eBook Formatting in General

daffy4u · 09-02-2008, 12:58 PM

Curiosity questions...

When I purchase a book from Amazon and the formatting is bad, I report it to them, they correct it and I re-download it (usually rather quickly).

My questions are:

- I don't see (or notice 'cuz I'm in my own little Kindle world) people with other eBook readers complaining about bad formatting (other than public domain books, self published books and ePub). Do other book formats have the same issues as the Kindle formatted books? Are you having issues with typos, bad justification and other weird glitches.

- If you do have issues, who are you contacting for corrections (Sony?, the publisher?...)?

- Is bad formatting rampant no matter the file format?

DixieGal · 09-02-2008, 02:35 PM

I buy most of mine through Fictionwise. No problems so far, and in fact, they are actually very well formatted. Have you bought from them?

JSWolf · 09-02-2008, 02:55 PM

Most of the eBooks I purchase, I convert to LRF, so if there is any bad formatting, I do clean it up. As for typos, I guess I've just been lucky with the eBooks I've been reading or the typos have not been all that noticeable.

daffy4u · 09-02-2008, 03:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DixieGal

I buy most of mine through Fictionwise. No problems so far, and in fact, they are actually very well formatted. Have you bought from them?

I have purchased from Fisctionwise twice. Once buy accident (don't ask) and once last week. There was a magazine with Stephen King short story that was not available in a Kindle version that I purchased.

One of the reasons I went with the Kindle was the lower book prices, so I'll only purchase outside of Amazon when there are items not available for the Kindle.

RWood · 09-02-2008, 08:31 PM

The classic complaints about the Sony bookstore provided books are:

Type too small
Type too large
Too much white space around the text
Poor/unviewable pictures

In all cases that I have heard about the response from the Sony Store has been to refund the purchase price. I have not heard of Sony reformatting their books to correct the identified problems. Sony seems to use a third party to prepare their books for distribution.

Fictionwise uses calibre for preparing their Sony format books and I have never had a formatting problem with their books. (There was a case where one book was not what it was labeled to be. I emailed them and received a note back within 12 hours saying that the problem had been corrected and to download the book again.)

DaleDe · 09-03-2008, 10:51 AM

While I don't own a Sony I have also heard quite a few complaints about their classics being ridden with errors. So much so that many folks that had the special dollar discounts for classics claim they would rather get them here.

Dale

Strether · 09-03-2008, 12:24 PM

When I had my Sony 500, I bought Alex Ross' "The Rest is Noise" from the Sony Bookstore, which was so poorly formatted I would have returned it if there was any way of doing so, so I think formatting problems are not peculiar to the Kindle.

But the Kindle's biggest formatting problem, it seems to me, is that it allows publishers to sabotage their own product by producing books that are Topaz-formatted. It not only sabotages the book, it sabotages the device, and why Amazon allows it is a mystery to me.

Jim

DaleDe · 09-03-2008, 01:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Strether

When I had my Sony 500, I bought Alex Ross' "The Rest is Noise" from the Sony Bookstore, which was so poorly formatted I would have returned it if there was any way of doing so, so I think formatting problems are not peculiar to the Kindle.

But the Kindle's biggest formatting problem, it seems to me, is that it allows publishers to sabotage their own product by producing books that are Topaz-formatted. It not only sabotages the book, it sabotages the device, and why Amazon allows it is a mystery to me.

Jim

Topaz is designed for additional features that are not available in mobi. I suspect it is likely that it is or will become the preferred format for Amazon. How is this the biggest formatting problem?

Dale

vivaldirules · 09-03-2008, 03:44 PM

I've purchased several pretty bad ebooks. The one that has annoyed the most is Ian Stewart's Why Beauty is Truth - A History of Symmetry which is published by the Perseus Book Group and which I bought from Sony six months ago. Below is a screen capture of one page. I was so annoyed that I have yet to make it through the Preface. No, I haven't complained, yet (my bad). I did enjoy another ebook by Stewart and I posted at Sony a review which is quite favorable towards the work by Stewart but somewhat unfavorable regarding the ebook formatting (it had several minor problems which I thought I would warn potential buyers of and thought Sony and/or Perseus would take note, too). Sony apparently didn't like my negative comments so they only posted the positive portion of my review. Naturally, I was outraged and told them to post the entire unedited review or nothing and they chose the latter. Long story short: that's probably not the best way to report problems with ebook formatting, etc.

