UK vs US books

[O'Callaghan]

Also take into account that we Americans are stupid so some references will have to be "dumbed down" for us to understand them.

After all no one here in the states would have had the slightest clue what a "Philosopher's Stone" was.

"Sorcerer's Stone" is so much better



Cheers

Jamie

I do so agree*, Jamie, and I'm a Brit, although I live in the US. The differences between the UK and US editions of the Harry Potter books have been totally dissected and argued over on news://alt.fan.harrypotter , so there is little to add on that subject per se, as you can read it for yourself.

*ETA: meaning I agree that your own publishers in the US treat you as if you were stupid, not meaning that you ARE stupid, LOL!

To read it, you can got to Google Groups if you don't have a newsfeed and/or a newsreader client (first browse all subjects, then browse all Usenet, then select 'alt', etc.). Alternatively, 'Motzarella' is a free newsfeed, and I use 'XNews' as my newsreader, which is a free download.

However, it seems that, at least for those books, they were editted twice, by two different UK and US editors each working from the same manuscript. Of course, this is probably because two separate publishers were used, rather than just one (and there are many publishing firms that even operate in three or more countries). The title change you are talking about was suggested by her US editor, and she apparently accepted because it was her first book and she didn't want to rock the boat.

If, OTOH, there is only one publisher, the changes would be just spelling and vocabulary. A good example of vocabulary that actually occurs in one of the Harry Potter books is skip(UK)/dumpster(US). This is a really extreme example where the two different words are each AFAIK completely unknown on the other side of the pond, leaving aside all the other meanings of skip that don't mean dumpster (for readers in the British Isles, this particular meaning of skip is the one you put rubbish in). The first time I heard the word dumpster was after coming to live in the US and being told to turn left at the dumpster - the what? What's a dumpster? I've never found any Americans who knew it was called a skip either.

I fall in the camp of people who think that the original is best. UK publishers don't change vocab/spelling in US books anyway, so it's only an issue going from the UK to the US, and although I'm a Brit there are plenty of Americans I know that prefer original vocab and spelling in UK books, both online and in RL. IMHO that gives you an extra reason to get the UK version. It's almost always possible to figure out 'new' words from their context.

One American I know in RL has an MA in English Lit, and it drives him crazy that he can't buy works of literature from the UK that haven't been tampered with. OTOH, Amazon UK is a good way to do just that, and it's an American company, FWIW.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Publishing is just weird. My first two novels were written in standard British English while living in Ireland, but were first purchased by a US publisher. The result: spellings changed to American Standard. Later, when picked up by a British publisher they left the AmStand spellings because the main character was an American!

JT Edson is British, and writes westerns-- and the spelling (and word use) is all over the place. It's either damn poor editing, or a case of total confusion on the part of his editors in both the USA and UK.

I'm not sure Amazon will ship to the USA ahead of US publication dates as their distribution contract should preclude that from happening (this is to prevent "flooding" or "dumping" lower priced editions of the same book in the market; the same applies to US titles shipping to the UK).

[Joe Gondek]

I ordered it and was notified that it has been shipped
I should have it by the first of next week
total cost with air mail shipping was 15.54 BP

[O'Callaghan]

I'm not sure Amazon will ship to the USA ahead of US publication dates as their distribution contract should preclude that from happening (this is to prevent "flooding" or "dumping" lower priced editions of the same book in the market; the same applies to US titles shipping to the UK).

You are right, but IMHO this is because Amazon is an American company, even though they have multiple websites covering different countries.