Are Vyrso resources proofread at all?

Lee said:

It seems that Vyrso books are mostly auto-converted from documents provided by the publisher.

Yes, that's right.

Lee said:

Surely Vyrso resources deserve to be given a quick once-over by a human proofreader, to at least catch the particularly bad errors?

I agree with that, but that's the responsibility of the publisher, not Vyrso. The error is almost certainly in the ePub source files, not the conversion process. Vyrso is just the bookseller.

<edit>To demonstrate the point, the same problem appears to occur on the B&N preview.</edit>

Lee said:

Mark Barnes said:

I agree with that, but that's the responsibility of the publisher, not Vyrso.

Naturally, if Vyrso is marketed as bargain-basement stuff, that would be okay. But Vyrso is not marketed as such. Anyway, do customers really care whose "responsibility" and whose "fault" it is when there are loads of really basic errors? Are they likely to be satisfied with something like "the Kindle version has the same errors" or "the Nook version has the same errors"?

Depending on the marketing and pricing, maybe. Or maybe not.

I'm not satisfied with errors in either Vyrso or Kindle, but I don't hold Logos responsible.  I wish the publishers had a higher view of ebooks and took more care with them.  If Logos did their own editorial pass on Vyrso books, they would be much more expensive and wouldn't compete pricewise with Kindle.  That's why Logos and Vyrso are separate brands.  One for quality and one for bulk.  Can you imagine the manpower required to proofread the 12,000 books added to Vyrso in the past 2 years?  Logos would either have to hire many more editors or else slow down the output to a trickle.

Lee said:

To take matters to the extreme, supposing readers catch the really horrendous, systematic errors and submit typo reports, can, or should, Vyrso say "that's the way we got them, and we won't fix it until the publishers bother to"?

Yes, unfortunately that is the way the contracts with the publishers are. Logos is not even allowed to fix blatant typos. The publisher has complete control over the content, so it's their fault if something is wrong.

Perhaps Logos needs to be clearer about this in the marketing of Vyrso books. (Some disclaimer such as "Not responsible for errors in book content.")

It's the same with Kindle books too, though I don't think Amazon goes out of its way to explain that in its marketing materials. I guess enough people have been using Kindle books by now that they've grown to expect typos and just shrug it off as a fallout of the digital era.

It bothers me too, but with the volume of books the publishers are able to pump out these days, there is no way each title is going to get the kind of careful editorial attention that books used to in the good old days.

Lee said:

I am submitting that the retailer, in our case Vyrso, should not take a position that it is entirely the responsibility of the publisher if this kind of issue crops up.

Nobody, least of all Vyrso, is saying that "it is entirely the responsibility of the publisher". We're saying that:

• It is entirely the responsibility of the publisher to proofread the books
• It is entirely the responsibility of the publisher to correct errors in the original files
• It is entirely the responsibility of the retailer to correct errors caused by the conversion process
• It is entirely the responsibility of the retailer to ensure customer satisfaction and to offer refunds if he/she is not satisfied (and in extreme cases to remove a book from sale)

We sympathise with your dissatisfaction, we just disagree about who should be doing the proofreading.

Mark Barnes said:

If the footnote isn't superscripted, I would consider that to be trivial. But if the footnote isn't hyperlinked (which I think is what Lee is saying), then that is pretty annoying.

I agree with Mark on both counts.

I wonder whether this is a problem of the automated conversion process. Logos ought to be able to figure out what numbers are supposed to be endnote reference marks and automatically link them up. But perhaps they don't do that at all, or perhaps it doesn't work when the footnote marks aren't superscripted in the source files.

Anyway, there's a problem with the book. Lee is well within bounds to have called Logos out on it. Logos might very well turn up its hands and say "there's nothing we can do about it" but it isn't really our role to keep speculating about that and hammering it home. Someone from Logos ought to step in at this point to reply to this, instead of all of us offering our paltry attempts to placate Lee.

Hopefully the Vyrso product manager (Brian Williams) will notice this thread and respond.

Lee said:

a minority of people who speak as if they are representing Logos

Lee, the MVPs do in a way represent Logos. Logos has asked them to be the first line of defense for answering users' questions, because there are too many questions for Logos to keep up with themselves. If necessary, MVPs can escalate the questions to someone within Logos.

They've been instructed not to badmouth Logos, though not necessarily to defend any shortcomings of Logos. They can have their own opinions and express those. They've been honored with the role of MVP because of being long-time Logos users who know the product well and generally have demonstrated helpfulness on the forums. They are all human, though, and sometimes fall into defensiveness or whatever. As does everyone. MVP's are not "above the law" in any sense, but they've usually been chosen because of their gift of diplomacy in addition to knowledge of the software. However it doesn't always come across that way to readers of their posts, because we all bring to the forums our own preconceptions of what is right when we read what others have posted.

Anyway, we are all, together, part of an online community of sinful human beings who desire to learn better how to use Logos to improve our effectiveness at studying God's word, but who sometimes misconstrue what each other are intending in our online communications. We all, MVPs and others alike, need to give each other the benefit of the doubt to keep things from getting unpleasant on these forums.

I was an MVP for a couple of years but stepped down due to time constraints, and because of this perception that MVPs somehow have to be super-human and never offend anyone and never see things from Logos's perspective or be blamed for being fan-boys and the like. It became hard for me to always be tarnished with that brush, whether I was a bumbling communicator myself or was just being lumped in together with a category of people who were perceived as such. Nevertheless, I maintain my deep respect for the amount of time the MVPs put into these forums, and I know what pressure they are under to be always helpful and gracious; and they don't get paid for what they do. So give them a bit of slack, please, OK?

Thanks for your understanding.