01-16-2013, 07:58 AM | #1 | |
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Reply from SFGateway about book quality
I mentioned a few days ago that I'd bought Harry Harrison's "Skyfall" (a book published by SF Gateway) and been very disappointed with the quality, and that I'd written to the publisher. I've received a very detailed reply from them this morning, which gives me hope for the future. Part of that reply I've quoted below:
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01-16-2013, 08:09 AM | #2 | |
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01-16-2013, 10:20 AM | #3 |
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It is great seeing a publisher who will not only admit mistakes but tale steps to rectify them. Other Publishing Houses should take note and institute similar practices. They might just find sales increasing.
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01-16-2013, 12:41 PM | #4 |
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Of course, even 99.995% accuracy is still one OCR error every 20,000 characters or so, or 1 every 4,000 words, or 20 in a small novel, and 40 in a long one.
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01-16-2013, 12:46 PM | #5 |
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True, but in fairness there has to be a reasonable balance between accuracy and price. SF Gateway are making out-of-print works, which are not available in electronic form, available at sensible prices (mostly £2.99 or £4.99), so to expect perfection is perhaps unrealistic. I have no particular issue with an error every 4000 words at those prices. It's when there are errors on every page, as with "Skyfall", that I'm moved to write to the publisher to express my displeasure.
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01-16-2013, 01:04 PM | #6 | |
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01-16-2013, 05:05 PM | #7 |
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I had the same problem with a Stainless Steel Rat title last year. They pulled it from sale and fixed it but, from memory, it took about 6 months! I hope they have improved their speed since then. However, still promising that they responded to my complaint and did eventually get it right.
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01-16-2013, 11:27 PM | #8 |
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Good to see that. I bought a few Gateway books before Christmas. The only one I have read yet is "In the Ocean of the Night" by Gregory Benford and was horrified by all the errors. I kept notes on the problems and planned to fix them, but I haven't been able to find my paperback copy. Maybe I'll wait. Or maybe I should send them the fixed copy.
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01-17-2013, 02:38 AM | #9 |
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I have way too many books from them, and I've read five or so. Only one was really bad (Way Station by Clifford Simak) and I reported that back to them. They seemed to think they had already fixed it but for some reason I didn't get the updated version from Kobo. I have no idea if that's true. I tried grabbing the kindle sample, but the first really mangled sentence is just after the end. I did manage to read the book, and I haven't checked it again recently.
If it's not cost-effective to proof all these books properly, I think I'd still rather have them available than not, but it would be way better if they could be crowd-proofed. |
01-17-2013, 11:31 AM | #10 |
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Don't know if it's true either, but when a publisher updates a book with Kobo they aren't automatically updated for past purchasers in my experience.
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01-17-2013, 07:32 PM | #11 |
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I suspect that if Kobo update the kepub version, it will only get sent to your device if you do something that triggers this. Such as reset the device and then redownloading all books. Or you can delete it on the device, and then go to the web site and bookmark it. That will trigger a download the next time you do a sync.
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01-17-2013, 08:44 PM | #12 | |
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01-17-2013, 09:30 PM | #13 |
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01-17-2013, 09:50 PM | #14 |
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I went through this with them on six or seven books a year ago. The publisher sent them updated files, but I kept getting the same books with errors I had originally gotten. It wasn't until many conversations with CS that I found out they had to push the updates to my account before my downloads would change to the updated files.
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01-17-2013, 10:18 PM | #15 | |
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