[Hitch]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

If the fruit shop wont sell your client's books then cui bono, cui prodest - tinker, tailor, soldier, spy - the butcher, baker, or the candlestick maker. Not thee methinks.

One of the characteristics of convoluted supply chains is that everyone else can be blamed by everyone else when things go wrong,

<snip for multi-quote space>

BR

Yeah, I don't disagree with you, but as great as this client is, (and they are super), I'm not sure that they see this that way. After all: as they are PC people, they don't really have another viable way to get to iBooks. Almost none of the distributors--Bookbaby, etc.--will accept and upload FXL. Hell, they won't even accept and upload MOBI--you have to give them a KDP-ready ePUB. And this ePUB3 FXL book was expressly created for iBooks, with Kobo, Readium, etc., as...extra goodies.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Just a quick note. If you use Calibre's eBook editor, you can compare two ePub to see what's different. That way if the ePub you bought was somehow changed, you would be able to see what it was that was changed. I do this sometimes when I redownload an eBook and I want to see if anything has changed or changed enough so I know which file to keep.

Jon, you are my curmudgeonly sweetie, but I'm using Beyond Compare. It compares folders of files down to the gnat's ass. If a period changed, it would tell me. Unless I've mis-commanded it, (Never say that isn't possible),the two files are absolutely identical. FWIW, they are also identical in size, down to the hundredth. Generally, you don't see that even if someone only inserts a single space somewhere.

Out of curiosity, why would this be different than putting the two ePUBs in either Sigil side-by-side, or cracking them open and viewing them in NoteTab Pro?

Originally Posted by PeterT

It could have been worse; he could have referred you to one of YOUR posts at MR

This had me rolling. That's hysterical. And you're SO right--that would have been in a way, almost worse.

Originally Posted by eschwartz

This.

Except the sad thing is, the Smashwords guy probably found out about MobileRead because of Hitch('s posts)... so I'm not sure that makes it any better.

So, Hitch, what was your response, if any? I ask because I can't really think of anything worthy to be a response.
What do you say in a situation like this?

I really struggled for a bit. I was tempted to mooch from Lord Peter Wimsey, in Have His Carcase, and say something along the lines of "You drive me to the vulgarity of telling you Who I Am," but I (kinda) forbore. I did say something like..."Not to get up on my hind legs, or anything like that, but I feel obliged to tell you that all in all, I am one of the experts at MR." And while most of you here are steelier-eyed ePUB pilots than I, and coding whizzes, which we all know I'm not, I think that in the "dealing with retailer/distributor" area, I have more experience than most here.

Originally Posted by Pablo

Or he could have suggested Yahoo! Answers.

<SNORT>

You are most likely right, Pablo.

The frustrating thing is (aside from being patronized by some customer service guy--who, to be fair to him, really is only trying to help in a situation where he can almost do less than I can to ameliorate the problem--there's naught I can do. iBooks won't talk to me, the publisher or the author--it's apparent from the comments from SW that they won't talk to SW, EITHER.

I mean, that's the kick in the teeth, isn't it? If they'd talk to someone, that wouldn't be so damned awful, but as usual...their idea of customer service is: "we'll tell you if your s**t is broken, and if it is, you have to take it and like it, because, man, we're just SO EFFING COOL. So, you should be grateful that we sent you this damn canned email."

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Worse, you have any idea how hard it is to prove a negative? "Dear client, there's nothing wrong with this file, it's Apple's fault." Nobody is going to believe that--hell, they're APPLE, right?--and worse, it sounds like YOU are trying to blame someone else. I can't audit the file at iBooks, because you can't run it through their intake checker, without publishing the damn thing--which would bring hell down upon us, as the book would then be published in two places. As the book was removed from sale, I can't download THAT, either, to see if there's a problem that was caused by god-only-knows-what.

To TPTB here at MR: we need an "I'm gonna go eat worms" emoty, please. Is there an emoty-suggestion box here, folks? The closest thing is my buddy

Hitch