Tuesday, September 20, 2011

The Increase in Typos in Today's Books

If over the past few years you've noticed an increase in typos in published books, you're not alone. And we're not talking small presses here, either. Big New York publishing houses have released their full share of glaring, embarrassing errors.

Well, prepare to be enlightened. These quotes are from an article by The New York Times' Virginia Heffernan on the subject:
Before digital technology unsettled both the economics and the routines of book publishing, they explained, most publishers employed battalions of full-time copy editors and proofreaders to filter out an author’s mistakes. Now, they are gone.

There is also “pressure to publish more books more quickly than ever,” an editor at a major publishing house explained. Many publishers now skip steps.
There ya go. Precisely what you suspected, right?
Then came this quote:
But on the Web, typos sometimes come with a price. “Spelling mistakes ‘cost millions’ in lost online sales,” said a BBC headline last week. The article cited an analysis of British Web figures that suggested that a single spelling mistake on an e-commerce site can hurt credibility so much that online revenues fall by half.
So that got me wondering... which leads to today's question for you ebook readers:

Do you apply this sentiment to ebooks? Do you find you judge ebooks more harshly than print books when it comes to typos?