sea battle picture is labelled ‘3a ARTILLERS CHAPTER’ and the crossbow pic is called ‘19c ARBALASTIER CHAPTER’. This was true for all 26 of the pictures he was complaining about. His screw up, not mine.
Now all this I could take; I’m used to dealing with eccentric morons. However, it was the several insults to my poor self which really annoyed me. Chief amongst these were the lines: ‘BookBint would be better employed in putting pictures in the right place than trying to edit my book’ (which I didn’t), and ‘hopefully she can be more careful with this important book’ (which it isn’t). He also accused me of several misspellings of technical words, which I wouldn’t have dreamt of messing with even if I had edited the manuscript. Naturally I went and had a look at the original Word document he sent us, and found the errors already there.
There is also the small matter of him being a moron. He dated an Anglo-Saxon burial to 1242 (it turned out to be 925 AD). He was out on the dates of over 50 battles, often by as much as 40 years. He believes that the Hollywood version of Robin Hood is real, down to Little John and Maid Marion. I don't want to start a fratching thread on whether Robin Hood was a real person (which he really wasn't, whatever the romantics say) but Maid Marion really is total bollocks. She doesn't turn up in the ballads until a hundred years after Robin first appears.
Anyway, I had the joyful task of reading and rewriting the entire book, which has now taken me two weeks, on and off. Today I got to write him an email attaching a new PDF of the book, and incidentally listing all his mistakes in the nicest possible way. Sort of. Now I'm waiting for the inevitable explosion when he realises how much I've changed...
BG: I’m an editor at a publishing company, specialising in history.
Just before Christmas we sent the page proofs of a book to an author who I’m going to call TG (Total Git). It is a book about mediaeval archery, and TG is a total archery nut, makes his own bows etc. That in itself is no problem, except that he can’t really write and is an all-round idiot. I didn’t edit the book myself, UberBoss (a publisher who is my immediate boss) did it in a great hurry because we were swamped. We figured that we’d pick up any little errors once the book had been paged (put into a Mac programme, made to look like a real book etc).
However, one thing I did do was tell the designer where to put the pictures (each is given a number and that number is typed into the Word document near the paragraph where it is relevant). Because I hadn’t read the book, I placed the pictures by going by the image names the author had assigned. Therefore, if a picture was called ‘14a ARROWSMITH CHAPTER’ then I gave it the official number and keyed it into the chapter called ‘The Arrowsmith’. Pretty straightforward, no? No.
Just after Christmas UberBoss gets a seriously angry email from TG. Top of his list of complaints is that most of the pictures have been put in the wrong place. ‘Why has a sea battle picture been put in a chapter on artillery??? It should be in the chapter on warfare!’ ‘Why has a picture of a crossbow been put in the Arbalastier chapter, it should be in the chapter on crossbows!!!’ I go through all the pictures he originally sent us, and sure enough, the sea battle picture is labelled ‘3a ARTILLERS CHAPTER’ and the crossbow pic is called ‘19c ARBALASTIER CHAPTER’. This was true for all 26 of the pictures he was complaining about. His screw up, not mine.
Now all this I could take; I’m used to dealing with eccentric morons. However, it was the several insults to my poor self which really annoyed me. Chief amongst these were the lines: ‘BookBint would be better employed in putting pictures in the right place than trying to edit my book’ (which I didn’t), and ‘hopefully she can be more careful with this important book’ (which it isn’t). He also accused me of several misspellings of technical words, which I wouldn’t have dreamt of messing with even if I had edited the manuscript. Naturally I went and had a look at the original Word document he sent us, and found the errors already there.
There is also the small matter of him being a moron. He dated an Anglo-Saxon burial to 1242 (it turned out to be 925 AD). He was out on the dates of over 50 battles, often by as much as 40 years. He believes that the Hollywood version of Robin Hood is real, down to Little John and Maid Marion. I don't want to start a fratching thread on whether Robin Hood was a real person (which he really wasn't, whatever the romantics say) but Maid Marion really is total bollocks. She doesn't turn up in the ballads until a hundred years after Robin first appears.
Anyway, I had the joyful task of reading and rewriting the entire book, which has now taken me two weeks, on and off. Today I got to write him an email attaching a new PDF of the book, and incidentally listing all his mistakes in the nicest possible way. Sort of. Now I'm waiting for the inevitable explosion when he realises how much I've changed...
Comment