Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
Well, icing on the cake:
(Or...insult added to injury)...after I told them how to cover their butts for the "pre-sale" thing on Amazon, BUT then told them, no, I couldn't have this book (474 pages, 181 images, poetry, yadda) done by the 15th, they went with "another conversion house" that said that they could.
Now...I know what this means. It means, that house is going to run this POS through Calibre, tweak it ever so slightly, and give them a MOBI (that is either made with C or with KG). But...it also means that this book will NOT be properly made; the images won't be optimized for all the HD issues; it won't have media-queries to address the KF7 devices; and the poetry won't line-wrap correctly. But, bygod, the "other conversion house" will tell them to look at it on K4PC, and, "yowza!" it will LOOK PERFECT.
Right up to the point that some poor buyer actually buys it and downloads it.
What kills me--what really bloody kills me--is that you CANNOT explain these quality issues. People don't care. They want their crap fast, and if it looks like a cake with icing, well, then, howdy, it's all good. They don't use Previewer; they don't test the books...it's so damn frustrating. The lower-quality houses just have them all download K4PC or K4Mac, in which almost everything LOOKS great, and bobs-yer-uncle.
(n.b.: I received a mostly-complete book that a former, now-gone competitor of mine had done. I was SHOCKED to see how badly the book was coded. Absolutely gobsmacked. That, atop this...makes me want to shut my bloody doors. They were charging SUBSTANTIALLY more than we.)
Hitch |
I am thinking in cases like this you need to become more snooty. Raise your prices or submission requirements for people like this. Tell them if someone can do this substantially better for the same price that you will give them their money back provided they in no way use your work to build upon.
Let them know you can tell if they do whether you can or not.
I am thinking the squawking might subside to squeaking and then to worship given a few months.
Helen