Would you pay extra for a an error-free ebook?

[alanHd]

The biggest problem I have with this idea is, the price for crappy formatted books would stay as is and the price for decent formatted books would go up. Surely when we buy a book we pay for a certain level of accuracy, or should I rephrase that to expect.

[applesauce]

in a word no,, mistakes do not bother me at all. I think I get very involved in my reading, and I do pray everyday that GRMM lives to finish the books, but seriously there is a line were you need to step back and not see something personal in what you read. Nobody is attacking you with a spelling mistake or type, take a breath hehehe

applesauce

[danskmacabre]

When I pay for an ebook, I expect it to be error free.
I would never pay a premium for a guaranteed error free ebook as I would not want to encourage that behaviour.

[theducks]

Would you pay extra for a NEW car with mis-matched fenders? Bent wheels? Bubbles in the paint?
So why would you pay more for a e-book with more errors than its Hardbound cousin? You are paying nearly the same price for something the already tend to short you on the nice cover. An e-book error usually can be corrected in minutes...No plates to make. No Press run to schedule. And No Warehouse stock to replace.

No excuses, just Greed and laziness.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by theducks

Would you pay extra for a NEW car with mis-matched fenders? Bent wheels? Bubbles in the paint?
So why would you pay more for a e-book with more errors than its Hardbound cousin? You are paying nearly the same price for something the already tend to short you on the nice cover. An e-book error usually can be corrected in minutes...No plates to make. No Press run to schedule. And No Warehouse stock to replace.

No excuses, just Greed and laziness.

I must respectfully disagree, ducks. For backlist books where no electronic version exists there certainly is a choice to be made about what level of proofing to do after OCRing the book. More proofing = higher cost. For books with a relatively low anticipated sales volume, such as old "mid-list" SF, it's probably not economic to aim to produce a completely error-free book at a sensible price. It's a matter of finding the optimal balance between quality and price. Too many errors and you'll annoy the reader; too high a price and the potential reader won't buy it in the first place. I can live with an error every 10 pages, say. I can't with live an error on every page.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I must respectfully disagree, ducks. For backlist books where no electronic version exists there certainly is a choice to be made about what level of proofing to do after OCRing the book. More proofing = higher cost. For books with a relatively low anticipated sales volume, such as old "mid-list" SF, it's probably not economic to aim to produce a completely error-free book at a sensible price. It's a matter of finding the optimal balance between quality and price. Too many errors and you'll annoy the reader; too high a price and the potential reader won't buy it in the first place. I can live with an error every 10 pages, say. I can't with live an error on every page.

My error tolerance is higher than yours, and probably I don't pick out the grammar mistakes as well as you do

I read as many, probably a lot more, backlist books as I do newly published and I find that the quality has gone up considerably. I notice no errors, or a trivial amount of errors, at all in most of them.

Still the publishers should, and my opinion is that most of them do, put out a comparable product to the paper books they sell. If they can't get it proofread, they should not publish until they can, backlist or not.



Helen

[theducks]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I must respectfully disagree, ducks. For backlist books where no electronic version exists there certainly is a choice to be made about what level of proofing to do after OCRing the book. More proofing = higher cost. For books with a relatively low anticipated sales volume, such as old "mid-list" SF, it's probably not economic to aim to produce a completely error-free book at a sensible price. It's a matter of finding the optimal balance between quality and price. Too many errors and you'll annoy the reader; too high a price and the potential reader won't buy it in the first place. I can live with an error every 10 pages, say. I can't with live an error on every page.

Harry,
Maybe I needed to be clearer. I expect the e-version to be of the same quality as the original. I am not speaking of improving the quality of the prose
PG seems to manage quite well in this respect.
Like Speakingtohe, I can tolerate minor errors. But I don't consider blocks of missing/garbled/mis-ordered text, minor.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by theducks

Harry,
Maybe I needed to be clearer. I expect the e-version to be of the same quality as the original. I am not speaking of improving the quality of the prose

Neither am I. I'm talking about the process of creating an ebook via OCR where no electronic original exists. That process is inevitably going to introduce errors; the question is how much money it's sensible to spend to fix them. If you want an ebook that's identical to the original paper book, free from all OCR errors, you're going to have to pay a lot of money to get that.

[MikeB1972]

SF Gateway would never have released the amount of backlist titles that they had if they had to fix all OCR errors (and the first lot they released were bloody awful, but they have gotten better since then), on the plus side they release them fairly cheap.

The other side would be Anne McCaffreys backlist appearing not long ago, as they cost more than most new paperback releases I would expect those to be completely error free.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

SF Gateway would never have released the amount of backlist titles that they had if they had to fix all OCR errors (and the first lot they released were bloody awful, but they have gotten better since then), on the plus side they release them fairly cheap.

Yes, it was actually SF Gateway that I had in mind. They do have a proofing process, but not one which claims to catch 100% of errors. But it has got a heck of a lot better over the last year. The level of errors in their recent releases has been very acceptable.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Neither am I. I'm talking about the process of creating an ebook via OCR where no electronic original exists. That process is inevitably going to introduce errors; the question is how much money it's sensible to spend to fix them. If you want an ebook that's identical to the original paper book, free from all OCR errors, you're going to have to pay a lot of money to get that.

Well, not if you get the pdf files of the scan. Maybe that would be a good method. When you buy a cheaply produced backlist book you get both the pdf files and the OCRed version.

Concerning the question in this thread. Why not ask "Would you pay less for a book with more errors in it?"?

[priyas]

i haven't seen ebooks with lot of errors from big publishing house..... infact many ebook development companies have a separate proof reading department. so that book can be made error free