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  • April 25, 2018

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What authors need to know about the new Kindle warning system

January 23, 2016 By Michael Kozlowski 30 Comments

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Amazon has announced that they will be publicly warning users if an e-book has spelling mistakes or formatting errors. This is meant to protect the average reader so they don’t make an impulse purchase and regret it. Thousands of authors are asking a ton of questions about this new warning system and today we will answer the most common issues.

One of the most common questions we have been fielding from authors  are those who have written fantasy or science-fiction e-books. Many of them have developed their own vocabulary or intentionally misspell words.  If this is applicable to your book, I recommend updating your title via Kindle Direct Publishing and implement a lexicon. This is a a page or two at the beginning of the novel that provides a rundown of the words and their meaning. This will ensure the book is not reported for spelling mistakes and if they are, you have a point of reference to show the Amazon rep when they contact you.

Authors have also been asking questions about the localized usage of the English language. American, Canadian and the UK all have different ways of spelling words. An example of this is color and colour. I think that as long as you are consistent in your vocabulary you will not run into any problems.

Sometimes being an indie author is full of peril. Authors heavily compete against each other for sales and readers. What happens if one of your rivals goes over your novel with a fine tooth comb and files a series of Kindle Quality Reports in the hopes you will have a warning label and they will not.

For the last two years Amazon has been emailing authors and giving them a list of words that are misspelled and what pages they are on. This is not an automatic system, the readers themselves. Authors receive ample time to make the changes and upload a new copy of their book. It normally takes two days for Amazon to verify that the mistakes have been corrected and they will push out an update to anyone who has purchased the book.

I really want to stress that just because you get a few reports, the Kindle Details Page will suddenly not receive a warning. You will continue to have ample time from the date you first receive the Kindle Quality Report and to make the proposed changes.

FAQ

How do users report content errors? – Amazon has two different ways that users can report content errors. One is via their website and will only let a user file a complaint if it was a verifiable purchase. The other method is via the companies like of e-ink e-readers, such as the Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite or Kindle Voyage.

Beware Editing Services – Since we broke the story that Amazon is implementing the warning system, I have seen hundreds of editors try and get authors to pay them to fix up any spelling or grammar mistakes.  I think its important to ensure that you find a good editor and not someone who is just hyping their services with a newly created website or via social media.

What’s the deal with this warning system anyways?  Amazon is simply making warnings public. In the past, it was always between a KDP representative and the author.  Some authors simply opted to ignore the warnings and nothing really happened to their title, unless it had gross formatting errors, in which case Amazon would remove it from the Kindle bookstore.

My contact information has changed, help! Sometimes authors lose access to their email or get a new address. If this is the case you want to login to your KDP control panel and update your account information.

Michael Kozlowski

Michael Kozlowski is the Editor in Chief of Good e-Reader. He has been writing about audiobooks and e-readers for the past ten years. His articles have been picked up by major and local news sources and websites such as the CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and Verge.

Filed Under: Digital Publishing News, E-Book News, Indie Author News

  • Hazel Campbell

    If this applies to fiction as well as non-ficiton, this is crazy.The beauty of ficiton is very often innovation in all sort s of ways-sometimes quite unorthodox.

  • Tracey Morait

    What about British slang words and British spelling? Will it know the difference? Why should I have to impliement a lexicon to explain that in British word usage most people in the UK like to spell ‘realize’ (prominent in our dictionaries) as ‘realise’, the variation. Why should I have to tell a reader that most locals in Liverpool, England (where my books are mainly set) that we call the police ‘bizzies’. Are they saying they won’t publish my books because I’m not Jane Austen? Ridiculous!

    May I point out to Amazon that it is in the main an American company and in the US its readers tend to forget where the English language came from. It’s also a bit of an insult for them to imply that indie authors misspell for misspelling sake; they do not! That said, there are some words that are misspelt (hello, UK variation alert) purposely for effect, as you say, in the sci-fi genre.

  • FireStorm Weaver Bladewing

    Or what about simple ‘written dialect’ issues. For example, one of our novels has individuals who are foreign, and the pronunciation of their conversation is written in dialect. Honestly, did people have to mess with things and make them even more complicated. Sheesh!

  • Michael Kozlowski

    I know some authors are working on american/UK variants of their book. So they will have 2 editions, one for the US market and one for the UK. Each one will have proper regional spelling.

