Next chapter in the saga of poor ebook formatting

Amazon gives 7 days (or something similar) to return ebooks. I have zero compunction returning an egregiously poorly formatted book, and marking it as a quality issue.

One of the most annoying things about ebooks is that there is no standard (de facto or otherwise) that publishers follow. If you pick up a print novel, odds are that there are no spaces between paragraphs, and that paragraphs are indented. You'll see whitespace, or some decoration (asterisks, etc) separating scene breaks. What about an ebook? Who knows? Depends on the publisher's whims.

I really wish there were standard CSS classes that denoted various things, like: paragraph to start a section, normal paragraph, scene break, etc. Then we could have our ereaders tailored to what we like.

Until then, I use Calibre to fix things that are fixable easily, and I return things that are not.

One book I got was entirely typeset in bold. Who does that?

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Joques

DiapDealer, yes it's those chapters. Let me see how it is with my version (untouched original):

I Talins: All italic
II Westport: None italic
III Spiani: Starts italic, shifts to non-italic right after "Monza took down ..."
IV Visserine: All non-italic _except_ for the last portion of the 3rd sentence! Weird.
V Puranti: First sentence is italic, the rest is non-italic. It could have worked, but the very first capital letter of that italicized sentenced was _non_-italic for some reason.
VI Ospria: All italics, expect for, again, the very first letter.
VII Talins: Same as VI.

I guess if these chapters are fine and consistent in your versions of the book, then the publisher probably cleaned them up at some point. Which is fine. I realize the standard of formatting is getting better, like Katsunami says.

This is exactly the same in my version as well.

I think this is easily fixable though, should I want to. (But agreed, I shouldn't have to.)

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Joques

I guess if these chapters are fine and consistent in your versions of the book, then the publisher probably cleaned them up at some point. Which is fine. I realize the standard of formatting is getting better, like Katsunami says.

You must've missed where I said my copy was purchased at the time the ebook was originally published. It's not a later copy. It's the original mobi sold by Amazon at the time. I never downloaded a newer copy.

The sections you pointed out were all consistently italicized in my mobi purchased on Feb 2, 2010. The exception being the first letter of each of those sections which is a rather large raised capital.

The errors must have been limited to retail epubs. *shrug*

[Joques]

Evidently.

[JSWolf]

The ePub version I have of Best Served Cold is a second eBook edition dated July 2012. It does not have big gaps between paragraphs.

Originally Posted by Joques

DiapDealer, yes it's those chapters. Let me see how it is with my version (untouched original):

I Talins: All italic
II Westport: None italic
III Spiani: Starts italic, shifts to non-italic right after "Monza took down ..."
IV Visserine: All non-italic _except_ for the last portion of the 3rd sentence! Weird.
V Puranti: First sentence is italic, the rest is non-italic. It could have worked, but the very first capital letter of that italicized sentenced was _non_-italic for some reason.
VI Ospria: All italics, expect for, again, the very first letter.
VII Talins: Same as VI.

I guess if these chapters are fine and consistent in your versions of the book, then the publisher probably cleaned them up at some point. Which is fine. I realize the standard of formatting is getting better, like Katsunami says.

I've checked and the version I have is good in terms of the italics. My guess is this was all fixed in the second edition.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

You must've missed where I said my copy was purchased at the time the ebook was originally published. It's not a later copy. It's the original mobi sold by Amazon at the time. I never downloaded a newer copy.

The sections you pointed out were all consistently italicized in my mobi purchased on Feb 2, 2010. The exception being the first letter of each of those sections which is a rather large raised capital.

The errors must have been limited to retail epubs. *shrug*

Well, I have the Kindle version (amazon.com) and re-downloaded it today to check it and I have the italic problems. So not limited to epubs.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, I have the Kindle version (amazon.com) and re-downloaded it today to check it and I have the italic problems. So not limited to epubs.

