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BJDibbins, on 12 November 2013 - 08:16 PM, said:
I'm not even going to try defending everything that has occurred since the sale at the end of June last year - partly because there are some things I think should have been done differently, and partly because when all is said and done, I only know what I've been told by those involved with the process.
What I 'know' (see above caveat) is that the project was conceived by Terry Goodkind and his creative director, and then a "CE Team" was contracted to bring the concept to reality. There was a difference between the prototypes and the produced products. Terry Goodkind wasn't happy with the quality of what was produced and did not want to send out substandard stuff. The Grace rings were all custom made, not bought off a catalogue. They were sent back to be remade with more silver, rather than another 300 bought. That was done early on though. The excessive delays were caused by trying to find printers that actually produced the desired quality instead of just saying they can. The original CE Team were replaced somewhere during the process and a new team bought in.
Incompetence? Sure, that applies. Whether you call it poor hiring decision with the CE team, poor judgement by the CE team in selecting suppliers, suppliers producing substandard products that didn't meet promises made, or whatever... the end result is that the CE purchasers are going to be getting a high quality package when it does arrive, rather than a good enough package.
There's been a lot of discussion about this on the Collector Edition Pre-Orders Open FaceBook page. Nearly all of the negative comments have been relating to the lack of communication about the problems and issues - not keeping us informed by email (etc), but what you will have trouble finding are any posts from people complaining about anything else. Pretty much everyone complaining has said they are prepared to wait as long as long as it takes, as long as they're told why they need to.
My own opinion on this (and why I've signed up to comment) is that I dislike seeing inaccurate speculation. There's enough honest criticism that can be made, and equally enough credit for wanting to deliver the highest quality product without seeing the results of 'chinese whispers' circulating around the internet.
What I 'know' (see above caveat) is that the project was conceived by Terry Goodkind and his creative director, and then a "CE Team" was contracted to bring the concept to reality. There was a difference between the prototypes and the produced products. Terry Goodkind wasn't happy with the quality of what was produced and did not want to send out substandard stuff. The Grace rings were all custom made, not bought off a catalogue. They were sent back to be remade with more silver, rather than another 300 bought. That was done early on though. The excessive delays were caused by trying to find printers that actually produced the desired quality instead of just saying they can. The original CE Team were replaced somewhere during the process and a new team bought in.
Incompetence? Sure, that applies. Whether you call it poor hiring decision with the CE team, poor judgement by the CE team in selecting suppliers, suppliers producing substandard products that didn't meet promises made, or whatever... the end result is that the CE purchasers are going to be getting a high quality package when it does arrive, rather than a good enough package.
There's been a lot of discussion about this on the Collector Edition Pre-Orders Open FaceBook page. Nearly all of the negative comments have been relating to the lack of communication about the problems and issues - not keeping us informed by email (etc), but what you will have trouble finding are any posts from people complaining about anything else. Pretty much everyone complaining has said they are prepared to wait as long as long as it takes, as long as they're told why they need to.
My own opinion on this (and why I've signed up to comment) is that I dislike seeing inaccurate speculation. There's enough honest criticism that can be made, and equally enough credit for wanting to deliver the highest quality product without seeing the results of 'chinese whispers' circulating around the internet.
How do you know about the prototypes/production not matching up to promises and the replacement of the CE team? Have you seen pictures or listened to people you know in person talk about these things? Or are they kind of telling you this stuff by very sporadic e-mail updates sans pictures/links?
A full year plus seems much longer than is standard to wait for an order that's totaled $90,000+ (if Tairy has chipped his own money in). It also seems unlikely that a true high quality package is going to arrive after such a long time - changing the production types shouldn't take that long if things were already set for production. We're not talking about illuminated books here. We're a year past the promise delivery date of the book and sundries.
The Sub Press books for the Malazan editions are asking artists to paint a full set of illustrations, get super-high res PDFs, bind them in great paper and so on. They pop out at a pace of roughly a book a year. The Malazan books are have sold much less copies than Goodkind's series, are written by an author who isn't as personally wealthy and Erikson/ICE have mostly managed to keep to actual deadlines in getting stuff/projects done. I think a couple of the Sub Press Malazan editions have gone longer than expected, but only by a couple months (not sure).
Something is rotten in Denmark and it isn't entirely the original CE team's fault.
