Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
"But I has an English degree and don't need no editor or book."
|
Cins: gosh. It takes a lot to leave me speechless, but that line did it! ;-)
Quote:
Originally Posted by patrik
Hitch, I'm curious if you know how, if anything, Amazon considers an awz3 that only consists of images (scanned pages)? I have bought some which was like that, and it's barely readable on an 6-7" e-ink reader. (I ended up reading it on my tablet.)
Since there is the option "fixed layout" for such things, one could hope that it's not "allowed" for azw3.
One author I contacted is redoing the book, I'm consider contacting the others as well.
Thoughts? :-)
|
Hi, patrik:
I would suspect that those will get the Scarlet Letter,
if they are reported. That sort of "book" can be created in a number of ways:
- Deliberately. Believe it or not, some people do this on purpose, by using a cheap scanner. They scan the print book, and Abbyy Fine Reader creates a PDF that's an imaged-only PDF. If you run something like that through mobigen or Calibre, you get what you're describing--pages that are "images of text," rather than text.
- Inadvertently, because they don't know any better. Either they do what I said, above, or, they take a PDF that they happen to have, upload it at KDP, and, voila! A book! If they don't have a Kindle--think about it--how would THEY know that it's not a good eBook?
- Now, on this one...they COULD be using KTC, Kindle Textbook Creator. There's a real PUSH in the DIY crowd to use KTC for bloody everything. It's like Amazon hung out a sign: "Have PDF Will Travel." It's beginning to make my head spin. But, KTC will put out a product that is very much like what you describe, although the pages ARE zoomable, unlike other fixed-layout products (kids' books, comics, some coffee-table books.
I realize that trying to read a PDF on a Kindle of almost any size (excepting the DX and the 8.9") is a pain. Flip the page, grab it, tap it, then pinch zoom it, read a bit, and then pan-scan around the page to find where you left off, lather-rinse-repeat...oish. If you can contact the publishers, yes, you'd be doing them a favor. If you can't, as much as it pains me--you really ought to contact Amazon about the readability. You'll likely need to do it through the book's sales page if you aren't on a PPW or Voyage, which has firmware/software set up to let you report it in-book.
Amazon is all about the customer experience. Bad customer experiences with a book that are reported and then verified by them will indeed result in them contacting the author about issues. This was true even before the advent of the Amazon Scarlet Letter. I don't think you are doing anyone any good by not reporting it. The publishers may not even know that the book is crappily done if they are not part of the e-reading community. You'd be BOGGLED--boggled, I tell you--by how many publishers don't have Kindles, Nooks, etc., and don't read on any device. To those folks, an eBook=ePDF. So, why wouldn't a PDF be a good choice as a book?
Those are my thoughts on it. Were it me, I'd either contact the publisher, directly, or report them. You and others ought not pay money to receive unreadable books, or books that provide such a crappy reader experience.
Hitch