Do ebooks need production notes up front?

[dapriuk]

Consumer protection in the UK includes the Sale of Goods Act 1979 which amongst othet things requires the goods being of satisfactory quality and fit for purpose. So Amazon et al may have a policy of no-refunds but may not have a choice if they want to sell ebooks in the UK and a customer demands a refund.

"Satisfactory" is described as what a "reasonable" person would expect, so is even one error in the text of a book reasonable, or are less than 10 errors acceptable?

Do the contracts between publisher and author include anything about the publisher having to meet specific levels of merchantable quality?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Remember, until fairly recently few pubs kept their digital files after printing... they just deleted them. So, apparently, did many authors. So it's not a surprise that HC didn't have a digital file, and I woudn't be surprised if McDevitt didn't either. (Edit: I also wouldn't be surprised if he did have a digital file, but the publisher never asked him for it.)

I hope he has a contract with his publisher that gives him some say in acceptable quality, but I don't know. I'm not sure most American authors have any say in production and delivery once the book is handed over, and the ebook process is so new to them that I suspect they're all feeling their way through it.

[EowynCarter]

There's one book i asked for refund. Guess people should hesitate less in doing that.

Sometimes, I'm glad for the fact i'm dyslexic, and don't see most of the mistakes.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by GA Russell

It occurs to me that for Kindle books, a one-star review with the reason cited on Amazon's website might have some effect.

I did exactly that on the Barnes & Noble website for Deepsix, making it clear that the criticism was for the condition of the file created by the publisher, not the story itself or any actions by the author. I did the same on Amazon for one of the Wild Cards books.

I agree, this is about the best place to warn consumers away from a badly-formatted ebook, and I encourage everyone to do exactly that when they come across or buy one.

[Freeshadow]

*sigh*
You don't want to see my pbook edition of the new (uncut) "Stranger in a strange world" in German. typos d' have been a blessing.
2 missing lines and 2 completely screwed paragraphs as far as I can find out crosschecking with an older shortedition.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Nice to know how little some publishers think of their product, and the people who buy it. With that in mind, I think anything an indie author or publisher can do to assure customers they are making the extra effort to present quality work can only help their sales efforts. And if big pubs don't follow suit, I could see them losing significant market share to indies over time.

Of course, big pubs make up for their bad products with mass sales. As long as they have that, they are not likely to sweat little details like quality.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Can you point to an example of a book that has been cleaned up in its first few chapters, so the sample looks OK, but the rest of it is poorly formatted? Personally I've never come across such a thing, and would regard it as dishonesty.

Your idea is sensible. Have you proposed it to the big name publishers?

I just finished reading a free book from Barnes & Noble... at the tail end of the book, all dialog was without quotation marks... though all was fine at the front of the book.

In another instance, I read a free book where things were fine in the first half of the book, but by the last half, every instance where the word "that" should have appeared, the word "mat" appeared instead. Annoying.

So yeah, stuff like this is happening. I'll probably write the publishers at some point. I'd be more tweaked if I'd paid for the books. I have mentioned the issues in reviews though, so others are warned.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by graycyn

I have mentioned the issues in reviews though, so others are warned.

I agree, the best thing to do.

This and other threads convince me that most publishers are either only paying lip-service to any desire to produce quality ebooks... or they really believe customers don't care about quality. Only they can decide whether the effort to produce quality is worth it... or if they'd rather give up and blame "consumer apathy" for bad sales.

Of course, if they continue to produce ebooks like that, I'd just as soon see them go out of business sooner than later. Unfortunately, those publishers still hold the control of their backlists, essentially, holding them hostage against our desires to see old books converted into ebooks. If they fold, will anyone be able to recover those backlisted books and turn them into ebook product?

And will the new publishers give us any better quality than the existing slack publishers?

[Krystian Galaj]

At least with pirated books one either gets bad quality or good quality from the first to the last page.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Consistently good or bad? I'm not sure how much of a positive selling point that is...