A Misprinting Costs Penguin Publishers, $20K

By Devaki

Wednesday, April 21, 2010, 17:18

The error of a single word caused Australia's Penguin group spend thousands of dollars.

The world-class printing company had to pulp and reprint more than 7000 copies of Pasta Bible as they got a misprinting in the recipe called for “salt and freshly ground black people" instead of “pepper". The error thus made them a loss of 20,000 dollars.

The company says that it will not recall stock from the bookshops. The copies remain on the shelves in Australian bookshops, selling for 20 dollars.

The company officials also said that they could not understand the reason for the readers found the slip 'offensive'. "We're mortified that this has become an issue of any kind and why anyone would be offended, we don't know," said an official. "It's called the Pasta Bible, almost every recipe has ground black pepper in it, mostly in the same place."

"In one particular recipe misprint occurs which obviously came from a spell checker. When it comes to the proofreader, of course they should have picked it up, but proofreading a cookbook is an extremely difficult task. I find that quite forgivable," explained the source.

"We've said to bookstores that if anyone is small minded enough to complain about this very silly mistake, then we will happily replace the book for them," he added.