"Eric Flint - Grantville Gazette - Vol 6" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

Well, actually, where Baen Books has been going for years now. HenceforthтАФbeginning with
Volume 7, not this oneтАФwe are going to start publishing the electronic edition of the Gazette the
same way Baen publishes e-books through Webscriptions. Using the same basic approach, at
least.
 We'll simply put up the volume for sale as soon as the editorial staff has it readyтАФexcept
we'll put it up all at once, not serialized across three months the way Webscriptions does. But,
like Webscriptions, we will produce the final copy-edited version after the volume goes up for
sale.
How soon thereafter? I don't know. Unlike Webscriptions, we can't guarantee that we'll have
it ready within three months. But it shouldn't generally be much longer than thatтАФand, as with
Webscriptions, anyone who has paid for the magazine will automatically get the later, copy-
edited version free of charge.
Mind you, the text will have been proof-read, at least once, before we put it up for sale. We're
not going to be putting up raw text. But "proofing it once" is not the same thing as the normal,
time-consuming, and very laborious process of copy-editing, querying authors, and two rounds of
proof-reading that is standard practice in commercial publishing for paper books.
But that's really the key: paper books. Publishers have to put the time and money into copy-
editing and extensive proof-reading before they produce a paper edition, for the good and simple
and obvious reason that once tens of thousands of printed and bound volumes have appeared on
the shelves of bookstores, it is effectively impossible to call them back.
That is not true, however, with an electronic edition. Molecules are not electronsтАФand
electrons respond just fine to a recall notice. With electronic publishing, the difference between
"in production" and "in print" is a continuum, it's not the Chinese Wall that it is in paper
publishing. It is perfectly possible to keep making corrections in a text after it's been made
available for public sale. With the proviso, of course, that you have to make sure your customers
are informed of that.
You are hereby informedтАФand we will repeat the information regularly.
If any reader spots a typo or what they think is an error, and has the desire to do so, you can
inform us in any one of three ways:

1) Send an email to Paula Goodlett, at: [email protected]
2) Post a notice to that effect in the 1632 Tech Manual conference in Baen's Bar.
3) Post a notice to that effect in the 1632 section of the discussion area in my own
web site: http://www.ericflint.net/forum/
On a periodic basis, we will incorporate the corrections. (Assuming the reader is right,
anyway. Not all "errors" are actually errors.) And, of course, we will replace the existing edition
with the copy-edited edition when that finally becomes available.
Granted, it's not an ideal solution. But it seems a far better one to us than continuing to have
the magazine delayed for long stretches of time by purely production problems.
***
One final note. In terms of the editorial work, this volume 6 is a transitional volume. Paula
Goodlett and I co-edited it, essentially. Beginning with Volume 7, however, Paula has become
for all practical purposes the editor of the magazine, not me. I say "has become" rather than "will
become" because the transition has already happened. When I said toward the beginning of this
preface that "we've pretty much got the next volume already put together," I could just as
easilyтАФand considerably more accuratelyтАФhave said that Paula has pretty much got the next
volume put together.
Henceforth, starting with Volume 7, she will select the stories, she will edit them, she will
make all final decisions regarding the magazine except whatever few decisions might need my
overall input. My own position with the magazine will no longer be "editor" in any real sense of