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Old 07-02-2011, 06:48 PM   #1
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Will E-Books Change The Way We Handle The TOC?
I've noticed several comments in book reviews at Amazon where people were complaining about this e-book or that not containing a hyperlinked (working) TOC, only to be chided by later reviewers saying that he/she has to scroll down to the TOC.

Obviously, some readers expect to see a TOC right off the bat, perhaps right after the book's title and by-line. And equally obvious is the fact that many of these books have a greyed-out TOC in the "go to" menu of their Kindles even though they did in fact have a working TOC within the text itself, probably after the preface. (Of course the people who created the mobi/azw are partly to blame for not making sure they had a TOC that wasn't greyed-out.)

I'm wondering if it would perhaps be more fitting to move the TOC up after the title/by-line though with e-books?
Last edited by Ransom; 07-02-2011 at 08:43 PM.
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Old 07-02-2011, 07:42 PM   #2
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Strangely (to me) on occasion I find non linked TOC's at the beginning of a file and linked TOC's at the very end.

On a side note, a random check of 10 of my hard backs shows the TOC's to immediately follow the publishing information in nine of them. The one exception had three pages of NYT etc. gushing blurbs before the TOC.
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Old 07-02-2011, 08:24 PM   #3
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I think TOC's are slightly pointless for ebook fiction.
If one must be there, I would like it at page one. (Page two if you count the cover as page one).

The majority of TOC in fiction ebooks are simply Chapter headings or worse the first lines of text that are printed at the beginning of a chapter. Meaningless to me.

The physical books I've examined did not have these TOC's bizarrely enough. Just the ebook edition. They were all several years old though.


IMO TOC's in fiction ebooks are only useful for finding things like the start of the book, prologue, copyright, dedications etc. or skipping over them, and so should be placed before these items.

Helen
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Old 07-02-2011, 08:32 PM   #4
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Yes, I would hardly bother with TOC for a fiction book unless it was something likely to be studied as part of an educational course. Non-fiction is a completely different case and there I would like to see the TOC right after the title.
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Old 07-02-2011, 08:45 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RichL View Post
On a side note, a random check of 10 of my hard backs shows the TOC's to immediately follow the publishing information in nine of them. The one exception had three pages of NYT etc. gushing blurbs before the TOC.
Yes, I don't know what I was thinking. I've changed my original post now to correct that.
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Old 07-02-2011, 08:52 PM   #6
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Originally Posted by speakingtohe View Post
I think TOC's are slightly pointless for ebook fiction.
If one must be there, I would like it at page one. (Page two if you count the cover as page one).

The majority of TOC in fiction ebooks are simply Chapter headings or worse the first lines of text that are printed at the beginning of a chapter. Meaningless to me.

Helen
I find them very nice to have. If someone mentions something to me about a quote in the fifth paragraph of chapter 3 of a book I own, I can jump right to it. Sometimes fictional books have fictional footnotes as well, and I really hate when they are not hyperlinked. As far as I'm concerned, Amazon should reject any book that does not have a working TOC including hyperlinked footnotes unless of course it's something like a short story that doesn't have any chapters etc.
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Old 07-02-2011, 08:55 PM   #7
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Originally Posted by RichL View Post
Strangely (to me) on occasion I find non linked TOC's at the beginning of a file and linked TOC's at the very end.
Those are mobi files probably created with Calibre, and the creater was too lazy to make bookmarks using html in the first place. Calibre will automatically create a TOC at the end based on headings unless you tell it not to. But a properly made mobi file will have a TOC at both the beginning and the end. (The one at the end has to be there for the TOC to show up in a Kindle's "go to" menu.)
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Old 07-02-2011, 08:59 PM   #8
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...Of course the people who created the mobi/azw are partly to blame ...
No, they are not "partly to blame"; they are solely to blame for the lack of an active TOC entry on the navigation menu. No one else is at fault.

Personally, I find no value in an inline active TOC in a single title fiction work, though I do like having a "contents" page, active or not, at the beginning of a short story collection. It provides a list of the titles included. When I want to go to a particular story I use the Go To entry on the menu.

