New Book Updates & Editions in an e-Book Age

Not long ago when a book was published with a mistake or revision no matter how small, your printed book was stuck with that mistake.  With e-books you have the ability to “update” your copy of the book whenever a book is updated.  If you happened to purchase Steve Jobs, by Walter Issacson in Kindle format from Amazon you’ll likely experience this yourself.

 

Saturday I received an e-mail from Amazon informing me of an updated version of the e-book with image and caption layout corrections.  Amazon doesn’t automatically push these updates to your e-reader.  Instead they offer you a chance to “opt-in” for the update via e-mail so they don’t mess up your bookmarks or anything else.  The other reason is so they aren’t “messing” with your e-book library without your permission.

Here’s the message I received from Amazon notifying me of the update:

For a book that is addressing a current event-type of topic this feature could be very useful as the author could ensure the content doesn’t become stale.