Since I wrote about my copy of "Ender's Game" with OCR errors galore, I have seen the story picked up by Teleread.com and even received a response from a TOR editor. That's progress, right? Unfortunately, it all amounted to me still being left with an error filled copy of an eBook with no replacement or refund. I respond to Tor below.
I emailed Apple and requested escalation, but received no word from them.
I emailed Scott Card and received no word from him.
I did, however, receive a reply from Tor on both this site and over at Teleread.com. That was unexpected progress. If you didn't see the reply on the other blog posts I'll share it with you here.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden said:
I posted this over at Teleread, but it occurs to me that I should say the same thing here. Hi, I’m a senior editor at Tor, Orson Scott Card’s publisher. I’m not Scott’s editor, but I do manage the science-fiction department.
Our digital-publishing people are in touch with Apple about this issue. I’ve been told that Apple agrees with us — this shouldn’t have happened. And I understand that Apple people are scrambling to set it right. Bear with us; this industry is being put together at a breakneck pace, so everybody’s bound to trip up a few times.
Mr. Nielsen Hayden,
Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking time to reply to my problem, and I am very heartened to hear that Apple is scrambling to set problems like this right. However, I am still left with a cruddy version of Ender's Game while the fixed version is not being offered to me as a replacement.
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do at this point. Will Tor contact me as Scott Card's site claims? Or will Apple contact me? Am I supposed to contact somebody and get my name on a list? Do I sit and wait and hope for the best?
I understand this is a new industry, and I would have been more than happy to be patient if somebody had told me that I'd be taken care of as you have now done. That somebody should have been Apple on behalf of Tor, but perhaps you folks didn't anticipate it would take three months to work this particular bug out. Instead, Apple ignored me until I raised the issue through customer care, and still didn't help me. I'm guessing Apple hasn't set up a mechanism to push updated texts to customers. It is colossal short sightedness on their part, in my opinion. Yes, the kinks will get banged out over time, but in the meantime I and other Scott Card readers who purchased the awkward texts are out of luck.
You ask me to bear with you, and so I shall, but do you have an idea when this will be straightened out? Is there anything I can do to help on my end? Just let me know. I'd be more than happy to spread the word.
Cheerfully,
Douglas Cootey
Follow me on Twitter for my ADHD escapades at @SplinteredMind or my novel writing project over at @DouglasCootey. And if you're a glutton for punishment you can friend me on Facebook as well.
