Poor quality of ebooks

[HomeInMyShoes]

The one I'm reading right now has some margin issues where the pages shift to the right a little every now and then. Nothing wrong reading-wise, but it just looks pathetic to me in places.

[Hellmark]

The most common problem I've come across is typos, or where spell check got the best of them. I have seen a handful that were littered with typos and OCR errors, but vast majority are fine

[DiapDealer]

I'm more than satisfied with the quality of the vast majority of my ebook purchases. I've come across a few clunkers, but even those are usually because the typography is pushing the limit of what's possible with a given ebook format. I refuse to believe that I've simply been "lucky" for the last three to four years. I've primarily purchased new-release, big-publishing-house authors' works (by the bucketful) in those 3-4 years.

[Pinecone]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

The most common problem I've come across is typos, or where spell check got the best of them. I have seen a handful that were littered with typos and OCR errors, but vast majority are fine

I don't mind the first.

But sometimes the second can be very annoying. One book had all instances of Mrs. converted to Mr. Which was confusing as the appropriate Mr. WAS a character in the book.

Or one where all the " marks were missing. Or where any punctuation marks come out as some wierd character.

[stodge]

I finished some Jo Nesbo books from Kobo. The quality was poor; random line breaks, words randomly split and The Redeemer even had a broken anchor tag visible. The Redeemer was missing paragraph divisions so the text flowed together, making it a very confusing read as I couldn't tell when the scene switched. Very disappointing.

[morriss003]

Ouch! We are getting better at this and a lot of that is due to readers pointing out our mistakes, especially in how punctuation is used. My latest books have fewer errors than my first.

[cHex]

I purchased a recently-released Kindle version of a new book, which obviously had not been proofread at all; there was a glaring glitch on the first line of the first page! I reviewed the book on Amazon, giving it a 1 out of 5, and in my review noted that while the subject seemed interesting, the Kindle edition was unreadable. Within less than a month the book had been reformatted, and I even got a nice e-mail from the publisher asking me to give it another try. I, in turn, revised my review accordingly.

I think as long as the Kindle version of a book impacts the book's overall customer score, we might get quick help like this from publishers. (At least until they start proofreading Kindle editions.)

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by Pinecone

I don't mind the first.

But sometimes the second can be very annoying. One book had all instances of Mrs. converted to Mr. Which was confusing as the appropriate Mr. WAS a character in the book.

Or one where all the " marks were missing. Or where any punctuation marks come out as some wierd character.

My, that Mrs. -> Mr. bit must have been confusing :-) I've run into the 'missing quotes' as well. Made the book pretty much unreadable. I can take the odd OCR error, but when all the quotes are simply missing....

[theolightfoot]

Haste makes waste. The good thing about Kindle is that you can self-publish easily. The bad: the same thing. Best thing to do is write a review and request a refund if it's bad. People buying ebooks put a lot of stock into the reviews they read and word of mouth.

[rakulos]

I probably split my time between reading 80%, proofing and editing 20%.
If it wasn't for Calibre, Sigil and Apprentice Alf, I'd thrown my reader in the bin awhile ago and gone back to dead tree books.
It's a shame that a quick profit means shoddy work but as people have pointed out, quality is improving - albeit slowly with some publishers.

[Lazybones]

I find that most of the top-selling free/low-price books on Amazon's Kindle store are pretty good. Lately I've been using the top free titles list to find new authors to read, and while there are definitely more typos in the self-published books (mine included, I'm certain) than in the big publisher releases, I'll accept a few more errors in a book that is in the $0-$2 range compared to a $13-15 one. It's only when they start to become pervasive and I'm noticing a mistake every few pages that I will put that author aside.

[raac]

I've had issues too. Recently I read Collapse, by Jared Diamond. In addition a variety of typos, the images were all missing (yet were still referred to in the text), the index was just a list of words with no links or page numbers. There were some mis-rendered characters too, but that was probably an reader-specific issue. The book cost at least as much as a paperback. I contacted Penguin, who basically did nothing about it. From now on, I'm going to return unacceptable e-books such as this and explain why I'm doing it. If re-sellers start loosing money then they'll apply pressure to publishers. Vote with your wallets, people!

[DiapDealer]

the index was just a list of words with no links or page numbers.

??? Missing links would be a pain, sure, but you don't really expect page numbers in an ebook's index do you?

[raac]

No, I expected links. What I was getting at is that no effort whatever was made to create a useful index.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by raac

No, I expected links. What I was getting at is that no effort whatever was made to create a useful index.

Gotcha. Perfectly understandable.