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AnemicOak · 08-07-2018, 11:43 PM

The book in question in the OP came out in hardcover in 2000 and paperback in 2002. Each of those releases would have had a press ready PDF generated at the end of the process and if the publisher had any kind of electronic file to start with for the ebook (done in 2007, at least I can't find that it had been an ebook release in the earlier days) it would have been one or both of those (they didn't keep something like a Word file with all of the books final edits stored somewhere). Big if though. Publishers didn't see the value of keeping electronic files around, etc. until ebooks started getting popular so for a lot of books they simply weren't available. Provided a PDF was available during the big 2006ish-2009ish push to get everything they could (had rights to) out on Kindle/eBook they would have tried to either convert it or OCR the PDF which back then & sometimes even now would often produce questionable results. More likely is that they farmed out a scan/OCR of a paper copy.

If I had to guess, this book was part of the initial rush/push to get everything the publisher could out for Kindle as fast as they could while a lot of people were buying everything they could get as soon as their favorite authors backlists were available. Unless there have been a lot of complaints about the title then I doubt the publisher has touched it since.

Should it have been physically proofread? Absolutely, they would have given that much attention to a new printing of a paperback edition if it was being typeset again so should give the ebook they're charging as much or more for as much attention. I guess it's not too surprising that it wasn't, given the speed they were trying to push backlist titles through the pipeline without much idea how well some of these backlist titles might sell (some of these backlist titles sell in the 10's, not 100's or 1,000's). I know I've complained about titles in the past and sometimes if lucky the publisher has actually fixed them, but other times it seems to fall on deaf ears. I found emailing the head of the imprint got me more/better response then the publishers customer service.

08-07-2018, 11:43 PM	#32
AnemicOak Bookaholic Posts: 14,391 Karma: 54969924 Join Date: Oct 2007 Location: Minnesota Device: iPad Mini 4, AuraHD, iPhone XR +	The book in question in the OP came out in hardcover in 2000 and paperback in 2002. Each of those releases would have had a press ready PDF generated at the end of the process and if the publisher had any kind of electronic file to start with for the ebook (done in 2007, at least I can't find that it had been an ebook release in the earlier days) it would have been one or both of those (they didn't keep something like a Word file with all of the books final edits stored somewhere). Big if though. Publishers didn't see the value of keeping electronic files around, etc. until ebooks started getting popular so for a lot of books they simply weren't available. Provided a PDF was available during the big 2006ish-2009ish push to get everything they could (had rights to) out on Kindle/eBook they would have tried to either convert it or OCR the PDF which back then & sometimes even now would often produce questionable results. More likely is that they farmed out a scan/OCR of a paper copy. If I had to guess, this book was part of the initial rush/push to get everything the publisher could out for Kindle as fast as they could while a lot of people were buying everything they could get as soon as their favorite authors backlists were available. Unless there have been a lot of complaints about the title then I doubt the publisher has touched it since. Should it have been physically proofread? Absolutely, they would have given that much attention to a new printing of a paperback edition if it was being typeset again so should give the ebook they're charging as much or more for as much attention. I guess it's not too surprising that it wasn't, given the speed they were trying to push backlist titles through the pipeline without much idea how well some of these backlist titles might sell (some of these backlist titles sell in the 10's, not 100's or 1,000's). I know I've complained about titles in the past and sometimes if lucky the publisher has actually fixed them, but other times it seems to fall on deaf ears. I found emailing the head of the imprint got me more/better response then the publishers customer service.