Strether · 09-05-2008, 09:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Topaz is designed for additional features that are not available in mobi. I suspect it is likely that it is or will become the preferred format for Amazon. How is this the biggest formatting problem?

Dale

I seriously doubt that it will become the preferred format if readers have anything to say about it. Formatting a book in Topaz increases the size of the book ten-fold, slows down the page turns annoyingly, and produces an ugly looking page.

It's enough of a problem that the first thing that I look at when I'm thinking of purchasing a book from Amazon is the size of the download. If the details of that aren't available, I download a sample and check. A big tip-off is if the book is published by St. Martin's Press. They're the big users.

Jim

DaleDe · 09-05-2008, 12:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Strether

I seriously doubt that it will become the preferred format if readers have anything to say about it. Formatting a book in Topaz increases the size of the book ten-fold, slows down the page turns annoyingly, and produces an ugly looking page.

It's enough of a problem that the first thing that I look at when I'm thinking of purchasing a book from Amazon is the size of the download. If the details of that aren't available, I download a sample and check. A big tip-off is if the book is published by St. Martin's Press. They're the big users.

Jim

Interesting, I had not heard that before. Embedding a font will certainly make the file bigger but I would suspect for most eBooks it would or should not be necessary. I would suggest you send Amazon a message outlining the problems with the Topaz format, in particular emphasizing the performance issue. Perhaps there is something that they can do to fix it.

Dale

daffy4u · 09-05-2008, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Interesting, I had not heard that before. Embedding a font will certainly make the file bigger but I would suspect for most eBooks it would or should not be necessary. I would suggest you send Amazon a message outlining the problems with the Topaz format, in particular emphasizing the performance issue. Perhaps there is something that they can do to fix it.

Dale

Oh, they've heard about it. People have been complaining about it (myself included) for a long time.

There was a big rush of complaints after the Julia Spencer-Fleming give-away in June. After downloading the free book I ordered the other books in the series. The free book kept freezing my Kindle. I had Amazon remove them and refund my money on the other books because I couldn't deal with Topaz (I do have the free book as a pdf).

There's a thread about it here somewhere.

It seems to be hit and miss. The sample I downloaded for the thread about the Kindle's zoom feature worked fine but some others... not so good.

Alisa · 09-06-2008, 11:12 PM

A feature I would really like to see implemented on the Kindle is an error flag. If you spot an error in a book, you could just scroll to the line and select to report an error. Next time you connect, they could upload your error reports. If corrections are made they could replace your copy. It would be so simple and would improve the quality of their books with very little effort from the readers. They'd also receive better data. I would imagine may complaints are along the lines of, "The formatting was poor and there were many typos." I doubt most people bother to list all the locations of the errors in their books. Many probably don't bother to report them at all. With an error flag, they'd know the specific location and I bet a lot more people would take a few seconds to do that than would take a few minutes to write an email.

09-02-2008, 12:58 PM	#1
daffy4u I'm Super Kindle-icious Posts: 6,734 Karma: 2434103 Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: Long Drive, Calinadia Candafornia Device: KDXG, KT, Oasis	eBook Formatting in General Curiosity questions... When I purchase a book from Amazon and the formatting is bad, I report it to them, they correct it and I re-download it (usually rather quickly). My questions are: - I don't see (or notice 'cuz I'm in my own little Kindle world) people with other eBook readers complaining about bad formatting (other than public domain books, self published books and ePub). Do other book formats have the same issues as the Kindle formatted books? Are you having issues with typos, bad justification and other weird glitches. - If you do have issues, who are you contacting for corrections (Sony?, the publisher?...)? - Is bad formatting rampant no matter the file format?

