Some perspective on why ebooks are so filled with errors.

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by Hitch

If I may--the reason that some of you are struggling with "how easy" it would be to single-source this (go from final "print" source to epub to mobi, etc.) is because, quite bluntly, you don't do this for a living, and thus, don't know what really happens when print is involved. This is not a criticism; it's a statement. In the print world (and we do POD PDF's), what really happens is, many of the things that get changed are only visible, and knowable, and hence fixable, when the book is put into print format. For example, if you are almost any author being legacy-published, and the print formatter ends up with a chapter with an orphaned 5 words, dangling precipitously onto an horrifyingly blank page, there's no magic stick that fixes that. At RH, they pick up the phone, call the author, and tell him/her to lose 5 words--or have the "real" editor (not typing editor) do it. Have a sentence that, heavens forfend, has a normally-hyphenated word that then hyphenates syallabically in the second word? You have the author or editor add a word or two...or take one or two out. Hyphenation takes a looong time to do--if you're going to do it correctly. Doing it crappily takes minutes. And making it look decent means a modicum of rewriting--by somebody.

Shouldn't these edits for length then be made in the source document, and then you run the source to PDF conversion process again giving you a corrected single source document and a corrected print output PDF? Or is the source-to-PDF process so horrendously hand-cranked that you only want to do it once?

For info I am peripherally involved in single source to multiple output publishing in higher education - we go from quasi-XML to online PDF, print PDF, epub, content managed VLE sites and probably other formats that I don't know about. We've gone through (and are still going through) a lot of pain trying to morph a print-centric process into a multi-output one.

Andrew

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Hitch

what really happens is, many of the things that get changed are only visible, and knowable, and hence fixable, when the book is put into print format. For example, if you are almost any author being legacy-published, and the print formatter ends up with a chapter with an orphaned 5 words, dangling precipitously onto an horrifyingly blank page, there's no magic stick that fixes that.

I would have tightened up the kerning of that chapter slightly to fix that. Things like that are the layout artist's job, that's one of the reasons why copy edits at that stage are such a pain. If you start telling people they have to re-write to fit your layout you'll just create friction where there's really no need.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

Shouldn't these edits for length then be made in the source document, and then you run the source to PDF conversion process again giving you a corrected single source document and a corrected print output PDF? Or is the source-to-PDF process so horrendously hand-cranked that you only want to do it once?

Even if the PDF is hand tweaked to fit the printed page properly, there is still no reason the original document cannot also be fixed in the same way. That way, when the pBook layout is done, you'd have a source document that would be the document for use in making the eBook editions. I know it sounds simple and really, it is. It's just that this sort of thing has to be put in place or it won't happen.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

@JSWolf: Let me put it to you this way, without getting into the specifics of my business--which aren't the business of anyone here--whatever you think it might be, it patently isn't enough (and trust me: it's more than you think). I've fired more epub "editors" than I like to think about. Part of it, amusingly enough, is that the html editors get pissed off at the authors, who tend to be pissy in their proof sheets. It would be funny if it didn't cause me so much agita. I can't tell you how many ePUBs I've had to edit myself because I daren't let the Crews see the nasty comments from the authors--almost always about errors that they (the authors) themselves made, and blame on my Crews, or because they don't know a hard return from a ball return.

I would love to be paid to create eBooks. Even at the low end of the scale (whatever it is). That would help supplement my current income. I don't do shoddy layouts like a lot do. I know what looks good on a computer screen and an eink reader.

But, that aside, why would the editors get pissed off? Personally, I find it easy enough to shrug it off if it's something I didn't do wrong.

[CommonReader]

Most of the grads I interviewed wanted more money per hour (essentially) than my production crew leaders get; the latter of which are line, so earning me money, not staff, which don't.

That sounds as if a car manufacturer were telling you that he can't hire any development engineers as these only cost money while workers on the production line earn money.

Anyway, why should I as the end consumer really care about production processes? I don't have to wonder about how the manufacturer of my washing machine meets his production challenges, so why should I do so with ebooks? As I have bought recent releases of ebooks that didn't even have usable metadata I have the impression that some publishers do not even take basic care about what they sell to the customer.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Even if the PDF is hand tweaked to fit the printed page properly, there is still no reason the original document cannot also be fixed in the same way. That way, when the pBook layout is done, you'd have a source document that would be the document for use in making the eBook editions. I know it sounds simple and really, it is. It's just that this sort of thing has to be put in place or it won't happen.

Problem is it's different people doing the print and ebook versions, and that's where you end up with different versions. What they need is a project manager to oversee the whole thing so that the changes for the print version are also sent to the person responsible for the ebook version. Simple in theory, but not something you're ever likely to get from a large corporation.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Hitch

And, just for s&g's, I've asked several clients if I may use some of their pages here, for demonstration purposes (I do not know if I will obtain permission)--these clients had scan & OCR. I'm asking them if I may post 1-2 original pages from a PDF, and the resulting RAW scanned output;

I have samples. I do ebook conversions of public domain work that Gutenberg doesn't have, and a few other things.

