While reading a book,

[iNTeNSeBLue98]

what do think when you find errors that the editor should have found and had fixed before publishing?

I just downloaded Kindle for my Android phone and read "Dancing in the Moonlight" by RaeAnne Thayne. It was great read, but I recall at least two places where there was a mistake in the "print".

The one was use of the word "them" instead of "him", confused me for a moment when I read it. I had to flip the page back and forth a couple of times to realize what was being said. The sentence made sense on its own, but didn't coincide with the rest of the paragraph.

The other time, a paragraph began and the whole first row repeated itself on the next line. Easy enough, just skip the first line and begin on the second, but it shouldn't have been there.

I think there was another, but it's not coming to mind now. I'm not so bothered by these errors that I feel the need to contact the publisher or the writer and blast them for missing them. It just struck me that someone is paid to review the works before they are published and they didn't do a thorough job of it. Is this something that is still done by a human or have computers taken over and something like spell-check would have missed these oversights?

 

[J3nn78]

Funny, I just finished that book last night on my kindle and I noticed the same mistakes. I did not give it much thought though.

 

[LuvOrlando]

Whether it's a book, a magazine or an advertisement I think to myself, "With all the English majors in the world how come they won't cough up the minimum wage to let a kid proof read it and catch the mistakes?"

The fact it's such an easy fix makes the companies that do it look really, really unprofessional to me. Programs are limited because they can't account for artistic license, humans do a much better job.

 

[clh2]

My DD, was "really" into an author a few years back. DD actually had sent the author a note or two. The author always responded. In one of their "chats" DD asked if the author received a lot of notes from fans, and the author replied..."No" not too many. DD answered back..."well maybe it is because your e-mail address is wrong on your book".

The author was greatful to DD for pointing out this mistake, and actually sent DD some stuff! (Author requested address info from mom/dad, not our DD.)

The author was Lauren Myracle.

 

[Jennasis]

My dad recently read a book where he got through almost the entire book and at the last chapter, the book STARTED OVER. It was the first chapter.

 

[DVCLiz]

If you see a mistake in a Kindle book, please contact Kindle Customer Service and let them know so it can be corrected. I see on the Kindle boards all the time instances where the book was corrected and a new copy sent to replace the one with errors. It would be a kindness to the next reader to let CS know about mistakes you find.

I don't know what the editing process is for ebooks but I see more errors than in print books. However, they are much easier to correct!!

 

[bicker]

I should have mentioned this in the other e-book thread from this morning... E-books have actually opened up the world in the same way self-published music has opened up the world: In both cases, it is now a lot easier to publish the creative work, without incurring the high cost of going "all the way": Pressing an album/printing a book, shipping it around the country, and selling this physical item to people. Now, in both cases, you can just make your title available electronically.

This allows individual artists, who "can't get a recording contract", or who "can't get a publisher to agree to publish their book", to still get their work out there to the public, where it may gain enough attention to profitably back that artist into the mainstream distribution system.

And music lovers/book lovers therefore have a much broader spectrum of choices. We don't all have to like the Top 40 records or the Top 20 bestselling books, anymore. Niche interests are far better served by a system where artists are given a "shorter run" to consumers.

Unfortunately, there is a "close" to these advantages. Part of the broadening of the scope of availability involves eliminating a lot of the costly steps in the process. As often is the case, QA seems to be the first thing that gets cut.

And cheap QA is sometimes almost as bad as no QA.

 

[RitaE]

Editing is a function that Publishing Houses are increasingly unwilling to perform. It is often expected of the Author's Agent or the Author him/herself to provide the Publisher with a manuscript that is ready for print.

Most of the Publishing Houses have eliminated large portions of the editing staff -and most of those have become freelance employees who hire themselves out to the authors themselves. Whether or not the Author/Agent can afford to hire them before submitting a manuscript is largely dependent upon the track record of the author. Thus -- for newer and previously unsuccessful authors the job of editing is being performed by family members, fellow author's in "writing circles" or not at all.

Where Have All the Book Editors Gone?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/where-have-all-the-book-editors-gone/article1894501/

 

[LuvOrlando]

Too bad for the publishing houses that poor editing is a reflection on them, not the authors of the work. Authors are artists, and I therefore expect them to be flawed, new ideas are a messy business & I pay for an artists ideas not his/her flawlessness. I do expect the organization that stamps its name on a work and collects $ for it to have done their share and if they don't it just makes me

 

[MrsJackSparrow4Life]

There is also the possibility that the Kindle conversion software caused the issue. A lot of authors over on the kindle boards have complained about their work being screwed up after they convert it to an ebook. Ebooks are still in their infancy stage and there are kinks to be worked out.

