Quote:
Originally Posted by aquina
I have been using the Boston Public Library to check out Ebooks which I have been reading on my laptop in PDF and EPub formats and on my Blackberry in Mobi format.
Let me say that I am very grateful to have access to this service but I have to say that the quality of the books is lacking. Not the selection, which is actually pretty good but the quality of the files. Most books don't have a front cover or a generic cover rather than the proper picture cover. Meta information is often missing, sometimes not even listing the author.
I know that this can be fixed with Calibre but for library books it is not worth it for me. Is this just a reflection of a lower grade quality Ebook the library is purchasing or is this true for Ebooks purchased at Ebook stores as well? Frankly I would be a bit upset if I would pay $10 for an Ebook that I would have to fix up after purchase.
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You wouldn't believe the
horrible quality, you sometimes receive.
I've bought all the major formats:
.prc, .lit, .azw, .lrx, .epub, .pdf
My gut feeling says, .lit is the most carefully prepared one, then .azw. But I didn't take any statistics....
In every format, I've seen the very same inconsistencies.
Just an example:
I've bought 2 official bundles of ebooks.
One for Sony and one for Mobipocket readers.
Within each bundle, for the very same author, both didn't stick to the naming convention.
It was "James Patterson", "Patterson, James" or even "PATTERSON, JAMES".
When sorting by author, this can be EXTREMELY annoying.
And that's from the very same distributor within an official bundle of books.
You can imagine, what happens, if you switch between distributors.
In one case, I even had "Jeffrey Deaver". The guy's name is JEFFERY!
Sometimes I really have to say: Downloading from torrents might lead to better results.
In one case, I've asked for returning my money, because the naming convention wasn't acceptable to me.
After 2 emails, I've actually got it back!
This should be done more often. Maybe then the distributors wouldn't outsource to cheap labour (*) (had similar occurences with Apple TV. The guy's name is Schwarzenegger, not SchwarTzenegger!) but care more about quality....
(*) "cheap labour" is my only explanation. Would it be actual bookstore clerks or any other kind of specialists preparing the ebooks, such things simply couldn't happen.