Death from the Skies: Kindle Edition

[Extravoice]

I recently purchased Death from the Skies! for the Amazon Kindle, and noticed several typos. I was wondering if these are in the print books as well.

Specifically, the Kindle edition seems to have problems with negative numbers. For example, Location 2988 (the Kindle equivalent of a page) in chapter 6, just before the sub-heading "Where are They?") says, "It's cold on Titan, about 300 degrees Fahrenheit."

I assume it should read "-300 degrees Fahrenheit".

There is at least one other error involving negative numbers, and several unrelated mistakes, including sub heading "Gold War, Hot News", that probably be labeled "Cold War, Hot News"

Has anyone else seen these errors in the print versions? I wonder to whom I should address my complaints, Amazon or Viking Press... or the BA himself

[Lurking Nerd]

I grabbed my book and checked the 2 specific erros you listed and they are both correct in the book. The temperature of Titan is listed as - 300 degrees. I found the sub heading you mentioned in chapter 4 and it does read "Cold War, Hot News".

I don't know how the digital version gets to the Kindle so I can't say whose responsibility it would be to correct these.

[HenrikOlsen]

Looks like the typical errors from an OCR scan with little or no proofreading.

It's the sign of a product made for quick profit by people who don't give a damn about the book.

[Extravoice]

Thanks for the responses. Amazon is going to get a nasty letter about this.

BTW: I've spotted a number of other problems with the Kindle edition. It looks like most, if not all, negative numbers have their minus sign dropped. There is a minor font mistake (a theta was replaced with some strange question mark thingy), and worst of all , the index is totally useless. It has no page references (or location references). It is just a big alphabetical list of stuff that exists somewhere in the book ARGH!

If the BA reads this thread, he may want to complain about what Amazon did to his book, too.

[Extravoice]

Here is the latest on the Kindle situation.

I emailed Amazon about the issues, and copied Phil. Amazon more-or-less asked me to proofread the book and let them know exactly where the errors are located. Phil responded by saying that he'd contact the publisher to see what the situation is.

That's where things stood until today when, while poking around Amazon.com, I noticed that DftS is no longer available in Kindle format. Hopefully, they are fixing the problems, and it will return soon.

I feel so...empowered.

[Nick Theodorakis]

Maybe they're waiting for your edits... Seriously, do they expect you to work for free as a copy editor?

It's almost as if they were trying to sell a bootleg.

Nick

[DrRocket]

Maybe they're waiting for your edits... Seriously, do they expect you to work for free as a copy editor?


Nick

Of course not. They don't give away Kindle readers or the contents. They expect you to pay about $300 initiation fee plus another fee per volume edited.