Proof reading errors? Arggg!

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

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.

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.

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?

Unbelievable. Typography and formatting matter. Paragraphs matter.

Periods instead of COMMAS. I'm not saying one word about writing style, I'm saying that's an OCR error that was ignored.

The book is rendered in English, not German, and we do no run words together willy-nilly. Even taking the step of running the OCR output through spellcheck would have indicated such mistakes, but no one even bothered to do that.

What difference does it make if it's midlist? Minimum standards of quality should be met.

The book is priced at EIGHT BUCKS. There's no way that's justifiable. No. Way.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by haertig

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.

You act surprised that there is dreck among traditionally published books. News flash: There is a lot of bad books traditionally published, not only Indie, Inc. is guilty of that. What I see there is definitely not worms that ruin the book. The writing of the book itself is what makes this one so bad, not the formatting, IMHO.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

You act surprised that there is dreck among traditionally published books. News flash: There is a lot of bad books traditionally published, not only Indie, Inc. is guilty of that. What I see there is definitely not worms that ruin the book. The writing of the book itself is what makes this one so bad, not the formatting, IMHO.

Sturgeon's revelation?

"I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. is crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms." -- Theodore Sturgeon

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Periods instead of COMMAS. I'm not saying one word about writing style, I'm saying that's an OCR error that was ignored.

But it is a writing style. You assume it is an OCR error, because you would have put a comma.

The book is rendered in English, not German, and we do no run words together willy-nilly. Even taking the step of running the OCR output through spellcheck would have indicated such mistakes, but no one even bothered to do that.

Again, please do not assume that OCR is to blame. If it was OCR it would have run words together that don't make sense together.

What difference does it make if it's midlist? Minimum standards of quality should be met.

Budget matters. A midlist book will not get the TLC it should have. If all you are chasing dreams of the next big hit, and financially depend on it, then the poor midlist book stays forgotten. It will end up in the back of the store anyway.

The book is priced at EIGHT BUCKS. There's no way that's justifiable. No. Way.

Nobody is making you pay it.

And I totally agree with you. The price is too high for what you get. To me the price of ALL books from the Big5 are too high unless on deep discount.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

But it is a writing style. You assume it is an OCR error, because you would have put a comma.

No, there was at least one example (in the two pages I bothered to read) of a period instead of a comma in what was obviously one sentence. It was not writing style.

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Budget matters. A midlist book will not get the TLC it should have. If all you are chasing dreams of the next big hit, and financially depend on it, then the poor midlist book stays forgotten. It will end up in the back of the store anyway.

I agree that budget matters and that mid-list books won't get the attention bigger books will, but the basic formatting issues and stuff in that example are really attrocious and shouldn't have gotten past a first glance at the publishers. Even having a summer intern go through it would have had better results than that.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

But it is a writing style. You assume it is an OCR error, because you would have put a comma.

Yeah, I would have put a comma because that's the correct punctuation. Example:
"Hi. babes," she said.

Either there's a comma after hi, or babes takes an initial cap. The way it's written isn't an authorial choice or a writing style, it's incorrect.

Again, please do not assume that OCR is to blame. If it was OCR it would have run words together that don't make sense together.

Seriously? An error is an error is an error. Those words do not exit in the English language.

Budget matters. A midlist book will not get the TLC it should have. If all you are chasing dreams of the next big hit, and financially depend on it, then the poor midlist book stays forgotten. It will end up in the back of the store anyway.

A midlist book will not get the hype, the publicity tour, the big first printing. That's the difference. The production process is the same.

Nobody is making you pay it.

It's a ripoff, and nobody should pay that price for a shoddy product. Why are you trying so hard to justify that kind of shoddy workmanship? Why are you defending something that's indefensible?

And I totally agree with you. The price is too high for what you get. To me the price of ALL books from the Big5 are too high unless on deep discount.

Of course, bash the big five, even though they are not responsible for the book in question, which doesn't list a publisher for the digital version. This is some slapdash, overpriced product created without the slightest bit of effort to make it minimally acceptable.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Of course, bash the big five, even though they are not responsible for the book in question, which doesn't list a publisher for the digital version. This is some slapdash, overpriced product created without the slightest bit of effort to make it minimally acceptable.

Where did the paperback come from that is the source if not from the Big5? Putting lipstick on this pig (e.g. making sure the ebook is at least to the standard of the paperback if not better formatted) is not making this a good book.

