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Originally Posted by shalym
You make many points here, but a lot of them boil down to "The layout couldn't be changed in a print book, so why should it be able to be changed in an ebook?"
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No. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that, as others have said here, there are typographic standards for some very good reasons. AND, yes, to some extent, I'm saying that we're all spoiled rotten.
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For me, I want it changed because that's one of the reasons I read ebooks instead of paper books. Ebooks are easier on my eyes, mostly because I can change the font size and style. When books are formatted as you suggest, enlarging the font can make the layout almost unreadable, especially with fully justified text.
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Hold it: where did I say "how" I make books? Where did I say use fully-justified text? (We don't, FWIW.) We do very little in our books, from my company, that precludes you tweaking whatever you want. Do we embed fonts, for chapter heads or title pages? Yes, sometimes. Do we embed body fonts? Preferably not, but we'll do it if the client insists, AND we know that Amazon can support the font without corruption. What I have said in this thread is that I don't particularly like books that look like essays. And, yes, I said that there is a mindset that every ebook in the world should be able to be Gumbied, and not every author or publisher is okay with that.
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You keep dismissing the statements of the people who say these things, saying that because we couldn't change it in print books we shouldn't expect to be able to in ebooks. What I'm telling you is that there are a large number of people who read ebooks because most print books are not comfortable for them to read.
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I'm not dismissing them; I'm pointing out that a very short time ago, much of what's been discussed on this thread, ranging from "fixing typos every 5 seconds" to "fixing the margins, font, indents, block style paras, etc." didn't even
exist as options. It may well be that lots of people (my father-in-law is one of them) deliberately read on e-devices because they can increase the font size, and that makes sense. Perhaps switching up fonts makes sense. As my vision hasn't gone yet (with my braincells), I can't speak to that.
But as I pointed out, as well, authors and publishers ALSO have particular visions for their works, and perhaps we've come to the question of:
who gets to decide? Is it the artist's right to do whatever she wants, and you take it or leave it, or is every artist obligated to make his or her work, in whatever medium, fungible so that you (generically, not personally) can customize it to suit whatever you want? Given that most of the folks on MR can customize their own books, and do so, I'd say that
here, at least, the point is moot.
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If there is a design element that is changed to make large print books more readable, why would you NOT include that change in ebooks, since there are so many people who will change the font to a large size?
Shari
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I never said that, did I? Nor did I say that an ebook should be a PDF. I don't think you'll ever see me say that. What I've said, a bit repetitively, at this point, is that some of this mindset--that any ebook can be changed around to do anything, or that typos can be fixed, etc., actually alters the original work. Moreover, it has contributed to a mindset in the very people whose work you're reading, that they don't have to polish their books to the nth degree prior to publication, because: ebooks can always be fixed. eBooks can always be changed. eBooks aren't printed.
And, somehow, despite all that, the Harry Potter books, which weren't digital, all managed to sell a gajillion copies, before JKR decided to make them available in ebooks. Somehow, everyone managed to suffer through that old immovable type (yes, that's a pun).
It's a double-edged sword. THAT is what I'm saying. I've seen both sides of it; I make my living at it...but truthfully, this outlook hasn't, to my thinking, served the publishing and reading communities well. {shrug}. I think I've said everything I have to contribute on this; others have mentioned things like the 60-character line length, etc., so....
Hitch