Why publishers format ebooks differently than paper books?

[latepaul]

Originally Posted by tompe

Very often you want to read a specific title and it is not interchangeable with another title. So not reading a book is very often not a choice for me.

It's still a choice. Your strong desire to read that particular book versus whatever formatting issues (re: your preferences) it has will be factors in the decision that may sway you strongly one way but it's still a choice.

[Dngrsone]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Now, maybe that's just me being cranky; but in my old and jaded opinion, books should be bloody finished BEFORE the publisher--traditional, self- or whatever--pushes "save and publish."

I say amen to that.

I understand that one can never catch and fix every error, regardless of the number of proofreaders you pass it by (at least, in part, because one can't satisfy everybody); but as I said before, if I spot two or three glaring errors within the first ten pages of a book, I'm seriously reconsidering my reasons for reading it.

I'm not some literary purist or anything-- I read YA and pulps, even-- but I do have some standards. One of those is have an understanding of the language in which you are writing (and that goes double for translators) and its grammatical structure.

If you are going to violate the rules in the name of art, then do so in a way to allows the reader to understand that you are doing so on purpose and you're not a hack.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

I say amen to that.

I understand that one can never catch and fix every error, regardless of the number of proofreaders you pass it by (at least, in part, because one can't satisfy everybody); but as I said before, if I spot two or three glaring errors within the first ten pages of a book, I'm seriously reconsidering my reasons for reading it.

I'm not some literary purist or anything-- I read YA and pulps, even-- but I do have some standards. One of those is have an understanding of the language in which you are writing (and that goes double for translators) and its grammatical structure.

If you are going to violate the rules in the name of art, then do so in a way to allows the reader to understand that you are doing so on purpose and you're not a hack.

As a writer, it's my belief that you can break any rule you want so long as you do it on purpose.

Breaking rules for effect can be very powerful, breaking rules because you didn't take the time to learn them in the first place can be disastrous.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by GeorgeH

VictoriaP, I well remember typewriter classes way back when (who could forget the home keys!). I'd forgotten about the double space at the start of a new sentence though

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I still do the double space after a period. Does that make me really old?

I was taught typing with the same rule (two spaces between sentences). My understanding is that is still the rule...when using a monospace typeface like Courier. The reason is to better visually separate the sentences, something that is not needed when using a proportional typeface like Times New Roman.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by latepaul

It's still a choice. Your strong desire to read that particular book versus whatever formatting issues (re: your preferences) it has will be factors in the decision that may sway you strongly one way but it's still a choice.

Of course I meant that reading book A or book B is not a choice for me. Of course it is always a choice to read a book or not.

And I assume the paper book is always readable so I would buy that version if the ebook was unreadable.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by tompe

Very often you want to read a specific title and it is not interchangeable with another title. So not reading a book is very often not a choice for me.

Unless it is 'Required Reading' by your instructor/employer, there is always a choice.

[Hitch]

All:

I've also come to realize, due to a different thread on a different sub-forum, that what I see, from inside the book, so to speak, affects how I view the layout issue.

I realized that most of you "see" this as, the author types a bunch of crap in Word, saves it as TNR or Calibri, maybe uses a tab here or there to format it. Upload it, or clean HTML and upload it, and they're done. So what? Who cares if you change the margins or add this or that?

But that's not how professional formatting houses do it. We don't just take a file, run it through Calibre, and bob's-yer-uncle. I or one of my crew may spend hours looking for "just the right font" for something in an ebook. We may spend time on line spacing, for something. We may spend time figuring out whether incipits work better for a book over a drop-cap, or a Raised Element, due to the font used, if a font is used. We may spend two hours looking over an ePUB on 5 different devices, to see if an embedded font for a letter or a newspaper article looks okay if the user changes the font to Trebuchet on an iPad versus Arial on something else. We may try 3 different variants of top-margin for a type of element (say, a series of text-messages), so that it doesn't waste screen space, but is instantly apparent to the reader that this element is removed from the regular narrative flow.

