Typos in ebooks

[Solitaire1]

Quote from Solitaire1:
The markup could be similar to HTML, but intended to be read by a human, rather than interpreted by a computer.

Quote from Worldwalker:
Um, might I point out that HTML is, in fact, meant to be read by a human? Or that the Web existed long before FrontPage, let alone Dreamweaver? There are still plenty of us hand-coding HTML, and a whole lot more of us squinting at lousy auto-created code to fix it.

Is reading <b> or <strong> really that much harder than reading [boldface starts here]?

You are right that it is likely as easy to read standard HTML tags as it is to read more verbose tags, especially if the HTML tags are fairly simple. I was just thinking of clarity and to make it easier to see them with the eye when I mentioned the longer tags.

Quote from Solitaire1:
A human takes the source text file and formats it in accordance with the instructions for a specific ebook format.

Quote from Worldwalker:
And thereby inserts errors.

You're talking about having a human act as a dumb processing system -- something which a computer can do much more efficiently. Having a human go along looking for [boldface starts here] and doing something with it isn't nearly as efficient as having a computer do the same, in terms of either accuracy or time.

On the other hand, you've provided a perfect example right here:

Quote from Solitaire1:
I think that ebooks are in the same statues as CDs and digital audio recording were in the early days.

Quote from Worldwalker:
You wrote "statues" where you meant "status". Since we can assume that you know the difference between sculptures and condition, it probably happened because your fingers, running half on automatic as you thought a line ahead of where you were actually typing, inserted that extra 'e' and, since it made a legitimate word, no little red line appeared under it on your screen. That's the part that we need humans for. To a computer, since pearls can be in statues (The Adventure of the Six Napoleons), and since tourists can be in statues (the Statue of Liberty), why can't CDs and ebooks be in statues? That's where we need a human who can understand what it was you were trying to say, as distinct from what you actually wrote, and spot the typo.

And that's what the problem is with the ebooks: not that computers can't read the formatting, or that a human could read it better, but that computers can't spot when something has gone wrong. They can read the formatting just fine; they can't understand the content. That's particularly true of OCR'd text, but it also comes up with things like soft hyphens, hard returns, and other things meant to format text ... for humans.

Thanks for the catch. I completely missed that when I posted it. This clearly illustrates the problems with humans reviewing text, especially if someone writes a bit too quickly.

Quote from Solitaire1:
Due to the differences between analog and digital recording, it took the recording industry time to adjust to the change and I think that it will be the same with ebooks.

Quote from Worldwalker:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the recording industry using digital recording for masters long before digital formats became available on a consumer level? I don't think there was that big an adjustment.

If I remember correcly, in the early days of CDs there were problems with getting CDs to sound good. The following article from Stereophile covers the issue: http://www.stereophile.com/news/10790/

[neilmarr]

***the PDF is sometimes used as for the print version and then the PDF is given out to the eBook department to create the various versions from. And we all know that a novel length PDF cannot be converted to any other format without errors. So, then we get shoddy proofreading of this PDF conversion and it goes out with errors.***

Right you are, Jon. In my technical innocence when we decided to run conversions through Smashwords and elsewhere and also produce our own ePubs, I thought our print-ready PDFs would do the job admirably. I was soon put right by my technical partner. It's actually a matter of going back to the (Word) source material from which the PDF was produced and starting over.

Even then, we've had reports of odd errors here and there (from kind readers), which will mean re-proofing all formats of 100 titles when we have time. Meantime, we immediately correct a specific conversion-generated slip when it's pointed out. Not ideal, I know, but it's the best we can do short-term with such a small team.

This is an interesting thread, by the way. Thanks. Cheers. Neil

[Worldwalker]

Solitaire1, please edit your post and correct your repeated mis-capitalization of my name.

Thank you.

[sassanik]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I'm not saying you don't; quite the opposite, in fact.

You'll notice that recent Project Gutenberg books -- basically, any that have been through the Distributed Proofreading Project -- are much superior in quality to most backlist commercial ebooks. And they are at times working with books hundreds of years old, victims of age and worn type. They're proofread by humans -- why not go do a page? That makes all the difference. That's where the human eye is needed: checking the scan against the original. Not in reading through a computer file and clicking "bold" every time you see [bold text starts here].

A good point to note is that at Project Gutenberg most documents go through several rounds of proofreaders to ensure that as few as possible errors get through the system. It does not seem to be that case for many ebooks, some of those errors seem like they should have been caught on a second or third reading.

Amy

[Drybonz]

I have noticed some of the bargain eBooks on Amazon have reviews that say there are a lot of typos in the books. It makes me very wary about buying these books because I worry about whether what I'm reading is even authentic.

Here's an example... Henry Miller's Rosy Crucifixion has a Kindle edition that is bundled as a trilogy for $10. Reviews complain about multiple typos. Now, while for this example there are other digital editions to choose from, there are quite a few authors that don't have public domain books and the only digital versions are these bargain editions (See Jean Genet in the Kindle store for an example). So if I wanted to read a digital book that only has one of these bargain editions to choose from I would be concerned.

So, I guess my question is... does anyone have an experience with these bargain Kindle editions that they can share? Should I be concerned with the accuracy of these books? If so, what is the best source for these contemporary classics that digital publishers have, so far, ignored?

Thanks.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Solitaire1, please edit your post and correct your repeated mis-capitalization of my name.

Thank you.

Corrected. I apologize for that.

