The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Wiggo]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

This is of Bavarian origin, called Wolpertinger. I once fooled my girlfriend with it in the museum.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolpertinger

[Hitch]

I'm reading the newest Cormoran Strike novel (Jo Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith), on Kindle and

OHMYFLIPPINGGOD!

(fear not, no plot spoilers)

The bloody eBook formatting is abysmal. I mean, horrible. Much of the book takes place in chatrooms, ICQs and the like. They could have taken myriad different paths to conveying this locales, text etc to the reader, but noooooooooooooo.

They're all imaged pages. It's a constant tap-zoom, pan-scan, try more panning, more scanning, try to read...it's a bloody nightmare. The pages were made oddly, too--the formatted that made it apparently thought that there was no need for any margin around the text, so when you zoom it, you can sometimes find the text cut off at either the left/right margin. You can't seem to solve it.

I'm at 23% and honestly...I'm not sure that I can face another 80% of this. There's no sensibility to it. The texts are TEENY and...man, this is truly awful.

I mean, there's likely no point in returning it to Amazon. Ain't nobody at 'Zon gonna tell her publisher, OR her, that this formatting is unacceptable, but I'm here to tell you, and yes, I think we can all agree that I know whereof I speak--if an Indy had done this, it would be Kindle-Quality-Noticed and tagged.

This has really ruined this book for me. Dammit.

Hitch

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I'm reading the newest Cormoran Strike novel (Jo Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith), on Kindle and


I'm at 23% and honestly...I'm not sure that I can face another 80% of this. There's no sensibility to it. The texts are TEENY and...man, this is truly awful.

I mean, there's likely no point in returning it to Amazon. Ain't nobody at 'Zon gonna tell her publisher, OR her, that this formatting is unacceptable, but I'm here to tell you, and yes, I think we can all agree that I know whereof I speak--if an Indy had done this, it would be Kindle-Quality-Noticed and tagged.

This has really ruined this book for me. Dammit.

Hitch

Others have returned it to Amazon with no problem.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Hitch

The bloody eBook formatting is abysmal. I mean, horrible. Much of the book takes place in chatrooms, ICQs and the like. They could have taken myriad different paths to conveying this locales, text etc to the reader, but noooooooooooooo.

My experience is that almost 1/2 of big publisher titles need the ebook formatting edited. I don't buy much small publisher & indy stuff, but not seen as much problems.
Really a decent formatted docx -> Calibre -> epub is better than the garbage being churned out using InDesign (really designed for paper publishing) and Vellum and a couple of others.

Then epub -> Amazon after it passes checks and maybe tweaks on image CSS width / height.

It's idiotic. One big mistake is doing paper version first and duplicating it. They need to do epub first and then "fancy up" a copy of source WP file for PDF export (drop caps, small caps, half spaces, more fonts taht work on paper and poor on eink, footnotes differently, white space, tables, front matter, rear matter.

There are two really stupid approaches to ebook format/conversion:
1: Copying a complex over pretty paper version.
2: Having a web page designer do it and pretend it's like a web page.

[ownedbycats]

If I'm understanding 'imaged pages' right, that also sounds inaccessible as hell.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I'm reading the newest Cormoran Strike novel (Jo Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith), on Kindle and

OHMYFLIPPINGGOD!

(fear not, no plot spoilers)

The bloody eBook formatting is abysmal. I mean, horrible. Much of the book takes place in chatrooms, ICQs and the like. They could have taken myriad different paths to conveying this locales, text etc to the reader, but noooooooooooooo.

They're all imaged pages. It's a constant tap-zoom, pan-scan, try more panning, more scanning, try to read...it's a bloody nightmare. The pages were made oddly, too--the formatted that made it apparently thought that there was no need for any margin around the text, so when you zoom it, you can sometimes find the text cut off at either the left/right margin. You can't seem to solve it.

I'm at 23% and honestly...I'm not sure that I can face another 80% of this. There's no sensibility to it. The texts are TEENY and...man, this is truly awful.

I mean, there's likely no point in returning it to Amazon. Ain't nobody at 'Zon gonna tell her publisher, OR her, that this formatting is unacceptable, but I'm here to tell you, and yes, I think we can all agree that I know whereof I speak--if an Indy had done this, it would be Kindle-Quality-Noticed and tagged.

This has really ruined this book for me. Dammit.

