![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/coin-op.jpg\" "\\"coin-op\\"")
Donna saves change in a decorative wooden box, which I’m raiding this morning for quarters.\u00a0 It’s take-the-motorcycle-to-the-car-wash day.\u00a0 I’m going on a cross-country ride to Nevada and Utah later this week, and it just wouldn’t feel right to start a big trip on a dirty bike.<\/p>\n
I read somewhere that the coin-op car wash industry is one of the major groups lobbying against the introduction of $1 coins.\u00a0 I suppose that makes sense … they have a lot invested in meter boxes that take quarters.\u00a0 The other major group is Big Vending, which, we’re told, is another word for Mafia.\u00a0 At today’s prices, though (eight quarters for four minutes’ worth of pressurized water and soap), I wouldn’t be upset if the government pulled on its thuggish jackboots and forced the change.<\/p>\n
Come to think of it, I’d better bring some extra quarters along.\u00a0 By the time I get to Las Vegas, the Goldwing will be dirty again.<\/p>\n
——————–<\/p>\n
I’m reading a new release on my Nook: We, the Drowned<\/em><\/a> by Carsten Jensen.\u00a0 The Kindle e-book sells for $16.69 at Amazon; the Nook version is $15.40 at Barnes & Noble.\u00a0 Potential e-reader customers probably think e-books top out at $9.99.\u00a0 Surprise!\u00a0 E-books … new releases, anyway … are not all that cheap.<\/p>\n So why are they edited like something you’d download free from a torrent site?<\/p>\n Within a month of purchasing my Nook, I’d already written a blog post about crappy e-book editing<\/a>.\u00a0 One of the very first e-books I read, Under the Dome <\/em>by Stephen King (click here<\/a> for my review), was full of typos and formatting snafus, and it too was an expensive new release.<\/p>\n I’m sure the publisher of We, the Drowned<\/em>, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, edited the manuscript for the hardcover version.\u00a0 But when they converted it for electronic readers, they clearly didn’t bother to look at it again before releasing it.\u00a0 Well, stuff happens during the conversion process, and the electronic version I’m reading is full of errors: in addition to missing words here and there, on almost every page there are superfluous letters and characters in the spaces between words.\u00a0 Like E<\/em> this, or ‘ this.<\/p>\n This is not trivial.\u00a0 I paid good money for this Nookbook and shouldn’t have to stumble over typographical errors every page or two.\u00a0 What’s keeping major publishers from proofreading books after the electronic reader conversion process?\u00a0 The price of a day’s wages for a single copy editor?\u00a0 How much could that cost?\u00a0 A hundred bucks?\u00a0 Less than that?<\/p>\n No one would put up with errors like these in a hardcover or paperback book.\u00a0 We shouldn’t put up with it in e-books, either.\u00a0 When I Google “typos in e-books” I get over 200,000 results with titles like “too many errors and typos in Kindle e-books,” and “lousy proofreading in e-books.”\u00a0 One member of a B&N Nookbook forum says he writes down every typo and formatting error he encounters, with the page numbers on which they occur, and sends them into the publisher.\u00a0 To date, he says, he’s received no responses.\u00a0 Most of these complaints date back at least a year.\u00a0 It’s a known issue, one the booksellers and publishers are certainly well aware of.\u00a0 Why hasn’t it been fixed?<\/p>\n I’m trying a more aggressive approach.\u00a0 I wrote to Barnes & Noble today, asking them to credit my account for the $15.40 I paid for this e-book.\u00a0 I also asked them to use their considerable clout to persuade publishing houses to do a better job of editing the e-books they sell.<\/p>\n That’s not all.\u00a0 I’m going to write to some of the major book review bloggers to ask them why they aren’t warning potential Nook and Kindle buyers about the sorry state of e-book editing, and to recommend they tell disappointed e-book readers to ask for their money back.\u00a0 If I’d known how bad the state of e-book editing was, I might not have been so eager to purchase my Nook in the first place.<\/p>\n Do I actually expect B&N to give me my money back?\u00a0 Do monkeys fly out of my butt?\u00a0 Do I expect to get someone’s attention?\u00a0 Hey, I can hope.\u00a0 If you’ve had similar experiences with e-books on your Nook or Kindle, maybe you too should start asking for your money back.<\/p>\n By the way, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt?\u00a0 Pay me $100 a day and I’ll proofread your damn e-books for you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Donna saves change in a decorative wooden box, which I’m raiding this morning for quarters.\u00a0 It’s take-the-motorcycle-to-the-car-wash day.\u00a0 I’m going on a cross-country ride to Nevada and Utah later this week, and it just wouldn’t feel right to start a big trip on a dirty bike. I read somewhere that the coin-op car wash industry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[412,18,2,415,30,21],"tags":[118,117,121,122,119,73,120],"class_list":["post-5762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-reviews","category-consumerism","category-personal","category-products","category-reviews","category-words","tag-barnes-noble","tag-ebook-editing","tag-formatting-errors","tag-houghton-mifflin-harcourt","tag-kindle","tag-nook","tag-typos"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5762"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8168,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5762\/revisions\/8168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}