The following is the message I sent off to Sony customer support over a bundle of books I purchased yesterday. I'll see what it is they have to say in response to my message. I feel this set of books was very amateurishly produced. I could have done better using Book Designer. Just a mess to be honest. And I bet I'd get better results buying the books as LIT and converting.

I recently purchased your R.A. Salvatore DeamonWars Bundle. There are a few issues with this bundle I hope you can fix.

First off, two of the books in the bundle have the author's name spelled different then the other 3. R.A. Salvatore vs. R. A. Salvatore.

The second issue is that the cover images display on the Sony Reader are some generic cover and not the cover as shown on the Connect site.

The third and most serious issue is that the format of the books are not set properly for easy reading. The margins are way too large and the print is way too small. Yes I know I can make the text size larger. But, small is almost unreadable, medium is still slightly too small. And Large is just too large. Large is too large because the margins are too large. If you start with a slightly larger font size in small then maybe I could get a size someplace betwee what it is now as medium and large. When the font size is at large, because the margins are too big, the spacing between the words can be off. So you get a lot of lines with too much spacing between the words.

And the last issue is some of the books have maps. For example there is a map in the book "The Demon Spirit". But the map is TOO SMALL to read some of the text. Again, the margins issue mentioned abaove is a problem here. Also in the first book "The Demon Awakens" on page 1293 (with medium selected) it says Maps by Laura Maestro. There are no maps in this book. Did the map get left out?

Now for the problem with the listing for this bundle on the Connect site. The bundle comes with 5 books. The first three books listed are correct. The fifth book "Mortalis" is actually the last book int he DemonWars series and not part of the Second DemonWars Saga as listed in the listing for the bundle. I am wondering if the bundle should have also had the complete Second DemonWars Saga since what is included is only the first book and is in fact missing two books "Transcendence" (book 2) and "Immortalis" (book 3). I had thought it to be have both series complete. But if that is not meant to be then that's ok. But I did think I would at least be getting TWO books in the Second series instead of only one. So that should be rectified I feel. If you are going to bundle a series, it should be complete.

Please let me know what you intend to do about the issues I have raised. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Jon

I have e-mailed Sony questions before and would like to share their answers or lack of answers but there is a explicit warning against this:

This message and any attachments are solely for the use of intended recipients. They may contain privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you received this email in error, and that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this email and any attachment is strictly prohibited. If you receive this email in error please contact the sender and delete the message and any attachments associated therewith from your computer. Your cooperation in this matter is appreciated.

Don't worry about that - it's just standard corporate "legaleze". My company's e-mail gateway sticks something virtually identical onto every message it sends out. If you get sent an e-mail message you can do whatever the heck you want with it!

I haven't looked at it, because I'm reading a number of other books right now.

I can tell you this: The series was hard as hell to locate on their site.

If these books are defective - and I'll look at them later today - then I'll also send an email off to them.

I doubt anything will come of it. When I pointed out their error on The Neil Stephenson titles (I was one click away from buying it and noticed a higher price), I also emailed them.

I don't know if Sony really gives a s**t, but I'm not going to "bother" them anymore with a list of corrections that they ask for. Let someone else deal with their officious negative corporate mentality. Seriously - with all calmness right now - I HONESTLY DON'T THINK SONY CARES ABOUT one individual WHO HAS LEGITIMATE CONCERNS ABOUT THE SONY READER.

If my PURCHASED books are in errror, I will email them on this.

Thanks,
Don

Actually a number of people here have reported that Sony have responded very promptly and efficiently to reports of problems with Connect books. Give them a chance to sort the problem out before moaning about it, at least :grin:.

Don't worry about that - it's just standard corporate "legaleze". My company's e-mail gateway sticks something virtually identical onto every message it sends out. If you get sent an e-mail message you can do whatever the heck you want with it!

OK then this is my Sony Story:


I wrote to Sony complaining about the text size on the reader:

"I have downloaded a few books from the Connect Store. There does not seem to be any consistency in the text sizes between different books. Some books I can read on the medium setting, others I have to use the large settings. Sometimes the large setting is not even good enough for my tired eyes. Does Sony ever plan to release a firmware update to offer more text size options? I would like to get a Reader for my Mom but her eyes are even more tired than mine."