This is a page from "Tales of Hoffman - Trial of the Chicago 8 7", which is not in the public domain, but majority of the text is, because trial transcripts are public domain. I figure that a page for educational purposes falls well within fair use, for the thirty words that may not be part of the transcript. (It's possible all of it is transcript.)

The PDF was scanned at 400dpi in Acrobat Pro (Which isn't the best, but is tolerable); the Word doc is auto-read in Finereader 7, after removing the page number. For this one, read quality's great; line breaks and the separating asterisks are the big problem.

Second sample is from "Magic and Fetishism," a public domain work available through Archive.org.

This one has more obvious problems. Extra punctuation caused by dots on the page, the foreign words are mostly misspelled, the punctuation is often wrong. And this is a good, clear scan of text that isn't tightly condensed.

Next sample: from Inglis' "Principles of Secondary Education," another PD book. This one's a nightmare for conversion; lots of tiny text in charts & tables.

I don't do most of the corrections in Word; I do them in Finereader, where I can see the text next to the scans, but that's not always an option.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by andyh2000

Shouldn't these edits for length then be made in the source document, and then you run the source to PDF conversion process again giving you a corrected single source document and a corrected print output PDF? Or is the source-to-PDF process so horrendously hand-cranked that you only want to do it once?

For info I am peripherally involved in single source to multiple output publishing in higher education - we go from quasi-XML to online PDF, print PDF, epub, content managed VLE sites and probably other formats that I don't know about. We've gone through (and are still going through) a lot of pain trying to morph a print-centric process into a multi-output one.

Andrew

Hi:

In a word (vis-a-vis, "is the source-to-PDF process so horrendously hand-cranked that you only want to do it once?")...yes.

We never started out to be a print or POD house. As I said, we're geeks, not publishers. The angst we've gone through, trying to make a decent-looking POD product, as part of, not in lieu of, an ebook process has been surprising to us, as well. We had so many requests for it (and intially, because people would ask AFTER their epubs/mobi's were done, we were reverse-engineering it) that we caved and started that process...the only way it really works is to edit the source (which at this point--the PDF point--is actually in OO, specifically due to some Word bugginess that doesn't facilitate output to PDF properly) and re-output the PDF--and then find where the next problem with hyphenation or Orphans, etc., occurs.

ALSO: vis-a-vis xml->xslt, man, I had high hopes for those, I really did. However, given all the mystery effluvia that Apple does over here, and Amazon over there, and Nook (with the dreaded RMSDK from hell) doesn't allow over THAR, (or, rather, allows but doesn't display correctly), I don't see xml translations really working. Geeeze, I wish they did.

@mrploppy: Yes, we could kern it "slightly," but in many cases, it's either impractical or...whatever. There's a reason that print layout people, who do nothing BUT this, get as much money as they do. I know I was shocked when I first tried to find print layout services--as a consultant service--for some of my clients. Most of my clients, who are small imprints or self-pubs, can't afford a grand-to-$2500 (or more) for print layout. So they use us--or they pay Createspace $400 or $600 bucks for the whole enchilada.

@CommonReader: As I'm not a publisher, I can't speak to that. The initial gist of the thread wasn't about processes, but it came up, as to "how simple it is to..." and I thought some perspective on what really happens in "the making of..." would be useful.

@Elfwreck: thanks, I should have thought of some DP texts--but I'm scrounging some up from various commercial buddies, replete with the dreaded Abbyy "red," which I think will be interesting to those who've never proofed genuinely raw output. Maybe not.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by Catlady

It's amazingly obvious in this thread who the people are with real-world publishing experience.

As was already stated, proofing errors, typos, OCR errors, and formatting errors all seem to be jumbled together in this discussion, even though they represent different problems. But what I am really wondering is just what books are filled with all these horrendous errors, because I simply haven't seen them.

Almost all my book purchases are from the big Agency publishers, often with price tags of $12.99. Other than a few run-of-the-mill typos that creep into every book, the main quirk I've noticed is the removal of hyphens from all hyphenated words (e.g., custom-built becomes custombuilt), which is presumably a computer error. I've also seen a few instances where display type (e.g., a dropped cap in the chapter opening) is not displayed correctly, or margins for an extract are too wide--again, small stuff.

Since in some discussions there seem to be a lot of people who loudly proclaim that they will not go over a certain price point, or will not buy from the Agency publishers, or will not buy a DRM book, I'm wondering if either (1) you get what you pay for, or (2) there really aren't that many errors after all.

+1. I've bought a lot of professionally published ebooks and have seen few typos. Maybe Catlady and I are both insanely lucky? I think it more likely that Catlady is on the money with both (1) and (2).
I think it amazing, really, that folks who never published or proof read an ebook can tell people who do this for a living that they don't known what they are doing and that they need to change their process. What the hell ? Would they tell their doctors or plumbers how to do their work in such preremptory fashion? Doubt it.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Would they tell their doctors or plumbers how to do their work in such preremptory fashion? Doubt it.

