I bought a historical fiction book Count Belisarius (2022 edition) by Robert Graves from a publisher called Seven Stories Press. The original book was published in the 1930's, and Graves isn't an unknown author; he also wrote the relatively well known and received I, Claudius. The editing in this printing is abysmal; like an error a page for at least 50 pages (I stopped reading after 50 pages). I'm not an especially strong editor and haven't taken a lit/eng course in about 10 years, but boy howdy look at how these errors stand out:
Pg. 3 ex, "… he should never tum is head…" instead of turn. I think the publisher scanned a faded 1930's printing and had chatgpt or something recreate the scan in a word processor. AI must have read 'rn' as 'm' (I speculate)
Page 4 ex, "Whether or not he w true to the oath…" W instead of were.
Page 7 ex, "… and thus making the Cyclops drunk, thrust out his one eye with the Barning point." Barning instead of burning. Barning unnecessarily capitalized.
Page 14 ex, "…brandishing the red hot spit which Belisarius. had put to heat in the hearth." One of many times there is punctuation randomly inserted into sentences.
Page 15 ex, "… The prophet Balaam was not greatly astonished when his as suddenly spoke in God's name." As instead of ass.
Page 15 ex, "I was with the remounts in the Persian wan…" Wan instead of war.
Page 22 ex, "The affair ended xµore…" Random use of Greek µ. Also an x thrown in there. Should say more.
Page 23 ex, "It was there th.at…" this error occurs twice on this page, both times with the word that.
Page 25 ex, "convinced Christian a d somewhat scandalized…" and missing an "n." Still has the spacing between a and d though.
Page 26 ex, "water dock, of which he is so proud and which keeps such poOI; time," dock instead of clock, poOI instead of poor. Random ; inserted. Again, somehow two letters, 'c' and 'l' combined to form a 'd.' Why…?
Page 35 ex, "(This was the other Thracian, a land owner}" Brackets don't match. Happens more than once.
Page 43 ex, "the stone by which the tome was dosed…" dosed instead of closed.
Page 43 ex, "a great number oi: rich…'' oi should be of; weird insertion of colon
Page 43 ex, "New Years Da'y…" You understand
Page 43 ex, "walls, floor, and roo£…" That is a pound Sterling in place of an 'f'.
This isn't an exhaustive list of errors; I just picked out some of my favorite examples to keep the list short but demonstrative of different types of errors. I've contacted Seven Stories Press 3 times with no response back, so I guess I'm just stuck with a bricked book. Anyone experience anything similar with publishers? Is there anything I can do?
by Dependent_Bottle_136