Sony replied:

"Hello,

Thank you for contacting Sony Connect!


We sincerely appreciate all the time and effort that you have taken to explore our CONNECT eBook service and to share your opinions with us. It is very important that we receive this feedback from our users so that we may better serve all our customers."


Sony then sent me an e-mail survey asking me if I was happy with their response?

Of course I replied No. So they sent me the answer to my original question:

"Hello,

Thank you for contacting Sony Connect!

I have reviewed your incident as well as your survey and I wanted to follow up with you. Unfortunately, the text size of the books that you download are determined by the publisher. They send us the content to add to the site already formatted to their specifications. You can re-size the works on the eReader itself, but only the 3 size options the eBook allows. I apologize for any inconvenience.

If the information I have provided does not completely answer your question, please update this incident so I may be of further assistance to you."

My reply:

"Thanks for your response. Its nice when one actually takes the time to read my initial complaint. It would be nice if there could be some kind of standardization between publishers. Right now I am leery about purchasing any more books from the connect site. It would be nice if a one page download could be made available so I could check out the font size before to see if it is readable for me. Thanks again for your answer to my question."

I agree - it would be nice to be able to view a sample.

Sony do have a point, though - they aren't directly responsible for book content; that is determined by the publisher.

Including all the errors in the bundles and such, as complained about in the first message above.

It will be interesting to see what the response is from Sony.

Content is the responsibility of the content-provider. And I bet the market is still too small for the publishers to really care if people are unhappy with their content.

I would be interested to response if Jon were to send to the publisher of the books the very same complaint that he sent to Sony.

I wonder if it will become a typical hardware/software tech support ping-pong game:
1)complaint to hardware, response is that it is software's fault
2)complaint to software, response is that it is hardware's fault
3)complaint to hardware along with copy of message from software, response is that the problem really is in software
4) complaint to software with copies of all previous complaints and responses, response is that hardware issues are not within the purview of software tech support
5) you send scathing letters condemning the offspring of both hardware and software tech support and questioning the legitimacy of their parentage and say that they'll never hear from you again.
6) hardware sends software a message acknowledging that software wins that point since they were the last people contacted before the "I've had it with all of you" message.
7) at end of year, all such points are tallied and a winner is declared from among all the tech support personnel on the planet (hardware and software) as being the tech support person most able to get a customer to stop complaining without actually having solved a problem.

As much as it pains me to toss support to the big guys, I fear that I must agree with them about "limited to supplied content". Since they are getting their actual books from the houses (and probably already in approved "e-formats") and then converting them over using publisher standards they could really be handicapped for print size.

It would not surprise met if the publishers had strict standards on media formats. That might be one reason there is so much small text. 8 point lettering looks much different on a PDA or cell phone than on any of the current e-ink readers but the probability is high that they are being looked at as the same thing instead of two separate beasts.

Now as for margins, that one I will lay at the feet of the Connect store for bad formatting that could be fixed. Well, assuming that also is not a stated display criteria from the publishers. Hmmmm, come to think of it, it could be. A huge margin looks a lot different on the Connect display page used for testing than it does on an actual reader. I would hardly be surprised to find out they never even looked at their format standards on the actual reader before sending them out.

Building on what stxopher just said: remember, most of the publishers are big corporate mentalities too, and the ball (in the form of the content) belongs to them, so logically Sony has to coddle them some, lest they take their ball and go home. :shrug:

Anyway, my point is that on the books we're not just dealing with a corporate mentality, but a layered series of them. :sad:

As the Reader gains in popularity and more people use the Connect store Sony will gain clout with the publishers to produce better looking and more functional books. Given the tools that Sony has released for book creation one has to start wondering if their internal tools are that much more advanced (if at all) over BookDesigner.

Then again, if you take a conspirator position, perhaps other forces waiting to enter the ebook market are suggesting to the publishers that they should not make the Sony books look too good. :D

I'm pretty sure that Sony doesn't do their own book formatting and creation. The publishers end up paying for a third party to do that. Not sure about the new "Classics" stuff, though, that is at the Connect store and has been offered as part of the free e-books with Sony Reader purchases.