What are you viewing it with? So far as I can tell, there is no KF8/AZW3 version on Amazon. I went and re-downloaded it (for sideloading) for an older Kindle (incapable of KF8) and a newer one (KF8 capable) and wound up with the same plain-jane mobi both times--which is identical to the 2010 file I have in my calibre library. There is no update available for that book on amazon.com

When viewing that newly downloaded mobi in calibre, or with the Kindle Desktop software, or on a Kindle Fire HD, I see none of the italics problems that have been described. I don't know what else to say.

I Talins:
II Westport:
III Spiani:
IV Visserine:
V Puranti:
VI Ospria:
VII Talins:

All 100% in italics except for the first letter in each one (which is a bold, oversized, raised cap).

[mgbino]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

What are you viewing it with? So far as I can tell, there is no KF8/AZW3 version on Amazon. I went and re-downloaded it (for sideloading) for an older Kindle (incapable of KF8) and a newer one (KF8 capable) and wound up with the same plain-jane mobi both times--which is identical to the 2010 file I have in my calibre library. There is no update available for that book on amazon.com

When viewing that newly downloaded mobi in calibre, or with the Kindle Desktop software, or on a Kindle Fire HD, I see none of the italics problems that have been described. I don't know what else to say.



All 100% in italics except for the first letter in each one (which is a bold, oversized, raised cap).

Are we sure everyone has the same e-book. The US edition is different than the UK one.

If you were wondering, The version of BSC in the collected edition has everything italicized correctly.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by mgbino

Are we sure everyone has the same e-book. The US edition is different than the UK one.

Bought using a US Amazon account from the US store, for my part. Published by Orbit (Hachette). I believe it was published the year before (2009) in the UK by Gollancz. Perhaps that IS the difference (with the Amazon version anyway).

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

What are you viewing it with? So far as I can tell, there is no KF8/AZW3 version on Amazon.

I am using my Kindle Voyage and looking at the third example chapter were the italic suddenly stops in the middle of a sentence.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by tompe

I am using my Kindle Voyage and looking at the third example chapter were the italic suddenly stops in the middle of a sentence.

Just checked with Kindle on Android. And in the III Sipani chapter the italic stops after "took down". The same error as on the Kindle Voyage.

[murg]

Originally Posted by Joques

The scene breaks are simply inserted line breaks like this: <div> <br/></div> instead of having the padding properly defined in the corresponding css class. So that's why they were too big.

Scene breaks should not be handled in CSS.

Scene breaks are content, not formatting.

For eReaders (which means epubs) scene breaks should be something other than a space, either asterisks or a line or something. A space scene break will completely disappear if it is displayed at the top or bottom of the screen.

This is why physical books use * * * if the scene break is at the top of bottom of a physical page.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Bought using a US Amazon account from the US store, for my part. Published by Orbit (Hachette). I believe it was published the year before (2009) in the UK by Gollancz. Perhaps that IS the difference (with the Amazon version anyway).

I am also buying it from amazon.com since I am not allowed to buy from UK Amazon. But my edition is Orion, Gollancz. I am very surprised by that. I thought when I bought books from amazon.com that I would get the same edition as people in the US.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by tompe

I am also buying it from amazon.com since I am not allowed to buy from UK Amazon. But my edition is Orion, Gollancz. I am very surprised by that. I thought when I bought books from amazon.com that I would get the same edition as people in the US.

No, you wouldn't. If the book has an european edition, you would get that one.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by tompe

I am also buying it from amazon.com since I am not allowed to buy from UK Amazon. But my edition is Orion, Gollancz. I am very surprised by that. I thought when I bought books from amazon.com that I would get the same edition as people in the US.

Mystery solved then. The original UK Amazon edition was (and continues to be) messed up. Since the italicizing issues match up with first edition retail epubs, they were probably all created from that original UK source. Most epub versions were subsequently updated, but the UK Amazon versions were never updated. US Amazon mobis never had the issues.