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Originally Posted by K-Thom
Sorry, it isn't. Each of the 800+ commercial eBooks I've created from manuscripts of authors and cooperating publishers needed a cleaning, fixing, converting, correcting. But even if they are "nice and tidy" files you still have formatting to do to get page breaks, chapters, sub-chapters, etc. right.
Next: if you want the job really to be done, never ever use PDF for converting. Never. You need a clean and well-structured HTML or XML, and that's what hardly any printing publisher has at hand.
So, "someone" (who has to be paid) has to convert the PDF into HTML and to format it correctly. This may actually take more time than running your RTF through Quark Xpress or InDesign to get your print-ready PDF.
Sure, if most publishers had some sense left, they would have kept a DOC or RTF and use that for converting. Sadly, most publishers don't, as can be easily witnessed ... and they let the readers pay today for their short-sightedness.
Heaven, I even had authors whose novels I had to scan, because they deleted their 300 KB(!) DOC file. "Took up too much space, and why keep it? It already got printed". Oh--my--goodness ...
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So, what you're basically saying is that there's a lot of waste resulting in extra cost, in terms of poor formatting. And we're expected to soak up the costs associated with their poor workflow? I don't think so.
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Even if it were true to some extent (which it isn't), it wouldn't answer what eBooks-only publishers and authors should charge. Surely you don't expect them to give away their product line for free?
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No, I don't. I expect them to charge cost + a reasonable margin for their work, just as I expect the big six to do. What the big six is in the process of doing is charging cost + an exorbitant margin, while simultaneously strongarming the retailers and the authors into terms more favorable to the publisher.