Kindle eBooks will have PUBLIC Warnings for spelling/formatting errors!

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Sharon Lee blogs

http://rolanni.livejournal.com/1073416.html

a. The Kindle edition of omnibus The Crystal Variation, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, including the novels Crystal Soldier, Crystal Dragon, and Balance of Trade -- has been taken off-sale by Amazon pending correction of "serious quality issues." These issues are "misspellings." Amazon forwarded the list of 144 instances of misspelled words to Baen, which forwarded it to us. More than a dozen of those "misspelled" words are "cermacrete." We also have "ISBN" identified as a "misspelled" word. Also, cantra, kais, qwint, Iloheen, aetherium, autoshout -- you get the idea. Steve and I have each made a pass down the list and have so far identified three Actual Misspelled Words, and one that I need to research, but believe to be a spacing problem. The process from here goes like this: We tell Baen which words are Actually Misspelled. A Baen editor will fix those errors. The Baen Ebook Team will then recompile the omnibus and shuffle it into its various formats, including forwarding a "clean copy" to Amazon. Amazon will then, at some point, put the book back on sale.

https://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Varia...dp/B00APA1L4E/
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crystal-Var...dp/B00APA1L4E/

If you would like to purchase an electronic copy of The Crystal Variation in the immediate future, your best choice of vendor would be Baen Ebooks, which offers the book for sale in All Formats Known to Man or Clutch. Here's the link.
http://www.baen.com/the-crystal-variation.html

(other ebook notes)

I don't really consider this recent snafu that much of a black eye on the new Public Warning policy put in place in February. Mistakes are going to happen. I still think it will accomplish more good than harm.

There have been horror stories of midlisters having their books pulled from Amazon's store because of unwarranted "complaints" about formatting long before this new policy was put in place. The only thing "new" here are the warnings. The new warning policy did not create the problem Lee and Miller had with this book. The potential for things like this happening were ALWAYS there.

I remember several years ago when one bestselling author had a book pulled from Amazon's store simply because he ended a chapter in an "experimental" way. It was a first-person POV by a character who was trying to defuse an explosive device. The chapter ended in mid-sentence (mid-word, actually). People were sending the physical books back because they believed there was a large chunk of text missing. The ebook kept getting pulled because new readers were calling in and complaining of missing text. He (the author) swore he'd never try anything like that again.

I wasn't fooled, of course. Not sure why it was so hard for people to figure out that the device exploded; thus interrupting the first-person narrative mid-word.

My point is: this too shall pass. Lee & Miller's troubles will end. They should take it as a sign that Liaden fans are getting more and more neophytes to try the books.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Given the subject matter... how mortifying. Fixed.

Perhaps you were commatose when you wrote it. ;-)

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I don't really consider this recent snafu that much of a black eye on the new Public Warning policy put in place in February. Mistakes are going to happen. I still think it will accomplish more good than harm.

There have been horror stories of midlisters having their books pulled from Amazon's store because of unwarranted "complaints" about formatting long before this new policy was put in place. The only thing "new" here are the warnings. The new warning policy did not create the problem Lee and Miller had with this book. The potential for things like this happening were ALWAYS there.

And HAVE happened. I've relayed the story here, from a few years ago--2012 or 13, if I recall correctly?--that we had a client that was a multimillionaire many times over, from bestselling books. We were doing her backlist books. The usual: scan, proof, convert, lather, rinse, repeat. Her novels, generally, were a quarter-million words. Each.

And what happened? Sure enough, some asshat reader thought that she'd make sure that we knew that the book had errors, and reported them to Amazon. 4 of them. Two were British spellings (color/colour type of thing), one was deliberate (Dr. for Doctor, or something like that) and one--ONE--was an actual error. Out of a quarter-million words. That's happened more than once, in our client base of ~2800 authors, now.

I remember several years ago when one bestselling author had a book pulled from Amazon's store simply because he ended a chapter in an "experimental" way. It was a first-person POV by a character who was trying to defuse an explosive device. The chapter ended in mid-sentence (mid-word, actually). People were sending the physical books back because they believed there was a large chunk of text missing. The ebook kept getting pulled because new readers were calling in and complaining of missing text. He (the author) swore he'd never try anything like that again.

