Lois’s answer to “I've been reading some books published decades ago but only fairly recently available in Kindle for…” > Likes and Comments
6 likes · Like
Scanning, especially the OCR process afterward that converts the image to text, is far from perfect. Mistakes are easily introduced that way.
Agreeing about the scanning process resulting in lots of errors. Have just been reading Zenna Henderson's The People (new compilation as ebook), and many errors are, for instance, cl elided into d (e.g., dosed instead of closed).
Not too long ago I helped a fave author of mine (who also happens to be a friend) go through the ebook versions of her novels before they were made available to the public and can very much confirm the OCR issue - which is why she'd asked me to do the re-proofing for her. This was scanned copies of printed pages that the OCR program nevertheless mangled horrendously in some cases. It's a fact of like that OCR programs' accuracy has NOT improved that much in the 30 years since I first started working with them!
In the Kindle version of Harry Harrrison's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!" (a.k.a. "Tunnel Through The Deeps"), two whole pages of text are missing, where someone obviously turned over two pages by mistake while scanning. The break is in mid-sentence, resulting in the bizarre sentence "Washington sent him over a pint of beer, then raised his own and drained it in Pall Mall."
Oof! Not good! (Although somewhat amusing!)
Recently, many of your Vorkosigan series were reintroduced with new artwork covers by Spectrum Literary Agency. It seemed these were republished electronically, nicely. But I haven’t done a “review” reading. I repurchased to encourage my adult children to read.
Its a bummer because as a writer, it is probably frustrating to see the text suffer thru poor editorial/review practices.
I wonder if readers reported those issues, if Amazon would produce and “UPDATE” that occurs in my content library quite often.
In my experience, most old books in Kindle format are riddled with errors, and I reckon they’ve been scanned with little or no checking by humans. Old books wouldn’t be available in computer-readable form because personal computers didn’t exist in those days. The first primitive personal computers came along in the late 1970s, and it would have been some time later that they started to be used for writing and publishing books.
back to top
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Linda
(new)
May 09, 2020 07:58PM
Scanning, especially the OCR process afterward that converts the image to text, is far from perfect. Mistakes are easily introduced that way.
reply
|
flag
Agreeing about the scanning process resulting in lots of errors. Have just been reading Zenna Henderson's The People (new compilation as ebook), and many errors are, for instance, cl elided into d (e.g., dosed instead of closed).
Yup, automated OCR with no reproofing. Very common, very cheap way to put the backlist back on sale.
Not too long ago I helped a fave author of mine (who also happens to be a friend) go through the ebook versions of her novels before they were made available to the public and can very much confirm the OCR issue - which is why she'd asked me to do the re-proofing for her. This was scanned copies of printed pages that the OCR program nevertheless mangled horrendously in some cases. It's a fact of like that OCR programs' accuracy has NOT improved that much in the 30 years since I first started working with them!
In the Kindle version of Harry Harrrison's "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!" (a.k.a. "Tunnel Through The Deeps"), two whole pages of text are missing, where someone obviously turned over two pages by mistake while scanning. The break is in mid-sentence, resulting in the bizarre sentence "Washington sent him over a pint of beer, then raised his own and drained it in Pall Mall."
Oof! Not good! (Although somewhat amusing!)
Recently, many of your Vorkosigan series were reintroduced with new artwork covers by Spectrum Literary Agency. It seemed these were republished electronically, nicely. But I haven’t done a “review” reading. I repurchased to encourage my adult children to read. Its a bummer because as a writer, it is probably frustrating to see the text suffer thru poor editorial/review practices.
I wonder if readers reported those issues, if Amazon would produce and “UPDATE” that occurs in my content library quite often.
In my experience, most old books in Kindle format are riddled with errors, and I reckon they’ve been scanned with little or no checking by humans. Old books wouldn’t be available in computer-readable form because personal computers didn’t exist in those days. The first primitive personal computers came along in the late 1970s, and it would have been some time later that they started to be used for writing and publishing books.
