# Gah! I wish you could edit Kindle books



## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

I'm in the process of eBaying my paper books and replacing them with Kindle books. I just Night Pleasures by Sherrilyn Kenyon, an old favorite. I was pretty chuffed that the Kindle version was only $2.99.

There's a reason for that. It is RIFE with errors. The words "wife" and "with" are frequently interchanged:
"Kyrian took Amanda wife him..."
"Kyrian thought of his with, Theone,..."

And that's just one example (which I've seen about five times). It's like the unleashed a spell-check on it and didn't bother to read it themselves. Horrible. And honestly, inexcusable, IMO, that I have to use context clues to figure out what a word is _supposed_ to be. Distracting as hell, too.

Anyway, I wish I could "fix" the typos. It would help save my sanity.


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## Daniel Pyle (Aug 13, 2010)

Sounds like they used bad OCR to convert the book.  That's definitely a bummer.


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## Cardinal (Feb 24, 2010)

I wish I could edit Kindle books as well.  Did you call Amazon and let them know about Night Pleasures?


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## bvlarson (May 16, 2010)

If you get an Indie book with problems, you can at least try to contact the author and tell them and they will fix it. I've gotten such requests once or twice, and I've promptly fixed the missing word or whatever and with a redownload, all is well. I don't think you will get any such satisfaction from a big pub company, and certainly zero from Amazon who don't have editing control over the content they sell.
-BVL


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## Cindy416 (May 2, 2009)

bvlarson said:


> If you get an Indie book with problems, you can at least try to contact the author and tell them and they will fix it. I've gotten such requests once or twice, and I've promptly fixed the missing word or whatever and with a redownload, all is well. I don't think you will get any such satisfaction from a big pub company, and certainly zero from Amazon who don't have editing control over the content they sell.
> -BVL


I started a thread a few weeks ago in which I asked authors if they wanted to be told when errors are found. All said yes, and there were a lot of responses. When I'm reading and run across a typo, formatting error, or omission, I highlight it. When I have finished the book, I send a PM to the author telling him/her what the error is and where it's located. (I give him/her enough context to enable a search for the specific group of words where the error can be found.) I've found that most of the time the author has already found and corrected the errors, but not always. (This is particularly true with books that I downloaded shortly after they became available.)


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

If you buy a book from Amazon and it has problems, you don't have to keep it. Within 7 days they will refund the money without question. After 7 days, the _may_ do so as well if you demonstrate that the formatting is not acceptable.

There's a 'feedback' section at the bottom of each book page. I believe that if you contact Amazon via those links, it will be directly tied to that book. . . .so do that, and tell them about the problems. Chances are, they'll pull it from the catalog and get the publisher to fix it. But they won't know unless someone tells them!


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## BevAnneS (May 11, 2010)

I just finished one this week that messed up absolutely every single time the letter "J" was involved.  After just a few chapters I was actually trying to anticipate the next time it would happen.  Most annoying, but I did enjoy the story anyway.


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## Guest (Aug 27, 2010)

I recently reuploaded may main works due to corrections that readers and other authors brought to my attention. 

I had used speech recognition software putting some stuff in MSWord and found a lot of "her/were"  "they're/hair"  "the/she"  errors.  Its maddening for all of us.


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## HappyGuy (Nov 3, 2008)

It's sad (and irresponsible) that they just scan and put it out there without going through and edit process. Considering the cost of selling ebooks, you'd think they'd at least review them before letting them go to sales. Fortunately, not all publishers are so ... ummm ... sloppy and seem to care a bit more about their corporate reputation.


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## MariaESchneider (Aug 1, 2009)

> "they're/hair"


That must have made for some interesting sentences...


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## Anne Victory (Jul 29, 2010)

Well, I filled out the feedback form.  Not sure if it'll make a difference, but oh well.  I'm hoping they weren't so sloppy with other books in the series.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

bvlarson said:


> If you get an Indie book with problems, you can at least try to contact the author and tell them and they will fix it. I've gotten such requests once or twice, and I've promptly fixed the missing word or whatever and with a redownload, all is well. I don't think you will get any such satisfaction from a big pub company, and certainly zero from Amazon who don't have editing control over the content they sell.
> -BVL


Except for the first few months of the Kindle's existence, I've never seen a re-download put the revised book on my Kindle. I've always had to call customer service, have them refund the money, and then repurchase the book after it's been fixed. It seems that when you buy a book, a copy is placed in your account, and it doesn't matter what edits have been made and re-submitted to Amazon by the author/publisher, you are stuck with that copy. I've had to go through this four or five times.

I just went and tried this with a book I know was fixed and then re-uploaded last year. I still get the old version.

Mike


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

jmiked said:


> Except for the first few months of the Kindle's existence, I've never seen a re-download put the revised book on my Kindle. I've always had to call customer service, have them refund the money, and then repurchase the book after it's been fixed. It seems that when you buy a book, a copy is placed in your account, and it doesn't matter what edits have been made and re-submitted to Amazon by the author/publisher, you are stuck with that copy. I've had to go through this four or five times.
> 
> I just went and tried this with a book I know was fixed and then re-uploaded last year. I still get the old version.
> 
> Mike


True, it's not automatic. But I've gotten several e-mails from Amazon pointing out that a book I'd previously purchased has a revision up, and asking if I'd like them to remove the prior version and send me the new one. They also point out that highlights and such will be lost when they do it.

I suspect it is the publisher who has to request that they send these notices.


