Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
But the problem is that sometimes we do get errors in eBooks that are not in the pBook version(s).
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So? I mean, really, so? I can pull out any, and I mean, ANY, NYTimes Bestselling novel I have on my shelves, in DT, and find typos.
What I'm referring to, in my previous, is exactly what you're displaying now, Wolf; being
incensed, or
indignant over an error in an eBook. This clearly gets up your nose, and badly. So it has an error? So it has 10 errors, in 80K words? So somebody made a finger error in converting the book, somehow.
I don't understand why the "usual errors" are
so much more egregious than those in print. It's an "entitled" viewpoint. Because people here know how to fix ePUBs, they think that any publisher can just sit at their computer, yank up Sigil and fix the book, voila! Well, most can't. Most have an investment in printing technology, not ebook technology. They pay companies like mine to make their ebooks, OR companies in India or what-have-you. They pay line editors, in either instance.
Regardless, in the real world--not the "everybody donates their time to make their own ebook collections, or donates time to make PD books available on PG and MR world"--it costs real money to make those edits. And not $5, either. At my shop, we have a minimum charge, once a book's been finalized and delivered in both formats, of $50 to go back and redo it, whether it's one edit or 50. By the time we get the email, answer the email, tell them to send the proof sheet (because they always want to free-form the edits in an email, which is haphazard at best), set up the project, assign a person/crew, find the book in archives, yaddayaddayadda, it's 30-45 minutes before someone can even
start making the changes, and that's optimistic. Realistically, it's an hour, and THEN the Crew's time. I'm
cheap, compared to most shops, mind you.
So, expecting a publisher to drop everything and make edits
right now is just unrealistic, and frankly, to me, it seems like more of the "entitlement" mentality--that just because it's digital, it should be fixed right this second and you are
entitled to this alleged perfect copy. We have novels and other books in here that get copy-edited by the publisher 5, 6, 7 times. And I will guarantee that they still have errors. I'm not talking
conversion errors--I'm talking the perfectly normal, usual, human typos and grammar errors.
I've been at this a while; we turn out very good books, but as both a producer AND a consumer of ebooks, this obsession over ebook errors seems disproportionate. Yes, if someone does a crappy conversion job, or does a lousy scan (or convo from PDF), and the result is error-ridden, like Diap's discussion, that's ridiculous, and the book should be returned, and the publisher informed as to why. But the odd error? Even 10 or 20 in a normal-sized novel? It doesn't make me crazy when I buy books from Random House, etc., and see that. I mark them--but I don't go nuts. More than 20 would start to irritate me, but, folks, PEOPLE make eBooks, just like PEOPLE line-edit, proofread, etc. Send the publisher the list, and then forget about it.
Hitch