Why is an ebook ever riddled with typos?

[JohnnyBook]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Go to your MYK page at http://www.amazon.com/myk
(If you have a large archive you may have to wait for all items to load)

In the 'view' drop down select "Available for Update", this will filter your archive down to those items that have updates available. Click on 'update available' behind the title and select 'Update this title now'.

When I look at the list in the view drop down, it does NOT include the choice "Available for Update".

I even scrolled down my archive until I got to a page with an entry saying "Update Available" (One of the "Amazon Games") and I still did not have "Available for Update" as one of the View Choices.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JohnnyBook

When I look at the list in the view drop down, it does NOT include the choice "Available for Update".

I even scrolled down my archive until I got to a page with an entry saying "Update Available" (One of the "Amazon Games") and I still did not have "Available for Update" as one of the View Choices.

How odd. Perhaps the menu is only for actual ebooks, and games are treated differently. Here's how the menu looks to me. Goodness, I have 18 updates available!

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

How odd. Perhaps the menu is only for actual ebooks, and games are treated differently. Here's how the menu looks to me. Goodness, I have 18 updates available!

Doesn't work for me either.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Go to your MYK page at http://www.amazon.com/myk
(If you have a large archive you may have to wait for all items to load)

In the 'view' drop down select "Available for Update", this will filter your archive down to those items that have updates available. Click on 'update available' behind the title and select 'Update this title now'.

Thank you. I've never seen that option (not sure if that's because I'm on Amazon UK - some things seem to be different). It's currently not shown, but that may be because there aren't any updates.

I'm currently waiting on a publisher to let me know that a book has been updated, so once I know it's been updated I'll re-check.

[sakura-panda]

Thanks for the information about updates! I had no idea and I have 32 updates.

If you update a book that you are currently reading, will it save your place? I see that one of my son's books has an update and I'm wondering if it is safe to send him the updated or if I should make sure he's finished reading it first.

[JohnnyBook]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

How odd. Perhaps the menu is only for actual ebooks, and games are treated differently. Here's how the menu looks to me. Goodness, I have 18 updates available!

You might be right.... Looking through all my titles (I only have 101) I have update available for 3 games, but none for any books....

Maybe it only appears IF you have books with updates available.

We will have to get some one to look to see if it shows up AFTER they have updates all their books.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JohnnyBook

You might be right.... Looking through all my titles (I only have 101) I have update available for 3 games, but none for any books....

Maybe it only appears IF you have books with updates available.

We will have to get some one to look to see if it shows up AFTER they have updates all their books.

I've just updated all my books, and now the menu option has disappeared. (Not disabled, just gone.)

My account is at amazon.co.uk

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I've just updated all my books, and now the menu option has disappeared. (Not disabled, just gone.)

My account is at amazon.co.uk

It's the same for Amazon US.

[Angst]

nice article on the problem here.

"Editors I spoke to confirmed my guesses. Before digital technology unsettled both the economics and the routines of book publishing, they explained, most publishers employed battalions of full-time copy editors and proofreaders to filter out an author’s mistakes. Now, they are gone."

(originally posted by lestatar here)

[Quexos]

Books are getting less and less problems now, aren't they ? I mean new releases. They seem to be in general better in terms of typos, lay out etc.

[andym]

Originally Posted by MartinC

I would be very surprised if publishers handled print editions and ebook editions of new books separately - everything's electronic nowadays, it wouldn't make sense to have two production processes. If I have any beef with ebooks from big publishers it's exactly this: they sometimes don't seem to realise that reflowable text needs a little extra attention to make sure it works properly.

Have a look at John Julius Norwich's history of Venice published by Penguin. Full of OCR errors which could have been picked up if someone had run the text through a spellchecker never mind employed a proofreader.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Angst

nice article on the problem here.

"Editors I spoke to confirmed my guesses. Before digital technology unsettled both the economics and the routines of book publishing, they explained, most publishers employed battalions of full-time copy editors and proofreaders to filter out an author’s mistakes. Now, they are gone."

Just when were these "battalions" employed? Publishers have made liberal use of freelance copy editors and proofreaders for a very long time, well before digitization.

[DiapDealer]

All I can say is that I must be extremely lucky in what ebooks I purchase/read. Because I honestly haven't noticed any marked difference in the number of typos in ebooks compared to typos in print books. Granted... I'm just not really buying much in the way of backlist titles.

[vxf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

All I can say is that I must be extremely lucky in what ebooks I purchase/read. Because I honestly haven't noticed any marked difference in the number of typos in ebooks compared to typos in print books. Granted... I'm just not really buying much in the way of backlist titles.

My experience is quite different.
I am constantly finding so many typos in ebooks it's really getting annoying. I recently gave up on Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations because all ebook versions I bought (and I bought three, from different publishers) were atrocious. I went back to my paper copy.

Another really bad experience was with a 'young' series - the whole 'Song of Ice and Fire'. The ebooks I have have some, frankly few, typos, but the formatting is often wrong. Especially in dialogues, they often forgot to break between two different characters speaking, so that, at times, it is just one big block of speech, when it should be going 'back-and-forth'. I found that in all the so-far books, bought from SONY's store in epub.

Funny thing is, I get the WSJ in ebook format and it has constant typos. So does the Financial Times. The same articles do NOT have typos, or nowhere near as many, in print, or on the respective iPad apps. But but both SONY and Kindle versions are full of mistakes.

It's really the dark side of ebooks, if you ask me. Typos, poor formatting, omitted notes and introductions... the product is often as expensive as print, but seldom of the same quality.

Oh... another one that just drove me nuts. Book 4 of the 'Wheel of Time'. I started using the 'report error' feature on my PW, so I kept count. I found 37 typos and a couple of missing punctuation marks.

[DiapDealer]

Granted... I'm just not really buying much in the way of backlist titles.

Perhaps you missed that part.