Downloading updated ebooks: Kobo and Amazon

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Not quite. If it's set in Britain, fine, but you might still wish to avoid choices that bring a US reader to a screeching halt.

So 'bollard', 'lay-by', even 'absolute majority'.

And more so if it's SF or fantasy.

Mind you there was a US author who decided "this space colony was founded by Brits" and changed 'truck' to 'lorry'. I know this because he changed 'truck garden' to 'lorry garden'.

The blog https://britishisms.wordpress.com/ may be of interest if you don't recognise something odd as British

They are just words and can be looked up or figured out, especially these days. But the big publishers will continue to "Translate" for us and for me, it loses a certain feel of time and setting. Like I said--I read Harry Potter and missed a certain feel of London because everything had been 'translated.'

But we all deal with it. There are some British words/phrases I come across and I'm not completely certain of the exact meaning, but it doesn't bring me to a halt. I never knew if sod off was the equivalent of F* off or just "Get lost." But it turns out it really doesn't matter all that much. If I read it, I get the context and I get the vehemency by the character/personality or context. Bloody Hell is another one. But it's the same with Spanish curse words. Some of the meaning is entirely regional. There's a local Spanish curse word in New Mexico that translates to "little goats." But that literal translation has NOTHING to do with the meaning if you are actually CALLED that word. Reading is like that. You pay attention to the other words around the ones you don't understand.

I think the regional words or, for this discussion, British words add to the story and setting. When they are taken out or replaced, a little piece of realism is missing.

[4691mls]

I wonder about the age of the people who thought books should be updated to include cell phones. Did these people grow up in the age of cell phones and just can't imagine not having them? Personally, I don't need books from other eras updated to include modern technology. I'm fine with reading them in the era in which the author originally set them. Of course I'm old enough to remember having a wall phone on a party line and no computers....

I prefer that books from other English-speaking countries remain in their original versions. I can usually figure out what's going on from the context if there are unfamiliar words (such as recent slang) that aren't in the dictionaries on my ereader.

To me the biggest reason to update a book would be to correct errors. I remember I bought a book from Sony a year or so ago that had a number of odd characters scattered throughout the text. Maybe I should log onto Kobo and see if it's been updated (I haven't actually shopped at Kobo since the store transfer, due to issues discussed in other threads).

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by 4691mls

I wonder about the age of the people who thought books should be updated to include cell phones. Did these people grow up in the age of cell phones and just can't imagine not having them? Personally, I don't need books from other eras updated to include modern technology. I'm fine with reading them in the era in which the author originally set them. Of course I'm old enough to remember having a wall phone on a party line and no computers....

To me the biggest reason to update a book would be to correct errors. I remember I bought a book from Sony a year or so ago that had a number of odd characters scattered throughout the text. Maybe I should log onto Kobo and see if it's been updated (I haven't actually shopped at Kobo since the store transfer, due to issues discussed in other threads).

The person leading the discussion is probably in her fifties. She was the only person that I'd interacted enough with to have an idea of her age. The others could have been any age from teen on up. I recognized a few screen names, but didn't know any of them well enough to guess.

From what Kobo told me, you'd have to work with CS to delete the one book from your library and get a new copy. Not sure how well it would work. I'm not even sure how well the Amazon method will work. Honestly, one of the reason I wanted to do this was to try out the "update" feature and see what happened. I had no idea it would take up to 4 weeks for Amazon to "review" the changes and decide on an action. It's obviously not a process for the faint of heart or impatient. If I had serious errors I wanted corrected and had to wait 4 weeks to get the fix out there, I'd be miserable.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Lynx-lynx

How did you know that Kobo's had been updated?

Sometimes there is a version number in the copyright. Sometimes you can tell by the filesize. Sometimes you can tell just by looking at both copies.

You do have to have the previously downloaded copy to be able to check if the one you just downloaded has been updated.

[sharphamster]

Thanks jswolf - going to re-download my Pratchett books and see if they've been cleaned up. Those early Discworld epubs look are a mess, even in KePub form.

B&N used name the downloaded files ISBN#vX.epub (back when they did customer-friendly sensible things) so you always could tell what you had.

*shakes cane* "Back in the day..."

[Justy]

I like Diane Duane's solution for the Young Wizard series. She wrote the 1st book about 20 years ago and the series is still active so she has released separate updated "millennium editions' of the early books to more closely match the technology of the later books. This way those of us who have read them from the beginning can still have access to original stories, and we can read the new versions to see what it would have been like if the main character was excited about getting a big flat screen TV instead of the colour TV they got in the original version. In some cases she made sure to say 'there wasn't any cell reception at the beach so they had to use the pay phone at the convenience store.'

Personally I would love to get updates to some of the ebooks I have with many weird characters or spelling errors. However, I can usually manage to read them anyway and don't stress too much about them, especially since it seems like a pain to figure out if there are updates available.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Justy

I like Diane Duane's solution for the Young Wizard series. She wrote the 1st book about 20 years ago and the series is still active so she has released separate updated "millennium editions' of the early books to more closely match the technology of the later books. This way those of us who have read them from the beginning can still have access to original stories, and we can read the new versions to see what it would have been like if the main character was excited about getting a big flat screen TV instead of the colour TV they got in the original version. In some cases she made sure to say 'there wasn't any cell reception at the beach so they had to use the pay phone at the convenience store.'

