So,do you completely read the books you convert?

[ProDigit]

When creating/converting an e-book to a mobile electronic format compatible with a reader, do you read the whole book, or not?

[Nate the great]

I feel slightly guilty for not reading every word before I upload an ebook. That's the main reason I rarely post anymore.

[vivaldirules]

I'd love to be able to catch and fix all possible errors before I upload a book. Unfortunately, the main reason that I convert them is so that I can read them on my Sony. So I usually only skim the text for obvious errors as I convert them. As I've now read most of the ones I've posted, I've been keeping notes of errors I've discovered that I intend to fix later and repost.

[Greg Anos]

Absolutely! I have to, in order to catch scanning errors not caught by the OCR process. Each scanner/OCR has its own quirks, Optoscan 3600/Finescanner 5.0 tend to convert "the" to "die", which passed spell checking but is still wrong. My attention span is not perfect, though, and I usually take 2 (or more) reading passes to get it right. (I read e-books nowadays with a pen and note pad at my side to write down errors to fix, even with commercial e-books!) -- RSE

[ProDigit]

I myself mainly skim through the text, and let the book run through some obvious macros that I develop while creating books.

Word's grammar and spellingcheck is all I give to the book, though generally I would read more than 60% skimming the book for errors.

[zelda_pinwheel]

that's the beauty of the eb1150 ; i can circle the errors on the touchscreen as i read and then go back and correct them later ; the search feature allows me to jump from markup to markup. very convenient.

[JSWolf]

I cannot answer the poll. The correct answer is missing. No, I don't read the eBooks I post here before I post them. I will someday read them all and then if I find any errors, I will correct them and post new versions. But for now, I don't really have the time to read before converting/posting. I'm looking for more good books to post.

[ProDigit]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I cannot answer the poll. The correct answer is missing. No, I don't read the eBooks I post here before I post them. I will someday read them all and then if I find any errors, I will correct them and post new versions. But for now, I don't really have the time to read before converting/posting. I'm looking for more good books to post.

So you're basically saying you just let a document go through a conversion and that's it?

[Patricia]

If I'm making a book from a scan then I have to read every word - usually several times - in order to catch the OCR errors and restore the formatting.

I'm less rigorous with books that I find in html or txt. But I do have to go through the text a couple of times in order to check that any verses, epigraphs or other special formatting is preserved. And I always run a spell-check. Unfortunately, errors still escape me sometimes.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ProDigit

When creating/converting an e-book to a mobile electronic format compatible with a reader, do you read the whole book, or not?

The poll does not contain an option for what I do, which is as follows:

I create the book, fix any obvious errors, and upload it.

When I then read it, I mark any errors that I come across and, when I've finished the book, correct them and upload a corrected version of the book.

For some books I go through a third stage, which is to do a careful comparison with a printed edition, and fix errors that show up that way (often a very large number - hundreds; sometimes thousands).

[Jellby]

Yes, with a couple of exceptions. I convert books I want to read, and I am a real nitpicker, so I take some time to carefully format the book, then I read it with pen and paper to take note of possible mistakes... if possible, I compare with a printed edition, or with scans available in the net[*]. Once I finish reading the book, I upload it and, of course, if I subsequently find any more problems I upload a corrected version.

[*]Sadly, I've found many recent editions of out-of-copyright books (as found in Google Books) are just the Project Gutenberg texts in paper form, so they keep the same mistakes, the formatting is often bad and conversion of curly quotes and apostrophes is automatic (which is even worse). The last example is Mark Twain's "The American Claimant", which I am currently reading, I had to download a scanned copy from the Internet Archive, because every other version I found was a pain to look at.

[mtravellerh]

It depends, really.

I skim only for books coming from the distributed proofreaders. I make a spellcheck on those and "fly" over them to identify the obvious errors. Later on I correct errors and update versions, if any.

For books like the Karl Mays or any books not coming from pgdp, I do proofread them while working on them.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Yes, with a couple of exceptions. I convert books I want to read, and I am a real nitpicker, so I take some time to carefully format the book, then I read it with pen and paper to take note of possible mistakes... if possible, I compare with a printed edition, or with scans available in the net[*]. Once I finish reading the book, I upload it and, of course, if I subsequently find any more problems I upload a corrected version.

[*]Sadly, I've found many recent editions of out-of-copyright books (as found in Google Books) are just the Project Gutenberg texts in paper form, so they keep the same mistakes, the formatting is often bad and conversion of curly quotes and apostrophes is automatic (which is even worse). The last example is Mark Twain's "The American Claimant", which I am currently reading, I had to download a scanned copy from the Internet Archive, because every other version I found was a pain to look at.

I found that the OCR'd texts from archive.org are really poorly done. I wonder what kind of software they use. Typing is sometimes faster than proofreading those,

[pdurrant]

It varies. In general, I read through before uploading. However, I didn't do this on the King James Bible - I just ensured that formatting was correct as far as I could.

But in general, I check before uploading, and if I can find two independent sources, I'll compare the two versions to catch differences before starting, and also check against the printed book, or scans of a printed version.

This probably explains why I don't upload very much.

Paul

Originally Posted by ProDigit

When creating/converting an e-book to a mobile electronic format compatible with a reader, do you read the whole book, or not?

[pshrynk]

Well, the one book I have uploaded I checked over several times as i wrote it. How does that count?

Actually, I just posted to subscribe to this thread.