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Originally Posted by Eden Winters
"But we don't *think* the use of PDFs is an issue, because this is still the most commonly read ebook format, and they'll convert to almost anything else. "
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True, for the most part. (Some locked PDFs won't convert. I have no idea why people hand out free promos as locked PDFs; I suspect it's a matter of "the software has a click-here-to-protect-your-file function, so I clicked," without realizing what it actually does.)
I like PDFs... because I'm a PDF fanatic, and I have ridiculous amounts of expensive software to convert to & from PDFs, and am perfectly comfortable cropping the pages to remove the headers, tagging the files, saving them out as Word docs, reformatting to 6-inch-reader sized pages, and converting back to PDF. For some files, this is a matter of a couple of minutes. (For others it's longer, and I won't bother unless it's something I want to re-read.)
Most people read PDFs on a computer, and are content with them looking "just like a printed book." Mobileread members aren't most people, in regards to ebooks; we have detailed opinions on *every* aspect of ebookery. And often, the first notion an ebook devotee gets is "throw out the idea that it should look like print."
We want some of the advantages of print--kerning, leading, easy-on-the-eye fonts--but ebook screens aren't paper pages, and don't have to cater to the limitations of print: margin requirements, putting as many words on a page as possible to cut down on print costs, layout chosen by designer preference instead of matching the reader's wants or needs. (We have *endless* discussions about what are, and are not, important aspects of ebook formatting.)
PDF is the format that best emulates print... with all its advantages, and all its flaws.
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My own story, The Telling, is in PDF format because that's all I knew how to do. I'd gladly change that if 1) it would help and 2) I knew how. I like Mel's suggestion of one of you tech savvy people posting on the topic. I've read several "how-to's" on this site and must say that I am impressed.
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One of the key points for making ebooks for portable devices instead of computers is the metadata--the ebook device is almost always looking within the file for the title & author info, not just showing the filename. In Word, this is easy to fix; the Properties option (under the File tab in W2003; I have no idea where '07 hides anything) gives a dialogue box with title and author. (And subject, and company, and several other bits of less relevant metadata.)
Lots of ebooks are released with metadata saying indicating their title is something like "9780373150915_SAMPL.indd" because nothing was set, so the conversion program grabbed the InDesign filename and used it as title, and the author is often the first name of the person whose computer was used for the most recent conversion.
When those books get put on a portable reader, they often
don't get read, because the person can't remember what they are. Or they get read ('cos I can see what I downloaded yesterday), but they don't get remembered; the reader forgets the author's name because it doesn't show up on the ebook list as she's scrolling through her device's contents.
Think of bad metadata as paperbacks with the front & back covers & title pages torn out. The book itself is fine, but the reader has no easy way to associate it with an author or publisher, no way to find more like it in the future. Because when we look at our "library" of ebooks, we're usually browsing either by filename or metadata, not by cover picture, which is inside the file.