Kindle and quality.

[ilthit]

I love Kindle because it's so easy, and I can get books to my iPad and phone with the minimum of fuss. I also like the word-lookup function and the navigational functions.

The only downside is that so many of the books look like they're hastily put together. I've been reading the Phryne Fisher novels' Kindle editions, which seem legit and not pirates, and there are extra paragraph breaks and sometimes missing paragraph breaks all over the place, and in the latest one, a paragraph that started twice. (A chunk of it was repeated.)

How common is this, what do you think? Not just with Kindle, but with ebooks in general? I mean, I'm sure it's the fault of individual publishers not proofreading the Kindle editions closely enough, but it's funny that it happens in ebooks so much more than in dead-tree books. I have half a mind of asking for my money back sometimes, but then I do like the books, and I like to pay for what I like. I'd just like a version doesn't have these distracting mistakes.

Comments

[malkingrey]

I think it depends a lot on whether the publisher is working from an electronic version of the manuscript as originally submitted (a lot of publishers these days ask for either electronic-only MSS or a combination of electronic and hardcopy), or whether they're working from a scanned hardcopy version of the published book.

A lot also depends on whether or not the publisher bothers to have somebody proofread the e-book before it's released. Dead-tree books are copyedited, and have the copyedited MS gone over by the author before being set into type, and then the typeset MS is gone over again by both the publishing house and the author before being sent to the printer. Even so, errors will creep in. Sometimes it's just because no matter how many sets of eyes look at a thing, something's going to get missed; other times, very bad stuff can happen at the printer's end and not get noticed until angry book buyers start sending back their copies. Turning hardcopy into e-text, if the publisher is converting something that never had an electronic MS, often involves taking apart a physical copy of the book and scanning it page by page, which not only preserves any existing errors but opens the way for even more.

Some publishing houses clearly take care with the process of turning hardcopy into an ebook; others just as clearly don't do much more than pour the however-generated e-text into a standard template and don't bother much with it after that.

Your best bet is probably to write to the publisher about any errors you find. It's not likely to get you a better version of that particular book, but it might encourage them to take more care with the process in the future.

[ilthit]

If a e-book shows signs of being scanned from a hard copy I immediately suspect it's a pirate. The book series I've been reading that has a lot of errors is from the 90s, though...

I really suspect they've just not bothered to proofread the e-versions thoroughly.

[malkingrey]

It used to be mostly pirates who worked from scanned hardcopy. These days, though, a number of legitimate publishers are working on bringing their backlist titles out as e-books, and a number of authors are doing the same thing with their own works for which the rights have reverted. In both cases, if the original book was produced during the typewriter era, or in the early days of word processing, scanning a sacrificed hardcopy may be the only way -- short of re-keying the whole thing -- to get an electronic text.

[ilthit]

Fair enough! It's a shame if they don't then also proofread the result. I'm thinking of complaining to Allen & Unwin over the Phryne Fisher novels, though I may have to track the errors in my Android Kindle app to see it's not just the iPad app messing it up.

[holyschist]

In both cases, if the original book was produced during the typewriter era, or in the early days of word processing, scanning a sacrificed hardcopy may be the only way -- short of re-keying the whole thing -- to get an electronic text.

This. And lack of proofread backlist books from that era is a big reason I haven't wholesale converted to ebooks, since so many of my favorites are either not available as ebooks or only available as subpar OCR'd texts because a lot of legitimate publishers just don't seem to care much (and I'm not a huge fan of putting several hours into cracking and proofreading a book I bought just so it's readable--and putting myself in an iffy legal area just to use the product I bought).