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Text Mistakes in Kindle Books

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Bingalau
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Posted December 17, 2011 at 9:39PM

I know there are a few of us who own and love our Kindles. However I am hoping someone knows how to get in touch with the powers behind the publication of the books. To try to find out how to correct the errors (rats) in the text. I do not profess to be a professional reader, (I was a compositor by trade many years ago though) but I am reading a book at the moment that would benefit from even a few alterations from me. I know it is possible to add notes in the margins etc., but it would be great if one could suggest where a mistake lies in the text so that someone behind the throne could rectify it, thereby making it more pleasurable to other readers yet to come.

I have been reading through the various forums but can find none relating to quality of text. Perhaps someone else knows how to find a contact point?

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Forum Editor

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Posted December 18, 2011 at 6:17PM

When a Publisher receives the manuscript of a book from the author it is invariably as a Word document.

That is revised as necessary by an editor who sends the Word.doc file to the typesetters. They import the file into another application - very often it's Quark -and format the page layouts. They then create a PDF file, and that is sent back to the editor and often the author, too, for final checks and corrections before printing.

All the editing and correcting(except the first revisions)is done on the PDF file; the original Word file isn't necessarily updated,and it's this Word file that's used to publish the Kindle version.

That's one way the errors creep in. Another way is that some of the conversion software has a problem with recognising some punctuation characters, so it substitutes strange ones.

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brindly

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Posted December 19, 2011 at 4:41PM

Bingalau.

I would still like to know which site you downloaded books from other than amazon please

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lotvic

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Posted December 19, 2011 at 6:28PM

This is a listing of 446 sites that legally offer free books (eBooks) for download ClickHere

To convert to various formats use the Free program Calibre http://calibre-ebook.com/about

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Forum Editor

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Posted December 19, 2011 at 11:32PM

"This means the Kindle edition was prepared from the paginated printer's file"

Which makes it likely that someone used OCR software to publish the Kindle edition. Individual publishers sometimes use different methods,but I think that most of them - certainly the major ones - use the Word doc file.

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brindly

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Posted December 20, 2011 at 7:58PM

Thanks for the link, any idea how to use this and the Calibre program with a Kindle.

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lotvic

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Posted December 20, 2011 at 11:20PM

Full details and Guide on Calibre website. Has a 'send to device' option (not just Kindle, other ebook reader devices as well). Calibre recognises any devices plugged in.

Or you can just copy or drag and drop to Kindle using Windows Explorer. An E-book is just a file in a folder on your pc.

Also if you go to Amazon you can download a free 'Kindle on your pc' program so you can read kindle file types on your pc and also synch with your Kindle device.

I have all three, Kindle on PC, Calibre program on pc and Kindle device (the £89 one), they all seem to work quite happily with each other :)

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brindly

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Posted December 21, 2011 at 11:08AM

Thanks Lodvic I will pass thios on to my wife and let her play around with it.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all.

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