[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by calvin-c

I'm not a fan of publishers but I believe they (or most of them anyway) are more interested in making money than books. That's why I think it's an economic issue. I don't think (most) publishers are interested in making books (regular or ebooks) look either good or bad-I think they're interested in making them look whatever way will make them the most money.

Therefore... If you make it look (and work) better, it will make you more money.

As it happens I disagree with your contention that you don't need to be a programmer. But then I disagree with most programmers about who is a programmer, too so perhaps it's our definitions of 'programmer' that differs. If you work with the raw HTML & CSS then, IMO, you're a programmer. If, OTOH, you use Sigil to produce HTML-encoded documents (ebooks) then you might not be a programmer. (Programmers can use tools like Sigil too.)

Nah. Writing HTML and CSS is not really programming. Not in my view. Programming is writing stuff with functions, and variables, and making the computer run stuff

I haven't used Sigil. I understand it's free-so if it works why aren't publishers using it?

Some do. Some also use Calibre. I have some bought e-books that have Sigil and/or Calibre metadata in them, right from the store.

Mostly however, the big publishers are using some sort of automated process; all o their books have the same file naming conventions, the same classes, and (basically) the same layout.

Perhaps its training costs. As I said before I doubt if most publishers have any interest in producing books that look bad so the question is why they're doing it.

I think that there are some books that just don't fit their automated e-book creation software very well, and then it turns out a broken e-book. Probably they don't check each and every book.