Nathan Bransford - The Forums

SYDNEY – An Australian publisher is reprinting 7,000 cookbooks over a recipe for pasta with "salt and freshly ground black people."

Penguin Group Australia's head of publishing, Bob Sessions, acknowledged the proofreader for the Pasta Bible should have picked up the error, but called it nothing more than a "silly mistake."

The "Pasta Bible" recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto was supposed to call for black pepper.

"We're mortified that this has become an issue of any kind and why anyone would be offended, we don't know," he told The Sydney Morning Herald for a story printed Saturday.

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

The reprint will cost Penguin 20,000 Australian dollars ($18,500), but books already in stores will not be recalled because doing so would be "extremely hard," Sessions said.

There was no answer at Penguin's offices Sunday.

Here's a link: http://www.smh.com.au/national/penguin- ... -skjl.html

Auto-correct gone very very bad.

"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."

That must be one of the worse PR move I've seen lately.

The whole story was highly amusing ... until Mr. Sessions made his comments.

I agree with him, that it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that it was a proof reading error. The bottom line, however, is it will be upsetting to some people. As a higher up in the publishing house they need to address the error with tact, and not turn it into a huge PR nightmare.

It wasn't that tactful, I suppose. But does the publisher have to apologize for a computer program's perceived racism? Shouldn't the software designer be the one called to task here?

I don't think the publisher should have to "apologize", but I do think openly referring to someone who does wind up offended as "small minded" is putting the publishing house in line for a larger group of people getting their feathers unnecessarily ruffled.