Not to mention, the hours that can be expended to ensure that the fallback coding for an element that works beautifully in KF8 works adequately in KF7. So that readers with older devices aren't...scorned, or given something substandard, just because they don't feel that they need an HD device.

The client may have given us a fleuron to use, that we test in various readers, because it's huge in one and small in another. Maybe it's too egregiously florid. Maybe it's not visible. Maybe the font that the client has her heart SET on (Garamond, anyone?) is too light a font to use for an ebook. Or maybe another (Papyrus!) not only is grossly overused, but literally does not work on a MOBI made with KindleGen, not once the book is on sale. So some poor slob (ahem) spends hours looking for a substitute that the client will accept--and that purists won't get pissy about.

Making an ebook can certainly be fast. It can be easy. Making it professionally, as a "real" formatter, isn't usually either. And real time, and real THOUGHT, and real effort, is invested in trying to make ebooks look beautiful, as well as functional, by pros. This isn't some pity party, and I'm not saying "oh, woe is me," but understand that while it's true that many diphoots out there upload crap, and more outsource the scan/ocr/making and upload crap, there are SOME formatting houses, and publishers, and authors, who really do make an effort to ensure that what they put out is lovely to the eye, and functional.

Done now. Not trying to sway your opinions as to the fungibility of ebooks; that's an important part of using them. But it occurred to me that for those who haven't made them, or have only "mooshed" them to make them work in certain sizes and shapes, or seen the type of vanilla, made-from-Word stuff you see at SW, knowing that there are a few idiots out here who really do have Bringhurst on their desks, and really do worry about things like ligatures, fleurons, incipits, etc., might lend some understanding to why I view "changing" an ebook the way I do. Not trying to remove anyone's prerogative; but the "artistic vision" of an author and publisher, vis-a-vis layout, can be very real (and very time-consuming).

That's all. No rant. Just...just explaining.

Hitch

[Fbone]

I prefer my ebooks to look exactly like the print version. Maps, charts, graphics, fonts, indents, spacing, etc. I want them all in the ebook. For me it adds character and atmosphere to the reading. Also, it tells me that the publisher cares about the quality of their ebooks and doesn't consider them an inferior product.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by theducks

Unless it is 'Required Reading' by your instructor/employer, there is always a choice.

And you can quit your employment. So there is always a choice with that criteria.

[Prestidigitweeze]

I tried to scan the posts in this thread to make sure this isn't redundant; apologies if it is.

To the person who complained of missing hyphens in an ebook:

If the dropped hyphen issue has nothing to do with OCR, then the culprit might be non-breaking hyphens in a Word doc that were pasted as raw text or converted in a way that doesn't retain that special character.

To those who find that dropped hyphens are an issue in self-publishing:

Before you convert a Word document to plain text and restyle it -- or copy text from another document and paste it into Word using the Paste Special command -- it's best to search for all non-breaking hyphens and replace them with hard hyphens. I try to do that with problematic characters generally.

Certain Open Office plugins have fun options for retaining quirky formatting in Word, but I try never to use them. What they retain in elaborate book design transposition, they lose in doc. integrity. If a manuscript in Word isn't created with consistent and minimal styles throughout, then I try to recreate the desirable aspects of its design in Sigil by starting with a stripped-down version of the text as opposed to simply saving the original doc. in html and opening it.

[Dngrsone]

What's a hard breaking hyphen? Is that like an m-dash?

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

What's a hard breaking hyphen? Is that like an m-dash?

I think a hard hyphen is one that you insert yourself and is treated like a normal character in a word. The software doesn't consider it a normal hyphen and the word won't break at there when hyphenating. It's similar to a hard space which is used to keep words together that should not be separated by a line break.

[Prestidigitweeze]

A hard or non-breaking hyphen is a special character that is used chiefly to avoid breaking lines at the hyphen, typically after a two or three-word prefix (such as non-breaking!). It looks exactly like a normal hyphen in print but behaves differently in a layout.

Solitaire1's description of it as a hyphen that functions like a single letter within a word typographically is quite apt.