Ebook News You Can Use

[rolanni]

Those of you who purchase ebooks from Amazon need to be aware of the following:

a. The Kindle edition of omnibus The Crystal Variation, by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, including the novels Crystal Soldier, Crystal Dragon, and Balance of Trade -- has been taken off-sale by Amazon pending correction of "serious quality issues." These issues are "misspellings."  Amazon forwarded the list of 144 instances of misspelled words to Baen, which forwarded it to us.  More than a dozen of those "misspelled" words are "cermacrete."  We also have "ISBN" identified as a "misspelled" word. Also, cantra, kais, qwint, Iloheen, aetherium, autoshout -- you get the idea.  Steve and I have each made a pass down the list and have so far identified three Actual Misspelled Words, and one that I need to research, but believe to be a spacing problem.  The process from here goes like this:  We tell Baen which words are Actually Misspelled.  A Baen editor will fix those errors.  The Baen Ebook Team will then recompile the omnibus and shuffle it into its various formats, including forwarding a "clean copy" to Amazon.  Amazon will then, at some point, put the book back on sale.

If you would like to purchase an electronic copy of The Crystal Variation in the immediate future, your best choice of vendor would be Baen Ebooks, which offers the book for sale in All Formats Known to Man or Clutch.  Here's the link.

b.  Amazon has also stopped selling Courier Run, an echapbook containing two Liaden stories by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, for Serious Quality Issues.  In a Surprising Plot Twist, this title shows as being Live and On Sale from my publisher's dashboard.  KDP support is Researching the Issue and promises an answer by August 18 -- next Thursday.

If you would like to purchase this echapbook before next Thursday, please seek it elsewhere -- BN, Kobo, iBooks still offer it for sale.

c. Sleeping with the Enemy was also briefly off-sale at Amazon, but its honor has been redeemed and it is now on-sale in the Kindle store, as well as at the rest of the Usual Suspects.

d. Spell Bound, an echapbook collecting "Will-o'-the-wisp" and "The Wolf's Bride," two Archers Beach stories previously published on Splinter Universe, is now for sale at the Amazon Kindle store (after a brief tussle in which Amazon insisted that the content was available "freely on the web" and therefore I had no right to publish the compilation), and! at Kobo, and iBooks.  BN will presumably get around to publishing sometime soon.

A related note: Since these stories have been collected, they have been removed from Splinter Universe.

Today, it is rainy and cool at the Cat Farm and Confusion Factory.  I plan a quiet, working day.  I realize that we are very fortunate in our weather.  All of you who labor under Dangerous Heat Advisories -- please be alert and take good care of yourselves.

Comments

[charlie russel (from livejournal.com)]

Thanks for the heads up on Spell Bound - while I have read the versions on the Splinter Universe, obviously, I'm quite glad to have them in official versions on my Oasis.

As for the "misspellings"? While I appreciate Amazon trying to improve quality, this does seem just a bit much. I certainly have no complaints about my Baen version.

Heat

[amm-me.livejournal.com]

Our dangerous heat advisory is OVER! For a week, anyway! Hurray for cool fronts and clouds! Of course, some actual precipitation out of the clouds would be nice ... But if it isn't a hundred degrees, I'm good.

[phantom_wolfboy]

Well, ya know . . . spelling errors not inserted by Amazon are not to be stood for!

[gerald heaton (from livejournal.com)]

Once upon a time, Robert Heinlein was quoted as saying that "If an editor hasn't pissed in the coffee when wielding his/her red pencil, nothing is right with the book."
True or not, I don't know, but his wife stands by the tale.

I'm surprised that more "misspelled" words are not flagged in your works and other works where a "non-English" author/book specific language is used.

Heck, my Office 2016 flags ENGLISH words. ("kerb, curb", "tyre, tire," omnibus for bus, (grammar) tram, lorry and like that)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Huh. A Google search for "Amazon serious quality issues" shows a flurry of talk about a two-stage quality program back in February of this year for KDP authors, but nothing suggesting that they were going to roll out the same program to mainline publishers. If they actually put every ebook, including the big publishers, through the same automated wringer... It will be interesting.

At least one article discussing this from before is at

http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/kindle-e-books-will-have-a-warning-message-if-they-have-spelling-mistakes-or-bad-formatting#comment-2470800012

The articles seem to reference an email sent to all KDP authors, but so far, I haven't found one that quotes the email?

Bizarre.

'nother Mike