Depending on the rest of the book, I might have been mighty pissed off; but it's hard to believe that nobody "got it." Aside from you, of course.

I wasn't fooled, of course. Not sure why it was so hard for people to figure out that the device exploded; thus interrupting the first-person narrative mid-word.

My point is: this too shall pass. Lee & Miller's troubles will end. They should take it as a sign that Liaden fans are getting more and more neophytes to try the books.

Yes, and this will CONTINUE to happen. You, Diap, have heard me rant about this topic before. While there may well be some valid good reasons, for everyday readers to report "typos" to publishers, this tattletale mindset is not helpful. NONE of these people would have emailed Random House, etc., about these miniscule mistakes, had they bought the books in paper. Nor would they hae expected that RH would turn around, say "oh, my GOD!!! typos! The Humanity!," recalled the books and reprinted them, would they?

But, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, now that people think that every book out there is typed in a day and uploaded in Word, bygod, the instant gratification squad is in full flight, insisting that authors and publishers hop to and fix everything--even if they are bloody utterly WRONG--right away.

I find typo and formatting errata in scads of books that I read. Do you really think that I email all the authors, publishers, or Amazon, commenting about how they have to fix the damn things? I found typos in Annie Lamott's "Bird by Bird." Did I report them? Hell no. Why? Because it's a BOOK. I wouldn't do it if the book was in print; I won't do it just because it's now in a digital format.

Hitch

[Barbara1955]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

No, because after a while you get a feel for the type of things other members say.
And my gut feeling says that would be out of character for her.

Besides, if it was a joke, it was a pretty bad one.

No it was No Joke.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Perhaps you were commatose when you wrote it. ;-)

You just couldn't help yourself, could you?

Yes, and this will CONTINUE to happen. You, Diap, have heard me rant about this topic before. While there may well be some valid good reasons, for everyday readers to report "typos" to publishers, this tattletale mindset is not helpful. NONE of these people would have emailed Random House, etc., about these miniscule mistakes, had they bought the books in paper. Nor would they hae expected that RH would turn around, say "oh, my GOD!!! typos! The Humanity!," recalled the books and reprinted them, would they?

But, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, now that people think that every book out there is typed in a day and uploaded in Word, bygod, the instant gratification squad is in full flight, insisting that authors and publishers hop to and fix everything--even if they are bloody utterly WRONG--right away.

I find typo and formatting errata in scads of books that I read. Do you really think that I email all the authors, publishers, or Amazon, commenting about how they have to fix the damn things? I found typos in Annie Lamott's "Bird by Bird." Did I report them? Hell no. Why? Because it's a BOOK. I wouldn't do it if the book was in print; I won't do it just because it's now in a digital format.

Hitch

Well, I have no problem with people reporting errors. But I think to be fair, Amazon has to be balanced about it too. If one or two people report errors, don't pull the book without manual review.

Error reporting is a valuable tool, but any tool can and usually is abused.

Ideally, such reports would be available to the publishers, who would have the opportunity to include the fixes in the next revision of the book at their leisure. And it would be left to them to decide whether the issue is bad enough to make them worried about sales.

Reports should be balanced against the number of sales, and trigger manual review when there can be doubt of the authenticity.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Katie1

No it was No Joke. But it was the 1st e-book I ever purchased. Faye Kellerman. I figured it was fast cause all they had to do was Delete the duplicate chapters

I don't really know what you intend to say with this.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

You just couldn't help yourself, could you?

I'm ssssssssssoooooooooooooooooooooooo sorry! I want you to know that I fought the urge for...gosh, at least half-a-second.

Well, I have no problem with people reporting errors. But I think to be fair, Amazon has to be balanced about it too. If one or two people report errors, don't pull the book without manual review.

Amen, brother.

Error reporting is a valuable tool, but any tool can and usually is abused.

Ideally, such reports would be available to the publishers, who would have the opportunity to include the fixes in the next revision of the book at their leisure. And it would be left to them to decide whether the issue is bad enough to make them worried about sales.

Reports should be balanced against the number of sales, and trigger manual review when there can be doubt of the authenticity.

THIS. ^ I could really get behind that. Why NOT do it that way? Wouldn't that save Amazon scads of human resources time? Gather upemailed comments about each book, and send them out at the end of the year, or whenever. This piecemealing is just annoying as hell. WORSE, it can be repeated!