  • Joseph Carver

    I’m skeptical about the lexicon. I have a fake language in small sections of my urban-fantasy novel, and it’s not really meant to be understood. It’s there for effect, something that the reader experiences with the character as the language spoken by a dark Fae creature. If I translate that in the front of the book, it takes away from the all-so-important customer experience as I’m trying to create it for my readers.

  • Amanda June Hagarty

    I do believe that you should spell that “ensure” rather than “insure” … Sorry, given the topic I could not resist. I will send you my editing bill 😛

  • joshuafinancial

    My wife was an editor of mystery novels at Penguin Putnam for five years. Every book has typeos and misspellings. I was an executive at a firm that digitized the most popular college textbooks in the USA for electronic distribution. We hired independent proofreaders, AND, we had a staff of five who proofread each text (recall, this is an electronic copy created from the PDF copy given to us by the publishers). DESPITE THAT LEVEL OF INSPECTION – EVERY TEXT HAD ERRORS. It’s a mystery how they got there. It’s a mystery how they escaped detection. It’s a mystery that Amazon thinks it’s a good idea to “warn” readers rather than educating readers that EVERY TEXT HAS ERRORS.

  • ZenDahl

    Where has Amazon announced this?

  • Michael Kozlowski

    They haven’t announced it yet, but they are emailing a ton of authors and letting them know about this change.

  • indiebookawards

    I haven’t come across this before and we have formatted books with strange spellings, slang, etc.

  • Tracey Morait

    That’s if they have the time to mess about with two editions. I don’t see why a UK author should be forced into that situation, quite frankly; nor should a US author be forced to spell like a Brit. It’s absurd! Next they’ll be picking holes in grammar.

    Unless they’re actually prepared to go out and market the books for us and take a share in what little profit we make, they have no right to foist this rubbish on us.

    Someone on Twitter pointed out that most indie books have poor spelling and poor editing. She’s right, but so have a lot of traditionally published books whose publishing houses employ editors and proofreaders. Kindle can do one!

  • Tracey Morait

    Sceptical. See what I mean? Load of billhooks and I’ll tell Amazon when they email me!

  • Sara Stamey

    This article is pretty hilarious, in that there are numerous errors in your message. I’m an independent editor and agree that many self-published books are in urgent need of editing and proofreading, but this proposal sounds like it will create too many problems for everyone.

  • Sara Stamey

    Yes, he needs you! 😉

  • Misfit

    Umm…

    From Merriam-Webster:

    skep·ti·cal adjective ˈskep-ti-kəl

    or scep·ti·cal

    1

    : of, relating to, or characteristic of a skeptic or skepticism

    http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com/unabridged/skeptical

    Might want to look into a dictionary before you try to shame someone. 😉

  • Misfit

    Speaking of grammar. You have a comma splice: Word has a spellchecker, most of us use dictionaries.

    It should either be

    Word has a spellchecker; most of us use dictionaries.

    or

    Word has a spellchecker. Most of us use dictionaries.

  • Tracey Morait

    Jesus, lol! 🙂

    In a forum you don’t have time to faff about with commas and semi-colons. Keep that for when you write your actual book and for when you CHECK and EDIT! 🙂

  • Tracey Morait

    I’m from the UK, mate; we spell it with a ‘c’ over here.

    Chambers

    sceptical or (N Amer) skeptical adj doubtful; inclined to be incredulous. sceptically adverb.

  • Jennifer Karchmer

    It would be interesting to see what the impetus for this move is by Amazon. I download and read a lot of ebooks in the free to $1.99 range and see LOADS of typos, misspellings and errors. (FYI: I am a professional proofreader.) This, I believe, is just sloppy work — the product of someone/an author not taking the time to invest in a qualified editor or proofreader. I can understand authors being upset if they have created a special language in their books. On the other hand, (if this is indeed the reasoning), this move by Amazon may finally show that books, whether in print or electronic, are a product of our culture and should meet the highest of standards in terms of quality to be in mass production. We all know that any writing riddled with typos or mistakes loses credibility, so why waster a reader’s time?

  • Misfit

    So… If you knew that “skeptical” was spelled correctly in a region where English is spoken, why did you decide it needed to be corrected? It just makes you look like an asshole. Don’t be an asshole, k?

  • Misfit

    Well, my dear, I was merely correcting you to prove a point. You thought you would be hilarious and try to correct someone–even though that person was correct. It doesn’t feel so great when someone gets all nitpicky over silly things, does it? Maybe try to learn something from this moment.