09-02-2008, 08:31 PM	#5
RWood Technogeezer Posts: 7,233 Karma: 1601464 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Virginia, USA Device: Sony PRS-500	The classic complaints about the Sony bookstore provided books are: Type too small Type too large Too much white space around the text Poor/unviewable pictures In all cases that I have heard about the response from the Sony Store has been to refund the purchase price. I have not heard of Sony reformatting their books to correct the identified problems. Sony seems to use a third party to prepare their books for distribution. Fictionwise uses calibre for preparing their Sony format books and I have never had a formatting problem with their books. (There was a case where one book was not what it was labeled to be. I emailed them and received a note back within 12 hours saying that the problem had been corrected and to download the book again.)

09-03-2008, 03:44 PM	#9
vivaldirules When's Doughnut Day? Posts: 10,059 Karma: 13675475 Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Houston, TX, US Device: Sony PRS-505, iPad	I've purchased several pretty bad ebooks. The one that has annoyed the most is Ian Stewart's Why Beauty is Truth - A History of Symmetry which is published by the Perseus Book Group and which I bought from Sony six months ago. Below is a screen capture of one page. I was so annoyed that I have yet to make it through the Preface. No, I haven't complained, yet (my bad). I did enjoy another ebook by Stewart and I posted at Sony a review which is quite favorable towards the work by Stewart but somewhat unfavorable regarding the ebook formatting (it had several minor problems which I thought I would warn potential buyers of and thought Sony and/or Perseus would take note, too). Sony apparently didn't like my negative comments so they only posted the positive portion of my review. Naturally, I was outraged and told them to post the entire unedited review or nothing and they chose the latter. Long story short: that's probably not the best way to report problems with ebook formatting, etc. Attached Thumbnails

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09-02-2008, 02:35 PM	#2
DixieGal Hi There! Posts: 7,473 Karma: 2930523 Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Ft Lauderdale Device: iPad	I buy most of mine through Fictionwise. No problems so far, and in fact, they are actually very well formatted. Have you bought from them?

09-02-2008, 02:55 PM	#3
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 73,931 Karma: 128903250 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	Most of the eBooks I purchase, I convert to LRF, so if there is any bad formatting, I do clean it up. As for typos, I guess I've just been lucky with the eBooks I've been reading or the typos have not been all that noticeable.

09-03-2008, 10:51 AM	#6
DaleDe Grand Sorcerer Posts: 11,470 Karma: 13095790 Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Grass Valley, CA Device: EB 1150, EZ Reader, Literati, iPad 2 & Air 2, iPhone 7	While I don't own a Sony I have also heard quite a few complaints about their classics being ridden with errors. So much so that many folks that had the special dollar discounts for classics claim they would rather get them here. Dale

09-03-2008, 12:24 PM	#7
Strether Guru Posts: 744 Karma: 2825929 Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: Fresno Device: Kindle 1; iPad Air; iPhone 7; Kobo Libra; Kindle Oasis 3	When I had my Sony 500, I bought Alex Ross' "The Rest is Noise" from the Sony Bookstore, which was so poorly formatted I would have returned it if there was any way of doing so, so I think formatting problems are not peculiar to the Kindle. But the Kindle's biggest formatting problem, it seems to me, is that it allows publishers to sabotage their own product by producing books that are Topaz-formatted. It not only sabotages the book, it sabotages the device, and why Amazon allows it is a mystery to me. Jim

09-06-2008, 11:12 PM	#13
Alisa Gadget Geek Posts: 2,324 Karma: 22221 Join Date: Aug 2007 Device: Paperwhite, Kindle 3 (retired), Skindle 1.2 (retired)	A feature I would really like to see implemented on the Kindle is an error flag. If you spot an error in a book, you could just scroll to the line and select to report an error. Next time you connect, they could upload your error reports. If corrections are made they could replace your copy. It would be so simple and would improve the quality of their books with very little effort from the readers. They'd also receive better data. I would imagine may complaints are along the lines of, "The formatting was poor and there were many typos." I doubt most people bother to list all the locations of the errors in their books. Many probably don't bother to report them at all. With an error flag, they'd know the specific location and I bet a lot more people would take a few seconds to do that than would take a few minutes to write an email.