Could a guideline be added to encourage ebook uploaders to not change text?

[John F]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Thanks, John

Changes in spelling are most often replacement of archaic spellings with modern spellings - ankle instead of ancle for example. If the original book was published in the UK I use British spelling - honour instead of honor for example. I do silently correct typos, but don't consider that to be a change in spelling.

Thank you for the clarification.

[GibbinR]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

I think I've tried to do something along the lines of what I think you're suggesting, but I've put it in the blurb accompanying the post announcing the ebook, and in the 'Preface to this edition' in the actual ebook. I'm still struggling to find the best actual wording. I'd be grateful for suggestions or feedback.

You might like to look at Mr Wray's Cash-Box by Wilkie Collins or my later Elizabeth Gaskell ebooks for examples. I'm groping towards including a bibliography.

Is this the kind of thing you're suggesting?

Alex, I took a look at the prefaces of 'Mr Wray's Cash-Box', and 'Mary Barton'.
Both seem to me to contain most if not all of the information I'm looking for when I try to decide whether a book is likely to be of sufficient 'transcription quality' to start reading.
A couple of minor quibbles/suggestions:
1. I would explicitly separate out the 'provenance' information from the 'author biography' information. Both are useful and worth having, but I think they serve slightly different purposes.
2. In the preface to 'Mr. Wray's Cash-Box' you say 'checked against a pdf of the 1864 edition'. It might be slightly clearer to say something like 'checked against a scanned image of the 1864 edition available at http://.....pdf' if that is indeed the case.

BTW Please feel free to look at the edition notices of my last couple of uploads ('The Golden Bowl' and 'The Wings Of The Dove' both by Henry James) and tell me if I need to improve anything in them. They were done before I wrote my previous append, so I probably wasn't thinking too hard when I wrote them. And in any case it's hard to look at your own prose from someone else's point of view.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by GibbinR

Alex, I took a look at the prefaces of 'Mr Wray's Cash-Box', and 'Mary Barton'.
Both seem to me to contain most if not all of the information I'm looking for when I try to decide whether a book is likely to be of sufficient 'transcription quality' to start reading.
A couple of minor quibbles/suggestions:
1. I would explicitly separate out the 'provenance' information from the 'author biography' information. Both are useful and worth having, but I think they serve slightly different purposes.
2. In the preface to 'Mr. Wray's Cash-Box' you say 'checked against a pdf of the 1864 edition'. It might be slightly clearer to say something like 'checked against a scanned image of the 1864 edition available at http://.....pdf' if that is indeed the case.

BTW Please feel free to look at the edition notices of my last couple of uploads ('The Golden Bowl' and 'The Wings Of The Dove' both by Henry James) and tell me if I need to improve anything in them. They were done before I wrote my previous append, so I probably wasn't thinking too hard when I wrote them. And in any case it's hard to look at your own prose from someone else's point of view.

Thanks for your suggestions. I suppose there is always the problem of deciding how much information to include, and how much to be brief. I suppose I could add 'on Internet Archive'.

I've downloaded your edition of The Golden Bowl, but as I am working on a horrendously complex ebook for a small publisher in the UK I don't know how long it will take to get back to you.