The Bookseller has an article today about Waterstones and the agency model. The usual stuff is said. But in the last paragraph comes this statement. It is the first time I’ve heard a bookseller actually raising this issue:
Ingram [ebooks buyer for Waterstones] exhorted publishers to improve the quality of digital files warning that dealing with errors in e-book files could wipe out the chain’s profit margin on individual titles
Not that the text quality is unimportant, but I think they could get much greater savings on customer support by ditching DRM.
Errors are a big problem. I just sent off an email to Harper Collins about a new release I bought that has 131 errors in it (that I noticed anyway, there might be more). That’s a ridiculous amount of errors in any title and takes a lot of the enjoyment out of reading it.
On the other hand it’s not always the publisher (I don’t think). I bought some titles from Kobo and they have all kinds of problems yet the samples from B&N and Amazon lead me to believe that what those stores are selling have none of the same errors and something was done on the Kobo end. Kobo has done nothing to fix them even though the publisher has sent them good files twice and Michael Tamblyn (their VP for content) saying he’d look into it almost a month ago and that after dealing with their CS folks for a couple of months.
I don’t see how typos could arise after the files are sent to Kobo. ? . It must ultimately be the responsibility of the Publisher or the self published author and I find it utterly utterly appalling that either would send a work with a single typo or editing error and expect people to pay good money for it.
You’d think so, but the files are fine everywhere else (or at least the first chapters are). The publisher has sent them replacement files twice, but Kobo can’t seem to take the time to replace the originals which have big problems like missing italics, words run together and corrupt cover images among other things. All they keep doing is asking again and again how I’m viewing them and what the problems are. As far as I know these files are from before the publisher themselves were doing ePub’s and Kobo (at the time they might have still been Shortcovers) did the ePub conversion in house, just like they convert files to their “web” and “mobile” formats.
I’ve had the same problems from HC books… clearly bad scan-and-OCR jobs, with no proofing behind them. I believe most Kindle and Nook users are not that concerned about DRM if it doesn’t affect their ability to read their books… but scores to hundreds of errors in a book they paid good money for will piss them off immediately, as they did me.
The problem is usually not all the publisher’s fault: Apparently they contract out scan-and-OCR jobs to third-party firms, at bottom-dollar-per-book costs… no wonder there are so many errors. OTOH, the publishers could spend some effort proofing the texts, and they’re obviously doing no such thing. And I suspect the authors are generally not even part of the process.
I agree, publishers need to improve this process, or they can kiss goodbye any money I might pay for backlist books (which constitute the bulk of scan-and-OCR jobs at present). I’ve had the last 2 books I bought refunded, and I will demand a refund of any book with that many errors in it… as well as contact the author immediately, and advise them how their publisher is sabotaging their product.