Some perspective on why ebooks are so filled with errors.

[Gudy]

Originally Posted by toddos

I just finished a book (to remain nameless, but it's not Cormac McCarthy who's allowed to write like an infant because he's earned it) where every single instance of a "X have" contraction that should've been "X've" was written as "X of". "Would of", "could of", "I'd of" (which should've been "I'd have"), etc.

Jacqueline Carey - Santa Olivia.
No, I have no compunction about shaming those that need shaming. I generally like her books (apart from the Sundering titles, which I just couldn't get into). I even liked Santa Olivia a great deal, but the whole "w/c/should of" issue was enough to make me think long and hard about whether or not I wanted to a) finish the book and b) buy the sequel.

And no, while the narrator definitely had a tangible personality, it was not a first person narrator. There were also no other indicators (at least that I noticed) that would have made the decision to use those grammatically wrong constructions in any way defensible.

Originally Posted by Hitch

BTW: the "beta reader" idea--I have authors that would kill for reliable beta readers. Beta readers are, Keryl, one of those generally-accepted, vaguely conceptualized ideas of "things that exist" that, quite bluntly, don't. Sure, if you're Dan Brown or Laurell K. Hamilton or one of those people with troos, it's easy to find beta readers; but for the average mid-lister (and that's who makes up the vast majority of publishing, folks), it's nearly impossible. Again, that's like the infamous pretty teenage girl who will come over and exercise and take care of your horse just for the love of it--they don't exist, either. And, btw: most of the beta readers are fine for plotline development, but they're not proofers. Not the same thing at all.

Funny, so you're telling me I don't exist? I am, along with half a dozen people, a beta reader for a probably less-than-midlist, self-published author (who also happens to have an account here). And yes, we do both plot and proof reading at different stages of the process. Combined with the gratifyingly excellent command of the English language which said author brings to the table, I think the result is, if not perfect then at least hugely better than most self-published authors and in fact easily competitive with what I've seen from big name publishers over the last couple of years.

As for what it takes to get those fabled betas, I can only tell you what it looks from my end. But the key seems to be to cultivate your fans. Interact with them, get them emotionally involved, get to know them so you have some hope of finding ones who can actually help you in the process instead of simply being a gushing fan girl/boy. I realize that not every author can do this, either because they don't have fans or because they don't know how to cultivate them as a community, but my gut feeling is that the Dan Browns and Laurell K. Hamiltons of the world with their readership in the tens of millions or more may very well have a harder time of it than mid-list authors with a smaller following.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I mostly have bought backlist. Most have been relatively recent--last ten years or so--but some are vintage pulp reissues from the thirties, forties, and fifties. Don't know what the process was on those, but they've been just fine--no major errors.

Perhaps you found a case of "gives a damn"? If the conversions were done by people who care, or the author cares (and his or her publisher allows him or her to do something about it), there's a much higher chance of a good conversion.

Originally Posted by Catlady

My first question is, Did this book have a first-person narrator? If of was used throughout, the author had to have made a specific choice to do that, for whatever reason, and clearly the publisher accepted that choice. Editing it to your liking is just wrong! It's like an author using present tense, and you change it to past tense because you prefer past tense. My second question is, What's the name of the book/author/publisher?

No, the book did not have a first-person narrator. It was written third-person with a single POV character. The book was One Second After by William Forstchen and published by Tom Doherty Associates/St. Martins Press/Tor/Forge depending on where you look (they're all the same company, pretty much).

I should've (should of?) read reviews a bit more closely before buying it, as every single one complains about the immature editing, but I was drawn in by the story concept. If it was only internal or external dialogue that had the mistake I would've left it in. If it was an obvious affectation like Cormac McCarthy's lack of punctuation and paragraph-long run-on sentences I would've left it alone. This was very obviously an author who can't write the English language (despite having written 40+ books) with an editor who can't read. Since Barnes & Noble won't accept returns on Nook books, I edited it so I could make it through without poking out my eyes.

