Mistakes in The Hobbit

[WillAdams]

I specifically remember there being a number of instances in my wife's 50th Anniversary Edition of _The Hobbit_ where UK-style single quotes weren't changed to US-style double quotes --- there's also at least one mis-spelled word in the last chapter....

William

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by WillAdams

I specifically remember there being a number of instances in my wife's 50th Anniversary Edition of _The Hobbit_ where UK-style single quotes weren't changed to US-style double quotes --- there's also at least one mis-spelled word in the last chapter....

William

Well now they've decided to use UK style single quotes. So double quotes should not be a problem.

[AlexBell]

Here is the response to an email I sent to HarperCollins

Dear Alex,

Thank you for writing to us and pointing out this error. We apologize for the inconvenience and would like to send you a replacement as new ones are coming out. Please go to www.harpercollinsebooks.com and it will list the ISBN's and format. Please give us ISBN you would like along with your address and phone number as our carrier requires this information and we will send you out the replacement.

Best regards,


Judy Maier
International Customer Service
HarperCollins Publishers
Phone 570-941-1545
Fax 570-343-7069
Email orders: ordersinternational@harpercollins.com
Claims/ inquiries: csinternational@harpercollins.com

It reads as though they will send me a print book, but it least it shows that they do respond.

Regards, Alex

[Phogg]

The biggest mistake in The Hobbit was Bilbo not skewering Smeagol right off.

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by Phogg

The biggest mistake in The Hobbit was Bilbo not skewering Smeagol right off.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I'd be happy to be hired to proofread/create eBooks. I know I'd be good at it.

Originally Posted by Jellby

I offer myself too

Originally Posted by tirsales

I'd support your application.
(If you need Germans - feel free to ask )

Originally Posted by HarryT

People who are keen to get into proofreading might like to start by properly proofing some of the books we have right here at MR. Goodness knows, most of them need it.

Or help out at PG....(voluntarily, of course)....

[Krystian Galaj]

Originally Posted by Phogg

The biggest mistake in The Hobbit was Bilbo not skewering Smeagol right off.

That would probably end in Sauron getting the Ring eventually.

[dauwhe]

You would likely be shocked at how much the publisher pays to have an eBook produced. Years ago all the books I worked on were checked by an outside proofreader. But that expense was probably six times what we're now paid to do the entire book. And we won't even talk about schedules!

I think the whole idea of "ebook conversion" is a misnomer, and has done great damage. An eBook is an entirely new thing, but publishers think you just "push a button," and don't understand how many things can go wrong (and how many decisions need to be made). An eBook should be thought of (at least) as a new edition, requiring a new design, possibly some editorial decisions, and of course extensive proofreading.

Dave

[dreams]

Originally Posted by dauwhe

You would likely be shocked at how much the publisher pays to have an eBook produced. Years ago all the books I worked on were checked by an outside proofreader. But that expense was probably six times what we're now paid to do the entire book. And we won't even talk about schedules!

I think the whole idea of "ebook conversion" is a misnomer, and has done great damage. An eBook is an entirely new thing, but publishers think you just "push a button," and don't understand how many things can go wrong (and how many decisions need to be made). An eBook should be thought of (at least) as a new edition, requiring a new design, possibly some editorial decisions, and of course extensive proofreading.

Dave

Welcome to MR, Dave. It's nice to have input from someone in the industry of producing ePubs for major publishers.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Here is the response to an email I sent to HarperCollins

Dear Alex,

Thank you for writing to us and pointing out this error. We apologize for the inconvenience and would like to send you a replacement as new ones are coming out. Please go to www.harpercollinsebooks.com and it will list the ISBN's and format. Please give us ISBN you would like along with your address and phone number as our carrier requires this information and we will send you out the replacement.

Best regards,


Judy Maier
International Customer Service
HarperCollins Publishers
Phone 570-941-1545
Fax 570-343-7069
Email orders: ordersinternational@harpercollins.com
Claims/ inquiries: csinternational@harpercollins.com

It reads as though they will send me a print book, but it least it shows that they do respond.

Regards, Alex

If you do get an updated eBook, can you also ask them if the library ePub copies are also going to be updated?

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If you do get an updated eBook, can you also ask them if the library ePub copies are also going to be updated?

Well, I'm not holding my breath, but when I do I'll ask.

Regards, Alex

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by dauwhe

You would likely be shocked at how much the publisher pays to have an eBook produced. Years ago all the books I worked on were checked by an outside proofreader. But that expense was probably six times what we're now paid to do the entire book. And we won't even talk about schedules!

