Who's Responsible for Shoddy Ebooks?

[bitemeok]

I recently bought an Oxford UP history book, Albion's Seed from the Sony ebook store. The epub file I received was garbled, filled with typos, and in fact missing whole pages of text (I was able to compare my copy to the partial text available on Google books)--to the point of being unreadable.

I complained to Sony Ebook store almost 2 weeks ago and they haven't contacted me back and are still selling the book.

I also contacted the publisher and an email exchange with an editor there, who seemed better informed than the person I spoke to at Sony. She said she would pass the complaint onto the appropriate person but that it was Sony that was responsible for making the epub.

Does anyone know if it is the case that Sony converts its own books (I assume from PDFs)?

If this was a paper copy I could easily return it, but it doesn't look like Sony is going to do anything about it. Although they will lose 5-600 $ worth of sales a year as a result.

[Mike L]

Regardless of who actually does the formatting and conversion, it is Sony that you must complain to. Your contract for the purchase of the product was with Sony, and they ought to make redress (such as a refund) for not providing good of merchantable quality.

That said, you're right to tell the publisher as well, as they have a vested interest in the the quality of the book. You're also right to spread the word among prospective purchases (such as the folk in this forum).

But it is Sony who must satisfy your complaint.

[Steven Lake]

I say the publishers are to blame in most cases. However, as a rule of thumb that is true in nearly any industry, if the store gets burned enough times, they will either force the company to fix their issue, or they will simply not carry their products. Many stores have a 3 strikes policy with products these days (well, 3 is an arbitrary number, but you get the idea) and it's making companies stand up and take notice. Many of the new items I've been buying lately have a "If you have a problem, call us first! Don't return to the store!" sticker on them with a tech support number. And they're pretty snappy about getting stuff fixed so they don't get blacklisted by the store. If we return enough bad ebooks to the ebook stores, they'll start doing the same thing to the publishers, forcing them to snap to and fix the issues.

[JeremyR]

To me this is the real problem with e-reading. And instead of working to fix it, everyone seems bent on delivering a better e-reader. But without properly done books, what's the point?

But then again, I guess as long as Stieg Larrson, Dan Brown, Stephen King, and whatever Oprah is pushing that month are halfway decent, no one will care because bestsellers are probably responsible for 90% of sales.

It's just going to drive people to other channels though. Every single book I've bought so far (admittedly, only 4) had formatting problems, or lacked a proper TOC and chapters. So I had to do them myself.

If I have to spend 20-30 minutes re-formatting a book, why should I buy them? I want to support the author, but at the same time, if they are okay with selling a less than quality presentation of their works, then they are just as guilty as the publisher.

At least amazon lets you return books within a week.

[Hellmark]

It really depends on the source. Most of the time it is the publisher, but sometimes it is the store, or even the author.

Bad ebooks from places like Smashwords is the fault of the author. Most of the time it is the problem of the publisher. From what you describe, it is OCR problems, and to the best of my knowledge Sony doesn't scan the books themselves. The fault there lies with Oxford UP, or who ever they had do the scanning. Still, your only recourse is with Sony.

[ProfCrash]

Amazon will allow you to return a poorly formatted e-book.

[Luke King]

The worst formatted ebooks I've bought tend to be from the major publishers. Neil Gaiman's "The Graveyard Book" was appalling.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by bitemeok

I recently bought an Oxford UP history book, Albion's Seed from the Sony ebook store. The epub file I received was garbled, filled with typos, and in fact missing whole pages of text (I was able to compare my copy to the partial text available on Google books)--to the point of being unreadable.

I complained to Sony Ebook store almost 2 weeks ago and they haven't contacted me back and are still selling the book.

I also contacted the publisher and an email exchange with an editor there, who seemed better informed than the person I spoke to at Sony. She said she would pass the complaint onto the appropriate person but that it was Sony that was responsible for making the epub.

Does anyone know if it is the case that Sony converts its own books (I assume from PDFs)?

If this was a paper copy I could easily return it, but it doesn't look like Sony is going to do anything about it. Although they will lose 5-600 $ worth of sales a year as a result.

Last I heard from my own publishers, each retailer does its own conversion, usually from an RTF file, at least if it's straight text like a novel. What you describe sounds like it could be a bad conversion from a PDF, which is always a dicey proposition. Or maybe just a garbled source file.

One big problem in the system as it now exists is that there's no mechanism for copies to be sent to the publisher (or author) for checking. Amazon, Sony, Fictionwise, none of them make copies available for proofing. How stupid is that? Smashwords does it automatically. The only other retailer that let me download my own books without buying them was Baen Webscription (when I made a point of asking).

So the answer to whose fault it is may be both. And that might help to explain why these things don't get corrected faster.

[Mike L]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

I say the publishers are to blame in most cases.

The publisher might be to blame, but the questioner wanted to know who to seek redress from. The answer is the retailer. Your contract is with the retailer, not with anyone else.

[bitemeok]

Thanks for the replies.

I was curious about who was at fault as well as who to seek redress from. And I expect the book was from a PDF--it's an academic press and that's what they usually make available as ebooks.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

The last time I encountered similar problems from an ebook purchased from Barnes & Noble, I complained to B&N, as well as leaving a 1-star review that pointed out the bad condition of the ebook, and got a refund. (The book not only had horrible errors, and far too many of them, but it was missing the last page of its ending!)

I'd also contacted the author, who sent me the final text, and said he'd forward my complaint to the publisher. And I contacted the publisher--the one entity that should fix the issue--from whom I never heard a peep.

I'm just finishing another book by the same author and publisher (I bought them together), and which is turning out to be almost as bad as the last book. I'm about to do it all again.

[Blue Tyson]

If you bought it with a credit card, charge it back perhaps.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Blue Tyson

If you bought it with a credit card, charge it back perhaps.

Not a bad idea, if you can satisfy the CC company that the product was "defective." Might need to set a few precedents there...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

FYI: I just received a reply from author Jack McDevitt, relating the reply he received from Harper Collins when he forwarded my complaint to them. (It was about 2 of his books, both of which had egregious errors from unproofed OCR copy.)

They stated to Jack that "the process is farmed out," meaning, I suppose, the scan and OCR of older books into ebooks. Naturally they expressed regret to Jack, who assured me they are "uncomfortable when they hear from unhappy readers." (I guess they were so uncomfortable that they couldn't bring themselves to contact me directly...)

Jack's letter to me doesn't reveal anything about Harper Collins' plans to fix the problem. Do they even have plans to fix the problem? Only the shadow knows...

[tompe]

I suppose you could argue that it is the consumers that are partly responsible for shoddy ebooks. They buy them and also they are not willing to pay a price for an ebook so that publishers can afford to spend more money on producing them.