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Originally Posted by graycyn
That could be. But you also miss things like well done illustrated title pages, frontispieces, maps, timelines and such. And there are nice covers out there too.
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That's as may be. Unfortunately, you're assuming that Amazon created the behavior, but it's the other way around. Amazon gets use statistics from their readers--literally, every "page" in every book. Data that authors would KILL to have (how many minutes did the average reader spend reading that carefully-crafted fight scene chapter? Did they like the Epilogue, etc.) Amazon simply gave the readers what they wanted,
based on their reading behavior. Everyone seems to assume that DTBook people just opened the cover, and started at the title page, but
apparently, humans (typically and in the vast majority) don't do that. They open the book, thumb it
and start at Chapter 1.
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I suppose publishers can do workarounds, but how many actually do this?
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I guess those who think that readers are going to/should read their front-matter.
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The trouble is that if people go to straight to the 1st full page of text, they won't see any useful front matter material, they won't even know it exists, because they'll also have jumped over the TOC!
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Well, then, you're going to need to put that crucial-to-the-story front matter, like, say, a map, or a prologue, etc.,
after the TOC. Even if Amazon hadn't set the SRL there, given the human behavior, you probably ought to do that anyway, so that the aforementioned "thumbing" doesn't miss the material.
Our clients don't like it, either, but, nonetheless, I tell them that the average reader really isn't interested in their dedication, acknowledgements, etc. They just want the story or the content (in non-fiction).
Sorry.
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Which begs a different question, WHY, if Amazon is going to skip the reader over all the front matter anyway, does Amazon insist on having the TOC in the front of the book?
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I suspect you don't really mean "begs the...question," but I get your gist. Firstly, for one thing--and people seem to ignore this, by and large--but because it's a fundamental and crucial part of the page-counting and calculation algorithms, that's why. If the TOC is someplace else, it bollixes up those calcs. Secondly, because, unlike a print book, you can't stick a piece of paper in the device, nor leave it opened and face-down on the coffee table (book destroying heathens!), etc. Some people don't really use the bookmarking system, and nav by TOC. Not many, anymore, but they still exist. Given that Amazon
still supports the very first Kindle built, it's hardly surprising that they cater to all types of reader behavior.
Let's not forget: Amazon's customer
isn't the publisher. It's the reader. So, alas, poor publishers, they are stuck with the behavior of the reading public.
I mean, to me, it's interesting. For 100 years, publishers assumed that readers read everything from the cover back. Now we know that's not true, not even remotely.