It makes me sad to see how USA sets (stupid) restrictions to freedom and has clout to enforce them around the world. Hundred years ago it was nudity in movies, now it's copyright - both can be taken to ridiculous lengths. What's so wrong letting others hear that I'm listening a catchy tune? It should be viewed as free advertising (or noise pollution
).
I saw in TV somebody remembering how they were shooting a bed-scene in 40-s: at least one foot had to be touching the floor at all times (with of course minimal skin exposure). Then around 90-s or so it seems like bed-scenes are mandatory - every self-respecting movie wants to have 5 minutes of naked arms and backs and legs. Now there's topless girls in commercials and nobody bats an eye.
I
hope that things around copyright get more sensible, but realize the slim chance of it actually happening. So I confess: if I consider a law stupid and against common sense, I
will break it. If I have paid for the book, it's
mine. Forever. For my grandchildren. They may prefer newer version with moving pictures and sound effects (or holograms) and can buy it, but they should be able to convert and read my text-only copy too.
I usually read mobi, bookmark the problems I find and then correct them in epub. Sometimes I find the formatting so irritating that I have to correct and convert before reading, but then mostly I don't look farther than first chapter and css. Delete text alignement & font-color & font-size, top & bottom margin:0, add indent for paragraphs; delete background color. Most unacceptable for me is when I can't change the font size in my Palm - it could mean no reading. Any fine tuning can be done after reading when I don't have to worry about spoilers.
Lately I hit on the idea to add more cover pictures, for example in case of omnibus, at the beginning of every book the cover of the first edition and in the end some other nice cover/artwork (I won't share it).
Some time ago I contacted Baen about errors in their book. Reply was something along the lines that 'we try to keep it as it was in the paper book'. Puh-lease! Space yarn is not the Gutenberg Bible where you look at the typo and imagine how the man had a sleepless night. There is no excuse for errors in the ebook, especially typos. I don't want to believe that thousands have read a book and not a single one brings mistakes to publisher's attention. Maybe people just don't complain enough.
Another example from Baen - mobi has no scenebreaks (and yes, it could be confusing), epub has <p class="calibre4"> </p>. I found out the hard way that Mobi Creator/Reader ignores this, so I suspect they just tossed decent-looking epub into Reader. I don't know if I'm right, but so far I have an impression that only sure thing for empty space to work in mobi is <br />. Now I have <p class="calibre4"><br /></p> in epub, in book view there was no change.
The books I've downloaded from PG are rather nice, have just to remove spacing from paragraphs and add indent.
I really loved Katsunami's idea of offering improved ePub to the publisher. And it is morally right to upload it for the whole wide world if publisher is not interested in improving their stock. People like that
should be driven out of business.
At least with living authors it's possible to complain to them
and the publisher.