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| Hearsay: |
The GOOD thing about e-ink is that mistakes can be corrected in real time and pushed out to consumers (I’m not ready to call them “readers” yet… maybe someday I’ll actually try one of these things…) who’d otherwise have to buy a second brick of dead tree to have their library up to date.
An Amazon spokesman confirms that the company does, from time to time, contact customers with updates, and they occur with both fiction and non-fiction titles.
Back when books had to be printed on dead trees, authors couldn’t do anything to fix an error they found after a book had been published. Once the book was in readers’ hands and on library shelves, the matter was moot.
But now that books, like computers, are connected to the Internet, they’re much more dynamic. Theoretically, the ability to change a book could be used both for good and bad purposes.
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May 13th, 2010 at 9:54 am
Does anyone else see a new potential for authors to be harassing their publishers for just one little stylistic edit here, and one teensy paragraph rewrite there? “I’ve thought up a much better first line, you really have to let me go back and edit it.”
Damn authors. Give them an inch, and they’ll want the whole rest of whatever that expression is.
May 13th, 2010 at 5:44 pm
If e-publishing is to be handled through the same maze of H=m, HBJ, andn other “established firms” with (ahem) multiple layers of editors and proofreaders I see no need. Professional and technical publishers already incorporate update services for the purpose of keeping current, but retroactively correcting errors in grammar and spelling are unjustifiable.
Corrections because of second thoughts? Don’t you dare. If you don’t believe in what you have written them keep it in your notebook.
Serious (canonical) material? Damn well better not. There’s enough nonsense around every time a writer’s papers get archived.
May 20th, 2010 at 9:39 am
Not ready to call them “readers”? What do you have to try in order to call people reading readers? Even if they read a novel written in butter on a series of palm leaves, they’d still be reading, and hence readers. Do you need to personally verify that eBooks are comprise of actual words? I can send you a photo if you want.