Further chapters in the saga of bad ebook formatting

[Joques]

It never ends

I'm re-reading the first volume of the GAP series, which comprises the first two books, and the sloppy use of italics is killing me. Donaldson tends to use italics a lot, and in particular, in this series he italicizes the names of space ships. So you have Bright Beauty, Captain's Fancy and Starmaster, for instance, in italics.

But the tags for italics are all over the place. In some places the </em> will come several words after the name of the ship, so the words after the ship name will also be italicized. In other places, it will come _inside_ the ship name, so just the first part is italicized! I guess some intern had to sit with an editing tool and mark text with a mouse, and did a really sloppy job.

There is another repeated error: Donaldson always writes "Station" (as in space station) with a capitalized "S". I guess somebody decided to run a search and replace on "station" with lower-case "s", because all of a sudden you'll come across words like "manifeStations" or "I was at my data Station" or "she was Stationary"

(Yes, I have checked that the errors are in my original untouched epub files.)

[murg]

Typical bad scan with really bad scan-editing.

[DiapDealer]

Love those books. I consider them Donaldson's best work. The names of the characters have never left me. Gotta love that Hashi Lebwohl.

Shame the ebooks are such a disaster.

[Joques]

DiapDealer, I agree. This is the second edition of GAP ebooks I've bought. The first one was much worse, completely atrocious. Entire parts of the text were missing, and it was rife with errors of every kind. This one is a lot better, but still.

Donaldson has had a rough transition to ebooks. The first two chronicles of Thomas Covenant were also riddled with typos.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by Joques

DiapDealer, I agree. This is the second edition of GAP ebooks I've bought. The first one was much worse, completely atrocious. Entire parts of the text were missing, and it was rife with errors of every kind. This one is a lot better, but still.

Donaldson has had a rough transition to ebooks. The first two chronicles of Thomas Covenant were also riddled with typos.

Do you have the US (Random House) or UK (Hachette) editions? (so I know which ones not to buy :-)

[Joques]

This edition is Gollancz. The previous, atrocious edition that I bought right when it came out ... 6 years ago? I've long since deleted. I have no idea who published it, but I do think it was an American publisher.

[Joques]

Geoff, if you can stand to wait, I could send you my files after I've read them and corrected them.

[Dr. Drib]

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[Joques]

I apologise!

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by Joques

I apologise!

Thank you.

Don
(Moderator)

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Joques

This edition is Gollancz. The previous, atrocious edition that I bought right when it came out ... 6 years ago? I've long since deleted. I have no idea who published it, but I do think it was an American publisher.

What store did you buy them from? If it's Amazon you should let them know. Amazon will notify the publisher and pull the book until they fix it if it's that bad. You may also get a refund if you bought recently.

[Joques]

Purple Lady, maybe Amazon does that, but back when I first bought this series, that did not happen. I contacted the vendor (now defunct booksonboard.com), I contacted the publisher. Neither were the slightest bit interested in either fixing the books or issuing any refund. I even tried to contact Stephen Donaldson directly to inform him of the situation. I don't know if I got through, but I do know that later on he lamented the state of his ebooks on his personal blog.

Apple are just as bad. I don't know if any of you tried downloading the omnibus edition of Clive Barker's Books of Blood from the iTunes book store? Just appalling, appalling state of text.

Here's the email that I sent to Apple support that time:
Hello! I recently purchased the "Books of Blood Omnibus" by Clive Barker on the iBooks store in iTunes. This text is hopelessly corrupt; as in just the 4 page introduction by Ramsey Campbell I found 6 bad typoes (apparently -> apparendy; is a -> a is; strength -> strenth; think -> tiiink; month's -> mondis'; and the real kicker is this one: deathless -> deaüüess), indicating to me that the text was not proofread after it had been OCR-ed. This version of the text is not fit for reading, and as I suspect that proofreading an entire text is beyond the scope of Apple customer service, I would like to cancel the purchase. Thank you in advance.

