Picking on O’Reilly here, but if the shoe fits, wear it : People who submit errata for paid books should at least have the chance to be rewarded for their effort (a prize drawing, etc). No? Motivate refinement toward excellence.
Update: See comment below from Allen @ O’Reilly. It’s in the works.
An aside to really pick on O’Reilly now, searching on oreilly.com for “errata” provides absolutely zero useful information on how and where to submit errata for an O’Reilly book.
This flies in the face of the following tweet. Tim, practice what you preach!
Here’s the mentioned Report An Error website from the tweet.
Update: O’Reilly is going to take care of this, according to Tim O.
Update: Jeremy also pointed out the following story to me, from Lifehacker : Get Perks from your Favorite Apps.
Hello Jeff,
The points idea is a good one, and we’ve had this in development for a while, though we’ve still to integrate it with our backend systems. It will work like this: Anyone who submits errata that is approved by the author will receive points they can use towards the purchase of ebooks, courses, or our conferences. Similarly, anyone who leaves a product review that another user marks as helpful will also receive points. And so on. The goal is for this to go live in 2011.
Many thanks for your thoughts.
Allen Noren, O’Reilly Media
Excellent, Allen!