Editing Standards
-
I'm new to this service. After reading bits of a few different series, I'm disappointed by the sloppy editing of the streaming editions. A full professional edit probably isn't possible before the final book is published, but you shouldn't post chapters without doing a last spellcheck. These chapters are rife with simple errors, particularly missing spaces and orphaned words. Those sorts of errors break the reader's immersion and leave a bad impression.
Have you thought of adding something that would allow readers to report errors/offer suggestions directly from the chapters?
-
@Blank46 It's been suggested but that would require a total overhaul of the reader, so even if they want to get around to trying something out, it will probably take years.
Series do have dedicated correction topics for anyone who wants to point out issues or make suggestions, and while it is clunky, you'll likely find that on more popular series, anything you find has already been reported by someone else.
-
The history is that the streaming prepublication chapters aren't the final edit.
The streaming chapters were never intended to replace purchasing the finished book.
During prepub folks can report corrections in the forums. Kind of depended upon the translation team whether they'd update the prepub "chapters" as errors were spotted.
So the prepub chapters have always been less reliable than the final published work.Errors to the published work go in by email.
Now that they've created the Reader Library thing, and it is a very recent thing, a month today, the possibility of going back and overwriting the prepub chapters from the published work is apparently under consideration...if they ever have the staff to afford to do so. Which is a big "if".
It's not a trivial action. -
@Geezer-Weasalopes said in Editing Standards:
Now that they've created the Reader Library thing, and it is a very recent thing, a month today, the possibility of going back and overwriting the prepub chapters from the published work is apparently under consideration...if they ever have the staff to afford to do so. Which is a big "if".
I would hope that they considered the resources they had before making the decision to sell the (formerly) streaming parts as a finished product.
New customers (like the OP) can't be expected to judge the streaming parts by the standards under which they were produced, only by the standards under which they are now offered.
-
@rsog412 Completely agreed. One of the main reasons I never cared for rentals and why the reader library offers no appeal to me is that I'm not interested in the prepub edits. I find enough errors in the official releases, why would I pay for something of even lower quality?
