Poor quality of ebooks

[HarryT]

One could well argue that an index is redundant in an eBook. One uses the "Search" facility of one's reader in its place.

[Joykins]

I just bought a few books recently that appear to have been originally published through Smashwords. These books have *random font shifts*--like a page with each paragraph in an entirely different font or different size font for no reason. It's so frustrating I stopped reading those books. I suspect this is a side-effect of Meatgrinder or something, but it bothers me more than bad pdf reflow.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by HarryT

One could well argue that an index is redundant in an eBook. One uses the "Search" facility of one's reader in its place.

That only works if the referenced passages contain the exact same words/phrasing as the indexed item, which is not always the case, especially when it comes to stuff in biographies like, say:

World War I 69, 70, 74, 105
* Andrews as a spy during, 71-76, 208

to give an example from a palaeontological biography book I have right next to me.

Nowhere on page 208 does the word "spy" appear, though the passage is about his reports submitted to the US War Department gathered re: Mongolia's economy, transportation, military capability, etc. And the longer passage from pg 71-76 seem to mostly call them "intelligence missions", and avoid the actual use of the word "spying", as far as I can tell from a quick skim.

So if you don't already know exactly what terms you're looking for, search may turn out to be less than helpful when turning up results you know should be there.

And common words can really give a lot of extraneous results.

[raac]

Yes, to a degree the index is redundant in e-books but for the reasons outlined by ATDrake it is still useful. A good index is like a curated search: it should point you to the places in the book where the term in question is most relevant. Sometimes an index will break down a term by context. Using the search function can be pretty slow in a large book. Finally, if the publisher is going to include an index in an e-book then it *should work*. I don't think I'd have so bothered by a missing index, but a broken index is just taking the mickey.

[HappyMartin]

Just finished Reamde by Neal Stephenson. Enjoyed it but was surprised at the number of errors in the book.

Surely with an author of his stature and the price asked for this ebook we should be getting better quality. No excuse for this.

[AnnaJMcIntyre]

Originally Posted by Joykins

I just bought a few books recently that appear to have been originally published through Smashwords. These books have *random font shifts*--like a page with each paragraph in an entirely different font or different size font for no reason. It's so frustrating I stopped reading those books. I suspect this is a side-effect of Meatgrinder or something, but it bothers me more than bad pdf reflow.

I publish at Smashwords, and the meatgrinder puts out a number of different formats. So far the RTF is always screwy. While most of the files look fine, and the epub looks alright on the iPad, if I open a RTF file, it caps chunks of the text, along with other annoying formatting issues.

Over at Amazon, I publish non-illustrated ebooks. A few of my ebooks have photos and illustrations - those I do at Smashwords. Amazon hates my photos and illustrations.

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

That only works if the referenced passages contain the exact same words/phrasing as the indexed item, which is not always the case, especially when it comes to stuff in biographies like, say:

World War I 69, 70, 74, 105
* Andrews as a spy during, 71-76, 208

to give an example from a palaeontological biography book I have right next to me.

Nowhere on page 208 does the word "spy" appear, though the passage is about his reports submitted to the US War Department gathered re: Mongolia's economy, transportation, military capability, etc. And the longer passage from pg 71-76 seem to mostly call them "intelligence missions", and avoid the actual use of the word "spying", as far as I can tell from a quick skim.

So if you don't already know exactly what terms you're looking for, search may turn out to be less than helpful when turning up results you know should be there.

And common words can really give a lot of extraneous results.

Yes. Part of the function of an index is to apply a controlled vocabulary to concepts that may be phrased a number of various ways, and provide pointers from other vocabulary to the controlled vocabulary (Cars see Motor vehicles). Another function would be to filter for relevancy. The proper format for an ebook index target location is location/page links, (a second choice would be page numbers that correspond to the ebook page/location and could be navigated to using the e-reader) and it should be omitted from the e-book if it doesn't have either of these because without them it is not useful.

And yes, I did edit an index (not to one book, but many sources; and yes, both in print and electronic) for many years, so I have some experience here.

[crich70]

I bought one ebook that turned out not to have a working TOC which was inconvenient as it is a reference book (on writing Steampunk fiction) but they had a glaring error in chapter headings too. It went chapter 8, chapter 9, chapter 8, chapter 11. lol. Someone got mixed up and mis-numbered one of the chapters.

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

??? Missing links would be a pain, sure, but you don't really expect page numbers in an ebook's index do you?

Why not? Especially if it's an ADE book which keeps an internal page count. Not ideal (ideal would be dynamic page count displays based on current screen size and font settings), but would be better than nothing.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

Why not? Especially if it's an ADE book which keeps an internal page count. Not ideal (ideal would be dynamic page count displays based on current screen size and font settings), but would be better than nothing.

No, ideal would be hyperlinks. Why on Earth should you have to look through the book to find a page referred to, when a hyperlink will take you straight there?

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No, ideal would be hyperlinks. Why on Earth should you have to look through the book to find a page referred to, when a hyperlink will take you straight there?

Hyperlinks would be assumed - just like you assume hyperlinks in the inline ToC or for footnotes. Didn't figure I needed to specifically mention them.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

Hyperlinks would be assumed - just like you assume hyperlinks in the inline ToC or for footnotes. Didn't figure I needed to specifically mention them.

Thank you for clarifying that, but I'm curious as to what purpose you feel page numbers would play in an eBook, when you say that you'd ideally still like to have them?

[NickyWithNook]

I only had one library e-book that had some formatting issues. The rest have been of great quality.

[HappyMartin]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Thank you for clarifying that, but I'm curious as to what purpose you feel page numbers would play in an eBook, when you say that you'd ideally still like to have them?

I have some books on cycling training that were released years ago as pbooks and only recently as ebooks. In them I frequently get instructions to view a table on page something or other or additional material on another quoted page. At that moment I discovered a use for pages in ebooks. Prior to this I didn't much care for page numbers

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by HappyMartin

I have some books on cycling training that were released years ago as pbooks and only recently as ebooks. In them I frequently get instructions to view a table on page something or other or additional material on another quoted page. At that moment I discovered a use for pages in ebooks. Prior to this I didn't much care for page numbers

But that's just an example of a cheapskate ebook conversion, Martin. Those references should have been converted to hyperlinks.