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

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

#61

Post by allturtles »

NeoTar wrote: post #46
allturtles wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It depends on the book. If it is a novel, then clearly not. A fact-book, that lists the current heads-of-state of all world nations, then possibly yes. It's ultimately a decision for the author/publisher for each book. Is this a living text that should be kept up-to-date, or a historical record - after all, a book which lists all of the heads-of-state in 1958 is also valuable for different contexts. Perhaps more impo…

> A fact-book, that lists the current heads-of-state of all world nations, then possibly yes.

If you want to sell an up-to-date, 2024 factbook, you should commission one. Providing up-to-date fact books is not a function that a back catalog can or should serve. You shouldn't take a 1950s fact book and try to make some ham-handed edits to it and sell it as if it's the same book.

> if a book says something dangerous - like a cook-book saying "add a few flakes of cyanide for flavour" is that grounds for an update, or editors note in an otherwise historical record text?

If a publisher feels that issuing a particular book in ebook form would be injurious to the public, than they are certainly within their rights to not issue it. Or to add an editorial note "This book is for historical interest only, don't try to use the recipes, because for some reason the author was trying to kill all their readers." Again there are a zillion cookbooks and it's not hard to get someone to write a new one.

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

#62

Post by bloak »

GJim wrote: post #38
brendoelfrendo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ab…

> the association with an old British poem

Wait, are you sure about that? Wikipedia says "an 1869 minstrel song". I had assumed it was a song from the USA that happened to be fairly well known in Britain.

Also I have the impression that the word "nigger" is not traditional in British English. The first time I came across the word was when reading Mark Twain. I had previously heard several words used for referring to darker-skinned people but not that one. Of course that's just my experience from one part of the country.

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

#64

Post by shagie »

evilduck wrote: post #52
djoldman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a problem. The translation is a new work. The original work in the original language stays frozen. Incidentally, the translation is treated the same and is frozen in the same manner.

Individual beliefs aside, the Christian Bible makes for a fascinating case study in book translations. Some translations are modern takes on an existing language translation like translating the King James Bible into modern English as literally as possible, while some take their own liberties with interpreting the original text as it was written and come up with somewhat dramatically different results. Translations b…

> Individual beliefs aside, the Christian Bible makes for a fascinating case study in book translations.

The start of the gospel of John is one that is particularly thought provoking for me because we can more easily grasp the meaning of the original words.

https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/jhn/1/1/t_conc_998001

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

en archē ēn ho logos kai ho logos ēn pros theos kai ho logos ēn theos.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And you'll note in that λόγος has been translated to "Word". But logos means such more than just "word" (the word for word is λέξις léxis). Logos, as understood in Greek philosophy was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos

> Ancient Greek philosophers used the term in different ways. The sophists used the term to mean "discourse". Aristotle applied the term to refer to "reasoned discourse" or "the argument" in the field of rhetoric, and considered it one of the three modes of persuasion alongside ethos and pathos. Pyrrhonist philosophers used the term to refer to dogmatic accounts of non-evident matters. The Stoics spoke of the logos spermatikos (the generative principle of the Universe) which foreshadows related concepts in Neoplatonism.

This was relating the philosophy of the Greeks (even then a couple of hundred of years old) to that of the early forms of Christianity.

I would contend that "In the beginning was the [ability to reason, link the rational nature of the universe to rational discourse]" ... but that doesn't fit well in translation or even liner notes. And so, we're left with the word "Word".

---

One of the late night Bay Area public TV programs (not sure if it was KQED or KTEH) had a once a week program back in the late 90s / early 00s that was a verse by verse bible study looking at the oldest forms of the text and looking at specific word meanings like rāṣaḥ https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h7523/kjv/wlc/0-1/ and hāraḡ https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h2026/kjv/wlc/0-1/ - where they are used (you'll note the contexts are different while one is killing in general, the other is a specific type of killing).

Anyways... it was an interesting program that had a lot of linguistic study of ancient languages with the Bible as the text being translated.

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

#65

Post by scarmig »

shagie wrote: post #35
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 fro…

Douglas Hofstadter (of Godel, Escher, Bach fame) has written a whole lot about this and related questions. Translator, Trader is a great essay (my favorite work of his) that anyone who thinks about translation and its implications a lot should check out.

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

#66

Post by everforward »

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…

> No. A book should capture an author's intent/concept/idea at the time it was written and those intents/concepts/ideas should be frozen.

Given that we're talking about ebooks, whose readers generally have some kind of navigation system, I think it would be reasonable to include a footnote. If a book says Pluto is a planet, I wouldn't mind a [1] linking to a note that says "Pluto has not been considered a planet since $year. $LinkToWikipedia".

I agree that actually changing the content is a bad idea, but I do think it would be valuable to link to up-to-date information in a non-intrusive manner.

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

#67

Post by HalfRadish »

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…

This captures a new problem that's sort of sneaked in with the advent of digital publishing.

In a print book, you can make corrections or revisions in a new edition, but the old edition is still potentially out there, in libraries and private collections, preserving its own history.

In a digital publication, if you make a revision, the old edition disappears by default; older versions are only preserved if someone does so deliberately.

At the very least, the reader should be informed of the initial publication date as well as the dates of any revisions, which I believe is already standard practice in the print world. This is essential context for the reader.

When a text revised in 2024 purports to be [entirely] from 1948: bad. When a revised text mostly written in 1948 purports to be [entirely] from 2024: also bad. To me, this is way more important than the question of whether or not to make revisions per se.

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

#68

Post by mcguire »

dhosek wrote: post #55
shagie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fro…

I’ve often wondered if Greeks were at a disadvantage in reading Homer since they would have the choice of reading either the essentially foreign original text or what would feel like a bowdlerization as a modernized text, while translations to other languages wouldn’t have that same negative association connected to them.

Don't forget that you're not reading the text as it was originally written; the surviving texts are copies of copies. Reconstructing, partially, the original text is possible if you have many downstream copies from different sources but never perfect.

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

#69

Post by kwhitefoot »

GJim wrote: post #41
watwut wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 suppo…

I could not disagree with you more. It is something you will need to explain to children at some point, and doing so over a light hearted story is an ideal approach. Shying away from the difficulties of bringing up a child isn't something you should be doing. Besides, the best children's books are also fun for adults! (I raise you Roald Dahl's 'Boy' and Judith Kerr's 'The Tiger Who Came to Tea')

> the best children's books are also fun for adults!

Also Kipling's Just So stories. My eldest loved me to read them to him and it was no chore at all.

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

#70

Post by crooked-v »

themaninthedark wrote: post #26
alpinisme wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Counterpoint: St. Paddy's day - where a lot of people dress up and claim to be Irish. Or when someone dresses up as a 1920 gangster, just always happen to Italian...

It's really the same rule of thumb of stand-up comedy: punching up vs punching down. Western European and North American pan-national stereotypes are typically comfortably 'up' (though targeting specific ethnicities can become 'down').
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