emailed Sony about ebook issues

[JSWolf]

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

[Madam Broshkina]

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.

[HarryT]

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!

[Dr. Drib]

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

[HarryT]

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 .

[Madam Broshkina]

Originally Posted by HarryT

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."

[HarryT]

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.

[dhbailey]

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.

[NatCh]

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.

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

[RWood]

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.

[Bob Russell]

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!)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Bob Russell

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.

[benn600]

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.

[igorsk]

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