ebooks—the good, the bad, and the ugly

[Metryq]

I recently bought a Golden Age space opera classic in ebook form: Edmond Hamilton's The Star Kings. I first read the novel sometime in the '70s, and the sequel, Return to the Stars, was also in my dad's huge library. I was surprised when the ebook ending was different—the "alternate" ending was really the original ending, before Hamilton had any idea of making a sequel. This is a good thing. (I liked the original ending better.)

I have an original hardcover of Asimov's movie novelization of Fantastic Voyage. Purely by chance, I stumbled upon at least one alteration in later editions (paperback, ebook). Just when Grant realizes miniaturization has begun, he exclaims, "Good God!" Later editions changed the oath to "Great guns!" Well, gosh, golly, and darn—someone must have been offended. So the editors pulled a 451 and changed the line. I wonder how much else has been changed? This is a bad thing. (I'm sure we're all aware of the "sanitized" version of Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.)

One thing that really saddens me about collecting older books in ebook format is the number of OCR errors. Old books must be scanned and run through OCR (optical character recognition) software to turn it into text. The software often fumbles, but that's not a bad thing—provided some human editor manually reads the text to make the final quality control check. From my experience, this last step is rarely done. This is the ugly thing.

If a publisher is going to charge for an ebook version, then the job should be done correctly. (Yes, I'm talking about commercially released ebooks with all these errors, not pirate copies.) Thankfully, there are those who care about "doing it right." A recent sci-fi author opted to do the ebook publishing of his earlier works himself, rather than contracting it out. Despite the fact that he is computer savvy, and his first book is only about 20 years old, his electronic manuscripts no longer matched the finally published books—this was due to all the changes made by editors and typographers. So the author had to do it the hard way with OCR. The author sought the help of his fans in checking and correcting the scans, and many of us were only too happy to help.

Incidentally, the above mentioned The Star Kings was yet another commercial release with a good shovel full of OCR errors. I wrote to the publisher and volunteered my services—as a labor of love— to correct this old classic. I was very pleased that the editor welcomed my help, and I have already submitted a cleaned manuscript. The submission was only a couple days ago, so don't expect the corrections right away if you run out and buy a copy.

If you find a beloved old classic in less than proper condition, write to the publisher! The sci-fi author I assisted requested lists of errata, which he would correct himself, while the Star Kings publisher was sent a complete manuscript with corrections. If I were a publisher, I might worry that some smart aleck did nasty things to the manuscript, so procedures may vary. (Yes, there are apps that can compare changes in two documents, but ask the publisher how they want to do it.)

 

[Vertigo]

Yes OCR errors in older books are a problem; doesn't seem to happen so much in newer books but then these days they probably all start life as electronic documents before being printed, so there would really be no excuse. However it can be a problem with older books. I know Gutenberg relies on a team of volunteers to do this job, but I suspect publishers can't be bothered doing a thorough editing job on older manuscripts. I suppose they don't really expect very big sales and so it's not worth the effort. However maybe they should do as you suggest and get volunteer readers to proof read them; I'm sure they could get plenty of volunteers.

 

[biodroid]

The problem I have with some ebooks is they are formatted poorly with lots of spaces between paragraphs and sometimes they are the same price as the paper version.

 

[Philosopher]

The problem I have with some ebooks is they are formatted poorly with lots of spaces between paragraphs and sometimes they are the same price as the paper version.

Totally agreed. How can publishing companies justify charging the same price as the paper version when the cost of production is reduced tenfold!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I wouldn't say tenfold. Production costs other than the price of paper and ink have to be shared out between all editions, not just those printed on paper.

But certainly the cost is less and should be reflected in the price.

 

[D_Davis]

A large part of the cost of putting out a book comes before printing, so the print or e-version will often cost a publisher about the same amount of money to put out. You will also find that retailers get volume discounts on large orders of print versions, and so they can pass these savings onto the customers. The same cannot be said for e-books.

 

[Philosopher]

I guess that makes sense, thanks for clarifying. I always looked at it as if e-books should sell at print price minus the cost of physical print production, but the volume discount print version thing makes sense!

 

[Metryq]

Setting the price must be a complex thing, as there is no longer a physical book. No lumberjacks, trucks, paper mills, printers, and distributors on the overhead—no "brick and mortar" store! But there is some cost in maintaining e-sales servers and associated equipment and staff. The actual page layout should be the same as it's been for the last decade or so. Anything published within the last handful of years should be ready for e-publishing with virtually no effort at all.