Here's their reply:
Dear Joakim, Your request for a refund was carefully considered. However, according to the iTunes Store Terms of Sale, all purchases made on the iTunes Store are final. This policy matches Apple's refund policies and provides protection for copyrighted materials.

These are the kinds of corporations we are dealing with. I swear, if it weren't possible to remove DRM in order to correct the publishers' mistakes, I would have given up on ereading a long time ago.

[Joques]

I just went back to my old email complaint to Random House back in 2010 for the last GAP book: "This Day All Gods Die". Some of you might find this humorous, others depressing. I only got a rote reply: "Thank you, we will forward this to our proofreading team". But as far as I know, the files were never updated. At least not until after I had given up on them.

-----

"Now for the wealth of errors. Like I said, I only started about 200
pages into it, and even then there are bound to be lots of errors I
didn't catch. Esp. the use of itallics seems very fishy in places.

P239: Example of a sentence that makes no sense - some words have been
accidentally deleted or something:
"I got the impression he's willing to cover our asses as well as his
own" of a singularity grenade makes ut innocent."

P241: Same kind of error:
"But when UMCPDA welded Angus, Warden had in decision by staking
everything on the people she knew best."

P245: Same kind of error:
"Then Marc Bator."
This should be somethign to do with Marc Vestabule and Suka Bator, but
words have disappeared in editing.

P246: Same kind of error:
"my actions with civilians." law," he admitted to his crew"

P256: "then fell my forces" should be "tell my forces"

P266: "You don't Speak for this ship." Very common error:
Inappropriate capitals in the middle of a sentence.

P291: "Abdullah disdained the courtesy of Waiting for. Len to call on
him." Inappropriate capital and punctuation.

Are you dismayed by the state of this text yet? Don't worry, there's
tons more to come.

P308: "What,failed?" Inappr. comma.

P315: "Why didn't you take (tare of it" This one is a doozy.
Parenthesis instead of the letter "c".

P320: "UMCP director] He did this to you." Inappr. square parenthesis
and lacking punctuation.

P330: "if he could have borne it." Here, "it" is italicized instead of "borne".

P334: "her dishes are occulted." Should most likely be "occluded".

P342: "Weil come up with an answer." This error is very prevalent.
"Weil" instead of "We'll". There are numerous occurrences. I will
refrain from repeating all of them. This is after all not my job, and
I don't get paid for it.

P349: "die inside himself And he'd promised" Lacking punctuation.

P370: "You haven't earned the right to be so tucking self-righteous"
Should be fucking. I think there are more of this error.

P412: "Captain Vertigus may hot have" Should be "not".

P422: "I'm the UMCP PR director." For consistency's sake should be
UMCPPR without space.

P424: "mounted it,and aimed his bulk" Lacking space. And possibly inappr. comma?

P429: "why she'd let Morn take command" inappr. carriage return after "Morn".

P434: "The sheep were faking too long." Should be "taking".

P436: "I don't mean to in trade." Should be intrude.

P436: "Hannish shouted at His back" Inappr. capitals.

P443: "practically in sane" should be insane.

P448: "Calm Horizons', beyond" Should be "Calm Horizons".

P450: "she needed TO hear" inappr. capitals

P454: "If he knew what he Was doing." Inappr. capitals.

... Ok, that's about a fourth of the errors that I've detected. No
doubt there are many more. I'll leave it there, for now. I hope to
hear from you with a message that this one, and "Chaos and Order",
will be updated with new proofreading and rereleased."

[HarryT]

SF Gateway (Gollancz) encourage people to report errors and rapidly fix them. I reported some errors in a Harry Harrison book to them a couple of years ago and they had a new version of it out within a few weeks.

[Joques]

HarryT, I am sure publishers have become more amenable - but personally I've soured on spending time contacting them. I have only had bad experiences with it so far - and frankly it is often more work than just making the corrections for myself.