Maybe that's wrong, but welcome to the digital world . I also use Greasemonkey scripts and Stylish user styles and ad blockers in my web browsers, despite that not being how site authors want me to read their web sites.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by vxf

One example: A Dance with Dragons. I think I paid USD 16 for it. Certainly a large-volume book, not a minor publisher. And a brand new book, written in 2011. And filled with errors not in the print edition - which is available at the same, if not lower, price.

I bought the hardcover, but I read parts of it in the digital version. DwD was spectacular compared to some releases.

Check out the Amazon reviews for the Kindle edition of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern trilogy. That had missing punctuation (even periods!), names spelled wrong (intermittently...would be very confusing for a new reader), etc.

Just one single proofread by a person would improve the quality about 100%. When even periods are missing (and lots of them!) you can tell no one really laid eyes on it.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Gudy

Jacqueline Carey - Santa Olivia.
No, I have no compunction about shaming those that need shaming. I generally like her books (apart from the Sundering titles, which I just couldn't get into). I even liked Santa Olivia a great deal, but the whole "w/c/should of" issue was enough to make me think long and hard about whether or not I wanted to a) finish the book and b) buy the sequel.

And no, while the narrator definitely had a tangible personality, it was not a first person narrator. There were also no other indicators (at least that I noticed) that would have made the decision to use those grammatically wrong constructions in any way defensible.

Actually, "would of," "could of" and "should of" are three of my personal pet peeve/no-fly-zone items. Unless an author has deliberately placed it in dialect to indicate illiteracy, it's an instant book-tosser for me.

Funny, so you're telling me I don't exist? I am, along with half a dozen people, a beta reader for a probably less-than-midlist, self-published author (who also happens to have an account here). And yes, we do both plot and proof reading at different stages of the process. Combined with the gratifyingly excellent command of the English language which said author brings to the table, I think the result is, if not perfect then at least hugely better than most self-published authors and in fact easily competitive with what I've seen from big name publishers over the last couple of years.

As for what it takes to get those fabled betas, I can only tell you what it looks from my end. But the key seems to be to cultivate your fans. Interact with them, get them emotionally involved, get to know them so you have some hope of finding ones who can actually help you in the process instead of simply being a gushing fan girl/boy. I realize that not every author can do this, either because they don't have fans or because they don't know how to cultivate them as a community, but my gut feeling is that the Dan Browns and Laurell K. Hamiltons of the world with their readership in the tens of millions or more may very well have a harder time of it than mid-list authors with a smaller following.

Nope, I'm telling you that in general, you don't exist. How many of you do you think there are? Firstly, you're a writer yourself, so you're willing to beta-read other writers, in order to earn that reciprocity. Secondly, you have fans. I don't think it takes the brain cells of Oppenheimer to take one glance at Smashwords, or Amazon, etc., to see that most self-published authors don't; most are desperate for something as simple as a single review, much less a beta-reader. You're active on this forum, as an author--not merely the "pimp my book" forum--which makes you unusual in the first place. As we're talking about books in quantity, I think it would be only fair for you to admit that you or your equivalent mightn't be sitting on every street-corner for the average first- or second-time writer. Not to mention, back to the original topic, beta-readers who can ALSO edit or proof? A Chimera, indeed, based upon my own observations just in "critique groups," which have also proliferated like rats and are almost as worthwhile, having succumbed in large part to the "nicey-nicey" mentality that has become so pervasive in the modern age, in which everyone's self-esteem is actually more valuable than their real worth.

It's possible that the sheer mountain of manuscripts I have to plow through every day for quotation alone (never mind production issues) taints my view, or skews my opinion--but I have absolutely seen books with 1, 2 and 3 professional edits that were still unreadable and rife with errors. You can make me believe that you, yourself, and your reading companion, might be horses with horns on your heads--but you can't make me believe in a race of unicorns. My higher-end midlisters do have beta-readers; but one of them is the author I mentioned in a recent blog post that got a nastygram from Amazon telling him to remove a book and "fix" it (over a single error). I guess my question to you would be: would you be a beta-reader if you didn't have skin in the game? You might think that as a (patently) vociferous reader, you would be...but I suspect that, as you mentioned, for the average author that requires fans...which, IMHO, gets us back to square one, which is: producing a clean, edited, proofed book that will garner fans in the first instance. Chicken-egg-chicken-egg.....

