Awful, just AWFUL formatting in ebooks

[Logseman]

As far as I remember, the only text processor endorsed by Smashwords is Microsoft Word. If you use another one, that's not Meat-Grinder's fault.

[Just4kix]

I found a good bit of advice on one of the Amazon Kindle threads. (This is my interpretation).

Before you upload to Kindle it would be best to check your formatting as Amazon converts it using HTML. If you are using Word go to Tools > Word options > Display > tick all the formatting tabs > advanced > tick the 'mark formatting inconsistencies'. Have a look at your manuscript. You might be surprised at what you find!

I had written my book many years ago and used tabs, so had to remove all the tabs and use the set paragraphs instead.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

It's one thing to criticize authors going through Smashwords... but books by professional authors, issued by major publishers, can be even worse. Especially when they are scanned in and OCR'd.

Every book I've recently bought from Barns & Noble come under the scan-and-OCR area, and without fail, they have had misspellings and formatting errors on at least every other page, far too numerous to catalog. I mean, we're talking about hundreds of spelling/formatting errors in one book. It's atrocious. My sloppiest uploaded text wouldn't contain so many errors. And these are in books that you'll pay $8-$10 for.

Simply put, there ought to be a law protecting consumers from such pathetic formatting, especially at the prices you pay for a book... if it was on paper, you wouldn't have to tolerate such bad formatting, you could show it to any store manager and they wouldn't think twice about refunding your money. But with ebooks, it's somehow okay.

One more thing that will drive consumers to pass on major publishers' works over indie authors who clearly put more work and care into their books.

[Steven Lake]

I like playing with Epub because I am in full control of the formatting (I build all my ebooks by hand and custom tweak each one until they're perfect), but the idea of cross converting them between formats bothers me. Especially for the reasons listed here, such as issues with breaks and the like.

[MrPLD]

I was looking at a book last night on the K3 that was formatted more how I really want, so today I think I'll be updating our ToL eBook and reloading onto Amazon etc.



Paul

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

I was looking at a book last night on the K3 that was formatted more how I really want, so today I think I'll be updating our ToL eBook and reloading onto Amazon etc.



Paul

Really? I thought your book was well formatted as it was....

[MrPLD]

DG,

Certainly as it is it's 'fine', I'm more thinking from a stylistic perspective, we're getting down to personal tastes. I was worried that the indent-for-paragraph (with no line break) would be too cluttered on the Kindle, however now that I've seen it in 'real life' it's actually quite nice.

I'll spin a copy with the new style and see how it looks - maybe get some people to compare. When you get the pBook version you'll be able to see how I really like it formatted (Quite excited for you to get it )

Paul

[desertgrandma]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

DG,

Certainly as it is it's 'fine', I'm more thinking from a stylistic perspective, we're getting down to personal tastes. I was worried that the indent-for-paragraph (with no line break) would be too cluttered on the Kindle, however now that I've seen it in 'real life' it's actually quite nice.

I'll spin a copy with the new style and see how it looks - maybe get some people to compare. When you get the pBook version you'll be able to see how I really like it formatted (Quite excited for you to get it )

Paul

me too, me too!!

[MrPLD]

Well, I stayed with the breaks between the paragraphs but I did go in and fix up the scene-breaks to be forced and visible. With that done I think there's really nothing more I need to do with ToL at this point.

Given that I've re-uploaded it to Amazon, will existing owners get notified about the update?


Paul.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by Tom Wood

I've just started setting up a project and I noticed that I was getting that space between paragraphs too. There was *nothing* in the code that was forcing it. So I set both the top and bottom margins for paragraphs to 0, and that fixed it. This is when viewing the output from the HTML on a PC, not sure if the spaces would carry thru to the Kindle, but it may be a source of that issue. People may not know how to fix it.

Point is, they should not have to....

I've come across only a few poorly formatted books, and these, without exception, have been ePubs. Of mobi books, I've not have one (as yet).

There must be a moral there somewhere ! ....

[MrPLD]

I agree, the end-user/consumer should not have to do anything to make the book readable on their device.

Here's a photo of the newly formatted ToL, all the scene breaks are now forced to show (unlike the pbook version where they're subjective).

Again, I was going to close up the inter paragraph spacing but Elita made the comment that on the Kindle she found it much easier/faster to read with the spacing in there.

Paul.

[Tom Wood]

I meant that the authors may not know how to fix their poor formatting, not the readers. I agree, readers should be able to just read a well formatted document. I'm in the midst of working through my own understanding of formatting, so I was commenting from the view of the author.

[MrPLD]

I'm just having a big rant at the moment on another thread here in the Writer's corner - seems that myself and SW are butting heads. I went to submit Elita's "Tree of Life" to Smashwords but they only accept .doc files... now it's starting to become abundantly clear how poorly formatted eBooks are appearing.

I'll probably come across in a very wrong way however this must be said - Microsoft Word is not an ideal platform for generating consistent quality work. Can you do it, yes; is it ideal, no. There's too many nuances and quirks within the ailing doc format which can hide issues that won't appear until after you've submitted it.

Paul.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by MrPLD

I'll probably come across in a very wrong way however this must be said - Microsoft Word is not an ideal platform for generating consistent quality work.

Trust us, you're not coming off in a wrong way at all. Many of us are well aware of Word's inconsistencies and hidden extraneous formatting codes, and what they can do to even the simplest files. Any system that uses Word docs as source material is asking for trouble, and usually generating a lot of useless drek in the process of creating that file.

I manually convert my Word files to clean HTML, and use that as a base for creating my other formats. Unfortunately, I have no such control over vendors, and sometimes the effort you go through to tweak the Word file for some services just isn't worth the trouble.

[jaxx6166]

PLD,

I read the first twelve pages of the book that prompted this thread. There really aren't any words for that other than lazy. Absolute and utter laziness.

Spellcheck is just a button press away. Hell, I think even the Word grammar editor would have helped. This really does look like a first draft just thrown up onto Smashwords from the author's original source file.

I about lost my mind when she wrote in the "About Me" page that she wants a traditional publishing deal through a major publisher with the work that she submitted to SW. There's a LOOONG way to go there.

There's no way I would have paid $4.99 for that. Even if it was free, I'd probably have passed. . . especially after reading the free excerpt.

ToL shows like you spent some time playing with the formatting. Thanks for the Kindle picture.

Has anyone here had any experience using an actual Microsoft Word document and running it through the meatgrinder? Are the results more of the ePub dreck or does it actually do a good job converting?