[bksvol-discuss] Re: Question for everyone: What makes you reject a book?
- From: "Monica Willyard" <rhyami@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 25 Dec 2009 02:15:44 -0500
Hi Judy. Yes, I think two of my books were rejected unfairly. One was
because of the numbers of end notes that were sprinkled throughout the text.
The proofreader said they were junk characters and rejected the book. My
contact info was in the comments, but the proofreader didn't ask me why
those numbers were present. They were in the print book and referred to end
notes that you could look up at the end of the book. The other book was
rejected because the proofreader claimed the copyright notice was missing.
It was on page six of my file, just as it appeared in the print book. That
one was annoying. I resubmitted the book, mentioned the location of the
copyright notice, and got it approved the next day.
I don't enjoy rejecting books, so I've developed some internal guidelines to
help me know what to do. I reject books no matter who submitted them for
three reasons. No page breaks, books where the scanner use single page mode
to scan two pages as a single page, or more than 10 pages missing from the
book. I do this for two reasons. Bookshare clearly says that when a book is
submitted the book must be complete and have at least 90% of its page
breaks. The other reason is that I can rescan the entire book in the time it
would take me just to fix these issues, and that's not counting actually
proofreading the text.
I will always contact a submitter if I have their email address to work out
things like missing pages or paragraphs of missing text. If the submitter is
a new volunteer, I am willing to work harder to make a book work out.
Sometimes I will buy or borrow the book and rescan the affected pages.
If I can't contact the submitter by email, I reject books with missing
pages, multiple large passages of garbled text, or where columns of text are
merged together so that I can't figure out how to separate it into sentences
that make sense. I can handle a page or two like this, but if it's
throughout the book, I reject it. I figure that if a submitter can't be
contacted, my chances of getting a better copy of messed up pages are slim.
I used to release books instead of rejecting them because I felt guilty. I
changed my mind about that last year. Now I generally don't let myself
release books unless something happens like going to the hospital. I figure
that if I take a book, have serious doubts about it, and release it, another
volunteer will end up having to cover the same ground. I either finish
proofing the book or reject it. The only time I change this self-imposed
policy is if I've been in touch with a submitter who tells me that they've
found another volunteer who can fix or rescan the messed up content. If
that's the case, I post here so people will know about the situation.
Monica Willyard
"The best way to predict the future is to create it." -- Peter Drucker
-----Original Message-----
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Judy s.
Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2009 3:02 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Question for everyone: What makes you reject a
book?
These are just some curiosity questions for me, as of course
there aren't any "right" answers. smile.
I'm curious about what makes us decide, as proofreaders, to
reject a book? Also, what makes us decide to release a book? And
for scanners, are there any kind of circumstances that made you
feel someone who was proofreading unfairly rejected your scan?
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