As previously mentioned: JMHO.
Hitch

[Greg Anos]

Hitch, maybe I'm just warped, (please stop cheering, y'all) but it seems to be a matter of cost. If the upfront cost is too much....

No upfront, and a cut of the gross? No sales, no payment, but if it sells a lot, you make a lot. No advances, just a stream of royalties from the e-books you proof. Assuming they sell, of course. And from the publisher's viewpoint, lower upfront costs and better product. Sort of like a lottery ticket, but one you work at.

Just a thought...

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Hitch, maybe I'm just warped, (please stop cheering, y'all) but it seems to be a matter of cost. If the upfront cost is too much....

No upfront, and a cut of the gross? No sales, no payment, but if it sells a lot, you make a lot. No advances, just a stream of royalties from the e-books you proof. Assuming they sell, of course. And from the publisher's viewpoint, lower upfront costs and better product. Sort of like a lottery ticket, but one you work at.

Just a thought...

Dear Ralph Sir Edward:

Nope, not on my end; it's not the cost; we have people who will proof, we have people who will edit, etc. But again: we're merely the producers (printers with digital "ink" on our fingers, so to speak).

I'd rather cut my throat than do the publisher route, no upfront and a cut of the royalties? No, thanks. Most of what gets self-pubbed isn't being pimped by John Locke, firstly, and second, in years of doing this now, in all the authors I've met (and that's a BUNCH), I've never met an author who felt that his/her publisher EVER did enough for them. Not one author. And my other issue with it would be the endless rewriting; we had to institute a per-edit fee AND a book remaking fee because the endless rewriting was bankrupting me; authors would put their books up, and 3 weeks later, when somebody had read it and sent 6 "mistakes," the author wanted the book remade. Have one client who's done it not less than 6 times. All on my nickel, of course, in the beginning, although now they don't do that for the obvious reason (the new fees). But in a no-upfront, piece of the action deal? Firstly I'd be swamped with all those DIY'ers on the KDP that don't know how to make their books; I'd have to "reject" those that I didn't think would sell, causing hard feelings, I'd be paying the editors that would be getting used to death...and...well, I'd be a publisher, subjected to the same aspersions, calumny and general hatred displayed here. So: no, I don't think so.

Warmest,
Hitch

[Gudy]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Nope, I'm telling you that in general, you don't exist. How many of you do you think there are? Firstly, you're a writer yourself, so you're willing to beta-read other writers, in order to earn that reciprocity. Secondly, you have fans. I don't think it takes the brain cells of Oppenheimer to take one glance at Smashwords, or Amazon, etc., to see that most self-published authors don't; most are desperate for something as simple as a single review, much less a beta-reader. You're active on this forum, as an author--not merely the "pimp my book" forum--which makes you unusual in the first place.

Minor but important correction: I am not, repeat NOT, an author. When I talk about "what it looks from my end" I am talking about the perspective of someone who reads voraciously and passionately and who has been recruited by an author he loves to be a beta/proof reader. And as I said, I concede that finding good beta readers may be nontrivial in certain circumstances, especially for a first time author without a fan base to recruit from. But most mid-list authors do actually have some kind of readership or fan base, else they wouldn't be mid-list authors but rank, first time amateurs.

Originally Posted by Hitch

As we're talking about books in quantity, I think it would be only fair for you to admit that you or your equivalent mightn't be sitting on every street-corner for the average first- or second-time writer.

Sure. In this, as in everything including critique groups, Sturgeon's law (90% of everything is crap) applies. Heck, you often need to apply it two or three times in a row to get to the actual ratio of crap to non-crap.

