Frustrated with all the recent posts by Kindle-only authors

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But if we do start ignoring it, maybe it'll go away.

They won't go away; they're too useful for legal & business purposes.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Jon, you're making all these assumptions about what people will have on hand. Most people are not ebook followers, and they'll look preferentially at a PDF because they already have Adobe Reader and that's all they want. Just mention the other stuff and their eyes glaze over.

My free books are in something like 8 different formats. PDF is by far the most popular download. (Though .PRC is gaining.)

Agreed... why ignore the most popular document format out there? It's not as if it doesn't work at all... as long as the file is tagged for reflow, I find it works well on most any device with an Adobe reader (as opposed to a third-party PDF viewer).

Disclosure: Although my situation is exactly the opposite: Out of all my available formats, I never made a single sale in PDF (though there may be RTF purchasers who are resaving the e-book in PDF format).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Jon, you're making all these assumptions about what people will have on hand. Most people are not ebook followers, and they'll look preferentially at a PDF because they already have Adobe Reader and that's all they want. Just mention the other stuff and their eyes glaze over.

My free books are in something like 8 different formats. PDF is by far the most popular download. (Though .PRC is gaining.)

I would love to see a poll from just the people who have dedicated readers as to what format(s) are downloaded.

[PhishStyx]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

As to market leader, no way is it Amazon. Amazon is only 45%. Sony at 30%. And then there are all the others.

Say again? In a plurality of e-book sellers, Amazon is out in front with 45% of the market share, which means it isn't the market's leading e-book seller?

I'm not Amazon's hugest fan, but . . .MAN WHAT?!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by PhishStyx

Say again? In a plurality of e-book sellers, Amazon is out in front with 45% of the market share, which means it isn't the market's leading e-book seller?

I'm not Amazon's hugest fan, but . . .MAN WHAT?!

100% - 45% = 55%

There are more devices out there that can (or will) handle ePub then Kindles.

[PhishStyx]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

100% - 45% = 55%

Except that nobody HAS 55% of the market.

There are more devices out there that can (or will) handle ePub then Kindles.

The number of devices that support ePub does not directly relate to booksales, nor does it indicate a bookseller that supersedes Amazon as market leader. I know that you like that format more, but that isn't relevant either. By your measure, PDF is a FAR FAR higher selling e-book format (and yes, I know that you don't consider it a genuine e-book format, but neither the market nor I agree with you on that score. And no, I don't really care how you want to redefine the words to fit your little slice of reality) since it can be read on PC's, Macs, and many more devices than the Kindles and whatever reads ePub format combined.

OOOooo, PDF WINZXORS!!!

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I would love to see a poll from just the people who have dedicated readers as to what format(s) are downloaded.

I always download PDF if RTF isn't available, because I consider it the most stable & convertible format. Not in general, just for me--I'm very comfortable extracting content from PDFs & converting it, and I'm pretty much useless with HTML.

I prefer reading in ePub. Or, well, I prefer reading in PDF, after I've extracted the contents, shoved them in a Word doc, removed the page breaks, removed the headers & footers, changed the page size to match the Reader, change the font, the character spacing & the distance between paragraphs, fixed the styles on the chapter headers, set the metadata, re-converted to PDF, and checked the bookmarks. But that's generally too much effort to get Fontin & 3 pts between paragraphs, so I read ePub if it's available; I do the conversion if the original's only in PDF, and cropping the top & bottom and adding tags doesn't make it readable.

I agree that it's ridiculous to think of publishers' print-ready PDF layouts as ebooks-for-mobile-readers. And they're usually not particularly good on computer screens, either.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Disclosure: Although my situation is exactly the opposite: Out of all my available formats, I never made a single sale in PDF (though there may be RTF purchasers who are resaving the e-book in PDF format).

That's an interesting data point. I saw a percentage breakdown from manybooks.net at one point and their pattern was pretty close to mine. (Although one needs to be careful in counting PDF downloads. You can't just go by "hits," because someone opening a PDF in a browser window may generate 20 hits from a single viewing. I had to search for some analysis software that corrected for unique visitors, to the extent that's possible.)

I wonder if your audience is more in the dedicated ebook enthusiasts population, who would be more likely to prefer other formats, and in fact be more savvy about other formats.

[krischik]

Originally Posted by Ea

What about Europe? Remember that not all European countries are members of the EU.

Indeed - eBooks are the thing in east Europe. My wive was reading Pfd eBooks on here PC before me. And one of the eBook device manufactures come form Ukraine.

Martin

[krischik]

Originally Posted by PhishStyx

Say again? In a plurality of e-book sellers, Amazon is out in front with 45% of the USA market share, which means it isn't the market's leading e-book seller?

There fixed that for you.

Martin

[DawnFalcon]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Don't neglect PDF. It's still the most popular download format, for all the grief we give it.

Or you could just offer HTML and save dozens of hours fighting acrobat. Lots more platforms can read HTML files than PDF. (Sure, you want to offer RTF as well, but...)

[PhishStyx]

Originally Posted by krischik

There fixed that for you.

Martin

There, reported you.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

Or you could just offer HTML and save dozens of hours fighting acrobat. Lots more platforms can read HTML files than PDF. (Sure, you want to offer RTF as well, but...)

I'm just saying, if you want people to read your book, offer it in the formats that are convenient for them, not for you. Lots more people download my PDFs than my HTMLs. Besides, creating a PDF is simple, once you have the source file in shape. Tagged PDF can be a little trickier, but Open Office (free) will make a tagged PDF that works for the majority of users.

Even at that, I offer both regular and tagged PDF (for reflow), and more people download the regular than the tagged.

Which says to me that most downloaders are not yet using dedicated reading devices.

[DawnFalcon]

And that PDF will screw up on an awful lot of readers, IME. If you're making PDF, and don't bother to make it properly, then it's going to put an awful lot more people off when the formatting goes badly wrong when their recently-updated reader shows one like per page, or whatever. (Let alone the devices, like my old, second-hand and now dead WinCE device which never handed non-Adobe PDF's well). I'll agree that this will lessen as a problem over time since PDF is now a fully open standard, but the effect remains for the moment since many devices and their readers were designed and produced before that.

And it says.. let's see, you're showing them as "PDF2". That's totally unclear, and you're relying on pop-up tags to explain what that actually means in the first place, given there is no "PDF2" format, and those pop-up tags won't display on many browsers (especially PDA ones!) in the first place. No wonder more people download the "untagged" one.

And your HTML is effectively unformatted... a common screwup, and I'm going to point at Baen doing the right thing here.

[HistoryWes]

I can certainly understand how you feel. As an author though, I would point out a few things.

- It is really hard to write a book.

- Once written, it's hard to get a book published.

- Self publishing a book limits your choices, and those choices you do have (Smashwords etc.) all have their own problems. You also have to expend quite a bit of time researching those options-- time that could be spent writing.

- Once published, it's really hard to get anyone to read your book even if it's free, let alone pay for it and read it. (I would rather they read my book than pay for it, but both would be nice.)

I certainly understand your frustration, and I realize as an author that when someone reads your book, they are doing you a favor and not the other way around, but try not to be too hard on writers who are just dipping their toes in the publishing world for the first time.

And you might also support those self-published authors who do put out a book in a format you prefer. For a while, my own book "Princess of Amathar" was available in ebook form only for the Kindle (it was available as a printed book), simply because I had never heard of Smashwords or any other ebook publisher besides Amazon. And I must say that when I finally got it published in .epub .lrf and .pdf, it's not as though it took off like a rocket.

By the way, there are only three days left to get "Princess of Amathar" free at Smashwords. Use coupon code RE32Y.