Sorry Kindle, You're Not Invited

[John the Miner]

... and I diced the ECO e-reader, by the way. The first one I got refused to start up after a week or ten days; the replacement refused to shut down after a day.
Maybe I was particularly unlucky, or maybe it was the construction standards and quality control on the Chinese sweatshop production line.
Now I'm running a Laser e-book reader/media player which (so far) is working well.

[Barbara1955]

Amazon fixes their mistakes! All you have to do is report them to CS! I have run into tons of Mistakes in the Printed books! There no fixing them! OK Maybe by 2nd ed they are fixed.... Tho I have read PB 10th printings with mistakes. Sooo your point is....

[John the Miner]

My point is that the proofreading trade, these days, is a lost art which disappeared when newspapers dispensed with proofreaders.
When old-fashioned paper books which were out of copyright became available on the net as ebooks, scanned directly by OCR technology into electronic files which were then able to be downloaded by anyone who wanted them, the need for careful checking of the words disappeared just as surely as the old-time "correctors of the press" did.
The results of that decision are plain to see in newspapers and in the etexts.
There is no doubt that Project Gutenberg has all the best warm and fuzzy feelings in bringing electronic texts to the masses in the easiest, cost-free way, but I think its means of doing this are fraught with danger when they farm out texts to what they call "distributed proofreaders" to check the manuscripts they distribute. I wonder just how many of these DPs are trained proofreaders and editors?
How many of the members of the team would be able to pick up style differences between page 3 (let's say) of an ms and page 279 (let's say) of the same ms if they were just given odd chunks of it which didn't include those pages to read?
How many buyers of electronic books can spot the differences when they read the ms? And how many take the time to point out those literals to the owners of the sites?
And how many times are those mistakes corrected?

[Barbara1955]

With Amazon/Kindle the mistakes are being pointed out & corrected even the Free eBooks! I sure there are people in other parts of this forum that could help you. Not sure this is the right thread. Are you getting a lot of messed up eBooks thru your Library? IF so I would report them to the Library.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=215
This is link for General Posts... Start a Topic there about you conserns I sure you will get a better response!

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by John the Miner

OK, all you book lovers in Mobile Read land (and speaking in particular about all the mistakes that stand out like dogs' whatnames on display in the ebooks available), what would you rather have: a book proofread properly by a human or one that's been scanned by an OCR?
Do those jarring literals in the text make your hair stand on end or do you (a) ignore them, (b) not worry about them, (c) fail to see them or (d) simply shrug and accept them as the price you have to pay for living in this electronic world?

Originally Posted by Katie1

With Amazon/Kindle the mistakes are being pointed out & corrected even the Free eBooks! I sure there are people in other parts of this forum that could help you. Not sure this is the right thread. Are you getting a lot of messed up eBooks thru your Library? IF so I would report them to the Library.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=215
This is link for General Posts... Start a Topic there about you conserns I sure you will get a better response!

I too am not sure why you put this in this thread. you have valid points, but a wrong location

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by GoSharks

That would be a lot easier if you learned how to use that multi-quote button, but that's been discussed already...... yawn...

Your just too lazy to go look up what I posted. Sorry, it's not a multi-quote issue. It's pure laziness.

I have asked if we can have proper quoting implemented here and so far, it's not happened. If we did, we would not really need multi-quote at all.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by khalleron

For those of you questioning why most ebook readers went to epub instead of mobi - it's because Amazon, the owner of mobi, would not allow any dedicated readers to support both DRM-mobi and any other DRM format.

They can support any number of DRM formats if they use epub - they can only support DRM-mobi if they choose to support mobi.

If you were an e-reader manufacturer, what would you do?

The history goes like this.. Sony had support for BBeB (LRF & LRX) and wanted to add Mobipocket to their Reader. But because Sony had support for DRMed BBeB, Mobipocket said they had to either remove it or no deal and it was no deal. Then Sony worked with Adobe and added in ADE. After that, ADE blossomed for it was then used in other readers as well. So really, we have Mobipocket to thank for ePub becoming the #1 eBook format.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

In exactly the same way that you can read Kindle books on the Sony/Nook/Kobo!!!!

No, not exactly the same way. Library eBooks are not the same as eBooks you purchased. There may or may not be a restriction on stripping/converting purchased content, but library eBooks stripping/converting may possibly not be legal.

Remember, library eBooks are not yours. They are borrowed.

[John the Miner]

Well, Katie1, going on your erudite replies, I think the mistakes you find in the ebooks must be absolute glaring wonders ... which emphasises my original point: that because language standards have fallen alarmingly these days, proofreading standards have followed.
It's much cheaper to employ a machine or a software program than a person.
Run this through your spellchecker:

Mount Everest is 3.722 metres high

and see what it tells you.
I don't subscribe to any library, so I can't/don't report any mistakes I find to anybody. I don't think they'd listen too much, anyway.
I find the old-fashioned proofreading I do keeps me busy enough to ensure that my electronic reading is kept to a minimum, although I must admit that any ebooks I do read give me a wonderful amount of proofreading practice (that's the un-American way of spelling it, by the way).
End of discussion.

[ArmorDog]

Originally Posted by John the Miner

How many of the members of the team would be able to pick up style differences between page 3 (let's say) of an ms and page 279 (let's say) of the same ms if they were just given odd chunks of it which didn't include those pages to read?

Just to be difficult:
If the ms didn't include either page, would anyone be able to pick out stylistic differences?

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by John the Miner

Well, Katie1, going on your... (snip)

I find this post very upsetting. And that's the most I can say without getting myself in trouble.

This was an entertaining thread until now.

[John the Miner]

Probably not, but a decent proofreader charged with the whole job would; an alert ebook reader should.
In my last foray into the wonderful world of ebook reading, the main character had a dog named Fogerty; a few pages along, his dog was called Fogarty.
I guess OCR readers wouldn't have a hope of catching that.

[ArmorDog]

Originally Posted by John the Miner

Well, Katie1, going on your erudite replies, I think the mistakes you find in the ebooks must be absolute glaring wonders ... which emphasises my original point: that because language standards have fallen alarmingly these days, proofreading standards have followed.
It's much cheaper to employ a machine or a software program than a person.
Run this through your spellchecker:

Mount Everest is 3.722 metres high

and see what it tells you.
I don't subscribe to any library, so I can't/don't report any mistakes I find to anybody. I don't think they'd listen too much, anyway.
I find the old-fashioned proofreading I do keeps me busy enough to ensure that my electronic reading is kept to a minimum, although I must admit that any ebooks I do read give me a wonderful amount of proofreading practice (that's the un-American way of spelling it, by the way).
End of discussion.

I picture you as a gigantic baby in Strunk & White pyjamas. (That's the un-American way of spelling it, by the way.)

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by John the Miner

Probably not, but a decent proofreader charged with the whole job would; an alert ebook reader should.
In my last foray into the wonderful world of ebook reading, the main character had a dog named Fogerty; a few pages along, his dog was called Fogarty.
I guess OCR readers wouldn't have a hope of catching that.

again, WHY this thread? there are several others much more appropriate for this conversation, or start your own thread

[Barbara1955]

John Do the world a Favor GET A LIFE beyond READING!