Ebooks filled with typos and bad formatting, is it unavoidable?

[RainingLemur]

I've found that with ebooks sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you. You'll get a book that has both formatting and proof-reading done admirably, and then another one that looks cobbled together by someone with Parkinson's.

[kindlekitten]

I'm currently reading the US edition and haven't found any editing issues. makes one wonder where that version came from

[MovieBird]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

I'm currently reading the US edition and haven't found any editing issues. makes one wonder where that version came from

I'm reading the US edition as well, and while I haven't noticed typos, per se, I'm having a tough time following the dialogue. It's rather common for diaoluge to go like this:

[Person A]"I have something interesting to say!" [Person B]"Ah, but you didn't let me tell you about the 21 course meal I just ate along with all the delicious spices!" [Person A]"Huh?"

Notice how there's no paragraph break between A & B. It makes it rather difficult to follow some conversations, which means I have to go back and re-read these parts.

There's no excuse for this other than laziness, as I'm sure GRRM had it properly formatted on the Word document he submitted to his publisher.

[JSWolf]

Blaming Amazon does no good at all. Amazon just sells it. It's the publisher that's at fault for any errors.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hellmark

My guess, the french publisher released an OCR'ed copy. When they scan and OCR a book, expect lots of issues.

My guess is they created the eBook from a PDF source. A lot of publishers do that and it shows.

[Ditchleyportrait]

makes me feel puzzled and manipulated by the text. it confounds the reader, me. it's terrible. darn near ruined a book for me. you remember the glaring errors as much as the text itself. 11.99 made it that much more infuriating. even tiny errors like the omission or inclusion of a word like the can throw a text off kilter. you notice the strange errors the better you get to know a text. HOWEVER, i'll never revert to print again when i can get it electronically, FTMP.

[vxf]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

I'm reading the US edition as well, and while I haven't noticed typos, per se, I'm having a tough time following the dialogue. It's rather common for diaoluge to go like this:

[Person A]"I have something interesting to say!" [Person B]"Ah, but you didn't let me tell you about the 21 course meal I just ate along with all the delicious spices!" [Person A]"Huh?"

Notice how there's no paragraph break between A & B. It makes it rather difficult to follow some conversations, which means I have to go back and re-read these parts.

There's no excuse for this other than laziness, as I'm sure GRRM had it properly formatted on the Word document he submitted to his publisher.

I noticed that in some ebooks as well. Terribly annoying.

I can't say I had many formatting problems and typos with most ebooks - only the occasional typo, but that happens in print as well. But I did notice lots of typos in free books on Guthenberg or Google.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by MovieBird

I'm reading the US edition as well, and while I haven't noticed typos, per se, I'm having a tough time following the dialogue. It's rather common for diaoluge to go like this:

[Person A]"I have something interesting to say!" [Person B]"Ah, but you didn't let me tell you about the 21 course meal I just ate along with all the delicious spices!" [Person A]"Huh?"

Notice how there's no paragraph break between A & B. It makes it rather difficult to follow some conversations, which means I have to go back and re-read these parts.

There's no excuse for this other than laziness, as I'm sure GRRM had it properly formatted on the Word document he submitted to his publisher.

Fortunately that is usually quickly fixed with some RegEx. I am really annoyed at those silly errors..

[mldavis2]

This was the topic of a recent thread on TeleRead. The bottom line is something that will permeate many areas of our lives as budgets are cut in the ongoing world economic crisis and jobs are lost to technological (OCR) shortcuts. Proofreaders are icing on the profit cake and expendable unless or until readers vote with their wallets. If they can sell a book with errors, why on earth pay someone to eliminate them unless it impacts sales? There is no pride in product for profit without proofing. One can also wonder if publishers are trying to make a case against eBooks in selling such sloppy products.
http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/why-e...ed-with-typos/

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by mldavis2

This was the topic of a recent thread on TeleRead. The bottom line is something that will permeate many areas of our lives as budgets are cut in the ongoing world economic crisis and jobs are lost to technological (OCR) shortcuts. Proofreaders are icing on the profit cake and expendable unless or until readers vote with their wallets. If they can sell a book with errors, why on earth pay someone to eliminate them unless it impacts sales? There is no pride in product for profit without proofing. One can also wonder if publishers are trying to make a case against eBooks in selling such sloppy products.
http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/why-e...ed-with-typos/

Trouble is, the reader are having a hard time voting with their wallets, when they can't say before buying books that are properly edited, and books that are not.

[Pinecone]

Heck, I see such errors in pbooks.

As someone said in this thread, proof readers were an early casualty of cost savings. Not that most people from the current school system COULD proof read.

[JSWolf]

The problem comes in when you have the text and it's fine in a pBook yet the eBook has errors that the pBook does not.

The reasoning for this is because (IMHO) they use a PDF source and that introduces a new set of errors that don't always get fixed.

The book is usually submitted via a Word document. Sure it's a pain in the ass to clean up the mess that Word makes. But, the text doesn't get mangled. So that is not a reason to have different errors.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Amazon are not responsible for the errors, the publisher is... Amazon isn't a publisher, it's a retailer and just sells what the publisher supplies to it... if it's really bad then you might be able to demand a refund but I am surprised with this book... I have a copy and don't feel that it's bad... I've been too involved in reading it to notice anything else although I did notice the original "Te" at the start of the Prologue... and the hardcover has it printed correctly.

Mr Ploppy is partially correct about proofreaders being an early casualty of making savings but this dates back decades to when spellcheckers were though to be a good replacement... and weren't resulting in errors in pbooks long before the main ebook revolution...

I am currently reading this and the "The" is correct both in the original and in what came out from the Calibre epub to epub conversion.

Originally Posted by MovieBird

I'm reading the US edition as well, and while I haven't noticed typos, per se, I'm having a tough time following the dialogue. It's rather common for diaoluge to go like this:

[Person A]"I have something interesting to say!" [Person B]"Ah, but you didn't let me tell you about the 21 course meal I just ate along with all the delicious spices!" [Person A]"Huh?"

Notice how there's no paragraph break between A & B. It makes it rather difficult to follow some conversations, which means I have to go back and re-read these parts.

There's no excuse for this other than laziness, as I'm sure GRRM had it properly formatted on the Word document he submitted to his publisher.

I don't remember seeing any problem with the dialogue unless I just read straight thru it - where did you see the problem?

I took your quote literally and searched thru the book looking for "21" until I reread your post and realized it wasn't real dialogue so I definitely could have read right thru it.

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I am currently reading this and the "The" is correct both in the original and in what came out from the Calibre epub to epub conversion.

But you're reading the US version are you not... and when did you get it? The typo was in the UK version on release...

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by mldavis2

This was the topic of a recent thread on TeleRead. The bottom line is something that will permeate many areas of our lives as budgets are cut in the ongoing world economic crisis and jobs are lost to technological (OCR) shortcuts. Proofreaders are icing on the profit cake and expendable unless or until readers vote with their wallets. If they can sell a book with errors, why on earth pay someone to eliminate them unless it impacts sales? There is no pride in product for profit without proofing. One can also wonder if publishers are trying to make a case against eBooks in selling such sloppy products.
http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/why-e...ed-with-typos/

These days they use advance reader copies. The writer sends them out to fans and they let him know about any mistakes they spot. The problem with that is proof reading is a unique skill that not many people possess, so if they don't have a fan with that skill they go out with lots of mistakes.