After the posting that went up yesterday on the unavailability of digital versions of the Young Wizards books in Canada, we had a really interesting response in the comments…
When we saw this blog post we contacted HMH directly to inquire about where Canadian rights for the Young Wizards series stand. They confirmed that the titles do have Canadian rights, so as of a few hours ago they’ve been available to readers in Canada: (use this link.)
Nathan Maharaj
Manager, Merchandising
Kobo
You folks are stars. Thank you, Nathan! We’ll update all the web pages at YoungWizards.com and DianeDuane.com to reflect this.
I also note this response to Nathan from”Jc”:
I’d say it’s a fair bet that they won’t be, and indeed can’t be, considering that the distributors of ebooks — like Kobo and Smashwords and B&N and Amazon — are specifically enjoined by the publishers against changing the content of ebooks. Errors or other production issues in an ebook have to be addressed by the publisher in question itself.
Seriously — and it seems I have to keep saying this, since there are a surprising number of people who’ve been writing me in a “tone of voice” that suggests they expect me to fix these problems personally — my influence in these matters is minimal. Maybe that’s annoying, but it’s the way things are. While I personally supervise the quality of ebooks that come out of Badfort Press and Errantry Press, I have no direct quality control over ebooks produced inside Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. As consumers, if you find that the presentation of the product you’re being sold falls below your expectations of quality, you need to be contacting the publisher yourselves and making your opinions known. If enough people do this, there’s a chance of something happening.
Anyway, congratulations to Kobo! I didn’t even know you folks existed until very recently. I’m impressed by your proactiveness. 🙂 Canadian YW fans, if you would check the Kobo search link above and make sure that it produces results for you, I’d appreciate it. Also: please leave me individual URLs in the comments so I can have our web lady add direct links to our pages? Thanks, all.
ETA: The excellent Nathan Maharaj has provided us with a complete set of links to the ePub editions of the YW series available at Kobo. These are available to Canadian .ePub readers:
So You Want To Be A Wizard (eISBN 9780547545110) | Deep Wizardry (eISBN 9780547538662)
High Wizardry (eISBN 9780547540306) | A Wizard Abroad (eISBN 9780547546797)
The Wizard’s Dilemma (eISBN 9780547546827) | A Wizard Alone (eISBN 9780547546803)
Wizard’s Holiday (eISBN 9780547546834) | Wizards at War (eISBN 9780547546810)
A Wizard of Mars (eISBN 9780547487953)
9 comments
Diane- I don’t think it’s having a ‘tone of voice’ to ask if deficiencies in a product that everyone knew were there before they were made available have been fixed. This is real money I spend on books! Why would I knowingly spend it on something unreadable? As for whose ‘fault’ it is, I admit I don’t know (or care) much for the intricacies of publishing—but I do know it’s not MY fault, so why should I be the one to take this up as a cause? I guess I don’t see why you can go to bat to the publisher and get them into Kobo, but you can’t go to bat to the publisher to get these errors fixed. And then—not doing that—you snip at the readers for having a ‘tone’? Baffling. You have lost a customer over this!
Joanna — let me take this one piece at a time, if I may.
“Deficiencies everyone knew were there before they were made available?” What “everyone” are we discussing, and which stage of the production process are we discussing?
There do seem to have been some formatting and spelling errors introduced between the print editions of some of the books (which are generally quite clean) and the electronic ones. As soon as I found out about this late last year, I started working on the situation with my publisher to see what could be done. But the upshot of those inquiries is that putting those problems right is going to take time and money — both of which are scarce at the publishing end, these days, unless you are a hyper-best-selling author. I am not. I do not have the clout to walk into the office of *any* of my publishers and demand that they fix things right now. I can ask nicely, and wait my turn. Which is where we are at the moment.
What I describe as “tone of voice” issues appear in mails from people who assume, through lack of data, that I am somehow personally to blame for the formatting / typo issues, and am a bad or lazy person for not having them fixed by now. Must I suffer this kind of thing in silence? You tell me. It seemed a word to the wise might clear things up somewhat, as it’s not unusual for people to be in the dark about how the process works. (Routinely, books are sent out to third-party companies for scanning and conversion, and in many cases there is no further editorial oversight until the books go online. This is an issue I’m going to be addressing via my agent in new contracts: ebooks will have to go through my office for an editorial pass to resolve typo / formatting issues before being released to the distributors. I’m sure the publisher will welcome this, rather than otherwise. )
So briefly: I *have* gone to bat with the publishers. I’ve done as much as I can at the moment. But now we are in a situation where the consumers’ voice will speak as loudly as mine, or more so. Hence my request, to those who have time or inclination, to speak up and help make a difference not just for themselves, but everyone else who might spend what Heinlein used to call “their beer money” on one of these.
If I’ve lost your custom, I’m sorry. — DD
I appreciate your response, Diane. I do understand that you have limited control over this—however, I, as the customer have even LESS control. I don’t even know the names and contact info of the people who might be in charge of this. And believe me, I have asked for it—I have emailed ebook stores in the past, gotten the ‘it’s not our problem’ reply and written back to ask who IS in charge, and nobody has EVER answered me with a name of a contact person. Customers are completely in the dark here. The only reality I can deal with as a customer right now is that my American friends tell me the books they bought have errors. So it was reasonable for other Canadians who have heard this too to ask if the errors were fixed prior to the release by Kobo. You say they have likely not been. So, what can I do? I am not going to spend money on books I *know* are faulty, just so I can write a letter to complain about it that nobody is going to read…
I urge you, when the books have been corrected and you have verified this for yourself, to post again and let your potential audience know. I did read this series in paper as a kid and I enjoyed it, but I am not going to knowingly spend money on a book that has mistakes. If you do have anybody at your publishing company who does care about this, you can assure them 100% that this costing you sales and forward my comments onto them.
