Product placement in B&N's edition of War & Peace?

[taosaur]

A community blogger in Ocracoke Island, NC, made on odd discovery in his first ereading experience. Halfway through War & Peace he received a Nook as a gift: perfect timing to save his wrists from hefting the massive tome.

As he was reading, though, he found the word "Nookd" inserted, puzzled over it a moment, and moved on. A few chapters later, there it was again: "Nookd."

This time, he pulled out his paper copy and checked it against the ebook. Someone at B&N had replaced every instance of the word "kindled" with "Nookd."

Can anyone confirm his observation, or is this guy pulling our leg?

http://villagecraftsmen.blogspot.com/2012/05/nookd.html

[DiapDealer]

I guess I just don't believe him. Especially since he failed to mention B&N's official response to the question he so clearly needed to contacted them with—if he had high hopes of being taken seriously.

[QuantumIguana]

My guess is that when this was submitted, they also submitted it to Amazon. They changed references to "Kindle" to "Nook", but did a replace all, not thinking that there might have been a referece to kindle in the text of the book itself.

[ucfgrad93]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I guess I just don't believe him. Especially since he failed to mention B&N's official response to the question he so clearly needed to contacted them with—if he had high hopes of being taken seriously.

Agreed. My BS detector is going crazy over this.

[elemenoP]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

My guess is that when this was submitted, they also submitted it to Amazon. They changed references to "Kindle" to "Nook", but did a replace all, not thinking that there might have been a referece to kindle in the text of the book itself.

Agreed, this was just an automated Find and Replace gone wrong. Perhaps B&N has had other ebooks submitted which say "This Kindle edition..." and so they always replace with "This Nook edition..."

It's not as nefarious and outrageous as the blog author makes it out to be.

Although I would like to add: it is dumb on B&N's part to assume that no book uses the word "kindle" as a regular word. It was a real word before Amazon ever got hold of it.

eP

[QuantumIguana]

I'll take his word for it, if it was a hoax, he would have claimed it said "nooked" rather than "nookd". "nookd" looks like a replace all error.

[ScotiaBurrell]

this is horrible!!

[tubemonkey]

Does that mean other readers will be Kobod, Appled, or Googled?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Does that mean other readers will be Kobod, Appled, or Googled?

Hopefully, not.
Those sound painful...

[JeremyR]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

I'll take his word for it, if it was a hoax, he would have claimed it said "nooked" rather than "nookd". "nookd" looks like a replace all error.

Yeah. Something similar happened when Dungeons & Dragons went from 1st edition to 2nd edition - they changed the name of magic-users from "mages" to "wizard".

So they just did a search and replace of "wizard" for "mage" and ended up many instances of "dawizard" instead of "damage"

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by JeremyR

Yeah. Something similar happened when Dungeons & Dragons went from 1st edition to 2nd edition - they changed the name of magic-users from "mages" to "wizard".

So they just did a search and replace of "wizard" for "mage" and ended up many instances of "dawizard" instead of "damage"

Not to wander too far into politigion (religotics?), but it sounds similar to the "cdesign proponentsists" that popped up in Intelligent Design texts when they first tried to scrub out all mention of Creationism to evade the U.S. Establishment Clause.

[AlexBell]

It's mentioned in the Discussion forum at

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=180000

with a different source for the information. So it might be true, and be yet another piece of evidence that the major ebook retailers have never heard of proof readers.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

Although I would like to add: it is dumb on B&N's part to assume that no book uses the word "kindle" as a regular word. It was a real word before Amazon ever got hold of it.

Seems to me to be even dumber to assume that B&N is the culprit rather than the book's publisher. I'd be more inclined to think it might be B&N if every instance of the words Amazon and Kindle were changed to B&N and Nook in other books. That this is the only example given indicates to me it is a publisher problem, not a B&N problem.

[taosaur]

Originally Posted by rhadin

Seems to me to be even dumber to assume that B&N is the culprit rather than the book's publisher. I'd be more inclined to think it might be B&N if every instance of the words Amazon and Kindle were changed to B&N and Nook in other books. That this is the only example given indicates to me it is a publisher problem, not a B&N problem.

Is there even a "publisher?" It's a public domain work that was available as a free ebook before B&N got into the business. I don't know how they source their B&N Classics line, but it's possible they prepared it in-house.

ETA:

Originally Posted by AlexBell

It's mentioned in the Discussion forum at

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=180000

with a different source for the information. So it might be true, and be yet another piece of evidence that the major ebook retailers have never heard of proof readers.

Ah, the Ars article answers our questions. The mistake has been confirmed by several sources now, and the book was prepared by Superior Format Publishing.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...ed-into-nookd/

[plib]

Originally Posted by taosaur

the book was prepared by Superior Format Publishing.

Who obviously have a taste for irony.