 

[bdcp]

It drives me crazy and it's not just on my Kindle, I see them in books, magazines and newspapers. I automatically notice grammar, punctuation, and spelling mistakes. I've even seen mistakes in characters names. I don't intentionally go looking for mistakes, but I see them without even thinking about it. It's how my mind works. I even go back here and edit my posting after reading them. Sometimes I'm too late to and it drives me nuts to know I made a dumb mistake and can't fix it.

 

[PigletsPal2]

If anyone is writing a book, I know a professional book/magazine editor who may be able to fit in a freelance project or two for the right fee...

Queen Colleen

 

[marcyinPA]

I pick out spelling errors in books pretty often. I does drive me nuts. I always wonder how someone can miss this?!

 

[postage stamp]

This was years ago, I think I was still in high school, I checked out a book from the library. I can't remember what it was called now. I couldn't even finish it. There were misspelled words, run-on sentences, poor punctuation, etc. I thing I read a chapter of it, brought it back to the library where a clerk agreed with me that it was just about unreadable. She pulled it from the shelf and had someone check to see if it was just that edition of the book that was horribly messed up or if they should just forget about the title altogether.

 

[erincon23]

My dad recently read a book where he got through almost the entire book and at the last chapter, the book STARTED OVER. It was the first chapter.

There's a high probability that this problem was caused by the printer (or the finishing house -- whoever assembled the book) and not by the publisher, and likely happened in just a small number of the total book run. Books are printed in "folios" -- groups of pages, usually 24 or 48 pages -- and then assembled. It's likely that the wrong folio was picked up by what was probably an automated machine. I had a book once that had a folio inserted upside down -- I contacted the publisher and they sent me a new copy. I went to a bookstore and looked at other copies of this book and they were all fine.

 

[bicker]

Too bad for the publishing houses that poor editing is a reflection on them, not the authors of the work.

I doubt that they're concerned about the comparatively few patrons who decide that this change in the nature of the industry is something for which blame needs to be placed on someone.

There is also the possibility that the Kindle conversion software caused the issue.

For older works, that might make sense. For stuff that is brand-new, not yet published by a major publisher, then the book probably started electronic and was just transferred around that way. There was a time when different publishing systems were incompatible, and so the data entered into one had to be essentially physically transcribed into another, but that's generally not the case any longer.

 

[Jennasis]

There's a high probability that this problem was caused by the printer (or the finishing house -- whoever assembled the book) and not by the publisher, and likely happened in just a small number of the total book run. Books are printed in "folios" -- groups of pages, usually 24 or 48 pages -- and then assembled. It's likely that the wrong folio was picked up by what was probably an automated machine. I had a book once that had a folio inserted upside down -- I contacted the publisher and they sent me a new copy. I went to a bookstore and looked at other copies of this book and they were all fine.

Yep. All th copies at the Walmart he got it from were botched the same way, but he was able to search out and find a good one.

 

[MrsJackSparrow4Life]

For older works, that might make sense. For stuff that is brand-new, not yet published by a major publisher, then the book probably started electronic and was just transferred around that way. There was a time when different publishing systems were incompatible, and so the data entered into one had to be essentially physically transcribed into another, but that's generally not the case any longer.

Even the self publishers converting brand new books have been complaining.

I suppose they all could be lying in order to cover up their bad formatting or editing but I think I will take them at their word

 

[bicker]

Formatting is one thing, but people have mentioned (specifically) misspellings. Electronic-to-electronic conversions don't lend themselves to misspellings. With electronic-to-electronic, either the conversion is utter gobbledygook, or the misspelling was there in the source. The only reasonably high-probably way a conversion of a perfect source could result in an end-product with misspellings is if it is a hardcopy-to-electronic conversion, and the letter(s) messed up looked similar to each other. At this point, with a new work, there should be no need to do a hardcopy-to-electronic conversion. The only reason for a hardcopy-to-electronic conversion with a new work is because the author who generated the manuscript was a Luddite, and therefore, if there is to be any blame, that is where that blame should be placed. As of about five or six years ago, even Stephen King (who has earned the right to practically write his own ticket, of course) switched to a computer for producing the manuscript that he submits to his publisher.