Caveat Lector

I’m wrong so often that every once in a while I like to point out when the clock stops at my part of the dial.

So.

I said this about the Google digitization project. And then additional evidence emerged.

And now Jessamyn confirms it with a link over here.

I’ll be blunt. The digital files that Google is going to produce are crap, not ebooks. They’re not one-tenth as readable as even a bare-bones Project Gutenberg ASCII. They substitute for a properly-designed ebook (never mind a print book) in roughly the same way that a moldy bottle of off-brand spaghetti sauce substitutes for a six-course meal at a five-star Italian restaurant.

Could publishers please grow the you-know-what up now? And perhaps develop a wee bit of appreciation for text artisanry?