Please replace old pre-pubs with the official versions.

Drazirach

I've been kind of wondering about this for a while, and I couldn't find it elsewhere. I saw in one of the forum posts a while back stating that the reason why there are so many errors in the prepubs we read is because the editors/proofreaders haven't gone through them yet, so we shouldn't criticize them and whatnot.
Could you guys start replacing the prepub parts with the finalized versions? I just started reading second path in life, since it's on catch-up and apparently there's potential news about vol 3, and so far volume 1 is just riddled with errors/typos and it's kind of distracting. There are places where a typo or omission makes it confusing for a bit. For instance, I just read about Lynette's side story in v1p6 and it says, "they did perform their tasks well at all". Obviously, you can tell from context that it's missing the word "not" in there, but mistakes like that keep pulling me out of the story.

It'd be nice to be able to see what we would be getting when we buy the ebooks or physical copies. I have a bunch of credits saved up by now and I've been thinking about buying some of the physical copies, but I can't decide on which series to get because I also don't want a copy of a book that is full of typos.

BTW as a side note, kudos to the bookworm team for having what seem to be the longest parts but the least number of errors. At least, that's my impression whenever I read them. I don't read all the series, but my favorite is bookworm due to both content (Myne is hilarious) and quality of the translation.

I was told when I put this question in discord that apparently it was said somewhere that there's no efficient or viable way to do this. I really don't see why not. How hard is it to cut and paste blocks of text? Since the size and font can be freely adjusted in the app reader, it doesn't seem like it's all put in line by line. I'm guessing it has to do with how things are programmed, and I'm no programmer by any means, so maybe you can explain to us all why.

One benefit if you release the final version of the text during the monthly catchups is you can get another round of the free proofreading you already get from us members. There are times where I'm reading a prepub and I see an error and I think to myself, "surely they'll catch such an obvious error", but for all I know, it'll still be there in the final version. There are also errors that I see week after week among multiple series, and I get worried that it's something that the editors think isn't an error. For instance, it seemed to take a long time before I stopped seeing the word "pour" instead of "pore". Currently, the error I keep seeing almost constantly is the use of "that" when the proper word would be "who". (sorry, this little bit should've probably been in some other forum topic) Even long-standing publishing companies have errors in their final published copies, which is one reason why they publish new editions of books. Part of it is to get more sales by including a new cover or whatnot, but another reason is they need to fix all the errors that were left over in the last version they published. If you leave all these errors, then you're basically not much better than a fan translator posting translations on WordPress. At least the fan translators tend to fix their mistakes and edit their posted chapters once the mistakes are pointed out.

I apologize for the long post that somehow turned into some sort of essay. I just really think that older pre-pubs should be replaced with newer (and better edited) versions.

piisfun

@drazirach

THIS IS IN THE WORKS.

According to previous staff messages, this cannot be done until after certain key back-end upgrades are complete.

Basically, until they can at least semi-automate the process, it takes too long to be practical.

Also, with prepubs becoming permanently unlocked if you bought the corresponding volume, it kind of had to happen.

Drazirach

@piisfun Oh that's awesome! I tried looking for something about this but I couldn't find anything. Granted, I only tried a couple of searches before giving up, but I wondered if the thread had been deleted or something. Would you be able to link one of the posts if you remember where you saw it?

myskaros

@drazirach said in Please replace old pre-pubs with the official versions.:

How hard is it to cut and paste blocks of text?

It's not "hard," but it is very time consuming, and we have nearly (over?) a thousand books to process and reformat, and not a lot of staff. Compared to other work there is to do, it's very very low on the priority list to do by hand.

piisfun

@myskaros said in Please replace old pre-pubs with the official versions.:

and we have nearly (over?) a thousand books to process and reformat,

Including all volumes with live prepubs:
927 LN volumes
145 Manga volumes

Total: 1072

jpwong

@piisfun Don't forget those all have to be cut up into their corresponding parts

piisfun

@jpwong said in Please replace old pre-pubs with the official versions.:

@piisfun Don't forget those all have to be cut up into their corresponding parts

I considered including that...

I gave up for two reasons:

Number of parts can vary wildly between different series, and even between volumes in a series.
Having only purchased a small percentage of the library (63 volumes, ~5.9%), I had no way to get any sort of average number of parts.

Drazirach

@myskaros Perhaps you guys can upload 1-2 volumes of a series each time the series is put on the catchup schedule? That way it won't be quite as overwhelming. It'll take a long time for the longer series to be updated, but it'll slowly get done. Also, and I could very easily be wrong, but I don't think the series that are completed get put on the catch-up schedule, or if they do, it's very rare, so that means there are fewer pre-pubs that need to be replaced.