Further chapters in the saga of bad ebook formatting

[Purple Lady]

How about this from Phoenix Pick Press. I gave up on them a long time ago because it took so long to fix their books, but I decided to look at this months freebie. How much does an author have to pay for such poor formatting?

Their books have no css and I cannot read this one in Mantano because I can't even increase the font enough for me to read. I can't change the font in Mantano either. Also, what is the reason that the word "whereabouts" is split into three sections here? I can't see a difference in formatting, but maybe someone else can. To me that is even worse than having no css.

This is a portion of the html:

<p style="font-size:11.5pt; line-height:120%; margin:0pt; orphans:0; text-align:justify; text-indent:14.4pt; widows:0"><span style="color:#000000; font-family:serif; font-size:11.5pt">With a sigh compounded equally of excitement and fear—of failure or discovery—he blew out the little paraffin lamp he’d made last year from the bottom of a can. It was the first such “forbidden” project he’d undertaken and he was unreasonably fond of it. Familiar with his wh</span><span style="color:#000000; font-family:serif; font-size:11.5pt">e</span><span style="color:#000000; font-family:serif; font-size:11.5pt">reabouts by feel alone, he took up another coil of wire—this one long, loose, and with a weighted end—and emerged from his tiny cave at the base of the crater wall just below the Rimfence.</span></p>

[icallaci]

I just spent hours fixing a book that had one class overridden almost SIX THOUSAND times in a dozen different ways. Why bother creating a class that centers text if you override it so that the text is never centered? Or a top margin of 1em if you force it to 0em or 2em but never use the default of 1em? I don't get it. It's much more work to override a class a bazillion times than simply to create a class that does what you want. How does this happen? I suspect a WYSIWYG editor from hell. I can't imagine someone would code this way on purpose.

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

How about this from Phoenix Pick Press. I gave up on them a long time ago because it took so long to fix their books, but I decided to look at this months freebie. How much does an author have to pay for such poor formatting?

Their books have no css and I cannot read this one in Mantano because I can't even increase the font enough for me to read. I can't change the font in Mantano either. Also, what is the reason that the word "whereabouts" is split into three sections here? I can't see a difference in formatting, but maybe someone else can. To me that is even worse than having no css.

This is a portion of the html:

They used to use something called Aspose.Words for .NET which did a terrible job, no working CSS and fixed point sizes for all text.

In fairness to them their newer stuff is better formatted, I wish they would update the old stuff as well though (The old stuff tends to be what they give as freebies).
Bit of a pain to sort in sigil, so I only tend to get their monthly deals if they really interest me now.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

How about this from Phoenix Pick Press. I gave up on them a long time ago because it took so long to fix their books, but I decided to look at this months freebie. How much does an author have to pay for such poor formatting?

Their books have no css and I cannot read this one in Mantano because I can't even increase the font enough for me to read. I can't change the font in Mantano either. Also, what is the reason that the word "whereabouts" is split into three sections here? I can't see a difference in formatting, but maybe someone else can. To me that is even worse than having no css.

The best way to deal with Phoenix Pick Press eBooks is to do an ePub > ePub conversion in Calibre. Then you have a CSS and all of those style codes in the XML end up in the CSS. You can than change the CSS fairly easily as most eBooks won't need any/much fancy formatting.

I've given up on their eBooks as there is too much else to read that's not formatted like someone dropped a bomb on the code.

[doubleshuffle]

Oh, yes, Phoenix Press... Got one of their freebies once, looked at the code and unsubscribed from their mailing list at once. I wonder what I would have done if I had actually paid for that mess...

[Purple Lady]

I figured that I could do an epub to epub conversion, but I shouldn't have to. I wonder how many others won't buy from Phoenix Press because of their terrible formatting. You don't need to look at it to know it's bad, you just need to try to read it and not be able to increase font size. A freebie is often the first time you try out Phoenix Press, so not updating their older stuff only hurts them.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I figured that I could do an epub to epub conversion, but I shouldn't have to. I wonder how many others won't buy from Phoenix Press because of their terrible formatting. You don't need to look at it to know it's bad, you just need to try to read it and not be able to increase font size. A freebie is often the first time you try out Phoenix Press, so not updating their older stuff only hurts them.

I gave up on Phoenix Press. I'm wondering why authors allow their books to be butchered by them.

[Barty]

Obviously some of the problems result from using an automated tool to convert from a word processing or typesetting document. I've seen a couple of retail (not pd) books that have blockquote wrapped around every paragraph, with a left margin of 2em and right margin of zero. Apparently nobody thought this looked weird.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by Barty

Obviously some of the problems result from using an automated tool to convert from a word processing or typesetting document. I've seen a couple of retail (not pd) books that have blockquote wrapped around every paragraph, with a left margin of 2em and right margin of zero. Apparently nobody thought this looked weird.

Or perhaps nobody even looked.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Or perhaps nobody even looked.

Perhaps these publishers are formatting on 20" computer screens
and perhaps they can't even wrap their brain around the concept of 'No Paper'

[JSWolf]

I was having a fix up of an eBook that has two CSS files and had 457 unused CSS styles removed when I used Calibre to removed unused styles.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Barty

Obviously some of the problems result from using an automated tool to convert from a word processing or typesetting document. I've seen a couple of retail (not pd) books that have blockquote wrapped around every paragraph, with a left margin of 2em and right margin of zero. Apparently nobody thought this looked weird.

I run into a surprising number of commercial ebooks that have a significant left margin and no right margin (though not wrapped in a blockquote) for normal body text. There has to be something popular in retail workflow that makes this happen. A css template that blindly gets copy/pasted again and again. Like maybe the css for all the right-hand pages of the physical book's layout or something?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I run into a surprising number of commercial ebooks that have a significant left margin and no right margin (though not wrapped in a blockquote) for normal body text. There has to be something popular in retail workflow that makes this happen. A css template that blindly gets copy/pasted again and again. Like maybe the css for all the right-hand pages of the physical book's layout or something?

That left margin/no right margin is a hold over from making Mobi eBooks. Mobi has a left margin, but no right margin. The symptom is called Kindleitis where an eBook is made to conform to Mobi even though it's ePub and/or KF8.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That left margin/no right margin is a hold over from making Mobi eBooks. Mobi has a left margin, but no right margin. The symptom is called Kindleitis where an eBook is made to conform to Mobi even though it's ePub and/or KF8.

That makes absolutely no sense, Jon. Even with no way to set a right margin, setting a left margin results in offcenter normal body text on old Kindles, new Kindles, and all epub devices. Nobody would do that on purpose for typical body text (nobody rational anyway). And the conversion to an old-style mobi would just ignore any right margins that were set anyway. There was never any reason to remove them from the source altogether. Good to see you're still getting mileage out of that anti-kindle broken record of yours, but that one was a bit of a reach. You've done better. Step it up.

There's no need to set left or right margins on the normal body text of a Kindlebook (or any other ebook). All readers come with their own defaults and user settings. Specifically setting a left margin of 2-3em and right margin of 0 for that situation makes even less sense (even when lending your explanation a bit of creedence just for the sake of argument). Unless you believe they're creating Kindlebooks, then unpacking the html 3.2 source from the old mobi portion and using THAT to make the retail epub I just bought.

[PandathePanda]

THis one makes me wonder: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HO12CS6
Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (it's free currently)

It's got 3,308 customer reviews, yet it looks (and feels) like a gutenberg copy. The one in our library is better formatted.