Whoops! One publisher’s Nook edition of Russian author Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace replaces every instance of the word “kindled” with the non-word “nookd” throughout the entire book.
Don’t jump to conclusions just yet, though; this probably isn’t an instance of anti-Amazon trickery-gone-wrong on Barnes & Noble’s part. One former Nook team member took to Hacker News and noted, “It isn’t possible for the device software to change text of books. Most likely the author or conversion service took the Kindle edition, ran a search and replace for ‘Kindle’ and there you have it.”
Further investigation makes this explanation seem quite likely. The publisher, Superior Formatting Publishing, also put out a Kindle edition. A simple find-and-replace search through the text for the word would change the word “kindle” to “nook,” including inside the word “kindled.”
This edition of the book was hardly top-class at $0.99. These sorts of cheap releases are possible because Tolstoy’s work is in the public domain, so it’s freely available online for anyone who wants to package and distribute it as they please.
Clearly, though, “Superior Formatting Publishing” is a tragic misnomer! Even (or especially) on the internet, you get what you pay for.
Source: Ars Technica Image: Ilya Repin, The State Literature Museum, Moscow (Tschäff)
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