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Originally Posted by Psymon
Gee, I don't know how I could possibly take offense to that, to be told that my professional opinion doesn't count (and yes, I was a professional web designer, working for clients, with many, many websites under my belt, for more than a decade-and-a-half) because I'm just a "hobbyist." :/ Y'know, I might have only gotten into publishing ebooks over the last couple of years, and might have only two published books so far (with four more on the way), but that doesn't mean that I'm not serious about what I do, nor that I'm incompetent at it.
We all have things we can learn from others -- we all do, Hitch, even you -- even from mere "hobbyists."  |
I meant nothing
other than, you are not making 100 books at a time. I--me, we, my company--are and
do. So, sorry, the inconvenience for YOU, and the inconvenience, for ME, are not the bloody same. No two books are the same, as you yourself would undoubtedly agree. That means, every single time some new and "improved" iBooks-only glitch comes up, with some not-industry-standard "fix" that needs to be made, it's almost never something easy to replicate across the board. I don't have some magic sausage-making machine here; I have real live people, just like you, each working on their set number of books.
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I beg to differ -- if you ask me, it's exactly the same thing, the issues with designing for different ebook platforms are perfectly analagous to designing web pages for different platforms. I can't think of a better analogy than that one, in fact. 
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No. It's not. You can fix
a website, for compliance with different browsers. And, if you happen to be a guy who's done 2500 websites, well, then, YES, I guess it's the same, if all 2000+ of your clients all expect you to go back and FIX what wasn't wrong, 12 months ago, to what is "wrong" today, because some idiot at Apple decided that using compliant code just isn't the Apple way. And, with all due respect, while it's true that different browsers show different things, in different ways, etc., the fact is that most of the website glitchiness
is documented, AND, for size issues, there are extensive, and I mean,
EXTENSIVE, media queries. OR, you can use something like Bootstrap. And, moreover, if, as a web designer, you use what's known to be relatively safe, 99% of the time, it will work cross-browser. With Apple? On ePUB? You just don't know, now, then, ever.
So, I'm sorry if you took offense to the word, "hobbyist," but unless/until you are making dozens of books, and you're being paid by clients other than YOURSELF, all of whom think that they own some piece of your time, and you're at the mercy of Apple and the others, it IS a Hobby. For that matter, if Dan Brown decides to start making his own eBooks, HE is a hobbyist bookmaker. So is anyone making their OWN, no matter how much of a perfectionist s/he is.
As I said, if you took offense, which
I believe I said, absolutely wasn't intended in any way, my apologies, but I still firmly believe that there is
a vast difference between commercial book production and making your OWN books, in terms of whom you have to satisfy, what you're expected to do, and upon whose nickel you're expected to do it, when it comes to leaping through hoops created by APPLE.
Hitch