The Sheila Variations

Maybe you should write a letter to whoever the head of B&N is? (Not that it may do much good; I once wrote a letter to a textbook publisher about a mistake-riddled basic statistics text. They send me back a form letter apologizing and offering to send me a copy of the new edition when it came out. I never saw the new edition, I figured they were just pulling my chain).

I hate typos too. Drive me up the wall. I don't know if it's just one of my numerous Rain Man-esque tendencies, but I find it really hard to keep reading on a page when there's a typo - it becomes the only thing I can see.

Don't remember where I got my copy, but it was a hardbound "Everyman's Library" copy - I don't remember there being typos in it.

I try as much as possible to buy older editions at used-book stores - it seems that 30 or 50 years ago, publishers actually CARED about proofreading. No more.

THANK YOU SO MUCH for saying that - I've seen that line of books and had thought of buying some of them myself. Thanks for stopping me.

ricki:

Yeah, I was thinking of sending them a letter. There are so many typos it's disgraceful, and kind of hinders the reading experience.

grrrr

Head of B&N is Len Riggio - or used to be - and his brother Steve. Based in NY. They own B. Dalton and a bunch of other chain bookstores. I believe they are still the owners.

Jayne:

Yup - STAY CLEAR of them!!! :)

heh heh Insider info. :)

yep...back in the day... :)

"...what, they have no feckin' spell-check?"

"...they had put the word 'diving' when it should have been 'divine'."

It's not that they don't have spelling checkers, it's that they do have spelling checkers and that they believe them. That's a stereotypical spelling-checker-induced error.

Before spelling checkers, proofreaders were playing without nets, they knew it, and they acted like they knew it. Every word was carefully checked (and I assume that many errors were caught). Now you can go pages without seeing errors in most writing. Paradoxically, this has made finding the remaining errors harder, because there isn't the constant reinforcement of the value of proofreading. It's hard to concentrate on a job that is as fundamentally boring as proofreading when there are so few things to find. In addition, the value to the publisher of spending the money to find the remaining typos has gone down.

BTW, it drives me around the bend sometimes too.

That's a durned shame. I've no experience with the Classics line, but I bought a book from the B&N Press line (nice way of getting a book back in print that wouldn't otherwise get the opportunity), Christopher Duffy's The Military Experience in the Age of Reason. That one, at least, was very well done in a nice hardcover. I'm sorry to hear that the Classics line doesn't meet the same standard--the works deserve it.

It seems like such a great idea - packaging these classics and selling them at an affordable price, but not if they're going to be riddled with mistakes. Especially in the case of divine/diving thing, which utterly changes the meaning. I once bought a copy of their Jude The Obscure...ZZZZZZzzzzzzzz...excuse me...and it had the same problem.

What the...! You're not supposed to READ them!

To defend my professional bretheren, a true copyeditor probably never saw it. It's those damn proofreaders who are to blame! Oh, and while desktop publishing software does indeed have grammar- and spell-check, many layout programs do not. If the proofreader missed them, it's too late. But then, Middlemarch does go put one into a dull trance from time to time, so maybe George Eliot is ultimately to blame.

Quite likely they just ran it through a scanner and then spell-checked, taking the suggested replacements each time.

Eric Flint has some possibly-pertinent comments about amateur proofreaders at http://www.baen.com/library/palaver5.htm. Scroll down to "SECOND EXCHANGE:"

I have one or two B&N classics and I don't remember too many errors. It's probably hit-or-miss. My problem with a lot of inexpensive classic editions is the poor quality of the paper and ink. The words are smudgy and you get fatigued trying to read them. Or the pages fall out. I have having pages just drop out of a book on the second read. My husband has a pocket PC and he downloads books onto that whenever he can. Conversion to e-books would actually solve many problems, starting with groaning bookshelves.

I think the person who commented that they might just scan old text in and go from there may have it right. (Scanned documents are rife with errors).

the other possibility is they've outsourced their proofreading (if they still do it at all) to a country where English is not the primary language.

Laura - Oh, but I love my groaning bookshelves!! I can't read books online - I've tried, I just am addicted to paper I guess. The feel of a book in my hands, the smell of it, cracking the spine open when I begin a new book ...

ahhhhh