Readers. At which moment would you inform authors that you spotted typos?

[Nyssa]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

No, which made me send a second letter, this time an application as office manager because I assumed my letter and the book must have been lost

No answer once more.

That's a shame, but, I still think it was cool that you let the publisher know.

[L.J. Sellers]

This is an interesting discussion. As I author and editor, I can assure that editing good fiction is challenging. Even my books published by a traditional press have more errors than I'm comfortable with. Now as an indie author, it's difficult to find an editor who will read through a manuscript more than once for a reasonable price. My editors and proofreaders also tell me that they get so caught up in my stories, they forget to look for typos. It's frustrating, but I keep trying to get it right.
L.J.

[Poppaea]

At the time I was outraged it was back in 1997 or so and I paid 48 DM (in todays money about 35$) for the book which was tremendously expensive. And then it was just all crap. Even the story had holes. It was quite clear no one ever had read the entire manuscript. It was the last time I bought a book from this publisher.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by mldavis2

I'm not sure how long Project Gutenberg has had their 5-tier proof-reading and formatting levels

That's not PG, but Distributed Proofreaders. They are separate entities, although there is some communication between them. All DP products are published in PG, but PG also publishes other works created by individuals. I don't know how much of PG comes from DP, but it's not 100%.

And of course, the most popular works in PG are usually the oldest, created before DP even existed.

[Assassin]

There are two sides to this issue.
First is the author, I want to assist them but to what extent. If the errors are minor and few I let them pass, but if serious and the story is affected I'm upset and want them to make changes for future readers.
Second are future readers, they deserve to be aware of my reaction and opinion of the quality of the book. I don't see anything wrong with mentioning the editing in a review if it is not overdone.
My personal experience is that reader reviews are almost nonexistent. I wish more readers would take the time and effort to post reviews to provide feed back as to what they like or don't like. I recently had over seven hundred downloads on a book and have seen only two reviews.

[CallOfCth'reader]

Originally Posted by Angst

It is so bad, I started my own conspiracy theory that publishers are deliberately introducing random unique errors into each individual ebook copy so they can track who uploaded a particular ebook, with a unique error, to the darknet.

You know, for some strange reason, it never occurred to me that someone would upload a book that they paid for. I just assumed that the darknet books were rough OCR jobs, with the occasional gem from someone who'd put a lot of effort into what they were doing (such as the Harry Potter books that I don't have).

[Russell Brooks]

Originally Posted by THE TERMINATOR

Define "Typo"? Do you mean misspelled words, or double spaces in the wrong spot and things like that. The most misspelled words I've encountered in a E-book is at most 5, but double spaces where they shouldn't be, that was very common in the last book I read "The Partner" by John Grisham. But I really don't mind the spaces thing you just read over it.

Misspelled words or accidental repeated words. Or even basic problems with punctuation, to go further.

[Russell Brooks]

Originally Posted by L.J. Sellers

This is an interesting discussion. As I author and editor, I can assure that editing good fiction is challenging. Even my books published by a traditional press have more errors than I'm comfortable with. Now as an indie author, it's difficult to find an editor who will read through a manuscript more than once for a reasonable price. My editors and proofreaders also tell me that they get so caught up in my stories, they forget to look for typos. It's frustrating, but I keep trying to get it right.
L.J.

NO WAY! Not you too! I once had an editor that I paid quite a lot of money and although the editor found some general problems with italics and one or two problems with sentence structure, over 70% of the novel had numerous spelling errors, ones that should've been caught easily. That relationship was short-lived. And oh yes, LJ. I never have the same editor read my work twice. Someone that's familiar with the plot will tend to skip over mistakes.

[Russell Brooks]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

At the time I was outraged it was back in 1997 or so and I paid 48 DM (in todays money about 35$) for the book which was tremendously expensive. And then it was just all crap. Even the story had holes. It was quite clear no one ever had read the entire manuscript. It was the last time I bought a book from this publisher.

I might not have bought another book again from this author.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Russell Brooks

NO WAY! Not you too! I once had an editor that I paid quite a lot of money and although the editor found some general problems with italics and one or two problems with sentence structure, over 70% of the novel had numerous spelling errors, ones that should've been caught easily. That relationship was short-lived. And oh yes, LJ. I never have the same editor read my work twice. Someone that's familiar with the plot will tend to skip over mistakes.

Which is exactly why authors should not attempt to edit or proof their own work.

[Russell Brooks]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Which is exactly why authors should not attempt to edit or proof their own work.

I couldn't agree with you more.

[Poppaea]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

At the time I was outraged it was back in 1997 or so and I paid 48 DM (in todays money about 35$) for the book which was tremendously expensive. And then it was just all crap. Even the story had holes. It was quite clear no one ever had read the entire manuscript. It was the last time I bought a book from this publisher.

Originally Posted by Russell Brooks

I might not have bought another book again from this reader.

Sorry, I don't understand. I was the reader and I refused to buy another book by this publisher as it is the publishers fault to throw unedited books on the market.

What/Whom do you mean when you say reader?

[Russell Brooks]

Originally Posted by Poppaea

Sorry, I don't understand. I was the reader and I refused to buy another book by this publisher as it is the publishers fault to throw unedited books on the market.

What/Whom do you mean when you say reader?

Sorry. I meant to write author, not reader.

[shanghaichica]

Over 50.

[zespectre]

My worst frustration with this sort of thing comes from the occasional technical reference where words are just missing. Interestingly when I've pointed typos and errors out to Novel publishers they seems to take it very seriously. Tech reference people not so much (how backwards is that?)

I find it funny that so far the Novel/book industry is taking the "high tech" ereader business more seriously than the technical reference book people.