[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ASterling

I am not a "formatter" I am a publisher. I swore off Kindle for all but simple text based books a long time ago.

May I ask why? What type of formatting, specifically, made you leave such a massive marketplace? We have about 2200 clients, with over 3K books, and I don't know one that would voluntarily leave the Amazon marketplace; most sell 88-92% of all their sales there. Of course, if you have a niche market, something like students that buy the books, no matter where they're sold, that's a different situation.

I am curious as to the "problem client" comment.

Well, in hindsight, I suppose I ought to have been more precise in my language. That will teach me. When I say, "problem client," I mean exactly what I said, though--a client that would be a problem in any business. Not someone who simply wants a good/great book product.

When I say "problem clients," I mean

• clients that won't read instructions that they are provided.
• Or who won't read an FAQ article if it's linked to them, and keep emailing the same question (which, by the way, is already answered in the pre-production emails that we send to them) until I copy-paste the body of the FAQ article into an email, and send them that--the same thing I've already linked them to, the same thing I've already told them, in advance, in our two-page pre-production handout.
• Refuse to use proof forms for book edits, and insist on either sending them in an email, in some disorganized, we-can't-find-them, way. (And thus, can't COUNT them for billing, either....)
• Don't watch the videos that explain about the fungibility of Ebooks in a reader, and then insist that the book has "blank pages," because they don't understand how ADE works.
• My all time favorite was a client that emailed me 80+ times, ranting about how our ebook was "corrupted" because Apple told him so. What Apple never bothered to investigate was that he didn't know how to download a file from his own email account (gmail), so he kept "downloading" a shortcut to the file--that was an email attachment--to his desktop. Of course that wouldn't open in Kindle Previewer; it was a shortcut, not a file. I told him repeatedly that he wasn't downloading the file, but no--he insisted that we'd given him a corrupted file. I ended up having to spend two HOURS of my time booting up the "emergency" Mac that I keep here; synching the files; sending his file to myself in a spare gmail account, adn then making screenshots/videos of HOW to download the file, from his email account, to his own computer, to open it in Kindle Previewer.
• Actually, that's a lie--my ALL time favorite was a guy with 5 books, that emailed me (precisely) 811 times, and then didn't understand when I fired him as a client, finally. One of only 6, since 2008, but...I just couldn't take it any longer.
• Or...they disappear for 2, 3 or more months at a time, and then come back with 100 book edits and tell you that they have a pre-launch deadline in 3 days. This is not uncommon.
• These are just examples off the top of my head. This isn't unique to us our our company; any commercial bookmaker will give you the same list. It's endemic.

There are a lot of ways to create a great book (or text). The way the Kindle is right now with any of the options means that many desirable forms of content and presentation for texts is difficult or impossible.

Again, I'll have to ask what you're talking about, specifically. I know that trying to keep up with what works, versus what doesn't, on all the eBook-reading devices is a full-time job.

A business that has developed a textbook, for example, that works as an epub3 on a tablet is not a problem are they? There is a reason that educational publishers have in house design departments that work hands in hand with editors and writers, and it's a team. I'm interested in quality. This is my first exposure to people "formatting" or preparing books that are not being published by them. I knew the general idea that an ebook is "text" dumped on a screen was an underlying problem with Kindle. All my students' texts are "defective" on Kindle ... Hard to use or problems with images/tables.

Well, some of us have been around (formatters) since 2008-9. In the beginning (ha!), Amazon didn't really have a spot for DIY'ers to go. The people who published there didn't know how to make their own MOBI files, so companies like mine came to exist. What MOBI can do now, versus what MOBI could do then--it's just night and day.

Generally speaking--with a few exceptions--what works in ePUB3 ought to, by and large, work in Kindle MOBI format (KF8). If, when you say ePUB3, you mean books that are created with something like iBooksAuthor, then, no--a Kindle won't do that (multi-column presentation with a sidebar running on each page, interactive test content, etc.) But if you mean things like text boxes, sidebars, bracketed boxes, fonts, tables--all of that works in Kindle, if done properly.

Not all formatters do that type (level) of work, however. We do work for a number of publishers, as well as retail work, and we do white-label work for publishers and print layout houses, as well (no visible book credit). Most of the outsource companies, for textbook publishers, etc., don't use book-credit lines, so you wouldn't have an instant way to know that they're using formatters, if that makes any sense.

Few students use the Kindle - they use iPads or Surface tablets.

Well, the iPad has its own issues, if they are endeavoring to use Kindle on that platform. The K4iOS reader is essentially Amazon's most primitive, but it's improving. Of course, if they have an iPad, they can use iBooks to read an ePUB, which I'm inferring you're making.

Since y'all are so experienced with Kindle is there a way to improve this? Does Amazon understand what is going on? Like these types of books are so difficult to make work due to their decisions?

Without knowing what you're referring to, as to what works, what doesn't, or what you feel is "defective," I can't really be helpful. I'm not sure why you'd be having issues with images or tables; most of those problems have been resolved for some years now. Tables can be--not necessarily are, but CAN be--problematic in all eReaders. It's a space issue more than anything else. Do you have some examples? Of things that you feel don't work well for MOBI format? Anything like any of these?: http://www.booknook.biz/showcase/complex-layouts , or is it all images and tables?

Hitch