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Old 11-04-2019, 11:48 PM   #73
Tex2002ans
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Posts: 2,306
Karma: 13057279
Join Date: Jul 2012
Device: Kobo Forma, Nook
Quote:
Originally Posted by slowsmile View Post
[...] I very much doubt that Amazon will make their applications too easy. [...] if Amazon, via their free apps, makes it too easy for a person off the street to easily produce the perfect ebook or book that is the same quality as those produced by the Big Five, then Amazon would not get that extra money stream(which is considerable) from the Big Five
This is absurd. Revenue isn't the only side the equation.

On the production side:

If these tools were so spectacular... there's nothing stopping "The Big Five" from using these tools to create 'the perfect ebook' either.

(And we all know, "ebook quality" isn't the only thing separating trade publishing from self-publishing.)

On the costs side:

Making it easier+higher-quality saves manpower all around:
  • Less complaints from customers (higher quality books)
  • Less customer support for authors (it converts 'perfectly')
  • Less hours needed to tweak/convert

On the conversion side:

There will always be books that can't fit the "easy conversion" mold:
  • Cookbooks
  • Math
  • Scans
  • [...]

There will always be more format wrenches that get thrown in the mix:
  • Google Docs
    • Have you seen some of the abominable code coming out of Google Docs?
  • Microsoft Office (2010, 2016, 2019, 365)
    • Different versions of Word produce vastly different innards.
  • ancient versions of software
  • different OSes/browsers
  • Desktop/Mobile

Side Note: It reminds me of this recent LibreOffice talk discussing copying/pasting between browsers/OSes... and the absolute hell it is:

LibreOffice Conference 2019 – Online: copy/paste

And on the user side:

You know that famous saying... creating smarter/easier tools creates dumber users.

These people will come out of the woodwork and break any tools, no matter how easy/simple, with even more absurd files (remember footnoteception?). :P

* * *

I would highly recommend watching this talk from ebookcraft 2018:

End of the Conveyor Belt: Quality control, support improvements, and user feedback

it discussed the QA backend in Kobo.

Probably the closest you'll get to hearing what actually goes on behind-the-scenes at Amazon.
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