Editing Questions About E-Publishing a Public Domain Book

[Ben]

Hi there -- This is probably not the best place to ask this. I looked around on Goodreads for other groups, specifically editing nerds, etc., but all I saw were resources to connect indie authors with amateur/professional editors. If you know of a better place to ask this, please let me know, but I've asked nitty-gritty grammar questions here before and received really helpful responses.

I have some questions about a book that I did not write. I'm working my way through a list of award-winning books, and came across one from the 1950s that, to my surprise, has never been released as an audio book or even on Kindle (far as I can tell). The last time it was published in print, to the best of my knowledge, was in the early 90s. Almost all of the other books on the awards list are still in active publication.

So I thought, hey, since I'm going to read this anyway, why not purchase a copy of the original magazines this story was published in, scan it, correct all the scanning errors, narrate it myself, and self-publish an audio book and Kindle edition? I ended up getting a few different paperback re-releases as well.

This process has been surprisingly fun. Seriously. Comparing a quartet of magazine issues to 1980s and 1990s re-pubs and finding all the differences has been a nerdy hoot. If all goes well I might actually do this again with older books, especially in instances where no audio book exists. It is relaxing and rewarding work, even though I may be the only person in the world interested in this book being available electronically.

I've finished reading the book and have compared most of the problem areas to later re-releases. (And, by the way, it's quite evident now why the book has vanished from publication -- it's not terribly good. But it's also not bad!) There were a fair number of simple typos, a dozen-or-so instances of dropped words or words that were repeated (for example "and" at the end of one line of text, "and" at the start of the next), but all told it wasn't too arduous. I have a few questions, though, that I would really appreciate some input on. I did ask Google Gemini about these things and got possibly helpful answers, but I can't be sure of their veracity since Gemini often boldly gives me incorrect information. Here goes:

1. The original publication, spread across four issues of a pulp magazine, includes four instances of the phrase "Now that's more like." It's too consistent to be a typo, and I have a feeling it was perhaps common to say the phrase that way back in the 50s. But in the 80s and 90s re-releases, all four instances have been updated to say "Now that's more like it." I am trying to stay as faithful as possible to the original text, and not only because I'm just a regular guy and not a publisher (If I were reading an older book, I'd probably turn my nose up to any obvious hobbyist editorial liberties -- more on that later). Do you think it's worth going with the updated text for readability? Or, if you were reading it, would you rather stick with whatever was in the original publication?

2. Same question for terms like "store front" or "world wide" or "ever present." These days it's far more common to see these as hyphenated or compound words. Would you balk at these words being updated?

3. Some words appear to be typos but are spelled consistently from instance to instance, so I'm worried they were correct back in the 1950s. Words like "irridescent," "foetal," and "anaesthesia." It's easy enough for me to conclude irridescent, with the extra r, was a simple typo (They didn't have spell-check back in the 1950s after all), but foetal used to be correct, right? And anaesthesia, isn't wrong, just not the American spelling. These were left alone in the 80s re-release. Irridescent aside, would you update the others or leave them as originally written?

4. Same idea, sort of, for the term "an eugenic mutant." This is written the same way across all releases I got my hands on. But... this can't be right, can it?! I couldn't find any instance anywhere of "eugenic" being pronounced with an oo sound. Re-releases be damned, it's a safe bet that I can correct this one, right?

5. Here's the really crazy part: extra line spaces. You know, when you add an extra return between paragraphs to show a scene change or passage of time? In the magazine there are several of these "scene changes" that occur with no passage of time or change of scenery. In later re-releases, some of thee have been removed but more have been added in other places that are just as baffling. Do you reckon I could exercise some editorial control here, removing some of them and ignoring the insertion of others in later publications?

6. Finally: I think I know the answer to this already, but something I thought was a typo turned out to be rather offensive racial slur for Asian people. It's a blink-and-you-miss-it passing reference to the craftsmanship of a device. It would be so easy to just yank it right out of there, and because it's used as an adjective, its absence wouldn't even be noticed. The book is otherwise not at all racially charged. I guess I'm nervous about narrating it, but... if I'm going to do this, I have to go all the way, right?

Thanks in advance for any help or time you spent reading this. I know this is out of the group's mission statement but I hope some of you can share in this fun little journey with me.