Jules Verne Forum

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Re: Jules Verne E-Book Editions -- Nook

From: Raymond Macon <maconr~at~speakeasy.net>
Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 09:13:19 -0600
To: "'Jules Verne Forum'" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

Hello James,

 

Thank you for an excellent synopsis of the "beauty and the beast" of
e-books. My own very limited experience with the NOOK so far has taught me
that the "free" editions of public domain titles are riddled with OCRs.
They also lack diacritical markings and italicized words which are present
in the original text. So I have tended to avoid those now and instead make
a real purchase of the titles I am interested in. However, just because one
pays for a book doesn't mean that the text is error-free. Even if there are
no OCRs in the text, the diacritics and italics may well be absent.

 

The booksellers are aware of these problems and others. I do not know how
they will eventually be resolved, nor do I know if this is a problem with
contemporary works. Presumably, their conversion to the digital format has
been done in a much more rigorous fashion than what has been done with
classical titles. I will be buying these books as well, so I should be able
to make a cursory comparison for myself. There are problems with the
digital format, but I believe that efforts will be made to correct them,
particularly as they apply to classical titles. Maybe that is wishful
thinking on my part, but we are talking about a massive undertaking that
will take many years to complete. In the meantime, I am simply happy that I
can take my favorite books with me anywhere in the world without packing
them in an extra case or leaving behind other items just so I can have good
reading with me. That convenience alone makes the e-book worthwhile.

 

Best,

Raymond

 

From: owner-jvf~at~Gilead.org.il [mailto:owner-jvf~at~Gilead.org.il] On Behalf Of
James Keeline
Sent: Monday, 23 May, 2011 08:46
To: Jules Verne Forum
Subject: Re: Jules Verne E-Book Editions -- Nook

 

I have the software for the nook and Kindle on my iPhone but don't really
have any books purchased for them yet. I might think differently if I had
an iPad, a good but expensive way to have access to all of the eBook
formats. It appears that both nook and Kindle rely heavily on public domain
"sales". Last year Amazon has posted articles about the sales of eBooks
exceeding those of hardcovers:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-19/amazon-com-says-kindle-sales-accele
rated-last-quarter-e-books-pass-print.html

However, they do not indicate how many of those "purchases" are free public
domain content which users download to fill their nook with books they may
never read in the same way that people have purchased the Britannica Great
Books to put on a shelf and once a year glance at the bookcase and say to
themselves: "yes, they're still there."

My mother in law recently purchased a nook and has been reading a lot on it
as a replacement for paperbacks. She obtains some books from the local
public library through some kind of lending program. However, after
downloading some favorite Dickens titles she complained to us about
gibberish characters in the texts. When we saw them it was clear that these
were optical character recognition (OCR) errors which had not been caught in
proofreading.

This reminded us of our project to reissue the first five Tom Swift books
from 1910 for a 100th anniversary edition through Lulu. We obtained the
texts from Project Gutenberg but were surprised to find, after all of the
time they have been available, that there were still so many errors
remaining. My wife and I read through the texts and found dozens of errors
in each one when compared with the vintage copies.

Project Gutenberg does have a Distributed Proofreaders project where people
can volunteer to edit books. However, this is probably done for newer
releases rather than the ones that have been available for years.

For Verne this likely means that there are not only the bad translations
rampant but also additional errors which may harm the author's stature in
the eyes of casual readers who are not aware of these issues.

It is interesting that the offerings for Kindle vs. nook may vary so much in
terms of the modern translations of Verne. One has to wonder how much this
carries over to other books. It certainly could be a factor in deciding
which reader platform to buy. It's not just price but whether the books you
want are (or will be) available for it. Of course, with the
iPhone/iPad/Android option of installing nook and Kindle software then you
have all (or most) options open to you.

James D. Keeline
Received on Mon 23 May 2011 - 18:13:29 IDT

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