The online reviews had familiar ring, and it was not pleasant.
"Great book, too many error."
"The errors distracted from the story."
Was I missing something? Like spell-check?"
"Who published this? A bunch of pre-scholars?"
"I think you are missing a line on page 123, or else it belongs on page 231."
"it wuz very hard to read..."
"Yikes, takes me back to my days as an English teacher!"
"Okay," Stephane said, to the project team assembled, "I guess w shouldn't have used a compositor from Russia for this one."
"I personally think it's the company editor, "Chris replied.
"But doesn't the author have some responsibility for submitting a readable manuscript?" piped up Yuhong.
"It's the number of steps in the process, and lack of accountability," George said as he paced back and forth.
Milad was making a list of Ali the stages and people along the way who handled the manuscript, and thinking about reliability and redundancy. Where were errors introduced? Where were errors caught?
1. Author: 70%-more concerned about content
2. Copy editor: 90% - usually does a good job
3. Compositor: 60%-can introduce errors
4. Proofreader: 80%-works with both copies
5. Author proof: 75%-mostly answers queries from proofreader
6. Production: 80%-could ignore/misplace corrections
7. Final proof: 50%-time constrained; skims
Assume that each step in Milad's list is performed in sequency. What is the reliability of the process?