Do you create a hyperlinked TOC for your ePubs in iBooks?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by pholy

On the other hand, some of us like to page through an ebook from cover to first page of text, and finding an inline toc does give me some idea of how long or involved a book will be. I may not ever look at it again, and I still finding it that first tiem through.

I'm with you on this. I have always read my pbooks from cover to cover. And I still do that for ebooks. I'm annoyed that my Kobo ereaders don't open the book at the cover. I can see why you would do it, but I'd prefer to start from the cover. So, I have no hassle with having an in-line TOC. Especially for short story collections.

[GMcG]

@mrmikel
'One thing I used to do to make it easier to navigate was to make each chapter head a link back to the TOC.'
@davidfor
'So, I have no hassle with having an in-line TOC. Especially for short story collections.'

I prefer an HTML ToC as part of the book. With an inline ToC you can navigate within the book, you don't need a button of the device.
In my collection of short stories I have a backlink to the ToC at the *end* of each story. If you make the *head* of the chapter a link to the ToC you have to scroll back to the beginning of the chapter before you can click on the link. I think this is not so useful, especially if there are some pages to go back.

George

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by pholy

On the other hand, some of us like to page through an ebook from cover to first page of text, and finding an inline toc does give me some idea of how long or involved a book will be. I may not ever look at it again, and I still finding it that first tiem through.

One should never confuse Jon's opinions with universal truths. -- Sorry, Jon, sometimes your cursades irritate me. Sometime I do agree with you, though.

Go wade through the internal ToC for an average James Patterson book. It tells you really nothing about how long it might be and it's a large list of around 100 or so chapters.

[pholy]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Go wade through the internal ToC for an average James Patterson book. It tells you really nothing about how long it might be and it's a large list of around 100 or so chapters.

What it tells me is that JP can't write a well organized novel, so now I have another reason not to bother with his stuff... same problem I had with the Mistborn trilogy.

Bad examples don't make the case. In any event, it's all a matter of opinion.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Go wade through the internal ToC for an average James Patterson book. It tells you really nothing about how long it might be and it's a large list of around 100 or so chapters.

If that is just a list of 100 chapter numbers, then dropping it is OK to me. But, it also just means a few taps on the screen to me so including it doesn't worry me.

If he has titles for each chapter, I'd be less willing to loose it from the book. I consider looking at that, part of reading the book.

If it was a collection of 100 short stores, I would definitely want to see it there.