Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
Well, I suppose someone could write ebook reading software (even for mobi devices) that would allow such editing on-the-fly.
But I can't see anyone actually doing it.
What would be good would be a mechanism (in the Kindle software) to report errors easily back to the publisher anonymously.
Amazon could easily do this. Publishers wishing to join could provide Amazon with a 'typos' email address, and any reported typos could be automatically sent to the publisher with the exact location of the error.
I would use it! Reporting typos to publishers is a tedious process. To be able to do it quickly and while reading would be splendid. And then if I ever re-read the book, the publisher will have (I hope) issued an update from the crowd-source proof-reading.
But I don't see that happening either, although it would be almost trivial for Amazon to implement.
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Oh, PLEASE, please, please, do not suggest that to Amazon, or even promote it as a good idea.
Nothing against you, my friend; I'm sure your edits would be great. But as someone who often receives these little
billet-doux from (authors who have received them from) Amazon, please don't encourage this. I can't tell you what it's like to get notices from Amazon to fix two "typos" (one a British usage, BTW), in a 226K-word book. Or, to make changes because ONE letter is missing from a backlist book of 140K words, that was scanned and OCR'ed.
I've ranted about this, privately, to Amazon, because it's the worst possible scenario--the dreadful books, those that are unreadable, receive
no notices, no edits at all. Why? Because
nobody reads them, thus the reading public doesn't submit errors, and Amazon doesn't (essentially) forward them. The amazing irony of the situation is that it's the popular books, the
best books--the books that were edited in the first place, carefully constructed, formatted, etc.--that get read, and thus get these "helpful hints" from readers.
So, the books that need it the most, don't get it at all, and the books that need it the least, do. Authors feel compelled to make the edits "right away," and so end up remaking books more than once a year. And I'd point out: this never would have happened a mere 10 years ago; hell, not even five. The "immediacy" and instant gratification of the digital age seem to imply that authors and publishers need to make those edits right away. Ten years ago, publishers would have taken any letters that they'd received about typos, stuck it in a file, and made the edits--if ever--when a second edition was published. Not even a second print run.
While I see the advantages, to some publishers, of essentially 'crowd-sourcing' the proof-reading for a book, the change in the publishing world about "instantly fixing typos" seems to me to be absurd, for, as I say, merely a decade ago nobody would have had their knickers in a twist about a few typos in a book. Now readers submit them as
if they are the beta readers or proofreading personnel for a publisher--
not the consumers. It's a paradigm shift, and I'm not sure it's a good one.
It's contributing to new phenomena in which
the book is never done. We see books being updated, re-uploaded, authors imploring Amazon to send notices to the people who've already bought them--it's contributing to an environment
in which Indy authors, particularly, have begun to think of Amazon as their critique group; that it's okay to put up a book that's not "really" done. It's not serving either the authors or the buyers/readers well.
I can see the point in sending notices to Amazon about a book that's rife with errors. But the types of notices we see, at least, are as I described above--1 or 2 errors in books of over 140-220K words. It's ridiculous. And as I said, I think it's contributing to a mindset that isn't serving either side of the equation very well, because when a reader buys a book, s/he should not be expected to contribute to the perfection of the book; it should be a complete work. That's what we thought ten years ago, and it's what we should think now. Amazon and Nook, Kobo, Diesel, et al,
should not be Wattpad, and when an author/publisher puts a book up for sale, it should be polished, complete, and
DONE.
That's my $.02.
Hitch