Quote:
Originally Posted by europas_ice
Now, I read the first two books in paper format, and there was no problem with the editing at all. You'd think they'd just take the same version and ebook it, right? But somehow, in this electronic version, every "Mrs." or "Ms." is written as "Mr." How could they possibly get this wrong? You'd have to TRY to change all of those. It is quite confusing. The other problem is that spaces are frequently in the wrong place. For example, when someone asked if he could ask a question, the reply was, "As kit." AS KIT? You must be kidding. And this is the third or fourth time such a mistake has been made.
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Unfortunately, the manuscript used to the ebook might
not be the same one as used in the paper edition.
For instance, I have pretty much the entire Baen Free Library on my PDA, converted to Plucker from the HTML content. Most of them are fine. but one was amusing, complete with obvious typos, asides to the editor, and author's note to himself to go back and fix something.
A note to the author got forwarded to the person who did the CD from which the ebook copy was taken. He confirmed what I suspected: because of publication timing, the version included electronically on the CD was the manuscript for the ARC (Advanced Reading Copy) -- essentially uncorrected page proofs, and not final proofed copy. I have the same book in hardcover dead tree edition, and those errors are fixed in it.
Something like that may be happening with the electronic versions you have, though it's not clear whether Sony or the original publisher should get the blame. (I doubt Sony does proofing on the electronic manuscripts they get, but assumes the publisher of the paper edition did it.)
Incidentally, the late John Brunner told a story about about one of his SF books. He included stuff in it that was done deliberately, but he
knew some copy editor would want to "correct". So he went through the submission draft of his manuscript, circling all of the instances in question, and putting "STET!" in the margin.
Sure enough, when he got the galleys to proof,
every instance had been "corrected". Apparently, he got a copy editor who didn't know what STET! meant...
______
Dennis