Next week, any e-book containing a whiff of a typo, spelling error, or formatting error will need to run for cover from Amazon’s editing bots.
No, seriously.
Come February 3rd, no errors are safe.
Ok, there may need to be more than a whiff of an error. But it would seem that even a few mistakes could land some e-books with a nice yellow error message for readers everywhere to see.
Michael Kozlowski from goodereader.com said, “Amazon has two stages of the warning system that will go live within a few short weeks. If an e-book only contains a few spelling mistakes, but is still readable, a simple warning message will appear on the details page of that specific title. It will make the average book buyer aware that there are some issues. If the book has bad formatting issues, and basically renders it unreadable, Amazon will suppress it and the book listing will be removed.”
According to another article by Nate Hoffelder, Amazon has long been warning readers when they come across an e-book with substantial errors, and rightfully so. No one wants to try to decipher whether or not a 5 is really supposed to be an “S” whenever they sit down with a romance novel. Sometimes, Amazon will even remove the titles. These files come with a message:
However, it is not only the unreadable books getting these sorts of messages anymore. Amazon will now be posting warnings for minimal typos and errors, even if the book is mostly fine. This means that the product page of a well-edited book with minor mechanical problems will have a warning label.
Sitting in an office where we pore over grammatical and spelling errors from sunup to sundown, we can say with certainty that you won’t always catch ’em all. It’s just not going to happen.
If you add to that the difficulty of checking every character in a file to make sure each one converted properly (an almost impossible task), there will most definitely be some errors in e-books on Amazon, at least the first time they’re uploaded. Enough to make them unreadable? Not always. Enough to make Amazon add a big warning message? Probably.
It is, for the most part, a fair system. Customers and readers report errors in the text to Amazon, who will judge whether or not they will pull the book from the shelf for its errors. They then notify the publishers and authors of the specific errors, giving them time to reupload a polished book.
Yes, it’s nice to inform paying customers that they’re about to buy a book with some errors, and some would say that other e-book vendors need to catch up with Amazon’s system. If you’re about to lay down some money for a product, you want to know that product is worth your time and cash.
However, Hoffelder makes an excellent point that these “spelling mistakes” may well be alternate spellings specifically chosen by the author, fantastical names, or other made-up words. If this is the case, then customers may see Amazon’s warning message and decide not to buy an excellent book because it contains unfamiliar words.
So what happens when readers pass up an otherwise great e-book because of a couple mistakes in spelling? Is this just good customer service or is it yet another of example of Amazon putting its nose where it shouldn’t? Sound off in the comments!
This could discourage a lot of publishing on Kindle Direct. It’s hard enough enticing buyers to try something not endorsed by a recognizable reviewer. I’m constantly finding obvious spelling errors and formatting problems in ebooks from mainstream publisher. Gotta wonder if the big ones will get a “too big to annoy” pass from Big Am.
Great point about mainstream publishers, which is definitely something indies always need to consider! Thanks, Matt!
This actually makes me REALLY angry. What if, as you said, I have some made-up words in my book because it’s fantasy? What if I have random Russian words here and there (this actually is a thing for me because Russia is a theme in my writing!) and someone reports them as an “error”? Honestly, the more I learn about Amazon, the less enthusiastic I am about it. I’m really glad I told my friends and family NOT to give me any Amazon gift cards this Christmas. (They know I like reading on Kindle so I often receive those gift cards.) After I finish up the gift card I currently have, I think I’m done with Amazon products. At least as much as I can be. Some writers are exclusive to Amazon, which can be annoying.
Anyway, getting back to your original point, isn’t this what the return feature is for on Kindle? As in, if I buy a book and it truly is bad (and we all know those books exist), I can just go into my Manage Your Kindle section of Amazon and return the thing for a full refund! Yes, I know there’s a finite period of time one can do this, but still. To me, that is more than sufficient to combat this problem.
You make way too much sense. Could you please apply for a job in the think department of Amazon?
“Customers and readers report errors in the text to Amazon” – sounds to me like ZON is not going to be auto-checking your books. If it makes sense in context and doesn’t prompt a reader to complain, you should be fine.
My latest book got flagged for 2 potential spelling mistakes – but they were legitimate technical terms not in Amazon’s dictionary and not “wrong”. There wasn’t really a suitable synonym I could replace it with…. hmmm. I don’t want “2 spelling mistakes” flagging on my book, because they’re not…..
What about those of us who use some dialect and ungrammatical dialogue to show the characters’ lack of education or geographic origins?
As a reader, I’d like to know which self-published books have not been edited well. But as a writer, I want some freedom to break the spelling and grammar rules when it makes sense.
There must be a better way than what this post indicates Amazon is going to do.
You’re absolutely right that there’s a fine line for those of us who are readers and writers, which makes this all the more complicated. Thanks for your input, Theresa!
Here’s a free alternative to Amazon for self-publishing: http://www.draft2digital.com
Very user friendly–much more so than Kindle Direct or CreateSpace.
It still ends up on Amazon, where it has the same rules and restrictions.
I’m all for this, actually. ZON does put its nose where it doesn’t belong an awful lot, but this seems like a step in the right direction – if you’re publishing things you can’t even bother to spell check, it doesn’t deserve to be listed.
I seriously can’t tell if Amazon is trying to make life impossible for indie authors, if they’re genuinely interested in ensuring the best possible experience for their customers, or both. In light of the other changes that have come down the pipeline lately, I’m inclined to believe the former.
If a book is so poorly formatted or proofread that it’s unreadable, that’s one thing. But speaking as a fantasy Author who regularly makes up his own words, this spells serious trouble for someone like me. It’s already hard enough to earn a living in this field, this just makes it more so.
This is why my work is available everywhere and I won’t just lock into Amazon.
