Quote:
Originally Posted by scubayak
There is a false alternative being described by some here, as if the only two options are perfection and the situation we have now. While it is true that professional proofreading to eliminate nearly every typo is virtually a lost art, the errors I see in ebooks are not due to a failure to proofread but simply a failure to read at all. I have seen ebooks with as many as 200 typos and commonly see them with about 50. Most of them are egregious and easy to spot. In fact, all it would take to eliminate 90% of the typos I see in ebooks is to have someone, anyone, read the book on a Kindle or Nook before release; not proofread it, just read it. Or, for crying out loud, at least run it through a spellchecker, which would catch some of them.
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You know, for popular authors this would be insanely easy to do. Video games have lists of people in line to be beta players. How hard would it be to get people to do that for books? Sure you'd have some spoilers creeping out, but you'd also get cleaner books for minimal costs.
Movie studios do this. They don't pay test markets to go see movies and let them know what needed work. Why not have test readers?