The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Quoth

I thought doing IT training I had seen every level of stupidity possible, though some websites with blinking, iframes, scrolling text bad.

Then I discovered what real commercial publishers were putting in ebooks. I need brain bleach for some of it!

Yes, a lot of stupid, stupid choices there. Makes one wonder if any of those formatters have ever used an ebook at all. I suspect not.

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by svenlind

Not long ago I finished Sisterhood of Dune and liked it well enough to buy the successor Mentats of Dune from Amazon.
But it had no TOC, it was one large chapter.

Strange. Does your copy look like the image below? Don't remember if I purchased it that way or I edited it to add the chapter numbers and toc.

I read the entire Dune saga a couple of years ago. I created a reading order list for all the books. See first post here... https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=354716

[Sirtel]

This issue has cropped up in recent years with a lot of self-published authors; presumably they all use the same formatting program without changing the default options. Chapter headers have huge white spaces under them, usually 12-15 em, which can be more than 1/3 of the page. WHY is this necessary?

I always reduce those spaces to a more normal height with the calibre editor. But it's really annoying, especially in a book with lots of relatively short chapters.

I've attached an example.

[Renate]

And why is the chapter title serif?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Karellen

Strange. Does your copy look like the image below? Don't remember if I purchased it that way or I edited it to add the chapter numbers and toc.

I read the entire Dune saga a couple of years ago. I created a reading order list for all the books. See first post here... https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=354716

You did that. The original has a ToC with chapter numbers and part of the saying at each chapter. Each chapter has no chapter number.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Renate

And why is the chapter title serif?

Even more problematical i that the main text is sans-serif. I associate sans-serif like that to be a product of someone who has no clue about reading.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Even more problematical i that the main text is sans-serif. I associate sans-serif like that to be a product of someone who has no clue about reading.

I think that was not actually specified in the css. My calibre viewer is set to display sans-serif for body text; I find sans-serif easier to read on a computer screen. On my eink readers I use serif.

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You did that. The original has a ToC with chapter numbers and part of the saying at each chapter. Each chapter has no chapter number.

Yea, I did edit the book and reformatted to match the rest of the Dune saga in my collection.

I've just picked up my pbook Doloroes Claiborne by Stephen King. The entire novel is one chapter. Grrrr!!! hate it. Surely SK could have found where to add chapter breaks.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Karellen

Yea, I did edit the book and reformatted to match the rest of the Dune saga in my collection.

I've just picked up my pbook Doloroes Claiborne by Stephen King. The entire novel is one chapter. Grrrr!!! hate it. Surely SK could have found where to add chapter breaks.

The eBook is the same way.

There won't be any "Just one more chapter" or "When I finish the current chapter".

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Karellen

Yea, I did edit the book and reformatted to match the rest of the Dune saga in my collection.

I've just picked up my pbook Doloroes Claiborne by Stephen King. The entire novel is one chapter. Grrrr!!! hate it. Surely SK could have found where to add chapter breaks.

No scene breaks, not even larger blank gap?

I've never read any SK, (not my genre) but I had read that he's an accomplished writer.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

No scene breaks, not even larger blank gap?

I've never read any SK, (not my genre) but I had read that he's an accomplished writer.

Of the Stephen King books I have read, there are proper chapters. I've not read Dolores Claiborne. So I didn't know what it was like. I looked at an Overdrive sample.

[DrNefario]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

This issue has cropped up in recent years with a lot of self-published authors; presumably they all use the same formatting program without changing the default options. Chapter headers have huge white spaces under them, usually 12-15 em, which can be more than 1/3 of the page. WHY is this necessary?

I always reduce those spaces to a more normal height with the calibre editor. But it's really annoying, especially in a book with lots of relatively short chapters.

I've attached an example.

I wonder if this is a way to inflate the page count for KU payouts.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I've seen this too. I just create the TOC in Calibre myself in those cases. The Edit TOC feature makes this really easy.

I sometimes use the edit TOC feature. At a particular session it was able to autogenerate a usable TOC.

In this case each new chapter started wiit a small epigraph in a lesser font. So I would have to browse through the whole book to find the next chapter and then add it in the TOC editor. Simply too much trouble.
The more expensive edition with the TOC has 82 chapters with a number and a few more without a number.

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by Karellen

Strange. Does your copy look like the image below? Don't remember if I purchased it that way or I edited it to add the chapter numbers and toc.

I read the entire Dune saga a couple of years ago. I created a reading order list for all the books. See first post here... https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=354716

My copy looks like below

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by svenlind

I sometimes use the edit TOC feature. At a particular session it was able to autogenerate a usable TOC.

In this case each new chapter started wiit a small epigraph in a lesser font. So I would have to browse through the whole book to find the next chapter and then add it in the TOC editor. Simply too much trouble.
The more expensive edition with the TOC has 82 chapters with a number and a few more without a number.

If each chapter started in a separate file, then the generate from files feature would have worked. No need to browse through the book. You can see in the calibre editor whether the chapters have their own files.

If they don't, then it takes some more work, yes.

I've seen the missing TOC in other books with no other edition, so it's either create one myself or not read the book at all.