  • Martha Smith

    I don’t think many readers mind the occasional typo. But as someone who reads many, many books, often books I pay $8 or more for, I have been upset to get e-books that are riddled with errors. Often these are books that were just fine in their print incarnations but the OCR process introduced errors to the e-book. Occasionally I have seen errors that were created by a faulty search/replace operation (e.g., once there was the same verb stuck in after every mention of a character through 2/3 of a book: “Angela smiled. ran down the hall.” “Angela smiled.looked in the mirror. Angela smiled. and Jack began to walk,” etc. And this was a book I purchased from BN published by a major publisher, not an indie.) These errors can be extremely jarring.

    I can understand how errors creep in, so I try to report the really bad ones that I notice (thinking that might help future readers). But I’ve wondered if the process isn’t something to keep me busy–sort of like pushing the “close doors” button on an elevator. Most of the time when I report errors, it seems no one ever notices. It can’t be that hard to update an e-file! And the books are DRM-locked so that I can’t even fix my own copy.

    I make a point to read reviews prior to purchase so that I can avoid the worst offenders, but (1) sometimes there are just too many reviews and (2) reviews aren’t always updated when/if the book is fixed. I am surprised that authors wouldn’t prefer this new system to the current “give a one star review that lasts forever” system. As a reader, I certainly appreciate this development.

    I would hope most readers aren’t dumb enough to confuse regional spellings or dialect spellings or “invented language” spellings with errors. But those readers are probably dumb enough to give one-star reviews for such things, too, so I don’t see that authors are running any special risk.

  • Martha Smith

    If e-books received this level of attention, readers wouldn’t be complaining as much. It’s pretty obvious that they don’t.

  • joshuafinancial

    Thanks Martha. Unfortunately, not so. For example, all ebooks from traditionally published authors at big houses. Those have just as many errors as they do in print.

    In reality, this move by Amazon is more of a needle/thorn with which to prick traditional publishing. Because, although AUTHORS would happily correct errata in ebook format if they were allowed to – traditional publishing doesn’t do that (generally speaking, at this time. There are perhaps exceptions, but they would be just that – exceptions). Once a book is finalized at a traditional house, errors in the source file are not corrected unless or until a second edition is published.

    Professional independent authors are using the same editing and proofing processes as traditional publishing. Using exactly the same professionals in many cases (in case you didn’t know, editors are not a highly paid bunch relative to their education and expertise. A little freelancing in the indie space is a welcome supplemental income stream.)

    Professional independent authors and ebook readers probably share an expectation – that it’s cheap and easy to correct errors, so why should there be any? It’s one of the advantages an electronic medium has over print, of course.

    However, if you’ll read the comments/reviews for ebooks at Amazon, there seems to be a significant number of unreasonably high expectations for indie-published work, given the error-prone nature of all written work of novel scale.

    If one considers Amazon’s beef with traditional publishing around ebooks – the tactic of warning readers will eventually point fingers at nearly all traditionally published books and the shoddy/amateur indie books, and less at the professional indie authors’ works.

    (Although in our experience, every time the source file is opened it creates opportunity for error to creep in. Either that, or voodoo. We never figured it out precisely, even after thousands of titles. )

  • Martha Smith

    You seem to be talking about books that have an electronic source file. Books that are older–scanned from a paper copy–clearly are not always proofread. If they had been, there would be no scanning errors like the hilarious “she threw her anus around his neck” errors (and other less egregious but still jarring errors that I have seen). http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/may/01/scanner-ebook-arms-anus-optical-character-recognition

  • Martha Smith

    I got curious and looked up who published the book that had the copy/paste error I mentioned above . . . and it was Penguin/Daw. The problem even occurred with the possessive noun, e.g., “Angela smiled.’s face lit up.” However–to their credit–after I complained, the ebook was fixed.

  • Susanne Lakin

    As a professional book copyeditor, I’m thrilled by this news. Not because it means job security but because it heightens the fact that we authors need to produce high-quality books. An author should be proud of his work, and error-riddled books are death to a good reputation.
    As far as made-up words and spellings go: readers aren’t going to report those. They understand fantasy novels have weird spellings. What readers (like me ) report are obvious egregious spelling and usage errors. I love that I can use my Kindle to directly report these. And I appreciate when readers catch the embarrassing typo or two in my books.
    All in all, this a good thing.

  • Linda M Au

    I noticed the mistakes in this blog post too, and I too found it funny. (I’m a proofreader by trade.) Fingers crossed that this move by Amazon is a good one and raises the standards of indie writers.

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