[pwalker8]

I'm not nearly as sensitive to typos etc. as some here. It's been a long time since I've run across an ebook where it was proofed badly enough that I actually noticed. In the early days of ebooks, it was pretty common. Of course, I also tend to stay with authors I'm familiar with and books that are recommended.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Where did the paperback come from that is the source if not from the Big5? Putting lipstick on this pig (e.g. making sure the ebook is at least to the standard of the paperback if not better formatted) is not making this a good book.

You're moving the goalposts again.

The OCR schlock that is being sold is not from one of the big publishers. But now you're somehow blaming them for publishing the book in the first place, based on what you think of the content. We WERE talking about the digital version, not about the story, plot, writing style. We WERE talking about generally accepted objective standards of quality, which are not met here by whoever published it as an e-book.

I don't know if you're deliberately trying to bait me for the fun of it, or if you truly believe that minimum quality standards don't matter. If the latter, we have nothing to discuss. If the former, the fun is over, and we have nothing to discuss.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I don't know if you're deliberately trying to bait me for the fun of it, or if you truly believe that minimum quality standards don't matter. If the latter, we have nothing to discuss. If the former, the fun is over, and we have nothing to discuss.

I don't think anyone is saying that quality standards don't matter. They're saying (myself included), that everyone's standards are different. And that no one's price-point comfortability is going to be the same.

So there is no universal "Price point X is too high for quality Y". 8 bucks is a reasonable price for those who think the book is worth 8 bucks. Not everybody does in this case, of course (myself included), but that has nothing to do with the price-tag the seller is allowed to put on it. They can put any price they want on it (as they clearly have). Those who want to can pay it, and those who don't want to don't have to (and those who bought it before discovering the quality was below their own personal standard can ask for a refund if they're unsatisfied). We're talking about readers here, after all, not clueless rubes.

There's no need for some sort of universal quality-unit per-dollar-charged formula to figure "reasonable" ebook prices (which could never be agreed upon anyway). The market will decide as always. As it's doing here.

[haertig]

For some things, I would accept lower quality in exchange for a lower price. For other things, I would not.

The problem with eBooks is, you don't know what quality you'll be getting based on price. You don't realize the quality until after you have already bought the product. (Ignoring for the moment library borrowing where you don't have to directly pay for a product, which I tend to do more of these days.)

We have found in this thread that some people are significantly bothered by low production quality. Others are not. And of those that are bothered, some are bothered because they are taken out of the story by errors, while others are bothered because of the rip-off feel of paying good money for poor quality. Some rail against poor quality, some appear to defend it. Some have pointed out that in order to get such a large selection of eBooks we have to be willing to accept lower quality (too expensive to produce otherwise). Everyone has a valid point. To each his or her own, nobody is right, nobody is wrong.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by haertig

The problem with eBooks is, you don't know what quality you'll be getting based on price. You don't realize the quality until after you have already bought the product.

Most retail ebook sellers offer free samples. They may not tell you everything you need to know, but to suggest that readers have no way of getting an idea of the overall typographic/formatting quality before purchasing is not accurate. Some may not want to take the time to do a little caveat emptoring before-hand. But the tools are still there for those who don't want to "buy blind."

[haertig]

Some may not want to take the time to do a little caveat emptoring before-hand. But the tools are still there for those who don't want to "buy blind."

If you would like a very specific example that counters your point:

Go read the "Look Inside" blurb on Amazon for the book I started this thread about: "Temple" by Matthew Reilly. I just scanned over about 75% of that Look Inside blurb, and didn't find anything horribly bad. So using "the tools", this books appears to be well (enough) formatted, thus appropriate for purchase. Now go buy it, or check it out from your library. See if you still feel it is appropriately formatted after reading and getting into, oh, I'd say about the 2nd half of the book. It seems like the farther you go in the book, the worse the formatting gets. Things become almost a joke as you near the last quarter of the book.

So in theory there are tools for us to use, but in practice they don't always provide the information we need.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by haertig

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.

Yeah, I was just having some fun.

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.

I'm not championing poor formatting in ebooks. In the case you described, you should write to the publisher and push for corrections.

I'm just saying I have realistic expectations and in some cases will accept a higher percentage of errors because I'm happy there's an e-version of the book at all.

[Greg Anos]

Sometimes I just wish that the publishers had a link in the "back" of the ebook, where you could give them the author, title, and a list of errors. Then they could have a summer intern fix the errors, and do an annual push of corrected titles out to the distributors.

I know that some here will scream that they are not paying to be proofreaders, but helping out the next person who comes along is a charitable act. . . .