Quote:
Originally Posted by karunaji
....To make it official I now tell how appalled I am with the current state of e-book format rendering. I understand that many traditional print finesses are unnecessary or impossible in e-readers due to freely selectable font size or screen area changes, or limitations due to memory and processor constraints of e-readers. However, there are many simple and critical features that are being ignored by current ebook moguls. Centered block text is one of them, another is "keep x lines together". I won't go into details for better indexing and dictionary support.
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It is even more shocking that such books are coming from respectable publishers like Penguin Publishing and others. Are they predicting their forthcoming demise in e-book age, so they no longer care about their reputation and rush to make a quick buck in their remaining time?
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I actually wrote to the people at Borders in Australia (who distribute the Kobo and sell the books for it) as I was also not impressed by the formatting of ebooks. I was most surprised (considering how book sellers usually don't pay much attention to their customers ) at how promptly they replied and what a detailed response they gave. I rather got the impression that the guy replying was also not happy with the product the publishers were putting out and was determined to make sure things were improved. Keep complaining directly to the sellers and they will start to listen. Point out to them how well some of the free sites format their books and they will listen even more! I was lucky in having the University of Adelaide's excellent free book site to quote as a good example of simple, accurate formatting. (
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/ if you are interested.)