The Vent and Rant Thread

[badgoodDeb]

I've been thinking Peter Dinklage .....

[kindlekitten]

Too short. Right attitude though!

[badgoodDeb]

Only too short by 4". Miles is billed as 4'9"* and internet says Dinklage is 4'5". That seems close enough to me!

*Did I say I'd just read 8 or 9 of the books in the last 3 weeks?

[Freeshadow]

Who'd be Cordelia?

[badgoodDeb]

Sgt Taura might be the real problem .....

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Sgt Taura might be the real problem .....

CGI can do marvellous things.

[phenomshel]

After reading the last three pages of this, I'm laughing too hard to either vent or rant!

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

Sgt Taura might be the real problem .....

When they can manage that furry xmen smurf they surely could a beautiful Taura.

[Rumpelteazer]

Despite wearing an anti-blister patch on a lnown sensitive spot I still got a blister on my foot today. Time to get out the sportstape to prevent further damage.

[covingtoncat73]

I am definitely sick and I think the Dr. misdiagnosed me when I went in yesterday. He didn't even take my temperature. I didn't feel particularly feverish, that is true, but I had and have a bad sore throat.

I always feel so guilty on the rare occasions when I have to call out. At least I can read today.

[phenomshel]

Ok, now I have something to vent about. I hate drama. Especially when it's not MY drama. Don't bring it to me, I don't want it!

[covingtoncat73]

Great. We have both a Brony convention and a possible ebola ship in town. I'm not sure which is scarier.

[kindlekitten]

Aaaaaaaa!!!!!! Take pictures! Lots! That has to be one of the weirder obsessions of late

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

Great. We have both a Brony convention and a possible ebola ship in town. I'm not sure which is scarier.

Some years ago I went to a DragonCon that was held at the same time as a large Salvation Army conference.....

[Hitch]

So, I have spent the best part of the last week + (last week and this) with a book that was a whopping couple-hunnerd bucks. I mean, riding herd on it, herding kittens, etc. It was from a scan, not very long, non-fiction, AWFUL, AWFUL images...just not a lovely job. But, we managed to do it, did REMARKABLE clean-up work on the nature images, and the like.

First email, after I send the ePUB + MOBI: full of comments about 'conversion errors" like "footnote not on the SAME PAGE with the superscript [sigh] and that type of item. Also says that the images used in the ePUB are "far superior" to those in mobi. "The page numbering is messed up" (ADE). This missive ends with..." It would be helpful to both of us if we had confidence in the page numbers." Grrrr.

So, I reply, and explain "no page numbers in ebooks, it's ADE, etc." And I further explain (which, BTW, we do THREE TIMES before we ever ship a book, about ADE's auto-page-numbering) that the numbers are created on the fly by ADE, etc.

Next email (still NOT on the Proof forms I send out, mind you), it's a few typos he made, plus, the footnote, AGAIN, plus a note that "I'd be happier if the map and the header were on their own page, so the map could be larger," (map is constrained by the width of the device, mind you). Continues on to tell me that he's unhappy with how small the cover appears (Kindle Previewer), which is Amazon's doing, not ours. Then tells us that the font is too light. {sigh}

More replying from me, replete with screenshots.

Next email: he apologizes for "causing me so much trouble, "but goes on to say "I'm not happy. I'm increasingly sorry I got into it at all." Then he says,

"If the print in Kindle is no better than what I have now, I wouldn't consider the book salable. It is just way too light. The best I can hope for is that it looks better when it is actually downloaded to Amazon."

Now, mind you: he's just said that we've given him an UNSALEABLE book. (And wait: on this topic, there's more).

Next up: 2 more emails about how the font is just UNUSABLE, and the book is UNSELLABLE. I take screenshots, I send them; he says that the ADE font is okay, but the Kindle font is simply "impossible."

The font? it's CAECILIA, the Kindle's DEFAULT FONT. We have NOT embedded, tweaked, called, NADA, a font. It's AMAZON's damn font.

I send a last email on this topic, because now I'm steamed, saying "look: this is probably the most-expensively-researched font IN THE WORLD. Amazon spent god knows what on the readability of it; it's on MILLIONS of Kindle devices, and trust me, it's FINE." (More screenshots, to boot).

Then I get THIS (and if you guys don't think I nearly stroked out, with steam coming out of my ears, at this point)...

Thank you for your evaluation and the representative fonts. I accept your explanation. To top it off, my wife has a kindle. She cycled through the available fonts on her device in a book from her library. They were all quite readable.

(Underline emphasis added).

ALL. THIS. TIME. ALL THIS TIME, he's had a damn Kindle, to-hand, and he never picks it UP? He never LOOKS at it? To see what the fonts look like, on HER device? This is all about how it looks on Previewer? And he can't think to PICK UP THE DEVICE that is probably less than 10 feet away from him?

And, the real capper:

He sends me this doozy, after I've explained, for the nth time, about Amazon and the embedded book covers, and sizes:

I hope you won't mind one final observation before final approval.

I previously submitted the Word manuscript to Kindle. The instructions for submitting Word files included the following: "Please do not include a cover in your file, as we will automatically embed your product image as the cover of the book." The "product image" was a .jpeg of the cover. The cover now shown on Kindle is correct. It is a full page image.

(More underline emphasis added by yours truly).

At this point, I literally had to get up and walk out of my office, because I was afraid of what I'd say. He's deduced that the cover he uploaded--not AS A COVER, mind you, but as a regular image (so the default is 100% of the screen, for non-cover images), in a Word file, at the KDP, is superior to what we're doing for him. That his simple experiment proved to him that somehow, we're not doing OUR jobs right. I epxlained, ONE.MORE.TIME. about how pixels=pixels and the cover he uploaded would display at ACTUAL SIZE on the K screens, depending on which one it was (which was promptly ignored. This was now my 4th explanation of the topic).

And, by the way, it didn't end there. He had more "helpful hints" on how I could do my job better, throughout, to the tune of how to "fix" the SRL, why the SRL suddenly didn't work (just like I told him it wouldn't) after he uploaded it; how the cover was, SURPRISE!, suddenly NOT full screen when he uploaded it...

51 emails. 51 total emails, in-and-out, over this $225.00 book. FIFTY-ONE. Which, of course, is gross. And that does not, by the way, cover the 10 emails I had from him BEFORE he ever signed on the dotted line, or how I had to dl his materials from the scanning house, or....

And people wonder why bookmakers are dropping out of business like rats on a sinking tub....

Hitch