The problem is the older books. Their peak has already come and gone, unless the title has "legs" and—in the usual method of things—would have merited paperback reprints. Those books don't have as much profit margin, which is why I advocate volunteer proofing programs to insure preservation. The handful who work on a given book might be given a finalized copy for their trouble. Everyone else benefits by reading clean books—without the annoyance of typos, hyphens where they don't belong, odd line breaks, and other garbage that can "push" one out of the story.

A big seller like Amazon really should focus on this because content is what they sell. The physical Kindle sales are probably negligible to their bottom line.

So how should ebooks be priced? Apps and games for mobile devices are often "dirt cheap," yet the developers make millions. I believe iTunes is now the biggest music seller, yet they destroyed the old business model of selling albums—possibly a few songs people want surrounded by filler. Whole albums are still cheaper than physical CDs.

Would you read more if books cost less?

 

[D_Davis]

I guess that makes sense, thanks for clarifying. I always looked at it as if e-books should sell at print price minus the cost of physical print production, but the volume discount print version thing makes sense!

I wish they would! And I think they should, but...

 

[Ursa major]

Incidentally, the above mentioned The Star Kings was yet another commercial release with a good shovel full of OCR errors. I wrote to the publisher and volunteered my services—as a labor of love— to correct this old classic. I was very pleased that the editor welcomed my help, and I have already submitted a cleaned manuscript.

Well done.

 

[K. Riehl]

And Amazon announced that Ebook sales have passed the combined sales of hardcover and paperback editions.

http://blogs.forbes.com/alexknapp/2...ns-e-book-sales-mean-for-the-future-of-books/

 

[Metryq]

Running an e-media store is not free—stores like iTunes have their own kind of overhead. While iTS sells mostly music and video (and apps), I would love to see numbers for Amazon and other ebook sellers.

And what does it cost in servers and manpower to run "free" libraries like Gutenberg and ManyBooks?

 

[RJM Corbet]

The production price of a (print) book goes down in proportion to the amount printed. That's why a big hard-back glossy coffee-table type book with full page colour photos may cost less to produce and sell for less than a paperback novel ...

 

[Vertigo]

I think you might find that has to do with the printing being one of the lower actual costs of a book being published. I suspect some of the most expensive work is the editing and proofing, consequently more text in a book will be more costly than more printing. This is one of the reasons given for ebooks not being cheaper than they are. I can sympathise a little with this; we do printing for professional photographers and we frequently have customers complaining at the difference in print price compared to the likes of PhotoBox and then we have to explain that they are not really paying for the printing but the photography.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Believe it or not, the vast majority of book sales are cooking and gardening books, etc.

 

[DrMclony]

interesting thread. And the OCR thing is allways annoying. I'd believe that about the gardening and cooking books.

And thanks for the points on the overheads. E-Books have overheads that tend to be less "Tangible" (read less visible) which means you are fighting a losing battle to charge much for them.

as for the ugly, I was wondering what the worst OCR errors people had seen were? I found in one book the word arms had somehow been replaced with anus! so it read "She linked anus with him and they walked down the corridor" After I finished rolling about on the floor in utter hysterics, I realised just how sad it really was that somebody had missed it....

 

[RJM Corbet]

Sewerage works seeks shi(f)t superintendant ...

 

[rubi]

My E-reading device gives me the opportunity to have thousands of different books in my pocket. Yes, i miss the smell of paper but i think in the future more and more people will choose to use their kindle or ipad, than having a backpack full of books which weight is several kilograms.

 

[D_Davis]

as for the ugly, I was wondering what the worst OCR errors people had seen were? I found in one book the word arms had somehow been replaced with anus! so it read "She linked anus with him and they walked down the corridor" After I finished rolling about on the floor in utter hysterics, I realised just how sad it really was that somebody had missed it....

That's hilarious.

 

[Daisy-Boo]

...as for the ugly, I was wondering what the worst OCR errors people had seen were? I found in one book the word arms had somehow been replaced with anus! so it read "She linked anus with him and they walked down the corridor" After I finished rolling about on the floor in utter hysterics, I realised just how sad it really was that somebody had missed it....

I snorted with laughter and nearly spat my coffee over my keyboard when I read that.