Quote:
Originally Posted by VydorScope
Judging by my sales at Smashwords, and judging by the test I did (covered in the OP), I standby my opinion that most readers open the Smashwords book on their Nook, Kindle, etc and you know, read it. Shocking I know! These readers do not have any problems, which is evident by their continued purchase of more books from Smashwords.
It is only a select few that will ever look at the code, and of them a small precent of them will care that the code is not as clean as they would like. That tiny group will never be happy.
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I have bought more than 300 books at Smashwords and never have looked at the code. As you suggest, I buy the book and read it. I do find that there are a number of books that are badly formatted, making reading of the book difficult, but then they are also often not well written either and I tend to read 20-30 pages and then simply discard the book.
My experience is that most ebooks I buy at Smashwords are acceptably formatted, by which I mean that the formatting does not interfere with the reading and enjoyment of the book.
My only complaint is with those authors who try to mimic print books by insisting on using justified formatting. As I have gotten older, I have had to increase the type size on my readers (Sony and Nook) and there is nothing more furstrating than seeing text stretched across a line, with large whitespace gaps, in order to maintain a justified appearance. When formatting an ebook, the author needs to keep in mind that an ebook file is a continuous text file and not a printed page with repeat beginnings and endings.