I encountered a situation this past weekend that I wanted to share and explore with you dear readers. One that I have to admit made me none-to-pleased with a certain publisher.

So it goes something like this:

  1. Michelle purchases e-book.
  2. Michelle begins to read e-book and notices it is fraught with grammatical, spelling and formatting errors.
  3. Michelle gets bitter because she realizes she likely just paid money for an e-GALLEY as compared to an e-BOOK.

Am I sure that this is the case?  No, I can’t be 100% sure that this was an e-galley but if it’s not then shame on this publisher for letting an e-book of such horrendous (and this is me being generous because there wasn’t a single paragraph that didn’t have an error of some sort) quality.  If it was the e-galley again shame on them for trying to deceive their readers.  I know a good portion of the e-reading community isn’t likely aware of e-galleys and the like but seriously guys, this was just W-R-O-N-G!

I mean, I know there is a certain push to have e-books available at the time of release along with other formats, but a publisher shouldn’t sacrifice quality for speed.  You know what I’m sayin’?  Or maybe it’s all a big game to get the reader to pay top dollar for the print version.  I have a hard time believing that a publisher would be so subversive and sneaky for what likely amounts to only a couple of dollars, but it all adds up right?

So my question to you, fine readers, is have you encountered this same scenario?  Have you purchased an e-book only to feel like you’d been had into purchasing an e-galley instead?  If so did you decide not to purchase e-books from the publisher again?  Because that’s pretty much where I’m at right now.