The text accuracy guarantee
Report an error in any book and a person checks it within 7 days.
Every one of our public domain books online was proofed against a named first or early edition. We still miss things. When you find one, we check it against the scan, answer you, and write it into that book's correction ledger with the date.
01The guarantee covers the words, as printed in the edition we name.Letters, punctuation, paragraph breaks, italics and speaker turns, measured against the stated source.
Each book page names its source. Gatsby is proofed against the 1925 Scribner first edition. Frankenstein uses the 1818 text. Pride and Prejudice follows the 1813 first. The promise is narrow on purpose: if our reading page differs from that source, it is our error and we fix it.
That includes the dull failures most free editions never touch. A missing line break that merges two speakers into one paragraph. An em rule turned into a hyphen. A chapter number skipped. Italics lost on a ship's name in Moby-Dick. These are the ones we see most, and the ones we go after first.
It does not cover our editor's notes as matters of opinion. If you think a note about Old New York in The Age of Innocence is wrong on a fact, tell us. We will check that too, but it is logged as a note change, not a text correction.
02A report needs the book, the chapter and a few words either side.Use the contact form with "Error report" selected, or write to [email protected].
Give us the title, the chapter or story, and six or eight words around the problem so we can search for it. If you have a scan or a printed copy of the same edition, say which printing. A photo helps but is not required.
- Good: "Middlemarch, Book 2, Chapter 20. 'the roar which lies on the other side of silence' has a comma after roar on your page."
- Hard to act on: "There is a typo somewhere in Dracula."
You do not need to be sure. A good share of what readers send turns out to be the original spelling, and that is still a useful question. The answer goes into the notes if it confused you.
Report an error through the form, or email it. Both land with the same person.
03Within 7 days the editor checks it against the scan and writes back.Seven calendar days from the day it arrives. You get an answer whether or not we change anything.
The clock starts when your message reaches our inbox, not when we open it. Inside those 7 days the editor pulls up the page scan of the source edition, compares it word for word with the reading page, and decides.
Three outcomes. We agree, fix it, and tell you the ledger date. We disagree and show you the reading in the source. Or the edition itself is ambiguous, a smudged letter or a broken sort, and we say so and compare a second printing before deciding. In that last case the check is still answered within 7 days; the fix may take longer and we tell you when.
Fixes go live on the reading page the same day they are confirmed. There is no batch release.
04Every confirmed change is written into the book's public ledger.A date, the place, the old reading struck through and the new reading beside it.
The ledger sits at the bottom of each book page. An entry looks like this:
- Chapter IIIParagraph break restored between two speakers.
one run-on paragraphtwo paragraphs, as in 1925Found by a reader. Checked against the Scribner first edition.
We do not quietly edit and move on. If a correction later proves wrong, we reverse it and that reversal gets its own dated line. Your name is not published unless you ask for it to be.
05Original spellings and period punctuation are kept, and that is not an error.Austen's "chuse" stays "chuse". Garnett's word choices stay Garnett's.
We do not modernise. The 1813 Pride and Prejudice spells words the 1813 way, and each odd spelling carries a note on first use. Mrs Dalloway has no full stop after "Mrs" because Woolf's British edition had none.
The Lady with the Dog is Constance Garnett's 1917 English, not a fresh translation. If her rendering of Chekhov reads stiffly to you, that is a fair complaint about Garnett, and we will not rewrite her. Frankenstein is the 1818 text on purpose; lines that only appear in the 1831 revision are absent by design.
None of this is listed in the ledger, because nothing changed.
06A printed pack carrying our error, or arriving damaged, is replaced at our cost.Tell us within 30 days of delivery. We replace the affected pages or copies, not the whole order by default.
Reading-group packs and large-print sets are quoted by email and printed to order. If one of them carries a text error that is ours, or a copy arrives with torn, missing or badly printed pages, write within 30 days of the delivery date.
We send replacement pages for a text error that affects a few lines, and replacement copies where a book is damaged or the error is serious enough to trip a group mid-discussion. You do not return the faulty copies. Shipping on replacements is ours.
For a large-print set, a replacement is set in the same type size you ordered. We do not substitute a smaller size to save paper.
07Digital packs get a corrected file, sent to the address that ordered them.For as long as the book stays in the catalogue.
If you took a digital pack for a classroom or a book club and a correction is later made to that title, we email the corrected file to whoever received the original. You do not have to ask. If your group has changed its contact, tell us the new address.
08The remedy is a correction or a replacement, not a cash refund.Anything else about a pack is set by the quote you accepted by email.
Reading on this site is free, so there is nothing to refund there. Packs are agreed by email, and the written quote sets delivery dates and any other terms. This guarantee sits on top of that quote and does not reduce it.
We do not cover damage after delivery, lost copies, or errors that exist in the source edition itself. A misprint in the 1851 Moby-Dick is Melville's printer's, and we keep it with a note. The broader rules for using the site are in the terms of use.
09Three people stand behind this, and one of them answers you.An editor, a typesetter and a correspondent, at 70 Oak Lane, Floor 2, Austin, Texas 82798.
The editor checks the text. The typesetter rebuilds the page if a break or italic was lost in the markup. The correspondent writes back to you. More on how the proofing works is on the about page.
Phone +1 (285) 555-7159. Email [email protected]. Post to Novelvora, 70 Oak Lane, Floor 2, Austin, Texas 82798, United States.