[carandol]

Everyone knows that fantasy novels have maps. Maps are important. With a map you can trace the travels of your heroes as they trek through trackless wastes, over snow-swept mountains, through deadly swamps and... etc., etc.

So there you are. You've just bought the latest fantasy trilogy as an ebook. And you're congratulating yourself on how light and slim your ebook reader is compared to the mighty tome you would normally have to hold up with your feeble, geekish wrists. And your heroes are surrounded by man-eating octopoids in the Swamps of Despair, scant leagues from the safety of the Tower of Hope. And you turn to the map, to see exactly where the Tower of Hope *is* in relation to the Swamps of Despair, and whether our doughty band will be ambushed on the way by the army of the Lord of Doom which is marching down from the Crepuscular Mountains...

And the map is the size of a postage stamp. In the paper book it was a lovely double-page spread, with curly edges and sailing ships and sea monsters and the names of a dozen nations and two-score cities lovingly rendered in gorgeous calligraphy. But on your ebook reader it's a tiny rectangle about 2cm by 3cm, in which you can just about make out the coastline, and what might be some mountains, and many indecipherable blobs and scratchings which could be writing but you'll never know for sure.

Come on publishers, don't just run your novels through an automatic conversion program that produces graphics for the tiniest screen imaginable. Think about who your readers are, and what they're reading your ebooks on!