Proof reading errors? Arggg!

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Oh please. They have moral obligation not to rip off their potential customers. They have a moral obligation not to present a shoddy product.

With 3 moral obligations and $2.45, I can purchase a venti dark roast coffee at Starbucks.

[AnemicOak]

The book in question in the OP came out in hardcover in 2000 and paperback in 2002. Each of those releases would have had a press ready PDF generated at the end of the process and if the publisher had any kind of electronic file to start with for the ebook (done in 2007, at least I can't find that it had been an ebook release in the earlier days) it would have been one or both of those (they didn't keep something like a Word file with all of the books final edits stored somewhere). Big if though. Publishers didn't see the value of keeping electronic files around, etc. until ebooks started getting popular so for a lot of books they simply weren't available. Provided a PDF was available during the big 2006ish-2009ish push to get everything they could (had rights to) out on Kindle/eBook they would have tried to either convert it or OCR the PDF which back then & sometimes even now would often produce questionable results. More likely is that they farmed out a scan/OCR of a paper copy.

If I had to guess, this book was part of the initial rush/push to get everything the publisher could out for Kindle as fast as they could while a lot of people were buying everything they could get as soon as their favorite authors backlists were available. Unless there have been a lot of complaints about the title then I doubt the publisher has touched it since.


Should it have been physically proofread? Absolutely, they would have given that much attention to a new printing of a paperback edition if it was being typeset again so should give the ebook they're charging as much or more for as much attention. I guess it's not too surprising that it wasn't, given the speed they were trying to push backlist titles through the pipeline without much idea how well some of these backlist titles might sell (some of these backlist titles sell in the 10's, not 100's or 1,000's). I know I've complained about titles in the past and sometimes if lucky the publisher has actually fixed them, but other times it seems to fall on deaf ears. I found emailing the head of the imprint got me more/better response then the publishers customer service.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by haertig

It's like when I order a book from Amazon, USA, to be delivered to an address in the USA, they are obliged to send me one in English, unless the description states that it's in some other language. This may not be a legal requirement, but it is certainly expected, and rightfully so.

Ummm... so you don't have an obligation to look at the product details to see what language it is in before clicking the buy link?

As I see it, they are obliged to send you the book you ordered whether it is in English, Urdu, Esperanto or tlhIngan Hol. They are not there to question why you decided to order Vingt Mille Lieues Sous Les Mers when you have never ordered a French language book in your entire purchasing history.

[patrickt]

Originally Posted by haertig

Oh darn, I probably should have used "ack", reserving "arrrggghhh" for seafaring ruffian exclamations.

Obviously. Using "arrrggghhh" is cultural appropriation.

If a book is "free" does that mean there is no moral obligation. That seems to be the case with "free" education and "free" healthcare.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Provided a PDF was available during the big 2006ish-2009ish push to get everything they could (had rights to) out on Kindle/eBook they would have tried to either convert it or OCR the PDF which back then & sometimes even now would often produce questionable results.

I would go out on a limb and say that OCRing the PDF might have actually produced less atrocious results than the available conversion pipelines for PDF at the time would have.

That's what some people don't understand. At that time, having an electronic version of the book only in the PDF format wasn't really distinguishable from NOT having an electronic version at all. Not from a workflow standpoint, anyway. OCRing PDFs was often the saner, more efficient, choice, in fact.

That has changed, of course, in the years since the PDF format became open and standardized in 2008.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Ummm... so you don't have an obligation to look at the product details to see what language it is in before clicking the buy link?

Yes, I am "obliged" ("expected") to look at the description to see what language a book is in. But if no language is mentioned in the description, then the seller is just as "obliged" to send me a copy in the most common language of the area where the selling/buying is going on (at least in areas like the USA where the area is huge and there is only one predominant language). A rare historical text might be the exception to this expectation, but a simple entertainment novel is not.

But getting back to the main point of this thread, a book publisher/author is "obliged" ("expected") to provide you with a reasonable quality product when they take your money in payment. The story and writing style is never guaranteed to be to your liking (subjective), but the technical aspects inherent to publishing should meet minimal expectations IMHO.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by haertig

But getting back to the main point of this thread, a book publisher/author is "obliged" ("expected") to provide you with a reasonable quality product when they take your money in payment. The story and writing style is never guaranteed to be to your liking (subjective), but the technical aspects inherent to publishing should meet minimal expectations IMHO.

Amazon has been known to pull books from sale and require the publisher to fix them before making them available again. I suspect that it depends on the particular rep, but it can be done based on a single complaint in a single chat session. It will certainly happen if enough complaints are received. (I have no idea how many are enough, except that sometimes it can be one.)

If you have no qualms about depriving potential readers not bothered by OCR errors of having the opportunity to buy the book while it is being fixed, if it is ever fixed, you can give that a shot. From your description, it sounds like the book is a poster child for the sort of thing that should be pulled.

[Mims]

Last week I made an impulse buy at Amazon. Just clicked buy without looking at anything but the title and price. This is what popped up today when I opened the book in kindle for iPad.

PUBLISHER'S NOTE DATED 8/2/2018. Please note the original uploaded version had an unacceptable number of typos (our screw-up). The current version is a CORRECTED version. All previous buyers of the book can download the new version.

Went back to see if that note was on the web page. Yes, it was. Also noticed that this edition was published last November. Guess it took them that long to correct. Also realized that this book is published by Phoenix Pick which just confirms my opinion of their formating and proof reading standards.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by haertig

...a book publisher/author is "obliged" ("expected") to provide you with a reasonable quality product when they take your money in payment. The story and writing style is never guaranteed to be to your liking (subjective), but the technical aspects inherent to publishing should meet minimal expectations IMHO.

