E-book Sales Are Exploding And Hurting Paperbacks, Publishers Say

[CazMar]

One thing book publishers will have to address is the very poor formatting of a lot of ebooks. I really find it unbelievable that a free book from this site (or many of the other sites with out of copyright books) can be beautifully formatted, yet something I have paid a premium price for is an utter mess. Do they use the 17 year old junior office assistant to convert their books? I am about to write a very scathing letter to one publisher - and I will now start demanding my money back if the book I spend money on doesn't meet a minimum standard.
What will happen is that some of the smaller publishers will start turning out well made products and the big firms will actually find their sales have dropped away. And the authors will follow the firms who present their products well.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by CazMar

One thing book publishers will have to address is the very poor formatting of a lot of ebooks. I really find it unbelievable that a free book from this site (or many of the other sites with out of copyright books) can be beautifully formatted, yet something I have paid a premium price for is an utter mess.

This is true. I have looked into Betty White's "If You Ask Me (And of Course You Won't)" book. The free Kindle sample started thus:

One time I remember hearing someone ask my friend George Burne, of (sic) he had read a certain book, current at the time.

George said, “I can’t read a book cuz I’m writing one.” We all laughed—George could make anything sound funny—but he use (sic) absolutely right.

Whatever else you may be involved in, writing a book take (sic) precedence.

There is that inexorable due date staring you in the face. By my sixth book you’d think I would know better, get (sic) once again I was thrilled when they asked me to do another one.


Four mistakes in six sentences? Sorry, nothing I'm going to put up with for 12.99. Does it get better? Who knows, I stopped reading then & there.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by CazMar

One thing book publishers will have to address is the very poor formatting of a lot of ebooks. I really find it unbelievable that a free book from this site (or many of the other sites with out of copyright books) can be beautifully formatted, yet something I have paid a premium price for is an utter mess.

Fan-made digital products will always be higher quality than professional ones. Fans don't need to account for the time they spend on them.

[jkeene]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

...

Four mistakes in six sentences? Sorry, nothing I'm going to put up with for 12.99. Does it get better? Who knows, I stopped reading then & there.

Definitely a major factor in my purchases as well. I can see numerous well formatted, error free news stories and blog posts in a day, but when a sample chapter of a book shows a complete failure of English grammar I remove it from consideration immediately.

People that can write and edit are out there, why some publishers fail to hire them is odd.

[jbcohen]

Does anyone find any particular publisher to have particualrly bad formatting? I am reading king Solomon's Mines and the formating could be better but at the cost of $0 I am not complaining. I read Dourado by David Wood and the formating was perfect, so I am a bit dubious of publishing companies that can not seem to format their books properly.

[JCarig]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Printed books cut into the sales of hand-written books, too. And codices really munged up the sales of scrolls. Technology happens.

LOL - But very true...still can't get my hands on a hand-written Gutenberg Bible

[crich70]

I'm assuming you're joking since the Gutenberg Bible was never hand written. He printed up some 200 copies as I understand and only 48 of them are still known to exist. Usually in museum collections and under environmentally controlled conditions to help preserve them as he didn't know of acid free paper.

Originally Posted by JCarig

LOL - But very true...still can't get my hands on a hand-written Gutenberg Bible

[CazMar]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Fan-made digital products will always be higher quality than professional ones. Fans don't need to account for the time they spend on them.

Sure - and if I downloaded Sting's latest album would I hear muffled sound reproduction, the studio crew chatting in the background and a high frequency hum in parts? Not now and not ever. And Sting would probably sue any music company that put out his work on such a shoddy product. The same goes for most TV drama, movies and anything else. Does the book publishing industry think it can try to sell rubbish when junk mail from my local supermarket is better proof read and designed?

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by CazMar

Sure - and if I downloaded Sting's latest album would I hear muffled sound reproduction, the studio crew chatting in the background and a high frequency hum in parts?

If you were a real Sting fan you would pay a lot of money for something like that. I was thinking more of ebooks, but digitised vinyl records would also be included. The fan-made ones are often of a much higher quality than the professionally-made ones. The same goes for digital comics from what little I have seen of the pro ones.