Originally Posted by Hitch

I guess my question to you would be: would you be a beta-reader if you didn't have skin in the game? You might think that as a (patently) vociferous reader, you would be...but I suspect that, as you mentioned, for the average author that requires fans...which, IMHO, gets us back to square one, which is: producing a clean, edited, proofed book that will garner fans in the first instance. Chicken-egg-chicken-egg.....

In a way, yes. As mentioned above, I am not an author, so my motivation as a reader is essentially to help making the books of the author I am beta reading for the best they can be.

So maybe my view of this process is as skewed as yours, except in a different direction, but why would you need to start out with a clean, edited, proofed book to garner those fans? Why not, as "my" author did, start off with publishing your work(s), be they short stories or a first novel, in installments on your web site, trying to garner some readership by buying advertising on web sites that host stories similar to yours and build it up from there? OK, so maybe those first stories you published on your site will never exist as an actual book due to the first publication issue, and maybe they contain an error or two, but so what? What you need to do as an author is convince people that you're worth their time and money. If you're very lucky indeed, you can get a big publisher and their marketing machinery to do the convincing. But for most authors that will never happen and the only one who can convince anyone of anything is the author, and the only means by which to do so is their writing, so not putting it out there more than likely won't get you anywhere, with slush piles being as big as they are.

The thing to keep in mind in all this, though, is the economics of the whole situation: Given how many books are bought each year and how many new books are published each year, it is patently impossible for anyone but a very small minority of authors to ever "make it". Most won't. Deservedly so in the vast majority of cases. But even a great number of really good authors won't make it, sadly, because they never quite get enough of their ducks in a row to garner the readership and attention base that would allow them to become successful. And in that sense you are absolutely right: you need a modicum of success to get those beta readers from your fan base or fellow authors. With said success being as rare as it is (and must of necessity be given the numbers involved) a great many authors will not ever find their betas. On the other hand, if you are a mid-list author with a couple thousand readers and at least a basic grasp of the idea that you could shape your readership into a community and potential resource for you, you should be able to find a handful of beta readers.

Originally Posted by Hitch

As previously mentioned: JMHO.

Same here. :-)

[BearMountainBooks]

Hmm. Well, if it is ORC'd proofreading can be expensive, it's true. And publishers may not want to sink an additional funds into the backlist. If the author has the rights, he/she could do it herself or hire someone. If the author does it herself, she also has to buy artwork (and in fact so do the publishers usually as the original artwork may not still be within their original agreement.)

But as someone else said, it isn't rocket science and you gotta do what you gotta do to get a product out.

[Keryl Raist]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

Hmm. Well, if it is ORC'd proofreading can be expensive, it's true. And publishers may not want to sink an additional funds into the backlist. If the author has the rights, he/she could do it herself or hire someone. If the author does it herself, she also has to buy artwork (and in fact so do the publishers usually as the original artwork may not still be within their original agreement.)

But as someone else said, it isn't rocket science and you gotta do what you gotta do to get a product out.

The rights issue you're talking about here is another reason why I'm thinking we're eventually going to see the production aspect of books going to a cottage industry. You, the author, own all the content rights, and then hook up with a larger entity (what I assume publishers will be in 5 or so years) to distribute and market your book.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Keryl Raist

The rights issue you're talking about here is another reason why I'm thinking we're eventually going to see the production aspect of books going to a cottage industry. You, the author, own all the content rights, and then hook up with a larger entity (what I assume publishers will be in 5 or so years) to distribute and market your book.

That already exists. There are plenty of people who will do the various tasks now. All except marketing. No one wants to do that. Sure, a publicist will hook you into a few ops, but no one actually wants to do the marketing because if you pay them, they'd have to be able to show results...

[kaleissin]

Originally Posted by vxf

I teach at one of the top-fifty research universities in the US, mostly to undergraduate business students - but occasionally to graduate ones as well (MBAs).

See, that's your problem right there, it's business students

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by Barty

Given the convoluted workflow, it's a wonder ebooks aren't bigger piles of mess than they are.

There's the problem right there. The workflow is stupid. The reason they don't fix it is because they don't care about eBook quality. Between price fixing and DRM, there's no incentive for them to care.