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The number of typos on Kindle


SueK

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Have you noticed how many typos appear on Kindle books. It was so bad recently I had 3 emails from Amazon asking me to re-download books that had been re-typed - which was nice.

 

I recently finished a really good book called Anatasia on the Kindle but it had so many typos - especially towards the end it was like the typist needed to get away quickly because sentences were unfinished, words were repeated and it began to not make sense. I reviewed the book on Amazon and gave if 4 stars because I found the plot very good and an exciting read but the typos forced me to downgrade from 5 stars. I would have only given it 3 but for the fact that the book was good and I didn't want to distract from that. I hope Amazon take note though.

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I've only encountered two Kindle books that I've had any problems with (the main one being 'A Dance with Dragons', which was shocking considering I bought it when it was in hardback, so it was more expensive for the Kindle, too). I get the feeling a lot of the typos occur when older books are being OCR'd for ebook release. You could always email Amazon customer services and let them know about specific examples.

 

Do you download samples, Sue? I would always recommend downloading the sample of each and every book you're interested in so that you can see what it's like before paying for it, although that obviously doesn't help if the problem starts towards the end of the book! :smile:

Edited by Karsa Orlong
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I know what you guys mean about the typos .Drives me bonkers when I read a book like that .I want to pick up a red pen and start circling the mistakes. The main ones I have noticed are the freebies .Not all of them,some of them are fine,but once in awhile you run across one and wonder why the person didnt have someone look over it first before just putting it out there . It distracts me from the story,and I usually won't read the rest .

Edited by julie
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I've noticed a few, but as most of the e-books on my Kindle are freebies, I don't mind so much - many of them are classics that have been converted by regular-Joes in their own time with no compensation for doing it, so I can give lee-way for a few typos here and there. However, if it were established authors whose print books are of profesional standard, I would expect their e-book versions to be just as good, and I would be unhappy if I were paying for an e-book that was riddled with errors.

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I've noticed it too. As Kell said, a lot of my books too are the freebies so not too much can be expected, but I have downloaded a couple of paid ones that have been full of mistakes. You wouldnt buy a tree book in the shops and have it full of typos, so downloading a book that you have paid money for shouldnt have typos in, in my opinion.

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In general, most books I've read on the Kindle (well over a hundred now), haven't had any more typos that normal paperbacks I've read. I did have a problem with one recently with an incredibly irritating number of formatting errors with random S and R's distributed through the text and words being hyphenated when there was no need to, as if in the paperback version this was at the end of a line. It's really been the exception to the rule though, and like I said earlier, neither format are immune to errors, and I've seen just as many mistakes in real books as I have in ebooks.

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I've definitely seen plenty of errors in hard-copy books too. I had a paperback version of The Godfather by Mario Puzo that was chock-full of typos and spelling errors - at least one to every 10 pages or so, but probably more. If it hadn't been such a great story, I would have ditched it pretty early on as I do find it incredibly annoying.

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  • 4 weeks later...

There are always one or two even in the most professionally written books, but I too have noticed more in Kindle books. Maybe it is because it is easier to self publish that way and self publishers don't have the money for a proof reader ? I didn't know about the free updates though. How does that work ?

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  • 3 weeks later...

Manuscript errors are unacceptable, but even after multiple edits of my 85000 word novel (seven compete drafts) my editor was still finding punctuation errors, bearing in mind that at this point she had read the whole book four times. If you plan to write anything for public consumption, you just can't edit the last few drafts yourself, because you are often blind to your own mistakes and bad punctuation. From a self published author's perspective, the worst scenario for me would be a quality ebook manuscript on Waterstones, that took thousands of hours to write, undermined by errors that make the author look bad and don't do the retailer much good either. It's all about respect for the reader. Having said that, it's rare to find anything absolutely perfect!

 

[name of book removed]

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I found exactly the same thing - I must have read and re-read my own book about 10 times over, but still there were errors, most of which thankfully, my proof reader spotted. Even so, there are still one or two that slipped through the net. Like you say, it's about respect for the reader, and although most people wouldn't mind the odd minor error, I have seen some real howlers.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 year later...

I hate typos in general, but in all fairness to e-books, I haven't read a printed fiction book, even those by top authors, in the past 5-6 years that hasn't had at least three or four glaring typos. And this isn't a recent thing. I recently read an early edition of The Great Gatsby and the number of typos and grammatical errors was astounding. Indeed, one of the e-books I'm reading now has the fewest number of typos I've found in any book this year, which is pretty amazing given its length and the fact that it's self-published. 

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