Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Until very recently, no digital version of a book was retained by a publisher. Most backlist ebooks are produced by OCR from a paper version of the book.
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I was not aware of that.
I assumed, having no inside knowledge of the publishing industry, that in the past 10 years or more, all proofs, submissions and editing would have been done in digital editors for ease of correction, and that final proofs would have been retained as backup for future printing runs.
But if you are correct, then I can assure you, as an experienced proofreader for Distributed Proofreaders / Project Gutenberg, that OCR scans are notoriously prone to inaccuracies, especially when confronted by "altered" text forms such as boldface, italics, drop caps, etc., and irregular formatting tricks; hence it is no wonder that digitally captured printed text comes out as a butchered replica of the original. This speaks to the profit incentive of a hands-off rush to convert printed text for digital sales.