Digital Piracy Hits eBook Industry

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by K-Thom

Let me clarify my "solidly proof-read". As tompe said, these novels have actually been proofread before, so this is about looking and eliminating OCR errors. After (legally) scanning about 100 novels in the past six years, I tend to know my "usual suspects" errorwise. This speeds up progress quite a lot.

And "solidly" means "sufficient for an illegal version". Nobody in the eBookz scene expects a copy without errors, though even there the self-imposed standard is relatively high, at least among the active German scene.

Fair enough; my standard of proof-reading (for the things that are important to me, like my Dickens novels) is "every comma in the right place" .

[barnacle]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Fair enough; my standard of proof-reading (for the things that are important to me, like my Dickens novels) is "every comma in the right place" .

And why would you want anything less?

Mind you it gets complicated: I, for example, am going through some serious hoops simply to try and automatically remove hyphen... it's not as straight-forward as it seems, and it's arguable (from the point of view of an OCR program) that they should remain in their original position. But I want the little devils out!

What I want:
- All words the right word
- All words spelled correctly
- All words in the original case and properly capitalised
- All punctuation marks (English style - I'll worry about other scripts some other time!) present and correct
- All hyphens removed

What I don't want:
- Font size or style information (that's a job for the display device)
- Layout specifications (so's that)
- Lines between each carriage return (save as a scene break marker)
- Carriage returns at the end of each line (what were you *thinking*, Gutenberg?)
- Page numbers
- Titles, periodical name, author's name, or other page matter
- Illustrations

In brief, I want a structured document, not a formatted one.

Neil

[HarryT]

Why don't you want illustrations? They can enormously enhance the book, to my mind. The original illustrations by "Phiz" that most Dickens novels have, for example, make it so much easier to "picture" Victorian life, as it was, than do the words alone. They are just as much a part of the book as is the text, to my mind.

[barnacle]

A matter of taste, I suppose. I agree; the Phiz illustrations are in and of themselves exquisite, but I don't want them in a text stream as a general principle.

That said - most of what I want to transcribe doesn't contain pictures, and I find in my favourite genre - science fiction - that the pictures distract me rather than enhance the experience. I find often the same disjunct as one gets seeing a favourite book performed as a play or on TV; you get the *director's* internal image of the book and if it doesn't tie with your internalised image, it jars.

As I said, a personal taste; other's mileage may vary and far be it from me to constrain or instruct them.

Neil

[HarryT]

No, no, I'm certainly not disputing your right to have a personal choice in the matter - just curious as to what your reasoning was .

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Why don't you want illustrations? They can enormously enhance the book, to my mind. The original illustrations by "Phiz" that most Dickens novels have, for example, make it so much easier to "picture" Victorian life, as it was, than do the words alone. They are just as much a part of the book as is the text, to my mind.

Agreed, but they can open another copyright "can of worms". Example, Frank Pape' did wonderful illustrations for James Branch Cabell books in the 1920's. But he died 20 years later than Cabell. In life + countries, they become PD later than the text....

[HarryT]

Yes, as you say, the illustrations have their own, separate, copyright.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Fair enough; my standard of proof-reading (for the things that are important to me, like my Dickens novels) is "every comma in the right place" .

SInce there are different editions of books how can define a correct version?

And if you are proof-reading it against a specific version I hope you add this information to the ebook. I find that this is the information I often miss when reading an ebook.

[Dulin's Books]

Originally Posted by Connallmac

And how many times was it borrowed from libraries for free? I would be willing to guess that number was at least 100,000, if not more!

Libraries lending a copy is not the same as copying your paper book into a digital version and allowing it to be downloaded many many times.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Kellhus

Woooah, proofread is not as easy as it seems, trust me. Especially if you don't actually read the book while doing it. On the other hand most people don't even notice mistakes in ebooks and would read a terrible scan as long as it's full and free.

I suspect it depends on the nature of the mistake, the type of book, and the attention of the reader. Most people probably read right through typos, for instance - but my wife wouldn't. Other kinds of errors, affecting the sense of the sentence, would seem to me to be harder to overlook.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

Libraries lending a copy is not the same as copying your paper book into a digital version and allowing it to be downloaded many many times.

Right, but it could still be somewhat equated with the nebulous "lost sales."

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by omk3

Not only mine, I suspect!
But it's a nice thought. As long as I don't read them until copyright expires, I'm not really doing anything illegal am I?

Damn, man, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Read them now! Otherwise, you have merely wasted bandwidth...

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Right, but it could still be somewhat equated with the nebulous "lost sales."

Of course, but just like with the illegal downloading, it's not one-for-one. There are quite a few people who use the library who simply can't afford to buy many books. Not everyone who borrowed the book from the library would have bought it new had it not been available through their library. Many would likely have waited for a price drop, bought the paper copy used or borrowed it from a friend. Not every ebook fan is ebook-only like I am. Plus, some people may have read it simply because it was available. They may not have gone looking for that title in particular but considered it because it was available for loan. If they couldn't borrow the book, they might rather read other books they didn't have to purchase, like Public Domain or illegally downloaded material. Still, I think many publishers likely regard providing titles to the library as good corporate citizenship even though they know it will lose them some sales. Can you imagine the PR cost of not doing so?

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Gutenberg is doing Astounding (Analog) from the start of the Clayton years. So far they have got 1930 and part of 1931...

A minor nit. Distributed Proofreaders has been doing this and contributing them to Project Gutenberg. In addition to the 1930s, some of the magazines from the 1950s and 1960s were not renewed, and most, if not all of the PD stories from the latter years have already been processed by DP and released to PG.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

A minor nit. Distributed Proofreaders has been doing this and contributing them to Project Gutenberg. In addition to the 1930s, some of the magazines from the 1950s and 1960s were not renewed, and most, if not all of the PD stories from the latter years have already been processed by DP and released to PG.

My apologies.