Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

teresaelsey.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 97 posts

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#31

Post by dacryn »

alpinisme wrote: post #16
GJim wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to understand why a story about a child innocently dressing up as someone from another culture is perceived by some Americans as racist.

It’s never really resonated with me either. But I think this thread has a good example in it: a patent not wanting their child to read a book in which people consider “you” to be an acceptable costume (making you feel strange or uncomfortable, since kids often don’t like being singled out or noted as different — especially not in a way meant to exaggerate and lean in to stereotypes). This is doubly true when the kids…

ah come on. It's halloween. Brothers dress up as their sisters, sisters dress up as their brothers, kids dress up as their neighbours.

You are an acceptable costume. Face it. But context matters. The reading kid is not singled out, nobody is making this negative. It could also be perceived as a celebration 'hey I want to be like my adopted asian sister, she is cool'.

Live and let live, and give context if the kid is asking questions. But don't censor because you feel like a special snowflake

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#32

Post by brendoelfrendo »

ses1984 wrote: post #24
squidbeak wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same reason you repaint your fence occasionally.

Your covers lose their protective coating and will rot due to moisture?

That's not what they meant, but... yes, I suppose that is something that could happen to a book cover.

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#33

Post by watwut »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #19
GJim wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sad to see your factual statement downvoted. There was indeed a huge backlash in the UK, amongst authors and the public, when publishers sought to edit classic children's books by Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton to make them politically correct. Children a quite capable of understanding something was written at a different time.

> Children a quite capable of understanding something was written at a different time. Even if some person is certain that this is not the case, the child's parents hopefully are capable of explaining this to their children. :-)

Even if it was the case, but it is kind of massively easier to pick a book where you do not have to explain that.

Sometimes you just want to read a book and children books are not all that much fun for adults anyway. You might not want to then have to go into explaining that racism was normal for the author, but we think differently jadda jadda ... it is additional completely pointless complication for what was supposed to be good night story.

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#34

Post by brendoelfrendo »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #18
alpinisme wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody in this thread has said the book is racist. The question was whether you can see the motivation of retitling from a publishers (or for that matter booksellers) perspective. If you want people to buy the book, the old name is a turn off whether the content is raciest or not.

> If you want people to buy the book, the old name is a turn off whether the content is raciest or not. This depends on the audience. For some people it is a turn off to adopt the title to a woke zeitgeist.

Yeah but I tend not to care about the opinions of people who wish racial slurs had a more prominent place in modern society.

It is, if nothing else, convenient that I don't have to say one of the worst slurs in American English every time I discuss Agatha Christie's body of work.

It's worth noting that, for that reason, the book was released as "And Then There Were None" in its first US edition in 1940; the use of the original title until 1985 is a UK thing.

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#35

Post by shagie »

djoldman wrote: post #29

> And sometimes we’re not sure if what we’re seeing even is an error. The following passage, from Philip K. Dick, displays a lot of creative use of language, but the “zommed” in the third line — while matching the print book — seems a bit suspect. Should it be “zoomed”? How can we know? Strictly for possible typos: if the author is alive, ask them, otherwise leave it. > Sometimes a book is completely accurate at the…

Back in college, I recall a professor saying that German students of philosophy would learn English to be able to read Nietzsche in translation rather than as it was written. (Upon reflection, it might have been Kant - https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/28743 )

My latin was too rusty to be able to read Meditations on First Philosophy as it was written. ( https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23306 ).

A translation from Latin to English ( https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Meditations_on_First_Philosop... ) necessarily changes those intents/concepts/ideas into those that the reader is more familiar with.

A translation from English of 1000 AD to 2000 AD has the same necessary changes http://www.hieronymus.us.com/latinweb/Mediaevum/Beowulf.htm

Is it ok to read Liu Cixin's work 三体 as Ken Liu's translation known to the English speaking word as The Three-Body Problem? Or should I learn Chinese and immerse myself in the culture of China in order to read it with those intents / concepts / ideas as things frozen on paper?