I am most emphatically not on the side of those who publish illiterate gobbledygook, but man, leave those books which are 99.5% perfect bloody alone. It's become blatantly obvious, from the success of pure drivel, some with pretty egregious grammar and typographical mistakes, that readers don't really object THAT much.

I vote for the eschwartz methodology. :-)

Hitch

[Barbara1955]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Not only is this completely untrue (made-up words are far older than SciFi, as Cinisajoy pointed out), I also find this comment rather hilarious given who it is coming from.

You have randomly sprinkled your sentences with arbitrarily-capitalized words, used "to" instead of "too", left out an apostrophe in the word "can't"...

If you wish to criticize other peoples' spelling (and other linguistic errata), please mind your own first.

...

Oh, and I am not far gone from being a kid myself.
I also read more SciFi than three or four ordinary people (just SciFi -- but I read plenty of Fantasy too ).

Now tell me, which of the two of us has better spelling? Perhaps you should consider reading SciFi, since the evidence so far seems to be that it improves your spelling skills.

Blame the Fire I typing on I Don't look for those things. Who wants tooo Jump around several screens to find ''''',,,,,, Not me.

[Barbara1955]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The complaint was not about standards in a professional book, but that reading SF makes a child a poor speller. That's not something I would personally agree with.

Not just Sifi. It can be any book.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I'm ssssssssssoooooooooooooooooooooooo sorry! I want you to know that I fought the urge for...gosh, at least half-a-second.

Well, thanks for trying I guess...

THIS. ^ I could really get behind that. Why NOT do it that way? Wouldn't that save Amazon scads of human resources time? Gather upemailed comments about each book, and send them out at the end of the year, or whenever. This piecemealing is just annoying as hell. WORSE, it can be repeated!

Possibly, because Amazon has been quite successful at automation, they thought this would save them time. Unfortunately, what they are trying to do is beyond even the algorithms of the Algorithm King (a.k.a. The Jeff).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by shalym

I believe that would be the reviews. You can also usually get a clue from the book description. If both of those don't work, the "Look Inside" works as an early warning system 95% of the time.

If all else fails, Amazon will usually allow returns, even outside the 7 day window.

Shari

But some of the rather badly written self-published books have good reviews because the author pays people or has friends/family write the reviews.

[theducks]

Let us purge all foreign words from any publication

In the US:
No more cafe, bistro, siesta, cantina... . No trips to foreign ports because Amazon will not allow their name in a American book. No Drachma, Centavos, Yen... US Greenbacks only. (Do I have to get rid of those 2 cantra sewn into my vest?)

ABSURD

Many of the Fantasy books I have read, simply used foreign or ancient dialects. Would those be purely 'made up'

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by theducks

Let us purge all foreign words from any publication

In the US:
No more cafe, bistro, siesta, cantina... . No trips to foreign ports because Amazon will not allow their name in a American book. No Drachma, Centavos, Yen... US Greenbacks only. (Do I have to get rid of those 2 cantra sewn into my vest?)

ABSURD

Many of the Fantasy books I have read, simply used foreign or ancient dialects. Would those be purely 'made up'

Can't we all just be Feringi?
I think I spelled that right.

[HarryT]

No foreign words. ("Ferengi" is the Arabic word for "foreigner")

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No foreign words. ("Ferengi" is the Arabic word for "foreigner")

I heard it first as a race of aliens on one of the Star Treks.
Why was I thinking it meant friend?
And thanks for correcting the spelling.

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No foreign words. ("Ferengi" is the Arabic word for "foreigner")

That's a common misconception. There is an Arabic word ifranj (افرنج), however it was used to refer to the Franks (=all Europeans) and the Land of the Franks (= Europe) was usually referred to as al-firanja (الفرنجة).
In Modern Standard Arabic, ifranj (or the adjective form ifranjiy) can theoretically still be used to refer to Europeans, however, an Arabized form of "European" (=urubbiy) is more commonly used to express this meaning.

BTW, the Arabic word for foreigner is ajnabiy (اجنبي) pl. ajaanib (اجانب).

Pronunciation guide: a as in but; i as pit; u as in push; aa as in spa; iy as in bee; j as in jinn or s as in measure or g as in got.