Quote:
Originally Posted by ATDrake
Apparently no one bothers with pre-release quality control checking any more. But, we are offered their ill-made goods free for a limited time.
Two steps forward, one step back.
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I'd definitely agree on the former. And I suspect that for free, perhaps the people would not have been quite as upset to discover that they had the back half of a different book (especially if it was then corrected).
On Hour of the Hunter, there were typos and it was a bit annoying, but not as big a deal as was made of it by some readers (I've seen much, much worse; some of it so bad that I returned the book as unreadable). Auto-spell checkers should be banned at publishing houses - and anything OCR'd should be read by a native English reader (or the native language of the book), one who has either a degree in literature, a few years of honors lit in school or some other proof of being able to tell when an incorrect word has been substituted. The type that is annoyed by reading incorrect grammar and who is slowed and will notice errors (just the type that used to be employed as a proofreader in the past, perhaps, although not one that will feel compelled to mark up the text too much, as they will then have to be promoted to assistant editor, instead -- or offer their services, for a fee, to the self-published authors out there that truly want to sell a better product, eventually forming defacto e-publishing brands of their own).