CosmicGamer said:
Editing - While an English teacher may catch some spelling and grammar issues, they may not catch some things or even correct things that don't need it - like changing Traveller to traveler and maybe battledresses came from poor editing and not the author?
Any English teacher, worthy of the name, would catch the bulk of the blatant errors that have plagued several, if not all, of the books.
In the last couple decades there has been this ubiquitous advent of a thing called a word processor - even MS Word (which Mongoose
obviously uses - not being a 'professional' publisher
) has built in editing and commenting facilities. Any 'edits' by a third party, such as an English teacher, should naturally be subject to final approval before ever being included in a released product - an easily implemented feature supported by even MS Word. :roll:
Further, adding Traveller specific spell checking is a simple right click, left click option in most modern editors (I've added Traveller, psionics and starport to my Firefox dictionary, for example).
As to 'battledresses' resulting from 'poor editing and not the author' - either way it is an editing mistake (even my Firefox spell checker flags that one!). One likely indicative of nothing really akin to a formal editing process ever occurring.
Occasional grammar and spelling errors, even rule mechanic errors, are going to creep in to even the best edited and proofed documents. Complainers and whiners will make an issue of even just perceived errors, but such rarely has any real impact on actual sales. Repetitious and blatant errors for all to see, however, result in buyer experience and bad reviews that are common enough to cause such an impact. Doubt Mongoose operates on such high margins that even a 2% market loss is joyfully ignored.
To be sure, grammar/spelling issues are not the only ones, but they have definitely 'tipped the bucket' in my buying decisions. I can overlook personal preferences regarding formatting, organization and writing style, if the rule mechanics and resources content are somewhat solid. The physical books I purchased suffer peeled covers and failed bindings in less than 2 years. The lack of effort in producing quality PDFs - from not formatting with screen reading friendly fonts to the poor quality raster illustrations, notably deckplans - has turned me off from making those purchases as well. Top all that off with jarringly bad grammar and spelling errors. Result - Mongoose has lost, from myself alone, a minimum of $400 in sales.
Opinions are all well and good, but the cold hard fact is that not only has Mongoose lost $400 in gross receipts from me, you can easily tack on an extra $300 in sales to my players - who I introduced to Mongoose, but will not recommend several books I would have otherwise recommended purchasing. And so they not only won't buy them, they won't have them to more directly spread Mongoose around to others.
So, right there is 700 solid reasons to do some simple proofing.
Even die-hard fans who will purchase anything, regardless of the quality issues raised by others, would do well to realize that loss of revenue, even when due to things they don't personally consider important, can hurt the company who produces the product line they are fans of. Acknowledging and adding perspective to such issues can be supportive of their cause, but contesting constructive criticism of repetitious and blatant mistakes is counter-productive.
Without leaving one's chair, it should be possible to find email addresses for teachers who might be willing to make an extra $50~$100 dollars to proof a 100 page document and to find a free simple NDA agreement to cover confidentiality. Looking at online bulk printers, next day air proofs are commonly available for $50, or less, and electronic for free. Less than $100 buys a book on using MS Word and one on preparing PDF content. With a little effort all of these can probably be obtained for less (even free) - offer the Teacher credit in a published book and a retainer (Mongoose makes more than just Traveller books); printing is a competitive market and Mongoose is guaranteed future jobs for the printer; and online material for using Word and producing nice fonts is only a Google away.
Mongoose, notably in the form of Matt, routinely demonstrates exceptional customer service and enthusiasm for the game. It is a shame that some very simple and cost effective steps aren't taken to ensure the quality of their products is more on a par with such. Between direct loss of sales revenue and book replacements, etc., Mongoose could be doing better and probably without even the man-power effort they are expending now (not to mention stress and loss of face).
EDIT: I'm no professional writer, but I am mildly particular about the grammar and spelling in purchased products. A simple re-read and edit revealed 'being continuing' where I should have written 'being continued' in a sentence I had reworded even while composing.
I'm sure there are other mistakes, but that one was glaring enough to warrant changing. (I don't care much as I am not asking any money for my rambling, but still...
)
Point is, it took me longer to write the these explanatory sentences than it would have taken me to preview and edit this originally. A third party would likely have spotted the errors easily enough, not to mention, been able to make my word vomit more readable.