Actually, yeah, they do it all the time. "The TV told me I should ask my doctor about this new ED medicine. Why don't you give me a prescription?" "What do you mean it's going to cost $180/hour for you to come out and fix my pipes in the middle of the night? Can't you see this is an emergency?!"

Either you've just been lucky, or you're only buying new release novels that are following a modern workflow as Hitch has already explained. Backlist novels don't fare nearly so well, and yet we're still expected to spend $10-15 on them. Any other product with that level of quality would be quickly returned to stores. Fortunately for publishers, only Amazon has a generous return policy. Others, like Barnes & Noble, don't allow any returns at all (though you can try to sweet talk customer support).

Also, not every new-release book is error free, either. I just finished a book (to remain nameless, but it's not Cormac McCarthy who's allowed to write like an infant because he's earned it) where every single instance of a "X have" contraction that should've been "X've" was written as "X of". "Would of", "could of", "I'd of" (which should've been "I'd have"), etc. The first one occurred in the first couple of pages as part of dialogue and I let it go. But it soon happened outside of dialogue (so it was not an affectation of speech) and quickly grated on my nerves. For my own sanity, I edited the book myself and fixed all of those instances. Now to be fair I'm pretty sure this was just as poorly written on paper (and it was a NY Times best seller of 2009!), but the instances of "te le vision" and multiple other improperly-added spaces were definitely ebook artifacts.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Hitch

@Elfwreck: thanks, I should have thought of some DP texts--but I'm scrounging some up from various commercial buddies, replete with the dreaded Abbyy "red," which I think will be interesting to those who've never proofed genuinely raw output. Maybe not.

Abbyy "red?" Not familiar with the term. (Is that output with errors highlighted? I've never done that because I always do the first proofing pass in Abbyy. And sometimes the second pass. I am really, really unhappy that they dropped the "draft view" window in more recent versions.)

It's definitely worth mentioning that scan quality makes a *lot* of difference, and from what I can tell, some publishing houses are using the default settings to scan at 200dpi, which on some documents, is going to get i's turned into :'s and h's turned into li's. (Even for good scans, some fonts turn up a lot of "tlie" instead of "the.")

FWIW, I recognize a few OCR errors now & then in ebooks I buy (I can tell which authors converted their backlists from scans), but nothing egregious. I gather the worst of the errors are mainstream publishers--because individual authors glance over their book before they release it; the errors are buried in the middle rather than on the title page... like "Tha Hobbit." (Instead, I run across characters whose arms have faded cigarette bums. Or who are using modem birth control methods.)

[vxf]

Originally Posted by stonetools

+1. I've bought a lot of professionally published ebooks and have seen few typos. Maybe Catlady and I are both insanely lucky? I think it more likely that Catlady is on the money with both (1) and (2).
I think it amazing, really, that folks who never published or proof read an ebook can tell people who do this for a living that they don't known what they are doing and that they need to change their process. What the hell ? Would they tell their doctors or plumbers how to do their work in such preremptory fashion? Doubt it.

One example: A Dance with Dragons. I think I paid USD 16 for it. Certainly a large-volume book, not a minor publisher. And a brand new book, written in 2011. And filled with errors not in the print edition - which is available at the same, if not lower, price.

[RichL]

I lay the blame directly on the world-wide shortage of white-out and red cellophane.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by toddos

Either you've just been lucky, or you're only buying new release novels that are following a modern workflow as Hitch has already explained. Backlist novels don't fare nearly so well, and yet we're still expected to spend $10-15 on them. Any other product with that level of quality would be quickly returned to stores. Fortunately for publishers, only Amazon has a generous return policy. Others, like Barnes & Noble, don't allow any returns at all (though you can try to sweet talk customer support).

I mostly have bought backlist. Most have been relatively recent--last ten years or so--but some are vintage pulp reissues from the thirties, forties, and fifties. Don't know what the process was on those, but they've been just fine--no major errors.

Also, not every new-release book is error free, either. I just finished a book (to remain nameless, but it's not Cormac McCarthy who's allowed to write like an infant because he's earned it) where every single instance of a "X have" contraction that should've been "X've" was written as "X of". "Would of", "could of", "I'd of" (which should've been "I'd have"), etc. The first one occurred in the first couple of pages as part of dialogue and I let it go. But it soon happened outside of dialogue (so it was not an affectation of speech) and quickly grated on my nerves. For my own sanity, I edited the book myself and fixed all of those instances. Now to be fair I'm pretty sure this was just as poorly written on paper (and it was a NY Times best seller of 2009!), but the instances of "te le vision" and multiple other improperly-added spaces were definitely ebook artifacts.

My first question is, Did this book have a first-person narrator? If of was used throughout, the author had to have made a specific choice to do that, for whatever reason, and clearly the publisher accepted that choice. Editing it to your liking is just wrong! It's like an author using present tense, and you change it to past tense because you prefer past tense. My second question is, What's the name of the book/author/publisher?

[DrDln]

I think printed books go through long process of proof reading and editing. eBooks is a quick publication that any one can do. It's over used; and quality suffers in terms of production and content, IMO.