The amazing thing, though, is how well (and quickly) people at MR can prepare books for the Reader. If I were a publisher, I might be wondering if I was overpaying the third party companies for the work. If I were a 3rd party book preparer, I think I'd be considering whether purchase of BookDesigner and hiring vvv might be the most efficient approach. (Of course, that would be a loss for all of us, but we'd gladly wish vvv lots of success!)

If I were a 3rd party book preparer, I think I'd be considering whether purchase of BookDesigner and hiring vvv might be the most efficient approach. (Of course, that would be a loss for all of us, but we'd gladly wish vvv lots of success!)

Hear Hear! Couldn't agree more - vvv deserves every success from BD; without it, the Reader wouldn't be a fraction as useful as it is. With BD even people completely lacking in "artistic" skills - like me! - can produce good-looking Reader books.

If they just added book reviews, people could post about them and tell people don't buy this!! I was so surprised when I saw there are no reviews! It isn't like iTunes without some of those elements. There could even be two types of reviews (lol). One on the quality of the book--its technical mechanics...and another on the book's content. Simple enough would be two 5-star ratings. One for each.

It would be great if they made enough money to justify hand fixing lots of these issues but they probably can't devote that much work to the project.

Actually, Connect store does have user book reviews, but they're accessible only from Connect softtware interface, not over the web.

If they just added book reviews, people could post about them and tell people don't buy this!!

I just look on Amazon for book reviews.

Including all the errors in the bundles and such, as complained about in the first message above.

It will be interesting to see what the response is from Sony.

Content is the responsibility of the content-provider. And I bet the market is still too small for the publishers to really care if people are unhappy with their content.

I would be interested to response if Jon were to send to the publisher of the books the very same complaint that he sent to Sony.

That is a good idea to contact the publisher. I think I'll try to do that once i find out how to do so. These books are very poorly formatted. They do not fit in really with some of the samples that are ok.

P.S. I edited my original message to Sony and sent it to Randomhouse. Let's see who does what and when.

Perhaps we should send them some of the books we've created ourselves and say "here's how it should be done" :grin:.

I do suggest that if anyone gets books from the Connect store that you find have problem(s), please contact Sony and the book publishers. They'll never know of such if nobody tells them. I don't know who's at fault for this DemonWars bundle mess, but a mess it really is. They need to know we are unhappy witht he poor formatting and won't put up with it. The small size text is too small, the medium can be a strain depending on your eyes and the large is too large because of the margins. We need them to fix things so they work the way they should. I love the default margins in Book Designer. I like having the font at 11pt as the small size. I get more pages per book with BD and that means it will use less battery life to read a book I format in BD.

I've gotten a reply from Sony. The have sent my comment to to the content team so they can see what's going on. So I'll see what happens when they let me know. I'm hoping they can fix the issues.

Jon

I hope it is soon, as I bought the same package a couple of days ago and have not yet looked at it. I hope what ever positive response will be available to everyone who has purchased the bundle without having to jump through all kinds of hoops.

I hope it is soon, as I bought the same package a couple of days ago and have not yet looked at it. I hope what ever positive response will be available to everyone who has purchased the bundle without having to jump through all kinds of hoops.
if you want to do me a favor, please have a look at your bundle and if you find it a problem, please report it to Sony. The more people that mention the problems, the better. It will give them more incentive to get it fixed properly. And if nothing else, they might just give you your money back for it if nothing else. Besides, I would like to know what you think of the way these books are formatted. Thanks!

Jon

I understand what all of you are saying but I was wondering why a company like Sony, who has no problem creating standards for all of their customers, can't apply that same mentality to the publishers. I would think that it would be fairly simple to require that they all use the same format if they wanted to sell through connect. I doubt that this type of requirement would cause the publishers to decide against it. If that was done then then we would all at least know what to expect for every book purchased.

I would think that it would be fairly simple to require that they all use the same format if they wanted to sell through connect.

I really don't think that would be very practical - for example, would you really want the same format for a book of poetry as for a novel?

It really is down to the publisher to determine the "house style" of their e-books.

