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Originally Posted by ahi
I keep hearing anecdotes like this on mobileread... but to date I have yet to come across a single non-vanity-published paper book that has the sort of errors seemingly every eBook I've read contains.
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Where do the ebooks come from?
If you are talking about Amazon Kindle editions, those are often produced from OCRed scans of pbooks, because an electronic version of the manuscript doesn't exist. They don't seem to bother to proofread those.
Things like Project Gutenberg etexts will vary depending upon when they entered PG. These days, Distributed Proofreaders is the main feed, and generally passes on quality output. Prior to DP, you were at the mercy of whatever enthusiast produced the PG edition. (Ask HarryT about the state of the PG Charles Dickens volumes he's been turning into ebooks for distribution on MobileRead. Most date from before DP, and he's done enormous amounts of proofreading and edits on his versions. At this point, I suspect his ebook editions should be considered definitive.)
For others, the ebook should be produced from the same manuscript that becomes the base for the printed edition.
I've seen one ebook from a trade publisher that made me stop in my tracks. A Baen ebook edition of one of John Ringo's books had a fair number of typos and John's notes to himself and his editor. A query to John got the answer I suspected was the case: they needed to include it an a CD that would be bound into an upcoming hardcover, and there wasn't time to include the fully copy edited and proofread version. What they issued was an Advance Reading Copy (essentially an uncorrected galley proof), because it was what they had available when they had to go to production.
I didn't mind, and was actually fascinated by the insights into the process provided by things like John's "marginal notes", but it was the first time I'd seen that level of errors on a Baen ebook. Generally speaking, they are clean and relatively typo free.
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Dennis