How many errata are too many?
I'm not sure this is the right Stack Exchange Community for this question, but here I go.
I bought a book on Machine Learning from a (I believe) popular publisher a few days ago. It's a first edition and it was first published on September 2015 (4 months ago). The point is, in the first 50 pages I found around 5 errata. Not huge ones, but errata nonetheless. Even though the book is quite good, finding that many errata made me a bit uneasy.
Could this be considered normal, as it is a "just born" book? Or should I be concerned in any way?
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If the errors make the book unusable — for example, switching "row" and "column" makes what you're reading unworkable — I'd look for a way to contact the publisher and inform it about the errors. Then find another book to use as a backup or cross-reference.
If they're just spelling mistakes or the word switching is really obvious, then you're probably okay.
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I think you mean "errors" rather than "errata". A book's errata is usually a list of errors that have been noted and are corrected on a separate page. You don't see errata so much these days—it's cheaper to correct the error and reprint it, and there's less of a financial inducement to print the errors on a separate sheet.
5 errors in 50 pages might be acceptable, depending on the nature of the errors. If it's a book on programming, and the errors mean that most of the programs don't work as printed, this is unacceptable. But if it's a missing comma here or there, then it sounds normal, and possibly better than average. Some people's "errors" are issues of style—for example, the so-called Oxford comma.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20753. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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