Quote:
Originally Posted by sabredog
I often wonder if publishers actually proof ebooks before they place them for sale.
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Not sure about current state of affairs but some years ago I actually had a job as a Latvian proofreader in the publishing house. The first rule in my job was that all proofreading is done on paper printouts only. The reason is very obvious – it is hard to read on the screen and you miss about 50% of mistakes when reading a text on the screen. You work with a red pen and another person enters all corrections into a file and he will miss about 1-2% corrections. Then it is double-checked and when all corrections are entered, the book is printed again for a second proofreading.
Such meticulous proofreading usually is not done for publications that are for web only. The readers don't notice most mistakes when reading on the screen anyway. It is not a big surprise that e-books didn't gain popularity until the appearance of e-ink technology. The quality of the screens simply wasn't good enough.
E-ink, although not as good as paper yet, however, is quite comfortable for eyes and readers start noticing typos they missed when reading on the computer. It makes impression that the quality is going down but probably such mistakes were there all along on the web but most people didn't care. If an e-book is proofread on the LCD screen, then a reader on an e-ink device is going to notice a lot of mistakes. iPad users will probably be less critical and like their books better.
My proposal is that publishers (companies or self-publishing authors) should proofread on an actual e-ink screen. Vendors could provide necessary tools and software to make it easier for proofreaders and discourage submitting ebook format before this step is duly completed.