Cover Story » Nonfiction

Editor's Preface

Written by Eric Flint

Volume 6 of the Gazette is coming out three months later than we'd projected. There are three reasons for that, which are closely connected. The first reason is that our copy editor fell behind, for various reasons including some health problems. The second reason is that she's also one of the copy editors for Baen Books, with many other assignment. And the final reason is that the launch of the new online magazine, Jim Baen's UNIVERSE, further complicated the situation because the Gazette's copy editor is now also one of JBU's copy editors.

To put it another way, the Gazette was the runt of the litter.

On the bright side, the long delay due to production problems also means that the editorial staff of the magazine is way ahead of the game. We've pretty much got the next volume already put together, and most of the one that comes thereafter. From a purely editorial standpoint, therefore, we could publish Volume 7 very quickly, and Volume 8 soon thereafter.

However...

We'd likely run into the same bottleneck and logjam with the process of copy-editing and proof-reading. The tie-up with Volume 6 was not the first time that's happened, and it's very likely to happen again. Being the runt of the litter is never any fun, and, alas, the runt is what the magazine shall remain.

Facts are stubborn things, and it's just a fact that while the paper editions of the Gazette generate a significant income for Baen Books, this electronic magazine does not. Yes, yes, granted—it's the root source. But publishers are no different from you or me or anyone else, when they are faced with that nastiest of all nasty eight-letter words:

Cash flow.

Okay, it's two words. But, as everyone knows, they roll right into each other, like a mudslide approaching a town of people who have their budgets neatly in order. Abstractly.

In a pinch—and there's always a pinch in publishing—the work of copy-editing the electronic edition of the Gazette keeps getting pushed aside in favor of other, more financial pressing projects. So it has been, and so it will continue to be.

There's only one way to solve this problem, and that is to boldly go where...

Well, actually, where Baen Books has been going for years now. Henceforth—beginning with Volume 7, not this one—we 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 ready—except 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 that—and, 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 electrons—and 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 informed—and we will repeat the information regularly.

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