Commercial ePubs in Germany disappoint

[mtravellerh]

Thanks to the recent launch of the Sony Reader in Germany, e-book shoppers can now observe a surge in commercial German e-book titles. Two key players in the local market are Thalia and Libri that both offer e-books in the open-standard Epub format. And while getting ePub files onto your Reader may not be easy at first, on the whole, it seems to work quite well.

So everything is milk and honey? Not quite.

Ignored hardware limitations

We're a bit heavy-hearted to report of plenty of unhappy German-speaking users complaining about the sub-optimal quality of ePub titles they've purchased. One cannot help but believe that those book editors in charge were lacking important technical information regarding the current limitations of the Sony Reader. For instance, some simply ignored the size limitation of 300Kb per XML/HTML chunk. Without splitting large files into these smaller chunks, the converted e-book won't work properly on the Sony Reader. We've heard of at least one e-book that has been sold like this.

Flawed cover designs

E-book covers cause plenty of problems, too. Some titles are sold entirely coverless, while others may have a cover, but one that cannot be displayed (hint: the Sony Reader doesn't know Scalable Vector Graphics). (EDIT: It does, actually. This makes the failure to display the cover even more baffling.) This is by no means an exception: Almost half of the reviewed e-books didn't have a cover. Notice that on the vendor's website, titles are prominently displayed with a cover, without any indication that a purchased ePub book would be missing this feature.

Missing Table of Contents

Quite a few ePub editors seem to ignore the importance of a well-done Table of Contents (TOC). Properly working, hierarchical structured TOCs are a rare thing indeed. Some of the (full-priced) e-book titles we checked didn't have a TOC at all.



Overlapping text

Adobe's DE viewer (which is used by Sony to render ePubs) has a fixed setting to display page numbers on the right margin. Most ePub editors seem to ignore this fact by forgetting to create sufficient margins for the page number. As a result, page numbers overlap with actual text content - not a pretty picture.

Basic OCR errors

Many of the titles our members checked had too many basic OCR errors, obviously due to a bad scanning process (proofreading, anyone?). Other ePub titles seem to be based on ostensibly bad PDF conversions (spaces within words, for example).



Meaningless CSS rules

A closer look at the underlying (CSS) styling of ePub files reveals the disappointing fact that some editor "experts" in charge did obviously not know what style rules were supported by the Sony Reader. Outdated "Font" tags were used and old-fashioned inline tag definitions instead of outline style sheets with classes.

Vendors blame publishers

Neither Thalia nor Libri were able to provide satisfying answers to the complaints by our disgruntled members. On the one hand, they admitted that quality may be suffering due to the lacking experience of the editors with ePub. On the other hand, they bluntly stated that they could not grant a right to return defective e-books. Oh, did we mention that in Germany, publishers have even gone to court to enforce the same price for e-books as for printed books?

A glimmer of light

Things aren't exactly rosy for the German e-book market, to say the least. But there is reason to hope. At least in the past few days, we could observe some e-book titles being sold at a marginally lower price than the paper equivalent. Nevertheless, if publishers are sincerely interested in the future and evolution of a functioning e-book market, they must get their act together now and focus on improving the quality of their offerings. It goes without saying that they must quickly fix the existing faulty books and offer them free of charge to affected customers.

[zelda_pinwheel]

While some hiccups are to be expected in the transition to ebooks, I think the most disheartening is the response of the vendors. When readers reported many similar ocr errors in the french ebook L'élégance du hérisson, the publisher (Gallimard) corrected them and allowed all purchasers to redownload the new version of the text for free. A little show of good will like that will go a long way to making people want to buy more ebooks, even if the texts are not all perfect at first. (of course, if you ask me, it was the least Gallimard could do, particularly as they are selling that ebook for 19€, while the paper editions costs the same. )

I hope that both french and german publishers will soon make better efforts in their digital offers ; in the end, this sort of attitude only will hurt themselves, in the long run.

[Jellby]

While some limitations are sensible (like the 300kB max size per chunk; although it may be a bit low, there has to be a max), some others are just limitations of a specific implementation on a particular device. I don't think publishers should be constrained by this limitations and, for instance, set a hard-coded large right margin or avoid SVG graphics. Instead, the software must be improved, first to support as much of the standard as possible, and second to allow a fair bit of user customization.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by Jellby

While some limitations are sensible (like the 300kB max size per chunk; although it may be a bit low, there has to be a max), some others are just limitations of a specific implementation on a particular device. I don't think publishers should be constrained by this limitations and, for instance, set a hard-coded large right margin or avoid SVG graphics. Instead, the software must be improved, first to support as much of the standard as possible, and second to allow a fair bit of user customization.

Your answer may be sensible on a larger scale, but please do not forget that the German ePubs we are talking about are mostly read on PCs or laptops (with ADE) or on the Sony Reader. So it would make a lot of sense to make compatible books for those engines.

[TadW]

Originally Posted by Jellby

While some limitations are sensible (like the 300kB max size per chunk; although it may be a bit low, there has to be a max), some others are just limitations of a specific implementation on a particular device. I don't think publishers should be constrained by this limitations and, for instance, set a hard-coded large right margin or avoid SVG graphics. Instead, the software must be improved, first to support as much of the standard as possible, and second to allow a fair bit of user customization.