There are two problems - the book captured at its time may not be accessible anymore. Secondly, even if you can read the words it may be that the words those concepts map to in today's language are not the concepts that the author intended.

So... how short of a time frame is not not acceptable to read the work in translation?

I hold that a translation across time is not really any different than a translation of a modern work across languages and cultures.

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#36

Post by aleph_minus_one »

dml2135 wrote: post #28
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My daughters are Asian I wouldn't buy them a children's book where "be Chinese" is considered an acceptable Halloween costume. There also exist people who would rather avoid buying books where the publisher changed the content in 1984 style to appease the woke moaners.

Also consider that maybe the parent comment would not have bought the book in 1984 either, for the same reason.

> Also consider that maybe the parent comment would not have bought the book in 1984 either, for the same reason.

With 1984, I meant the book by George Orwell where newspaper articles of the past are permanently changed (and any references to the existence of the old versions are destroyed) to fit the daily political climate/narrative.

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#37

Post by aleph_minus_one »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #34
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want people to buy the book, the old name is a turn off whether the content is raciest or not. This depends on the audience. For some people it is a turn off to adopt the title to a woke zeitgeist.

Yeah but I tend not to care about the opinions of people who wish racial slurs had a more prominent place in modern society. It is, if nothing else, convenient that I don't have to say one of the worst slurs in American English every time I discuss Agatha Christie's body of work. It's worth noting that, for that reason, the book was released as "And Then There Were None" in its first US edition in 1940; the use of th…

> Yeah but I tend not to care about the opinions of people who wish racial slurs had a more prominent place in modern society.

But I do tend to care about the opinions of people who wish that works of the past are not manipulated to fit the current zeitgeist - in particular if it is claimed or suggest that this is the work as written by the author.

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#38

Post by GJim »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #34
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want people to buy the book, the old name is a turn off whether the content is raciest or not. This depends on the audience. For some people it is a turn off to adopt the title to a woke zeitgeist.

Yeah but I tend not to care about the opinions of people who wish racial slurs had a more prominent place in modern society. It is, if nothing else, convenient that I don't have to say one of the worst slurs in American English every time I discuss Agatha Christie's body of work. It's worth noting that, for that reason, the book was released as "And Then There Were None" in its first US edition in 1940; the use of th…

> who wish racial slurs had a more prominent place in modern society.

Nobody is wishing they had a more prominent place today, nor in the future. Rather, there is a need not to edit the past, lest we forget it.

> "And Then There Were None" in its first US edition in 1940; the use of the original title until 1985 is a UK thing.

I suggest that is because in the USA, particularly in the south, political sensitivities about such a title would be difficult to overcome and the association with an old British poem would be completely lost.

Re: When Nothing Ever Goes Out of Print: Maintaining Backlist Ebooks (2016)

#40

Post by allturtles »

djoldman wrote: post #29

> And sometimes we’re not sure if what we’re seeing even is an error. The following passage, from Philip K. Dick, displays a lot of creative use of language, but the “zommed” in the third line — while matching the print book — seems a bit suspect. Should it be “zoomed”? How can we know? Strictly for possible typos: if the author is alive, ask them, otherwise leave it. > Sometimes a book is completely accurate at the…

> Sometimes a book is completely accurate at the time of publication, but becomes factually inaccurate over time, giving the wrong dates for the beginning of daylight saving time or an incorrect planetary status for Pluto.

> Should we fix these factual errors? Do we need the author’s input? What if the author is dead, the agent is retired, and the editor has left the company? Should we fix them silently or with some kind of editorial note?

I think it's bizarre to call the "factual errors" at all. Would you alter a book from 1958 that "incorrectly" refers to Eisenhower as the current U.S. President? Such "fixes" would be a defacement of the historical record, flattening all of time into a perpetual now.

Post reply on HN