> Self-published books are usually okay but almost no big publisher understands one crucial thing: we are using ebook readers, you don't need to set this things!
Hi George, I'm with you. I'm a computer person and I work in the print industry. We provide print and data management services for other publishing companies. The people we work with are the marketing department. I typeset pages, and they provide the data. The marketing people are very nice but are VERY short on computer knowledge, but, they should not have to learn computers and how to typeset, because that's MY job.
I'm competent in designing a different system to meet the needs of any publisher, and I have the experience to back it up. We need the data in certain formats in order to save them money. However, some companies refuse to follow our directions, so we have to manually fix the data they send us, which increases their cost. Then they wonder why our charges are so expensive.
But the state of the industry is, many publishers are tight on money, or at least their budgets are tight in order to meet goals centered around stock value. So their leaders are simply saying "Convert this to an EPUB in the cheapest way possible." And that's what the non-computer marketing department does. You'd be surprised how many companies that distribute print materials have NO computer people to help them publish, they simply have minimal IT guys who are so overworked and stressed the IT guy cannot possibly help them with converting to EPUB.
Your complaints are valid, but, unfortunately, until leadership of the print companies understands the importance of specialty employees (or services like mine), they will continue to issue crappy EPUBs.
The best suggestion I have: make screen shots of crappy ebooks, post them on the internet, and send a copy of the link to the CEO of that company, or the director of the publishing department. Some people just won't listen until you effect their reputation or bottom line (stock price).