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Posts: 1479
Mar 25 10 11:48 AM
Golden Age
"Yes, of course -- you interpreted it to mean the book would be all-inclusive, as I'm sure many people would (even without reading the solicitation copy!), but all the same, the solicitation never promised that, and if you're going to start tossing around insults like "crook" and "liar" and "idiot" based on a claim that it did, well, you ought to expect that the point will be made."Sorry, FFF but your willingness to invoke a mealy-mouthed defense predicated on what the solicitation copy *didn't* say simply serves to further illustrate my point, and reveals you for exactly what you are. A publisher. Your vested interest is to unload books and not have to eat them if they are defective, as is the case for *all* publishers who want to stay in business. For publishers who want to use soliciation copy to intentially evade, obfuscate, or envagle when it comes to clearly defining what they are offering to the market to give them wiggle room to avoid returns while they figure out what exactly they are going to publish, it places them in an adversarial relationship with their customers, be they retailers or consumers. The smart this to do to avoid all of that, is to wait until a book is ready to print, and then write solicitation copy that describes *exactly* what the book will contain. Solicitation tells you one thing. How many to make. If you are using it for any other purpose, you are abusing the system, the retailer and ultimately the consumer. Consumers and retailers aren't playing craps or the lottery, hoping for a big win, they are buying merchandise that should be competently produced. See Marvel for an example of how to do it right.See Dark Horse for a publisher who should frankly be barred from further solicitaion until they figure it out."The subject of incomplete and inaccurate (and in many cases, ridiculously, laughably poorly written!) solicitation copy has come up here time and again, and while I agree that there's a need for change, there is, fortunately, a very easy solution for people who are constantly irritated by this, with no heavy lifting involved -- don't place pre-orders. If you're the kind of consumer who is quick to find fault (be it binding not sewn, spine 1/16" shorter than other volumes in the series, different reproduction techniques, or just an honest mistake that wouldn't have been covered in the solicitation copy, anyway), you're probably better off taking a wait-and-see approach, because no level of detail in a solicitation will probably ever be enough."Of course, and publishers already have a canned response for this. "If we don't get enough preorders, we won't publish, because preorders are how we gauge demand." It's the same tired song they are singing about the need for consumers to buy periodicals instead of waiting for the trade because if the floppies don't sell the collected edition won't be published.Publishers need to get overthemselves and realizing that they need to cater to the market, but the other way around. If your business model is antequated, find a new one.Buggy-whip makers are obsolete. So is serialized fiction, for the most part."In this specific case, yeah, the fact that the book was not complete certainly could have been -- and should have been -- more clearly indicated. But not everything that might raise alarm bells with the fussy consumer can be." I guess so, considering that *any* indication would have been "more clear" than the nothing we were treated to...
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