Hitch

I have the same eBook just in ePub. I've looked at the code and it's very interesting. Yes there are the text images as you said. But, there is actual text. The same text in these images. It's set to be hidden. So i could hide the images and display the text and read it that way. I'm not sure yet.

I would think the Kindle version has the same hidden text. But that would mean you'd need to download the KF8 version and edit it.

However, I do think the editor for this book should have said that it's not going to work well on a smallish screen unless the formatting for these chats was changed. I may leave the images as is and read it on my iPad.

My mother-in-law has this on her Kindle (6" screen) and I've yet to hear a complaint so I think she's not yet started reading it yet. What I might to is pull out my H2O and put the ePub on there (if she complains) and let her borrow my H2O. I will have to change swiping to tapping for page turn.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

If I'm understanding 'imaged pages' right, that also sounds inaccessible as hell.

Here is an example of one of the text images.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Others have returned it to Amazon with no problem.

You misunderstood my intent. Typically, when I return a book to Amazon, I sent them a laundry list of formatting or other issues, in detail and I've seen a lot of forward movement on those books being reproduced with the issues fixed. I envision no such outcome for this book, all things considered. I wasn't talking about getting my pre-order dollars back--I'm sure that they'd take it back.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Here is an example of one of the text images.

Attachment 196318

Yup, that's it. And it's not once every 50 pages or anything like that. It's bloody page after page after page. It's like...it's WORSE than reading an ePDF of it.

Hitch

[Hitch]

What's worse is, (sorry, still ranting), they could have done this another way, but somewhat better. Yes, I get it, she wanted these simultaneous private chats to read that way. (Honestly...it's a bit schizzy, from the reader's viewpoint.)

For those sets where she had two columns, as one alternative, she could have done tables, putting the IRC or whatever into the table cell. No great reason not to do that. Then the table would be zoomable and more importantly, all the text would normally resize, too. Not perfect for other reasons, but FAR FAR better than this.

This really is an abysmal job. I swear, if I knew the woman, I'd send her a letter and tell her to tell her publisher to FIX it. As I've mentioned--elsewhere, not this thread--I do this commercially, damned if I'm going to have to redo a 1K-page book so that I have the privilege of enjoying it!, so I'm NOT going to reformat it for myself. (It had to be done for Debbie Harry's last "book," so it CAN be done.)

AND, OTOH, do I want or need another 1K-page hardcover in the house? I most certainly do not.

<grumble>

Hitch

[Quoth]

It's stupid.

What? Debbie Harry has a book? The one that bleached her hair badly, wore a bin bag and is a great singer? I think I'll stick to her CD albums.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It's stupid.

What? Debbie Harry has a book? The one that bleached her hair badly, wore a bin bag and is a great singer? I think I'll stick to her CD albums.

It's Robert Galbraith (aka J. K. Rowling).

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's Robert Galbraith (aka J. K. Rowling).

Read the thread properly, or don't bother commenting. See Hitch's previous comment.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It's stupid.

What? Debbie Harry has a book? The one that bleached her hair badly, wore a bin bag and is a great singer? I think I'll stick to her CD albums.

Yes. Her publishing company created a landscape "memoir" book for her. And the formatters (cough cough cough) created it using, wait for it, Kindle Kids' Book Creator. The resulting eBook was unreadable. I mean, literally unreadable, it was being downloaded on eInks..it was a MESS. (In an hypothetical universe, your Humble Correspondent may have been called in to consult about fixing yon book.) The reviews were SO bad, so overwhelmingly bad, that, wait for it (Shades of the new LOTR thing), they removed all the bad "formatting" reviews. Whoo...

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's Robert Galbraith (aka J. K. Rowling).

Yes, so s/he is.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Read the thread properly, or don't bother commenting. See Hitch's previous comment.

:-)

Hitch

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's Robert Galbraith (aka J. K. Rowling).

I was referring to two different things:
1) The formatting and idea of the Rowling book. The K is as fake as Robert Galbraith. I have the 1st Galbraith book, but never read it yet. I enjoyed HP, but thought it was poor plotting & and dialogue tags. "Let's fill the plot hole with magic never yet mentioned".

2) I can't imagine Debbie Harry as a novel writer. But some unlikely people have written good books.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I enjoyed HP, but thought it was poor plotting & and dialogue tags. "Let's fill the plot hole with magic never yet mentioned".

You left out, “…and which contradicts established lore from an earlier book.”