Plus add the fact that they generally don't CARE if they sell on the Connect store right now. This may change rapidly though as more and more readers start to hit the mainstream and become an accepted distribution method. Between the branding of Sony with the Connect store (general awareness) and the online presence of Amazon (for online people) coming into play, publishers may be forced to take a more serious look at their final product presentation.

This would be even more rapid if they were to start utilizing on-site feedback per book. (Product feedback being something most publishers have none of.) They would notice a dissatisfied customer more if said customer could point out better products from competitors.

The problem is that I can purchase the same books in LIT format and convert and it would look fine on the reader for most books. But that would just cause the publishers to not have any sales of the Reader version and thus they would not care even less then they do now. I've yet to get a reply to my message to the publisher. I don't think they really care.

What will start to turn the tide in favor of publishers paying more attention to the Reader is when sales of paper books starts to drop. I plan on buying whichever new books I can for the Reader, since that is my preferred reading device these days, and not buy them in paper versions.

I have always waited to buy them in paperback simply because I hate reading hard-cover books, and economically it would make sense to wait for the prices to drop at Connect before buying them but I think I may be willing to spend the new-book price for an e-book and not waiting for the price-drop which seems to coincide or shortly follow the release of paperback versions.

But I really think that when the old-fashioned distribution model for paper books begins to decrease, that will be the time that the publishers en masse wake up and say, "Gee, maybe this e-book stuff is something we should pay more attention to!"

if they priced hardcover books at the paperback price since it's the same frigging file then they'd sell more. I am not spending that kind of money on a file that will still be the same when they finally do lower the price. Yes hardcover books cost more to physically make so they charge more for them. But the ebook costs the same no matter what copy of the book in paper is being printed.

:shrug: I figure part of the higher hardback price is an "impatience premium" for not waiting, some of that would still apply to hardbacks from my perspective.

Part of the higher price is the fact that they can get away with it. But for ebooks, there's no reason to prie it so high since it is the same thing as when the price is lowered because the paperback is out. Greedy B*stards.

I noticed that when I scrolled all the way to the bottom...lol.

I just emailed Sony in regards to a book I purchased (first one). The ISBN and page count basically match a certain book while the title means another. I wanted the one I didn't get, lol! I'm hoping they can either GET me the one I want (hopefully for free) or refund my money (part of my $50 credit) because I was relying on the ISBN to make sure it was what I want. They responded like 3 minutes later saying they have added the book to be reviewed. Who knows what will happen!

Part of the higher price is the fact that they can get away with it. But for ebooks, there's no reason to prie it so high since it is the same thing as when the price is lowered because the paperback is out. Greedy B*stards.
When the paperback comes out Sony has to pay the publisher less than when the hardback is out. Generally the publisher is spending its promotion budget when the hardback is released.

I did just pick up I'll Sleep When I'm Dead by Crystal Zevon (Warren Zevon's former wife.) It is among the best formatted books I've seen. It has an interactive Table of Contents like the one's Harry provides that highlight the first word of the titles. While the margins are a bit bigger than I care for, it is easy to read on the M font setting.

Some publishers there do seem to be getting their act together for ebooks.

Let's hope they hurry up and get more up there. I don't like it when I go looking for a book and can't find it! They seem more than willing to help in their response to me. Unfortunately, if they don't have a book I don't think they are likely to go beg the publisher...it's up to the publisher or author to get books up. I should email the author of the book I need and ask him to get the book up...it's sold over 15 million copies. Isn't that enough money? How about you give it away for free now?

I think there should be a very short period until everything enters the public domain...lol. Since I don't have any huge amount of intellectual property, I feel that way. But I feel that keeping everything in copyright for so long stunts further production. Everyone just keeps selling their old stuff.

How about 7 years and then everything enters the public domain?

zevon was a wild man. crazy as a loon and wrote great music. maybe i'll get that book. never spent my credit.

Let's hope they hurry up and get more up there. I don't like it when I go looking for a book and can't find it! They seem more than willing to help in their response to me. Unfortunately, if they don't have a book I don't think they are likely to go beg the publisher...it's up to the publisher or author to get books up. I should email the author of the book I need and ask him to get the book up...it's sold over 15 million copies. Isn't that enough money? How about you give it away for free now?


