[EbookNovice]

Originally Posted by mrmikel

You can compare your digital copies to what is shown by looking up the book in Google books.

What's the fastest way to do this?

Originally Posted by forcheville

I think there is a very legitimate problem behind this arising out of the fact that it is very much easier to alter the content of an ebook than of a paper book.
If the book has intact DRM then the issue become that of trusting the source, e.g. Amazon, and although they may have shown themselves less than perfect at times, at least you know what you are dealing with.

Right.

Originally Posted by Victoria

This search for certainty in the written word is a longstanding issue - not something newly introduced with ebooks.

For example, look at the history of the Christian bible: no originals from the Hebrew bible - just translations of translations; transcription errors crept in through hand-copying over the centuries; disagreement over critical word choices in modern translations due to differing theological and political perspectives of the scholars; the 1&2 century had a different understanding of 'author' from today, so that works were attributed to Paul and others, though written after their deaths, etc.

Social media / 'global village' now allows readers to brush elbows with authors. JK Rowling says she made a mistake with Ron and Hermione - too much information! What are we supposed to do with revelations from authors, rewrite the books in our head?

I think the OP is correct that ebooks introduce another avenue for change creeping into the written word. It would be very easy for an author to slip in a word change here and there to address criticisms in reviews, when correcting 'typos' and misspellings. Figuring out what is 'canon' is important, but it's not new, and it there will always be some degree of uncertainty.

So I should be uncertain of just about every e-book I read?

Originally Posted by avantman42

If it's a best-seller, maybe. If it's not a best-seller, it's significantly less likely. The internet doesn't mean that more people will read a given book, it just makes it easier for them to tell each other about it.

I'm concerned with e-books that are sold on a very small scale.

Originally Posted by Victoria

Yes absolutely, I agree it's far harder for changes to go unnoticed and reported.

But if someone is searching for certainty - the canon - in some situations it is substituting one problem for another. What if it's the author that makes the change from one version to the next? What weight should be given to that?

Another example is via movie and tv 'tie in' books that are popular now. I've started reading Star Trek books, and I feel a bit uncertain when the author goes in a different direction than the tv series, or kills off a main character - do I accept that?

Should I give it more weight to the books, if the author worked on the original tv series? Or should I just treat the earlier tv shows as the official canon?

I know Star Trek is trivial compared to Karl Marx - but what if someone dedicates their lives to his vision, and then Marx's diary is found, and his thinking evolved in a different direction? Or he wrote a revision, but was he killed and it was suppressed before he could publish it?

It's very important to try to nail down the canon, but there is often level of uncertainty.

Good points!