You Get What You Pay For?
From the Chronicle of Higher Education comes news that Princeton University Press has recalled a spring title (Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District, by Peter Moskoshat) that was found to have some 90 grammatical and spelling errors in its 245 pages. The press’s director, Peter Dougherty, stated that the book had been given to an inexperienced copy editor. When asked how much the recall and reprint would cost, Dougherty answered simply, “a lot.” The mistakes surfaced only through close reading on the part of the author’s friends and family.
Editing listservs have been buzzing over the cutting of corners and lack of oversight on the part of university and academic presses. Some presses have dispensed with proofreading altogether or sent proofreading offshore or enforced turnaround times that border on the ludicrous. Pay rates have stagnated. Princeton University Press reputedly has the largest endowment of any university press in the country. One would think they could have afforded to allot a few more dollars toward prevention to avoid “a lot” of cure.