I did e-mail a few of my favorite authors who aren't yet represented at Connect, and they replied in various ways.

One said that she prefers to remain about 25 years behind the technology curve so that I shouldn't expect ebooks from her at any time soon.

Another said that the publisher's contracts these days include e-book rights, so she had no control over such things.

Another one (husband/wife team) that I thanked for having one of their books at Connect and hoping they would put more up there also confirmed the publisher contract / e-book issue and said they have no control over such things and were in fact surprised that one of their books was up there, and that she would have to look into things further.

So it seems that some authors who have great track records may be able to control their publisher contracts and leave off the e-book rights while others may have the e-book rights in their contracts. So contacting the authors is great but won't necessarily get any results. Contacting the authors and the publishers in a two-pronged attack is the best way to go, because then the publishers can go to the authors and show them the potential market that exists and is growing, and the authors can go to the publishers the same way and complain that the publishers' failure to get their books at the Connect store is depriving them of income. :D

Get them both persuading each other and the whole process will accelerate!

Nice one, dhbaily, I love playing both ends off the middle!

When I checked my email today after our trip to Florida, I noticed email from Sony. They said that the publisher has agreed to rework the books. I am very interested in how they come out this time. And hopefully if they come out good that the publisher will go back and fix all their Connect ebooks and also for any future books. This is definately sounding like a step in the right direction.

These screen caps are from the reworked copy of The Demon Awakens by R. A. Salavtore. The margins and fotn are no better then before. The first is the small font, the second is the medium, and the third is the large. Please have a look. I'd like to know how bad you think this really looks.

http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/379/smallyr5.th.jpg (http://img103.imageshack.us/my.php?image=smallyr5.jpg)http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/1854/mediumlu5.th.jpg (http://img103.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mediumlu5.jpg)http://img103.imageshack.us/img103/5565/largelk1.th.jpg (http://img103.imageshack.us/my.php?image=largelk1.jpg)

What do you regard as being wrong with this? It looks perfectly OK to me!

I'm with Harry on this one -- all three pages look just fine to me, too.

What exactly is your complaint, JSWOLF?

The only thing I'd change personally would be to make the margins a little smaller, but I don't think they're excessive the way they are.

Didn't you notice all the excess space between the words? I have no idea how they managed to do that. I cannot do that (that I know of) with BD or html2lrf.

Also, the small size is too small to read for sure. And for a lot, the medium would also be too small. Small is 927 pages. Medium is 1294, and large is 2016 pages. Using The Shirlock Homes Omnibus posted in the forum, the small for this purchased book is smaller then that on small. Medium is also just slightly smaller. I've gotten used to books either I've created or someone else has. And the spacing between the words here is a bit off putting. if they'd increase the small size 1 or 2 point sizes, then medium would be a good size to read. Then move the margins so there is not so much space and fix the spacing between the words so it doesn't look like a double space between each word.

Oh, OK. Yes, I see what you're saying, but some people like smaller text than others, I guess. As I say, I wouldn't be too unhappy with this the way it is, but we're all different in what we like when it comes to these things.

That's the nice thing about creating your own books - you can get them exactly the way that you like them :grin:.

The between word spacing is just an artifact of the full justification. I don't like it either, but it's pretty standard. :sad:

Another feature request which immediately pops up in my head: enable/disable of full justification.

Now you're talkin'! I want that option. :yes:

I remember vvv saying that, at the moment, the Reader only supports full justification. My personal preference is for left justification - it would be great to have a choice as to which way a book was displayed!

Added it to the ever-growing Sony Reader Wishlist :D

The between word spacing is just an artifact of the full justification. I don't like it either, but it's pretty standard. :sad:
As you can see from the photos, it's not just an artifact of full justification. The first photo was using Book Designer and the second was the actual ebook.

Notice in the second photo how the sunlight immediately fades the display.:thumbsdow

I remember vvv saying that, at the moment, the Reader only supports full justification. My personal preference is for left justification - it would be great to have a choice as to which way a book was displayed!
We already have left justification in BD. Just choose the Sony Libre option to make the book and it will come out left justified.