I think the whole idea of "ebook conversion" is a misnomer, and has done great damage. An eBook is an entirely new thing, but publishers think you just "push a button," and don't understand how many things can go wrong (and how many decisions need to be made). An eBook should be thought of (at least) as a new edition, requiring a new design, possibly some editorial decisions, and of course extensive proofreading.

Dave

I can understand that, at least for books that are out of print.

But, I keep wondering how new books are being printed. Aren't they delivered to the printer in an electronic format? If so, how much more time would it take to also transform that electronic format into an established ebook format?

The way I see it (which might be a tad bit simplified), once you print a pbook, the cost to make an ebook too, would be small. The cost to create ebooks from out-of-print pbooks, on the other hand, would be high...

[dauwhe]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I can understand that, at least for books that are out of print.

But, I keep wondering how new books are being printed. Aren't they delivered to the printer in an electronic format? If so, how much more time would it take to also transform that electronic format into an established ebook format?

The way I see it (which might be a tad bit simplified), once you print a pbook, the cost to make an ebook too, would be small. The cost to create ebooks from out-of-print pbooks, on the other hand, would be high...

I think the cost to make an eBook is too small. Yes, the print book is essentially always delivered to the printer as a PDF, made from a page layout program like Quark or InDesign. And the publisher will typically send us this same PDF (if we're lucky we get the InDesign file). But it's a long way from PDF to XHTML and ePub. Lots can go wrong:

[1] The letters themselves. I've seen some books where the ligatures (two or three letters grouped as one, like fl or fi) were done in a different font. But you'd type a capital "W" in that font to get the character that looks like "fi". So if you pull the text from the PDF, the word "file" would look like "Wle".

Or the typesetter may not have used the correct accented character, instead typing the accent and the letter separately, and then squeezing them together in the layout program. When we export the text, it's wrong.

And then there are characters that don't exist in most fonts. I've seen several books lately about the Warsaw ghetto in World War Two. There are lots of Polish proper names, with slashes on the letter "L", and dots above the letters "S" and "Z". And it's really hard to find people who can proofread that kind of stuff in India! Spellchecking is worthless in that situation.

[2] More importantly, a PDF is a purely visual rendering of a book. It's like saying, "put the letter 'a' (using the font 'Bembo Italic') 2.3156 inches below the top of the page, and 4.1722 inches from the left edge, and make it .1344 inches wide." It doesn't know if that letter is part of the book title, or part of a footnote, or part of a web address.

To make a coherent eBook, we need to identify the function of all those parts of the book--this is a regular text paragraph, that's a reference to a footnote, this is the caption to the photograph on the next page). Most of the time that process is rather easy, but not always. Computer programs help, but they are not nearly as good at recognizing patterns as humans are. For example, figuring out when a new paragraph starts is surprisingly difficult (hence the occasional "split" paragraph in The Hobbit).

[3] The design needs to be adapted. Print designs start with the size of the book itself, and how many pages it's supposed to contain. The designer has total control over the fonts, spacing, everything. With eBooks we don't know any of this. The page could be 3 inches wide, or 30 inches. We don't know if it will be color or black & white. There will probably only be one font available, but we don't know which one. Dealing with these restrictions can seem impossible at times. How do you make a sidebar or a marginal note for a Palm reader?

[4] There are editorial choices that need to be made. What if the print book says, "turn the page for the answer to the quiz?"? What if you're supposed to fill in the blanks on the page? What if a book had two half-title pages, just to avoid a few blank pages at the end? What function does a title page have in an eBook? What about the blurbs designed to convince you to buy the book? By the time you see them, the purchase has already been made!

Some publishers assume that nothing should go wrong in all this processing. The evidence suggests that they are wrong, and that much more proofreading and general attention is required.

Dave

[tirsales]

Originally Posted by dauwhe

I think the cost to make an eBook is too small. Yes, the print book is essentially always delivered to the printer as a PDF, made from a page layout program like Quark or InDesign. And the publisher will typically send us this same PDF (if we're lucky we get the InDesign file). But it's a long way from PDF to XHTML and ePub. Lots can go wrong:

Yes - but it should be possible to create XHTML and ePub not from the PDF - but from the original source, shouldnt it?
Or at least possible to extract the text (or have the complete text in advance) and re-format this one...

[JSWolf]

It is so sad that PDF is used in cases where it's all wrong and it causes too many hassles. Just don't accept PDF.