In theory, I agree with you. In practice, I think the publishers are screwing up big time. Remember, it should be in the interest of the publishers to make customers happy. It was the publishers with the vendors who agreed to go hand-in-hand with Sony to bring e-books to the German market. To blame it on a bad software implementation just doesn't do it.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

If the Sony reader is not reading texts properly because it is not set to handle properly-coded ePub files, that is clearly a Sony issue. No publisher should be creating specially-formatted ePub for any one device. I'm curious as to how much of these errors listed are due to incorrectly-formatted ePub, and how much are from the reader's conversion engine.

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

If the Sony reader is not reading texts properly because it is not set to handle properly-coded ePub files, that is clearly a Sony issue. No publisher should be creating specially-formatted ePub for any one device. I'm curious as to how much of these errors listed are due to incorrectly-formatted ePub, and how much are from the reader's conversion engine.

The "flat" TOCs, for example, are a blatant case of BAAD overall coding. Have a close look at that pic!

The right margin numbering issue is a typical ADE thing, while the chunk limit may be considered as a Sony issue, but I believe it would be a good approach, generally speaking, to split up a text file by chapter, for example(better memory handling, nice pagebreaks, easier conversion) (cf Hadrien's approach at feedbooks,com)

[TadW]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

If the Sony reader is not reading texts properly because it is not set to handle properly-coded ePub files, that is clearly a Sony issue.

It doesn't matter. From a customer point of view, it's likewise disgruntling. German publishers (and vendors) chose the ePub format, knowing perfectly well that it would be used with the Sony Reader (currently the only device on the German market supporting their books).

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by TadW

It doesn't matter. From a customer point of view, it's likewise disgruntling. German publishers (and vendors) chose the ePub format, knowing perfectly well that it would be used with the Sony Reader (currently the only device on the German market supporting their books).

Apart from the Adobe Digital Editions software on PCs and laptops.

[sebastian]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

(of course, if you ask me, it was the least Gallimard could do, particularly as they are selling that ebook for 19€, while the paper editions costs the same. )

Yeah well, in Germany I would pay 22€ for an eBook which I can get as paperback for 10€ or less. We have something here called "Buchpreisbindung" (fixed retail price for books) which means every book shop sells a book for the same price. The lobby for book publishers is stating that this also true for eBooks. If necessary they want to prove it in court. Needless to say none of their customers shares their point of view.

I got my Sony PRS-505 and I'm lucky enough to understand (and like) English books so it doesn't bother me as much as it does people who only read in German.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by sebastian

Yeah well, in Germany I would pay 22€ for an eBook which I can get as paperback for 10€ or less. We have something here called "Buchpreisbindung" (fixed retail price for books) which means every book shop sells a book for the same price. The lobby for book publishers is stating that this also true for eBooks. If necessary they want to prove it in court. Needless to say none of their customers shares their point of view.

I got my Sony PRS-505 and I'm lucky enough to understand (and like) English books so it doesn't bother me as much as it does people who only read in German.

we have the same thing ("prix unique"). however, since ebooks are still technically considered "computer software" and not books, i'm not sure it *legally* applies (yet). on the other hand, neither does the special book VAT rate of 5.5% ; instead they get the full rate (19.6%). (it's *really* hilarious when the publishers insist the high prices are not their fault : it's the fault of the tva. )

[mtravellerh]

Originally Posted by sebastian

Yeah well, in Germany I would pay 22€ for an eBook which I can get as paperback for 10€ or less. We have something here called "Buchpreisbindung" (fixed retail price for books) which means every book shop sells a book for the same price. The lobby for book publishers is stating that this also true for eBooks. If necessary they want to prove it in court. Needless to say none of their customers shares their point of view.

I got my Sony PRS-505 and I'm lucky enough to understand (and like) English books so it doesn't bother me as much as it does people who only read in German.

Luckily, we do have quite a lot of free german ePubs right here at MobileRad, too. You can find this same post in the german speaking part of this forum. And welcome to MobileRead!

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by TadW

It doesn't matter. From a customer point of view, it's likewise disgruntling. German publishers (and vendors) chose the ePub format, knowing perfectly well that it would be used with the Sony Reader (currently the only device on the German market supporting their books).

I'm not saying it's not important... just that it is Sony's job to fix its improper displaying of ePub files. As an author or publisher, I should not need to create multiple iterations of the same format for multiple readers, just to get them to read properly.

[doctorow]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I'm not saying it's not important... just that it is Sony's job to fix its improper displaying of ePub files. As an author or publisher, I should not need to create multiple iterations of the same format for multiple readers, just to get them to read properly.

Ironic, if you keep in mind one of the reasons ePub was created was to avoid compatibility issues.

[netseeker]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I'm not saying it's not important... just that it is Sony's job to fix its improper displaying of ePub files. As an author or publisher, I should not need to create multiple iterations of the same format for multiple readers, just to get them to read properly.

Thalia and Libri, the same german publishers which are promoting and selling the Sony PRS-505, do offer a lot of ebooks which are either incompatible with the device or just poorly formatted and not well readable. And (much more important) they do promote their epub-ebooks as "compatible with the Sony-PRS 505", which is just not true if they use SVG-graphics or don't respect the 300K-limit. Either they stop promoting such ebooks as "compatible" or they take care that their ebooks are indeed compatible with the Sony PRS-505! A lie is just a lie.