**While I'm putting this in the Kindle section, I feel that it could easily apply to all other ebook stores, considering that books available from several ebook vendors (B&N, Kindle Store, Sony Store in particular) all have the same issues. (An example, B&N on the left, Kindle in the middle and how both of them SHOULD look on the right-
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/all_three-qHgVL.png)
*** Also, if you have the time, please make an "I support!" post on my thread @ the amazon discussion forums;
http://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle/for...x1679Z2JAO6EXS
Ok, so you know how we have a; click this link to let the publisher know you want to read this book in Kindle format - button?
Yeah, well I'd like for Kindle books, just beneath the picture, a; click here to report formatting issues - button.
I've read several books recently which have had pretty bad formatting issues which made it pretty unpleasant (see not worth the money paid for it) to read.
This one book I read recently, After Midnight by Richard Laymon, the formatting was so bad.... I'll just show you. Mind you, the entire book was like this;
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/aft...side-uiZVF.png On the left is the Kindle edition, on the right, the Look Inside feature on the Amazon page.
Don't you hate it when there's a big blank space between every paragraph? Me too. It takes up more space on the Kindle screen and less space=more page turns=less battery life.
Here's an example;
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/scr...0_pm-r4XOH.png .
On the left is how it appears on my Kindle, and on the right is the Look Inside This Book feature on Amazon's page for the print edition. It's Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick.
Here's another;
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/ano...mple-buWqx.jpg
Here's yet another; picture is in the same format as the first, this time to the tune of Anne Rice's The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty;
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/sle...side-wdApr.png
Don't you hate it when a book lacks punctuation marks, or has random symbols/OCR errors spread throughout the text? Me too.
What about no indents for new paragraphs? Ditto. See the After Midnight link posted above for a pic.
I know that in the uploading process things happen, but if I'm expected to pay good money for a book, I want it to be legible! I swear, some books were just scanned, OCR'd and published without any kind of proofread done at all.
Let me make this clear; I know that there's a difference between layout decisions and actual formatting errors; I'm talking about the latter, and people know when they have a sloppily done edition. The ebook edition should not differ drastically from the print edition, especially in the examples that I have shown.
Again, I understand that rendering proper formatting can be difficult, but the bottom line is that I'm a consumer and the difficulty is not my concern. Just because something is difficult to do doesn't mean you can sell a substandard product and expect consumers to just suck it up. That wouldn't be acceptable with other items, so why should it be acceptable with Kindle books? (This was stated by another user, Esse, who put into words better than I could.)
Most ebooks don't have these problems. So most publishers are getting the ebook making process right, and some are getting it wrong.
What's worse,it's not just the Kindle editions that have these problems. I've checked the same books using the sample feature at different ebookstores (B&N, Sony store) and they all had the same issues, so it's basically publishers sending out less-than-satisfactory products to several stores.
Here's an example; here on the left is the B&N ebook edition of Anne Rice's The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, and in the middle is the Kindle edition. On the right is a pic from Amazon's look inside feature, and is how BOTH versions SHOULD look;
http://www.imagenerd.com/uploads/all_three-qHgVL.png
Sampling goes a long way to keeping people from buying these books, and reviews can help to warn people about it- customer discussions on the book in particular can also help bring this to the attention of the powers that be, but I'd like a way to get straight to the publishers that put up these less-than-satisfactory products out for sale.
So here's what I want Amazon to do. I want them to make it easy for us to report these issues, since they can't be expected to check each book themselves. They should add a Report Bad Formatting button somewhere easy to find on the book's Kindle Page. Once you click on the -Bad Formatting Issues? Let the Publisher Know! - button, there could be a little chart of yes or no questions (are the paragraphs properly indented?, are there many misspelled words? Is there an active table of contents? etc) and an area where you can report specific issues (i.e- two sentences at location 2145 are complete gibberish).
To prevent abuse of the button (though it's not a simple request button like the book request button so I don't see why people would abuse it) the forum could require several areas to be filled in, either the yes or no questions or the longer description of errors found- this might also be solved with requiring to be logged on to your Amazon account with a kindle registered to your account to fill out the form.
With people reporting these issues with books, hopefully publishers will work harder on putting out quality editions of their books. I don't know if it's that they don't care enough/see enough profit in the ebook editions because they make so little a percentage of sales or if it's pure incompetence on their part.
But with more people making noise and reporting problems like the ones I posted above, ebooks will hopefully be of a much greater quality than they are now, and a badly formatted book will be a rare occurrence instead of a semi-frequent one.
Maybe one day all books will have active table of contents and chapter marks for easy chapter jumping!
But for now, basic formatting issues are enough of a problem to deal with.
So please post if you support!