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

Ann in Arlington said:


> True, it's not automatic. But I've gotten several e-mails from Amazon pointing out that a book I'd previously purchased has a revision up, and asking if I'd like them to remove the prior version and send me the new one. They also point out that highlights and such will be lost when they do it.
> 
> I suspect it is the publisher who has to request that they send these notices.


I've never gotten one of those notifications (yet). 

I think all but one of the experiences I've had with this situation have been with published authors putting up their back-list, though. That may make a difference.

Mike


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

I've gotten these notifications three times.  For the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation of "Anna Karenina" and Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" - both of these they refunded me the money, removed them from my purchase history, and I repurchased the new/corrected versions.  About a week ago I got an e-mail that they were replacing my links to the complete Sherlock Holmes collection I had from Bantam and that I should simply redownload the corrected version to my Kindle whenever I wanted to.


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## Maria Romana (Jun 7, 2010)

Yes, I've found this frustrating. I cannot even download the revised version of *my own book* without having to do the refund/repurchase nonsense. My book was quite well edited when it went up the first time, but I'm one of those perpetual tweakers who is always making minor adjustments ("Oh, this sentence would flow so much better if I change that semi-colon to an em-dash..."), and it frustrates me that people who already bought it will never have a chance to get the new and improved version. Of course, 99.9% of them would never notice the difference!

--Maria


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## D. Nathan Hilliard (Jun 5, 2010)

jmiked said:


> Except for the first few months of the Kindle's existence, I've never seen a re-download put the revised book on my Kindle. I've always had to call customer service, have them refund the money, and then repurchase the book after it's been fixed. It seems that when you buy a book, a copy is placed in your account, and it doesn't matter what edits have been made and re-submitted to Amazon by the author/publisher, you are stuck with that copy. I've had to go through this four or five times.
> 
> I just went and tried this with a book I know was fixed and then re-uploaded last year. I still get the old version.
> 
> Mike


I've had pretty much the same experience. I would put in a reader suggested revision or edit, then delete and repurchase the story only to get the old version again. I end up using my wifes account and a friends account as a backup if I ever absolutely have to see the new version.


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## WilliamEsmont (May 3, 2010)

As both an author and a reader, I really appreciate feedback on typos and grammar mistakes. Sometimes they slip though, but in this wonderful new digital world, it's possible to make things right with just a few clicks of the mouse.


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## Alice Y. Yeh (Jul 14, 2010)

WilliamEsmont said:


> As both an author and a reader, I really appreciate feedback on typos and grammar mistakes. Sometimes they slip though, but in this wonderful new digital world, it's possible to make things right with just a few clicks of the mouse.


Pretty much. If it is an indie author and you have this issue, though, perhaps you could contact him/her directly? This incident came up once, and I ended up just sending the person a MOBI file directly (Kindle-compatible format).

It's hard to say, though. Dozens read through my book without saying a word until one nitpicky lawyer found an error that had slipped through the cracks. Glad he told me, but it just goes to show you how these things get by!


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## Maria Romana (Jun 7, 2010)

AYY said:


> It's hard to say, though. Dozens read through my book without saying a word until one nitpicky lawyer found an error that had slipped through the cracks. Glad he told me, but it just goes to show you how these things get by!


Just curious since you mentioned lawyer--was it a typo-type error or some kind of legal logic error? The latter can be a lot tougher to fix if the story depends on having it the way you wrote it. I had a medical mistake pointed out to me once by an ER physician, and it was something that a lot of the story depended on, but I asked around among readers and none of them had any clue that it was an error, so I left it alone. Even the doc who pointed it out said it didn't interfere with her enjoyment of the story...

--Maria


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## Alice Y. Yeh (Jul 14, 2010)

Hi, Maria!

Thankfully, it wasn't the latter. I mistyped a "been" as a "be." I think the other two letters were cut off while I was messing around with verbiage. Oops.

The male protagonist in the story is a lawyer, so I'm hoping he doesn't come after me later with some gross inaccuracy. I'd hate to leave one in there, but rewriting and republishing would also be a nightmare.


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## Maria Romana (Jun 7, 2010)

AYY said:


> Thankfully, it wasn't the latter. I mistyped a "been" as a "be." I think the other two letters were cut off while I was messing around with verbiage. Oops.


Typos--definitely preferable. I think most readers are fine with there being two or three errors in a whole book. Of course, most of us would prefer none, but I've seldom read a professionally published book that didn't have at least one or two.


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## Alice Y. Yeh (Jul 14, 2010)

Agreed. In healthcare, we function with the understanding that human error can and will occur at one point of another, even with multiple safety features. If it can happen there, I can see how a one or two errors can make it past several proofreaders.


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## Maria Romana (Jun 7, 2010)

An update on this topic:  Since seeing this thread, I got more and more annoyed that I couldn't have the latest versions of books I'd purchased, so I sent an email to Kindle support about it.  They asked for the title and order # of a specific book that had been updated, and I sent it to them.  A few hours later, they told me they had "manually" sent the latest version to my Kindle, and sure enough, when I synched, it was there.  

This should still be a built-in or automatic function, IMHO, but it's nice knowing you can get an update by asking, if you know one's available.

--Maria


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## Roger E. Craig - novelist (Aug 28, 2010)

My books were previously sold in print and I'm new to Kindle publishing.  I have read them all on a Kindle to check for errors.  Please let me know if you find any errors and I will make you good.  I know that the Kindle system allows me to send documents to my PC for transfer to my Kindle.  Does anybody know if I can send a document (one of my books) to somebody else's PC?


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