Keep in mind that a fairly large body of work [citation required] exists only in printed, typewritten/type-set form. These are all the books that came out prior to the first, commercially available and affordable word processing software.
If you are reading an e-version of something published prior to 1985 (*cough* Magician *cough*), there's a good chance it was scanned (OCR) and then proofed. The capabilities of the proofers are suspect, as an arbitrary copy-editor could be anyone from a college intern on a summer job, to someone who isn't a copy-editor/proofreader, but rather someone with the money to own a good quality OCR package and the personal desire to upload an e-version. There's a lot of space there between amateur and professional. I'd to;dr this as "it depends" as there probably isn't any one, industry-wide, accepted bulk process. rip > On 05 Jun 2015, at 02:48, Scott Ponton <[email protected]> wrote: > > One of the reasons I originally asked about the production of the ebooks is > that I spotted a couple of what I'd have to call grammatical errors as they > ARE a true word but the wrong one. It's the same mistake twice actually. > Where the cat Hemingway is referred to as a 'torn' instead of a 'tom'. It > reads to me like an optical reader got the wrong wording and a spell checker > would have missed it. > > Made me curious as to the process involved. > > > -------- Original message -------- > From: Raymond Feist > Date:03/06/2015 14:11 (GMT+00:00) > To: feistfans-l > Subject: Re: Faerie Tale > > > > On Jun 3, 2015, at 5:33 AM, john.leighton <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > Don't forget that most authors would probably use word processors, it'll > > make it easy to transport proof. It's just a conversion to e-book format. > > > They don’t use our files, I’ll guarantee it. I export to Word from Pages. > They have specific programs that convert from Word to whatever dedicated > program they work with to set type font and format in industrial > printing—that is the province of the book designer. I suspect that is what > gets turned into the various e-book formats (Kindle, eBook, etc.) > > Never bothered to specifically ask, truth to tell. At some point it went > from a linotype setter—a real human being when I first broke in—to something > fully automated. > > All I know is that budget cuts over the years have dumped more responsibility > on my editor with less support much to the detriment of the finished book. > Long story cut about my brilliant copy editing 30 years ago and how I miss > this lovely, quirky Englishwoman by name Elaine Chubb, who could fix typos > and make me look brilliant, who is now replaced by a program that doesn’t > catch so many things. . . sigh. > > In any event, if the subject should arise next time I’m in New York with my > editor, I’ll ask how it gets done these days. > > Best, R.E.F. >