Personally I would love to get updates to some of the ebooks I have with many weird characters or spelling errors. However, I can usually manage to read them anyway and don't stress too much about them, especially since it seems like a pain to figure out if there are updates available.

Haven't read them, I am just fine with the old versions. What can I say, I am imaginative enough to appreciate the story with all the alien worlds and magic and everything.
Would you recommend reading the millennium editions anyway?

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by Justy

Personally I would love to get updates to some of the ebooks I have with many weird characters or spelling errors. However, I can usually manage to read them anyway and don't stress too much about them, especially since it seems like a pain to figure out if there are updates available.

I have two Kobo books which are pretty horrifically badly formatted. I'd love to be able to tell if there were fixed versions and get them added to my account. I emailed the publisher about the first of them and they thought there should already be a better edition. I have my kindle set to update automatically.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

I have two Kobo books which are pretty horrifically badly formatted. I'd love to be able to tell if there were fixed versions and get them added to my account. I emailed the publisher about the first of them and they thought there should already be a better edition. I have my kindle set to update automatically.

I've heard the kindle auto update doesn't always work. I don't know, but I may find out if Amazon decides Lunch should be updated. I will have minions, erm, fans, reporting in on when their dash shows an update (or not). When I added illustrations to Tracking Magic several years ago because updating became possible, it took nearly 6 months from upload to get to the last person who was watching for it!

[Justy]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Haven't read them, I am just fine with the old versions. What can I say, I am imaginative enough to appreciate the story with all the alien worlds and magic and everything.
Would you recommend reading the millennium editions anyway?

No, I got them because I'm a completionist and had a coupon for her direct purchase store. I also wanted to see if she managed to update the books without changing the story. She did a great job, but I was perfectly happy with the books always being written in the current 'now'. The millennium editions aren't any better than the original ones, just more accessible to today's young people.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Justy

No, I got them because I'm a completionist and had a coupon for her direct purchase store. I also wanted to see if she managed to update the books without changing the story. She did a great job, but I was perfectly happy with the books always being written in the current 'now'. The millennium editions aren't any better than the original ones, just more accessible to today's young people.

I agree the old version is fine.

I was just wondering if you think the new version is good enough to warrant rereading it with the updates, how well it compares, and if you personally (because I guess it is really totally irrelevant, but I am asking anyway ) enjoyed it and didn't get thrown off by the changes.

[Justy]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I agree the old version is fine.

I was just wondering if you think the new version is good enough to warrant rereading it with the updates, how well it compares, and if you personally (because I guess it is really totally irrelevant, but I am asking anyway ) enjoyed it and didn't get thrown off by the changes.

I enjoyed most of the changes she made. I think maybe I don't use cell phones as much as the younger folks do because it was a bit jarring when Nita used hers as an alarm clock instead of having a separate clock/radio. Otherwise it was nice to see updated computers and ebook readers in use in the books. I think Diane Duane did what she intended, they are just modernized versions of the original books. The main positive change is that Dairine has a consistent age throughout the books instead of getting younger and older as the books change.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Justy

I like Diane Duane's solution for the Young Wizard series. She wrote the 1st book about 20 years ago and the series is still active so she has released separate updated "millennium editions' of the early books to more closely match the technology of the later books. This way those of us who have read them from the beginning can still have access to original stories, and we can read the new versions to see what it would have been like if the main character was excited about getting a big flat screen TV instead of the colour TV they got in the original version. In some cases she made sure to say 'there wasn't any cell reception at the beach so they had to use the pay phone at the convenience store.'

The problem with that is that a lot of places don't have pay phones any longer. At least I've not seen one around where I live for several yrs now. The reason is obvious. Everyone has a cell phone and so pay phones aren't needed. In fact one of the few places I can think of that has a phone for public use now is my local public library. It's a regular land line phone. I have the 1st four books in paper (through a used book store here in town) and enjoy them.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Mind you there was a US author who decided "this space colony was founded by Brits" and changed 'truck' to 'lorry'. I know this because he changed 'truck garden' to 'lorry garden'.

I've never heard the expression "lorry garden". What does it mean? It's certainly not British.

[murg]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I've never heard the expression "lorry garden". What does it mean? It's certainly not British.

Probably because it doesn't exist.

I think that Truck Gardens are a US thing, with the British having a completely different name for them.

Then, if you automatically translate Truck to Lorry, Truck Garden becomes Lorry Garden, which is a term that doesn't seem to exist.

Do a Wikipedia search on Truck Garden and Lorry Garden to see the differences.

The same sort of thing may be to automatically change Trunk to Boot and Hood to Bonnet. Then we'd get Steamer Boots, Boxing Boots and Little Red Riding Bonnet.