For a single work, rather than collection, I rarely use the TOC though I find value in the Kindle's "chapter" ticks. I occasionally use the 5-way controller to jump forward and back. I also like being able to see if I'm near the end of a chapter or not when deciding whether to put the book down for the night or to read a few more pages.
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Old 07-02-2011, 09:13 PM   #9
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No, they are not "partly to blame"; they are solely to blame for the lack of an active TOC entry on the navigation menu. No one else is at fault.
I know very little about what goes on during the submission process. That is, if a publisher uploads a mobi file to Amazon to sell, I thought maybe Amazon might convert it to azw for them and screw up the TOC during the conversion. Anyway, I was willing to give the mobi creater the benefit of the doubt since I don't know much about the procedure.
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Old 07-02-2011, 10:29 PM   #10
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Originally Posted by Ransom View Post
Those are mobi files probably created with Calibre, and the creater was too lazy to make bookmarks using html in the first place. Calibre will automatically create a TOC at the end based on headings unless you tell it not to. But a properly made mobi file will have a TOC at both the beginning and the end. (The one at the end has to be there for the TOC to show up in a Kindle's "go to" menu.)

Thanks now I know. The 'how come' of it was always been a bit of a head scratcher.
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Old 07-02-2011, 10:38 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ransom View Post
I've noticed several comments in book reviews at Amazon where people were complaining about this e-book or that not containing a hyperlinked (working) TOC, only to be chided by later reviewers saying that he/she has to scroll down to the TOC.

Obviously, some readers expect to see a TOC right off the bat, perhaps right after the book's title and by-line. And equally obvious is the fact that many of these books have a greyed-out TOC in the "go to" menu of their Kindles even though they did in fact have a working TOC within the text itself, probably after the preface. (Of course the people who created the mobi/azw are partly to blame for not making sure they had a TOC that wasn't greyed-out.)

I'm wondering if it would perhaps be more fitting to move the TOC up after the title/by-line though with e-books?
I think having a page of linked ToC entries is wrong. We don't need it. We never have needed it. It's extraneous. And when we get eBooks that have ToC entries linked back to the ToC, that's even more wrong. All we need is the external ToC (toc.ncx). ePub does not need an internal ToC. I blame Amazon's substandard conversion software for this. And I think publishers should stop kowtowing to the poor Amazon conversion software and instead get Amazon to fix it to generate a proper ToC from toc.ncx. It can be done and it should be done so ePub uses don't get an internal ToC that we don't need and don't want.
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Old 07-02-2011, 11:07 PM   #12
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ePub does not need an internal ToC.
Yeah, it would sure be nice if ALL e-readers just used epub. Maybe someday.
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Old 07-03-2011, 12:11 AM   #13
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Personally, I kinda like having the ToC entry in the text that is linked. If you're going to have it, may as well be linked. If I see something I want to goto in the ToC, I want to jump right to it. If it isn't linked, then I have to jump back out of the text, then goto the ToC menu. What really pisses me off is when there is no ToC metadata (so nothing appears in the menu) and the inline ToC list is not linked.
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Old 07-03-2011, 12:20 AM   #14
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I actually find TOCs in novels handy sometimes, if I am reading partly on the computer (not via the Kindle for PC app), and partly on my Kindle.
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Old 07-03-2011, 03:05 PM   #15
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Whether a particular user wants/needs/uses a TOC is no excuse for the creator of the .mobi/.azw file to create an incorrect TOC, IMO. Mobipocket files have followed the same layout as long as I've been reading them, since, say 2000

No one has to use them, and if the creator doesn't want one, so be it. But if there is one it needs to be properly linked and at the end of the file. If there's an additional one at the beginning or at each chapter heading, etc., fine. But if your're going to provide a TOC, when you hit the menu button and choose TOC, it should take you to the correct part of the file.

There is no excuse for this, not ignorance (it's been this way for a decade or more; Pay Attention!) and not willful stupidity ("My way is better than the standard, so I'll mess everyone up so they have to read my book my way!").

Sorry, people not properly using well-documented features of ebook formats is one of my pet peeves. It's bad enough when people use undocumented features or get bloody minded about imposing idiosyncratic layout that screws up the reading experience for most of their readers, but to blow this kind of simple thing is just idiotic.

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