I agree, but I intentionally use slang in some of my stories.
I’m upfront about it in the introduction. It adds to the
description of characters.
Putting a disclaimer about the slang in the introduction for readers seems like a great way to get around this, especially if readers are submitting the errors to Amazon. Great idea, Frank!
It makes me very angry too because some of my books are written, deliberately so, in dialect. There’s no good relying on bots because that is writing by numbers. Absolutely ridiculous. And what about us Brits who don’t spell the US way? Disgusted.
There is already a stage in the process of uploading a text where errors are noted and the publisher is invited to make changes. This is where this kind of software is useful. Later on it is genuinely and aggressively hostile to the creation of neo-logisms. For example a friend wanted to refer to pap-music and this kept being auto-corrected to pop-music. But he intended ‘pap-music’. This obsession with enforcing correctness is worrying. Extremely worrying. I can imagine what it would do to the poetry of e.e.cummings!
We agree that correctness isn’t always the best way, especially because we want to see writers exercising their creative freedom and making those choices for themselves.
I am an indie author who received an email from Amazon Kindle that “readers” complained of a spelling error and that AK’s dictionary did not have my particular spelling. I replied back that the spelling was correct in the context in which it was being used and could provide proof if they needed it. They replied back that wasn’t necessary and my book would remain available. It was never marked “under review” but that could be because it was only one possible error. In any event, I like that authors will be accountable for their work, because I have read books where the story was good but there were many typos or bad grammar (such as not knowing the difference between then and than). If it’s relevant to the character or story, there won’t be a warning label or your book removed. I do feel it’s a bit much if there are only a few typos because it’s rare to read any book and not see an error or two. Hopefully at some point they will only notify those authors who have several errors, not just a few.
I think this is ok. As I have read quite a few books with big mistakes in where I just felt I couldn’t write a review. I pay a lot of money getting my books polished ready for publication, but even so my Amazon .com review says there are gramma issues in it or at least the reviewer thinks so, but when talking with some fans they have said no it’s the difference between English and American English, also because of the way the some of the Dialect is may seem that it’s an erro. If Amazon is going to do this then they need really people (reviewers) to review books that the public readers say might have problems, then the reviewers report should then be sent to the publisher of the book saying why it should be removed or made readable.
This is bad news for authors who create worlds with beings who have their own language, like witches, vampires, and werewolves for a few examples. Isn’t it time Amazon stuck to selling books and leave the editing to editors and authors? I think we can all manage just fine without their interference, after all, that’s what the return policy is for. Is it not?
Let me be the devil’s advocate here… I happen to think this is a positive move for the self-publishing industry. Holding authors to a higher standard isn’t a bad thing. In many ways, self-publishers are their own worst enemies. It is SO easy to publish an eBook. Any fool with a basic text editor and an internet connection can publish a book. There are some great tools for converting manuscripts in a variety of formats to eBooks, but it doesn’t mean that they do it well. They’re generally automated solutions that simply convert an existing manuscript into a file format that is compatible with an eReader. But they don’t format a manuscript or optimize it for proper performance across devices. It’s the equivalent of trying to make a pie by throwing all of the ingredients into a pie dish and expecting it to come out looking like the pie in the bakery window. But that’s not how it works. You have to make your pie crust first, and then your filling, and then you have to bake it all accordingly. It’s the same with self-publishing. You might have all the ingredients, but if you don’t put them together properly, you’ll end up with a mess and no one will be able to enjoy it.
At the end of the day, what matters most is the reader experience. Readers who have a poor experience with a book are unlikely to read another book by the same author. An author without readers is likely a very unhappy author.
For my own part, I have completely lost faith in an author who’s writing I really enjoyed in audiobook form because there were, in my opinion, inexcusable errors in the ebook. And this was an NYT Bestselling author, through a major publisher. The typos were so distracting that I wasn’t willing to spend another $15 for the next book. In fact, I don’t think I’d spend anything for the rest of the series.
My understanding is that Amazon won’t be flagging foreign or created languages, stylized speech, etc. But it’s not just “misspellings” that Amazon is flagging, it’s poor formatting: line breaks where they shouldn’t exist, forced hyphenation in inappropriate locations, erroneously swapped characters like zeros for ‘o’s. And there is a threshold set by KDP, one or two errors won’t get your book flagged. The threshold will be based on the length of your manuscript. the shorter the manuscript, the lower the tolerance. A manuscript with 3000 locations will get flagged for 10-15 errors.
While Amazon has made many authors very unhappy, they are still the 600 lb gorilla in the eBook industry and their focus is the reader experience because readers are the ones spending money. A reader shouldn’t have to decipher what they’re reading. They shouldn’t even notice that they’re reading. They should be so wrapped up in the content of your book, that they don’t notice the words or the formatting. But when you have typos and disruptive formatting, you yank them out and now they have to try to refocus. Enough of that, and you could easily lose a reader.
So instead of the usual knee-jerk reaction to Amazon’s changes, I encourage you to focus on creating professional quality books that readers can enjoy fully, with minimal editing and formatting errors.
As authors you write, to be read. Your reader’s experience should be your highest focus.
Excellent point, Tamara! Amazon is definitely for readers first, and hopefully this editing policy is keeping the reader experience in mind in a beneficial way for both indie writers and their readers.
I do think it’s important for there to be some measure of accountability. A lot of self-published authors don’t put the work in that they should. That said, I feel like this would too easily effect certain genres like Sci fi or fantasy that have a lot of made up names and words for fantastical elements.
I hope British English spellings are not regarded as errors. Also, authors introduce foreign words (characters speak their language) and give translations in brackets. Obviously, those are not errors. I hope Amazon understands that. Rely on readers rather than some auto-spell-check. Otherwise it’s a disaster.