Hello and Looking for Help

[PeterHouse]

Hello!

I downloaded Calibre a few weeks ago to fix some issues in one of my favorite books. The book was originally published in 1995 and I have a paperback version.

I have been using a Kindle since 2013 and carry it with me wherever I go and would like to have this book on the Kindle. Amazon had the book available, for only a few weeks, in the Kindle format which I purchased.

Unfortunately, the book has a lot (hundreds) of errors from really bad OCR scanning. Most of the errors are added or missing spaces, added or missing paragraph changes, repeated sentences, jumbled paragraphs where two paragraphs seem to have been merged, Sections and Chapter headings are part of the text, and others. I recently reread the book and marked ALL of the errors using the note function on my kindle.

I have these issues:

1 - The data in the Kindle notes references a location number and I need to reconcile this number to a location in the epub so I can go there and edit the source. Unfortunately, only 15% of the errors are search/replace friendly

2 - The epub is riddled with formatting tags which are empty or redundant. Is there a way to clean this up automatically.

3 - I am doing this for myself as it is a copyrighted work. I would not mind providing it to the author or Amazon. Is there a way to contact either?

Probably other issues, I have not come across yet . . .

Thank you.

[Sirtel]

It sounds like it would be easier to purchase another edition, if one exists. Was the Kindle edition the only digital edition that's been released? Perhaps another edition exists?

[jhowell]

It is possible that there is no legal e-book version of this book available. For many older books it can be unclear who currently has the right to publish it or the rights holder may simply be uninterested in producing an e-book edition.

I have seen many very poorly formatted versions of older books pop up on the Kindle platform that appear to be pirated copies. Those usually disappear from Amazon’s catalog once they are brought to someone’s attention.

[theducks]

It would be really great if there was a GoTo+ plugin for the editor that would accept the various "notes" indexes use by devices.
In this case Loc,

[retiredbiker]

3 - I am doing this for myself as it is a copyrighted work. I would not mind providing it to the author or Amazon. Is there a way to contact either?

A few years back a favourite author of mine popular back in the '60-80's was trying to get some of his older work out in ebook format. I got one of his works from Amazon as an ebook, and it was pretty terrible. After a lot of googling I managed to get in touch with him and sent him a copy-edited version...which led to a very nice conversation about ebooks and how to do them. Great experience. Very much worth trying to make contact with an author!

[PeterHouse]

Thank you all for your timely responses.

@Sirtel - I have not seen another edition for sale in ebook format. The "Free Internet Library" has one and it is also terrible - the pictures in the book were scanned as text with expected bad result! I have also found it on libgen.is and is the best ebook I have found in the epub format with very nice pictures - probably better than if I scanned the book I have.
@jhowell - I suspect you are correct.
@theducks - That would be nice. I am using a scaling factor based on the max location of 18889 on my Kindle and it gets me close.
@retiredbiker - Thank you for the encouragement, I plan to contact the author.

By the way, the book is "Unintended Consequences" by John Ross.

[DNSB]

Sorry but asking for help with pirated books is not supported. While I do realize that it appears that no legitimate ebook version is available, that is not an excuse.

[BetterRed]

The author John Ross died on the 29th April 2022.

BR

[DNSB]

Might be a bit hard to contact him then...

[Quoth]

Leslie Charteris gave up writing long before he died. He employed Ghost Writers.