In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#1

Post by jbegley » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
nytimes.com

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#2

Post by fnord77 » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

sounds like the "rewrites" are scanning errors (counterfeiters are probably digitizing the original works and errors are creeping in) and in the case of the "gibberish" copy, quite clearly a character encoding issue.

nothing in the article points to intentional alteration, like the tone of the article suggests

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#3

Post by jhbadger » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:27 PM UTC

fnord77 wrote: post #2

sounds like the "rewrites" are scanning errors (counterfeiters are probably digitizing the original works and errors are creeping in) and in the case of the "gibberish" copy, quite clearly a character encoding issue. nothing in the article points to intentional alteration, like the tone of the article suggests

Most of it is scanning/encoding errors, true, but the example of the high school edition of _Down and Out_ really does seem to be intentional alteration -- there's no way that rewording "Come here, my chicken" to "Come here" is a technical issue. For whatever reason, a human wanted that change.

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#4

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

fnord77 wrote: post #2

sounds like the "rewrites" are scanning errors (counterfeiters are probably digitizing the original works and errors are creeping in) and in the case of the "gibberish" copy, quite clearly a character encoding issue. nothing in the article points to intentional alteration, like the tone of the article suggests

[deleted]

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#5

Post by chris72205 » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:30 PM UTC

Wow I haven't been confident in buying electronics or anything with a battery on Amazon for a while - now I guess I'll add books to the list. Lately even buying the same brand of toilet paper has resulted in differing qualities each time.

Amazon is becoming less reputable than eBay at this point... at least with eBay, the seller has individual ratings and is not hidden behind whatever brand of product they are selling.

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#6

Post by msbarnett » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:33 PM UTC

fnord77 wrote: post #2

sounds like the "rewrites" are scanning errors (counterfeiters are probably digitizing the original works and errors are creeping in) and in the case of the "gibberish" copy, quite clearly a character encoding issue. nothing in the article points to intentional alteration, like the tone of the article suggests

The article cites examples from an unauthorized Abridgement of Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London aimed at High School Students.

In what way is the existence of that work, with the cited removal of entire parts of sentences for apparent brevity, consistent with your claim that

> nothing in the article points to intentional alteration, like the tone of the article suggests

?

Did you actually fully read the article?

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#7

Post by whatamidoingyo » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

I buy most of my books on ebay from the seller "thrift.books", and some other goodwill ebay/physical stores. They're used, and generally around $3.00/free shipping. Some Goodwill stores have every book priced at $1.00, and have nearly everything you'd want. I'd never buy a new book again, especially from Amazon.

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#8

Post by galago » Mon, Aug 19, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

When Gnutella file sharing first became popular, I noticed that if I searched for .txt files I could find popular books of the day. Sometimes I would download them and do a find and replace operation to change the names of characters, sometimes to my own name or of other people, just to be silly. I think I did this with all the Harry Potter books. I also recall creating a heavily modified version of Fight Club which had a happy ending. This isn't really what the article is about, but it does show that some edits may well be intentional. None of the works I modified, as far as I recall were in the public domain at the time.