[wayrad]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

I thought of that, but both titles of the mystery graph have "book buyers" in them.

The second "title" is actually the y-axis label. They sometimes do it that way in business graphs, although I haven't seen it since the mid -80's. (I have vivid memories of struggling with Harvard Graphics about its reluctance to follow scientific rather than business conventions in graphing.)

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by wayrad

The second "title" is actually the y-axis label. They sometimes do it that way in business graphs, although I haven't seen it since the mid -80's. (I have vivid memories of struggling with Harvard Graphics about its reluctance to follow scientific rather than business conventions in graphing.)

Thanks! I learned something new today.

[basschick]

being as they'll be more technologically advanced, they'll find the classics at gutenberg. they'll also get free ebooks from amazon, baen, smashwords, etc.

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Is it really? In the short term, perhaps, but how will new generations of readers be introduced to new authors and genres if garage sales and used-bookstore bargain basement deals disappear, too? I know I have found more than one author that way whose books I continue to buy. And I know I'm not the only one. Sure, there are always libraries, but still...

[mldavis2]

Originally Posted by rogue_librarian

Four mistakes in six sentences? Sorry, nothing I'm going to put up with for 12.99. Does it get better? Who knows, I stopped reading then & there.

Gee. You paid for it and refuse to read it because of errors? Are the errors more important than content? No argument, just asking.

IMHO, there is NO excuse for poor editing. If an author sends a proof to an editor, they pay big money for those services. If an author writes so poorly that they can't spell in context, they don't deserve to be published. If an author self-publishes and fails to proof-read their own work, they don't deserve to be read. And if a publishing company uses such brain-dead context-deficient automated software that it misses obvious uses of common words and/or changes them without editor intervention, it deserves to be boycotted. Yes, typos exist. Do these authors not give a copy to a friend (at least) to read for comment before publishing?

So the question is, where do the errors occur -- author, software, editor/proof-reader? Formatting is usually simple enough -- my computer does that within its array of browsers and word processors. Project Gutenberg (via Distributed Proofreaders) has 3 levels of proof-reading, 2 levels of formatting and a final proof by experienced volunteer editors. Are sloppy eBooks yet another 'clever' effort to convince readers to buy the 'real thing' in paper and pay for editing?

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I agree that ebook sales are going to change the way publishers do business, but I think it is a mistake to bank your whole premise on the idea that all of these ebook customers would have bought the paper book otherwise. We have seen enough anecdotal stories from people on this forum to indicate that this is not always true. They will lose *some* sales. They will gain other sales from former library and used book store users who never bought from them in the first place.

I forget the name for it, but there a word for those logic statements that don't really follow. You know, like 'candy is pink, girls like candy, therefore girls like pink.' The whole 'ebook sales are rising, paper sales are falling, therefore if we stop the ebook sales, all those people will buy the paper instead' argument strikes me as being on that level.

I actually have bought a ton more books and have been reading a lot more since I got my Kindle three years ago. I have never been one to really love going into the bookstore and shop. I hate shopping in general. Book shopping was more palatable but still was not fun for me. So I had pretty much stopped reading, mainly because I was too lazy to go to the book store or the library.

Once I got my Kindle that changed. I have bought close to 300 books and have been reading about 30 books a year. A good number of those 300 books are books I had already read and wanted to have on my Kindle and my In Laws love giving me Amazon gift certificates for Christmas and my Birthday.

[cfrizz]

My paperback buying days ended YEARS ago because I ran out of space. My paperback reading days ended a year & 5 months ago when I got my Sony. If publishers think that I'm going to go back to paper if they do a sloppy job of putting out ebooks they are delusional. I will simply boycott their books for others.

Actually it just might mean for some people, that they will pirate them instead. Why spend hard earned money & reward them for a shoddy product.

The publishers are slowly but surely slitting their own throats. The smaller publishers are doing a far better job at quality assurance then the agency 6, if they keep it up they will end up with the business that used to belong to the agency 6.