I know it’s not your fault, but it isn’t MY fault either, and what I was responding to negatively here was the implication that it either should be, or that it was having a ‘tone’ to be asking if the books were error-free before we bought them.
I’d say we’re on the same page here (to inject the probably unavoidable idiom).
Two notes: (a) Some background issues surrounding all of this were addressed earlier here:
https://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/2011/03/14/ebooks-a-note-from-the-pro-am-self-pub-frontier/
(b) When the “Author’s Cut” YW editions come out in Canada (and worldwide) later in the year, they *will* be clean, because production is being handled *here.* … As for the HMH texts, when there’s news, I’ll make sure it appears here.
Thanks for the input. –DD
Diane- I don’t think it’s having a ‘tone of voice’ to ask if deficiencies in a product that everyone knew were there before they were made available have been fixed. This is real money I spend on books! Why would I knowingly spend it on something unreadable? As for whose ‘fault’ it is, I admit I don’t know (or care) much for the intricacies of publishing—but I do know it’s not MY fault, so why should I be the one to take this up as a cause? I guess I don’t see why you can go to bat to the publisher and get them into Kobo, but you can’t go to bat to the publisher to get these errors fixed. And then—not doing that—you snip at the readers for having a ‘tone’? Baffling. You have lost a customer over this!
Joanna — let me take this one piece at a time, if I may.
“Deficiencies everyone knew were there before they were made available?” What “everyone” are we discussing, and which stage of the production process are we discussing?
There do seem to have been some formatting and spelling errors introduced between the print editions of some of the books (which are generally quite clean) and the electronic ones. As soon as I found out about this late last year, I started working on the situation with my publisher to see what could be done. But the upshot of those inquiries is that putting those problems right is going to take time and money — both of which are scarce at the publishing end, these days, unless you are a hyper-best-selling author. I am not. I do not have the clout to walk into the office of *any* of my publishers and demand that they fix things right now. I can ask nicely, and wait my turn. Which is where we are at the moment.
What I describe as “tone of voice” issues appear in mails from people who assume, through lack of data, that I am somehow personally to blame for the formatting / typo issues, and am a bad or lazy person for not having them fixed by now. Must I suffer this kind of thing in silence? You tell me. It seemed a word to the wise might clear things up somewhat, as it’s not unusual for people to be in the dark about how the process works. (Routinely, books are sent out to third-party companies for scanning and conversion, and in many cases there is no further editorial oversight until the books go online. This is an issue I’m going to be addressing via my agent in new contracts: ebooks will have to go through my office for an editorial pass to resolve typo / formatting issues before being released to the distributors. I’m sure the publisher will welcome this, rather than otherwise. )
So briefly: I *have* gone to bat with the publishers. I’ve done as much as I can at the moment. But now we are in a situation where the consumers’ voice will speak as loudly as mine, or more so. Hence my request, to those who have time or inclination, to speak up and help make a difference not just for themselves, but everyone else who might spend what Heinlein used to call “their beer money” on one of these.
If I’ve lost your custom, I’m sorry. — DD
I appreciate your response, Diane. I do understand that you have limited control over this—however, I, as the customer have even LESS control. I don’t even know the names and contact info of the people who might be in charge of this. And believe me, I have asked for it—I have emailed ebook stores in the past, gotten the ‘it’s not our problem’ reply and written back to ask who IS in charge, and nobody has EVER answered me with a name of a contact person. Customers are completely in the dark here. The only reality I can deal with as a customer right now is that my American friends tell me the books they bought have errors. So it was reasonable for other Canadians who have heard this too to ask if the errors were fixed prior to the release by Kobo. You say they have likely not been. So, what can I do? I am not going to spend money on books I *know* are faulty, just so I can write a letter to complain about it that nobody is going to read…
I urge you, when the books have been corrected and you have verified this for yourself, to post again and let your potential audience know. I did read this series in paper as a kid and I enjoyed it, but I am not going to knowingly spend money on a book that has mistakes. If you do have anybody at your publishing company who does care about this, you can assure them 100% that this costing you sales and forward my comments onto them.
I know it’s not your fault, but it isn’t MY fault either, and what I was responding to negatively here was the implication that it either should be, or that it was having a ‘tone’ to be asking if the books were error-free before we bought them.
I’d say we’re on the same page here (to inject the probably unavoidable idiom).
Two notes: (a) Some background issues surrounding all of this were addressed earlier here:
https://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/2011/03/14/ebooks-a-note-from-the-pro-am-self-pub-frontier/
(b) When the “Author’s Cut” YW editions come out in Canada (and worldwide) later in the year, they *will* be clean, because production is being handled *here.* … As for the HMH texts, when there’s news, I’ll make sure it appears here.
Thanks for the input. –DD
This is not the right place for me to put this. . . But here it goes. I have been a reader of your books, Ms. Duane, for a long time. So has my mother. I now no longer read your books. Here’s why : I am autistic, and I read the Young Wizard book number 6 (A Wizard Alone.) I HATED IT!!! It made me SICK!! Especially the ending. I DO NOT think that most autistic people want to be “cured”, and what you had happen to the autistic kid . . . It is like you were saying “oh, he will not be bullied or picked on if he is not autistic.” I cannot BELIEVE that the same author who in “So You Want to be A Wizard” and “Deep Wizardry” would have done such shoddy research . . . My email is arthurp.Piantadosi0@gmail.com if you would like to respond to my message
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