Complaining about errors appears to have worked

[avantman42]

Back in November, I mentioned that I'd found errors in Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik, and asked for advice about where to complain. I never heard from the author or the publisher, so assumed that they'd ignored me.

Last week, I read the next in the series, Victory of Eagles, and found errors. This one seemed to have more errors than Empire of Ivory. Thoroughly unimpressed, I contacted Naomi Novik and HC Voyager using every medium I could find - Twitter, Facebook, everything.

To my surprise, I quickly got an e-mail from someone called Natasha at HC Voyager saying they'd seen my tweet and that they were looking into it. To cut a long story short, I exchanged several e-mails with Natasha over the course of the day. She was utterly professional, even when responding to my initial angry e-mails. She promised to check all of Naomi Novik's e-books for errors and asked me to e-mail her direct whenever I find errors in any HarperCollins e-book (she only deals with the Voyager imprint, but will forward my e-mails to the relevant people if she doesn't deal with the book in question). She's also sending me a set of the paper books by way of apology for the inconvenience.

I've seen HarperCollins get some bad press here and elsewhere regarding e-books, so I was pleasantly surprised to have got a decent outcome from this.

[Joykins]

My guess is that if you find the right person, they're responsive, but it's often difficult to find the right person. This is also, incidentally, true for health insurance companies in the US.

[DiapDealer]

I've had one or two authors put me in contact with editors or publishing reps who were always considerate and took down the details and location/page numbers of several of the issues I was seeing. Whether or not anything ever came of those email exchanges, I don't know... but I can't imagine that things wouldn't change for the better if more people just took the time to point out errors to the people who can do something about them—and posting a bad review on Amazon doesn't count (if that's the only action you take).

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by Joykins

My guess is that if you find the right person, they're responsive, but it's often difficult to find the right person. This is also, incidentally, true for health insurance companies in the US.

I suspect you're right. I have to admit I'm pleased to have found an e-mail address for someone who is willing to help.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I can't imagine that things wouldn't change for the better if more people just took the time to point out errors to the people who can do something about them

I agree, but it's sometimes difficult to find out who to contact.

[ProfCrash]

I suspect that tweeting about it made it a public enough that they got off their ass and did something about it. Apparently they were embarassed.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Joykins

My guess is that if you find the right person, they're responsive, but it's often difficult to find the right person.

I agree. The only time I've seen a book (from a big publisher) I complained about get fixed is when I was able to track down the email address for the right person. Emails to plain old customer service of large publishers have never brought the desired results.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

I suspect that tweeting about it made it a public enough that they got off their ass and did something about it. Apparently they were embarassed.

Possibly, but she didn't reply to my tweet - she e-mailed me. There's been no public response, as far as I'm aware.

[ProfCrash]

She said in her email to you that she saw your tweet.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

She said in her email to you that she saw your tweet.

Yes, but if public embarrassment is what prompted them to do something, I'd have expected her to respond to the tweet, so that people who saw my tweet would know that they were reacting.

[GlenBarrington]

Originally Posted by Joykins

My guess is that if you find the right person, they're responsive, but it's often difficult to find the right person. This is also, incidentally, true for health insurance companies in the US.

It's true of insurance companies everywhere, they aren't usually evil, just bureaucracies with an antiquated infrastructure.

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by GlenBarrington

It's true of insurance companies everywhere, they aren't usually evil, just bureaucracies with an antiquated infrastructure.

The worst problem I had, where finding the right person was essential, was *signing up my baby for health insurance.* I mean, it's not like new people aren't BORN EVERY DAY, right? Why'd it take them a month to do it properly?

(they did cover her on some temporary basis after she was born, but the hard part was adding her permanently to the policy and getting her card. You'd think that never happened to them before...!)

[avantman42]

Just a quick update. I'd assumed the errors were only present in the e-books, but I did a quick check, and found the first three were also present in the paperback. I didn't check any further. Details on my blog

[cHex]

I've pointed to formatting errors as justification for a lowish rating of the Kindle edition of a book on Amazon.com. At least twice I've been contacted later by the publisher and asked to revise my rating after they cleaned up the eBook.

[Jeff L]

If you highlight the errors as you see them in your Kindle, you can then send the relevant entries in the My clippings.txt file to the publisher.

This will have the errors as well as the position where they occur. That will speed things along in the correction process.

[avantman42]

That's exactly what I do when I'm reading on my Kindle. If I'm reading on my phone, then I don't get a clippings file and I have to copy/paste highlights from kindle.amazon.com

I'm not convinced that the location information really helps, though. I suspect the easiest way to find the errors is to copy & paste the error into a search.