Can you define in concrete terms what counts as 'reasonable quality' in order to 'meet minimal expectations'?

Exactly how many OCR errors are acceptable? Or misspelled words? Should OCR errors be counted with misspelled words as errors, or should they be allowed a certain number of one and a certain number of the other? What about misused words?

We just need to get this cleared up and we can get Amazon to start pulling some books.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Can you define in concrete terms what counts as 'reasonable quality' in order to 'meet minimal expectations'?

That's a rhetorical question. You already know the answer is no. It is the overall "feel" of the book that determines one's opinion of the quality. I know, at least for me, that several errors per page is too many to be considered reasonable. Now, not every page had errors in the book I initially described in my post. Probably, most pages did not have errors. But then, there was a significant number of pages that had several errors on each one of them. They seemed to come in clusters - which makes no sense, I agree, but that's how it appeared. Even the definition of "a page" is not concrete in eBooks, given that we can adjust font size, margins, and all that.

You could also ask me to define, in concrete terms, how long a new tire should last on my car before disintegrating. I couldn't give you an exact timeframe for that either. But I could rightly comment that "one month is too short to be considered reasonable". That's what "reasonable" means ... it's subjective.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Can you define in concrete terms what counts as 'reasonable quality' in order to 'meet minimal expectations'?

Exactly how many OCR errors are acceptable? Or misspelled words? Should OCR errors be counted with misspelled words as errors, or should they be allowed a certain number of one and a certain number of the other? What about misused words?

We just need to get this cleared up and we can get Amazon to start pulling some books.

Take a look at the Amazon sample for The Mind Game, mentioned upthread, and tell me that it's acceptable to charge $8 for that mess.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Take a look at the Amazon sample for The Mind Game, mentioned upthread, and tell me that it's acceptable to charge $8 for that mess.

I did. First in the look inside. Other than the cover looking like a bad scan it looked fine. Maybe the sample is different? So check out the sample on Kindle app - still looks good. Have not seen any OCR mistakes. The only thing I seen is formatting a little simple, but still consistant. No real em-dashes, but double dashes instead. Simple quotation marks ("this" instead of “the nice ones”). Hyphens? Yeah I seen hyphens, but those were chosen to be there (e.g. in close-up). Again consistant as "close-up" was mentioned multiple times always spelled the same.

So what exactly is horrible about the sample other than subject and topic? (I even used your link).

ETA: I only read to about 8% of the sample, then I could not handle the mid-life crisis sex topic any more. Maybe all the bad mess happens afterwards?

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

I did. First in the look inside. Other than the cover looking like a bad scan it looked fine. Maybe the sample is different? So check out the sample on Kindle app - still looks good. Have not seen any OCR mistakes. The only thing I seen is formatting a little simple, but still consistant. No real em-dashes, but double dashes instead. Simple quotation marks ("this" instead of “the nice ones”). Hyphens? Yeah I seen hyphens, but those were chosen to be there (e.g. in close-up). Again consistant as "close-up" was mentioned multiple times always spelled the same.

So what exactly is horrible about the sample other than subject and topic? (I even used your link).

ETA: I only read to about 8% of the sample, then I could not handle the mid-life crisis sex topic any more. Maybe all the bad mess happens afterwards?

You don't see the book title, author, epigraph, chapter, and text shown without any spaces between lines or any typographical distinctions? You don't see the new paragraphs sometimes flush and sometimes indented? You don't see periods instead of commas? You don't see words run together (Danishmodern, selfflagellation)? You don't see dialog from different speakers run together in the same paragraph?

And then there are the errors that may or may not have been carried over from the print copy (inconsistent capitalization, no italics for a show title).

I'm stunned that anyone could look at that mess and think it's acceptable.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Catlady

You don't see the book title, author, epigraph, chapter, and text shown without any spaces between lines or any typographical distinctions?

Who cares? I rather not have the sample wasted space with the "proper" front matter. Even if the book was like this I really could care less about it.

You don't see the new paragraphs sometimes flush and sometimes indented? You don't see periods instead of commas? You don't see words run together (Danishmodern, selfflagellation)? You don't see dialog from different speakers run together in the same paragraph?

Yes, whenever I see a non indented paragraph I am imagining a little gap in between that one and the last. Periods instead of points? Now you are complaining about too simple sentences? I rather have simple sentences than long ones where nobody bothered to add any punctuation. Writing style is horrible, I give you that. But I am not judging that - it might have been done on purpose. Running words together is not a foreign concept to me, I am German after all. If I see an author wrongly use compound words that are technically spelling mistakes in "pure english", I just think that they have knowledge in more than one language. That is refreshing to see, and usually doesn't make me lose my pace. OTOH what I don't like is the inclusion of real German words that are used incorrectly (e.g. plural form used when a single is referenced) -- either do it right or stick to english words.

And then there are the errors that may or may not have been carried over from the print copy (inconsistent capitalization, no italics for a show title).

I'm stunned that anyone could look at that mess and think it's acceptable.

It is not a front list book. Even when it was new it was a midlist. Why are you demanding frontlist quality on a backlist formerly midlist title?

[haertig]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Why are you demanding frontlist quality on a backlist formerly midlist title?

My expectations would be the same no matter what "list" a book was. Just like I don't expect worms in my brand name cereals in the grocery store, ... but I don't expect them in the generic store branded cereals either.

I expect that the content (taste) of cheaper store brand cereals might not be as good as name brand, but I *do* expect that the technical production quality of it (no included worms) to be every bit as good as a name brand. Same for books. Content quality may be lacking for the cheap books, but technical quality should not be.