[MerLock]

I think the quality of ebooks will get better since they know the end product will be digitalized. I think the same goes for music, when people tried converting their cassette tapes to mp3's, the quality was pretty horriffic unless you had pretty good software.

I'm guessing the source for most books in the past were just typed manuscripts so the only way to digitalize them is to scan them. Guessing now days the source is now typed on a computer so is already in digital format.

Just a guess though.

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by MerLock

I think the quality of ebooks will get better since they know the end product will be digitalized.

They've known that for over a decade at this point, though. If they haven't figured it out yet, I don't have much hope for their learning.

[WarnerYoung]

Originally Posted by sassanik

A good point to note is that at Project Gutenberg most documents go through several rounds of proofreaders to ensure that as few as possible errors get through the system. It does not seem to be that case for many ebooks, some of those errors seem like they should have been caught on a second or third reading.

Amy

And as I mentioned in an earlier post, at least one major publisher I talked to last year admitted they have one, and only one, man who handles all their ebooks. The implication (though I'll admit it wasn't said outright) was that this one guy handles converting ebooks and everything else involved, like proofreading. That's pretty sad.

On the other hand, as the ebook market starts to gain more momentum, hopefully publishers will realize that ebooks actually need the same attention and processing (editor, proofreader, etc.) as regular print books. One hopes, anyway.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by WarnerYoung

On the other hand, as the ebook market starts to gain more momentum, hopefully publishers will realize that ebooks actually need the same attention and processing (editor, proofreader, etc.) as regular print books. One hopes, anyway.

But what can we do to bring on that happy day? I haven't seen many practical suggestions apart from reviewing particularly bad ones in a Hall of Shame thread and telling the publisher that one has done this.

I know it won't always work - I've had no response whatever from HarperCollins UK, but did get a gracious response from Clarity Press who are working on the problems I raised.

Regards, Alex

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

***the PDF is sometimes used as for the print version and then the PDF is given out to the eBook department to create the various versions from. And we all know that a novel length PDF cannot be converted to any other format without errors. So, then we get shoddy proofreading of this PDF conversion and it goes out with errors.***

Right you are, Jon. In my technical innocence when we decided to run conversions through Smashwords and elsewhere and also produce our own ePubs, I thought our print-ready PDFs would do the job admirably. I was soon put right by my technical partner. It's actually a matter of going back to the (Word) source material from which the PDF was produced and starting over.

Even then, we've had reports of odd errors here and there (from kind readers), which will mean re-proofing all formats of 100 titles when we have time. Meantime, we immediately correct a specific conversion-generated slip when it's pointed out. Not ideal, I know, but it's the best we can do short-term with such a small team.

This is an interesting thread, by the way. Thanks. Cheers. Neil

Starting from a Word document has it's own set of issues. The CSS used by Word when you save as HTML is a mess. The best way to do it actually is to do it as a plain text file like Project Gutenberg does. with markup for bold and italics. That way, you just slap <p></p> around the paragraphs and add in your classes for as needed. makes it very easy to then do the CSS and convert to various formats. It's not hard and it would work just fine.

[WarnerYoung]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

But what can we do to bring on that happy day? I haven't seen many practical suggestions apart from reviewing particularly bad ones in a Hall of Shame thread and telling the publisher that one has done this.

I know it won't always work - I've had no response whatever from HarperCollins UK, but did get a gracious response from Clarity Press who are working on the problems I raised.

Regards, Alex

Honestly? I don't know. The only thing I can think of is simply to vote with my pocketbook, and let the publishers know it. This applies not only to bad ebooks with errors, but also to ebooks that are priced ridiculously high.

The only other idea I can think of is to find some way to raise awareness of this issue. Given how much mainstream press has been talking about ebooks and ereaders lately, it might help if the same press started talking about the problems with ebooks, too.

If anyone else has better ideas, I'd love to hear it, too.

[Tonycole]

Whilst reading the comments on the topic of typos and so on in eBooks, one of the commentators, Alex, suggested creating a sort of Hall of Shame, and gathering all the typos and lousy proof reading examples into one place on a number of blogs, in an effort to shame the publishers into taking eBooks seriously and delivering quality.

Whilst personally I have not had much of this problem, it is obviously serious enough and wide spread enough to infuriate a hell of a lot of people, so it seemed a good idea to me.

So I thought that if I, and any other bloggers who were interested should create a page called "Lousy proof reading - Publishers take note!", or something similar and spread the word that people could send us their examples of lousy proof reading, we would all place them on this page on our blogs, and exchange all examples, so we all carried the total list of examples. This would surely make the publishers sit up and take notice of us all.

I shall be contacting other bloggers to suggest this to them, but I thought that if you were willing, we could make a start on this.......

If you think that Alex's idea is worth pursuing, contact me at www.ebookanoid.com or tony@ebookanoid.com, and we shall see what we can manage

[NickSpalding]

Typos and spelling mistakes keep me awake at night...

I went through my book over and over and over again, but I bet some of the buggers have still crept through.

It really takes you out of a book if you come across a mistake like this, especially in a tense bit.

I remember reading a copy of a Stephen King book as it got near to the climax and there was a howler of a spelling mistake. King's not known for his strong endings anyway and that really didn't help.

[kceb10]

I've heard alot of you guys complaining about typos in ebooks but have not really seen very many maybe 1 per book, until i read Moreta, dragonlady of pern by Anne McCaffery this book has so many typos i almost stopped reading it. There had to be close to one every other page i was very dissapointed in this book