future-proof Fictionwise multiformat choice ?

[bkilian]

Originally Posted by ahi

(3) they want to stick it to the pretentious jackass that's acting like they can see some mysterious aesthetic difference between one set of bunch of letters on a page and another set of bunch of letters on another page.

I spent three years dealing with people who swore blind they could tell the difference between losslessly compressed audio and uncompressed audio, despite us proving scientifically that the output was identical. Their magical abilities mysteriously went away in double-blind tests, but they always blamed that on the equipment.

So I'm used to dealing with the pompous 0.1% of the population that cares about something so much they're willing to see and hear things that aren't really there.

In your case, I _do_ see a difference between good formatting and ebook formatting, and I do wish that they could do proper justification using hyphens because sometimes the spaces in a line of few words does bother me a little, but that's it. I generally don't notice it while actively reading, which is what really matters. I also read significantly faster using my ebook than I do with paper books so the poor formatting is obviously not affecting the readability that much.

I guarantee you that if we took a population sample and did a readability study using "typographically perfect" output compared to simple output, the results would be inconclusive.

[Ankh]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Certainly-if they see the cost. Customers don't, so they don't care.

Customer's don't see the cost? They most certainly do. Amazon's $10 books sell just fine, so the pressure to drop prices is passed to the publishers.

And said publishers can see what Baen is doing... Let me see, typesetting or profit margin?

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Ankh

Customer's don't see the cost? They most certainly do. Amazon's $10 books sell just fine, so the pressure to drop prices is passed to the publishers.

And said publishers can see what Baen is doing... Let me see, typesetting or profit margin?

The only way a customer can see the individual costs involved with a book is if he customer gets an itemized bill for each book. Since this does not happen, they do not see the cost.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Ankh

Customer's don't see the cost? They most certainly do. Amazon's $10 books sell just fine, so the pressure to drop prices is passed to the publishers.

And said publishers can see what Baen is doing... Let me see, typesetting or profit margin?

There

are

no

cost

considerations

in

producing

a

professionally

typeset

eBook

.

- Ahi

[DawnFalcon]

True, and the level of typesetting done by, say, Baen, is both professional and entirely sufficient for me.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ahi

There
are
no
cost
considerations
in
producing
a
professionally
typeset
eBook
.
- Ahi

There are if you're a publisher, because time costs money. There's also software costs, which are negligible per book if you're doing it professionally, but notable if you only want to make a handful of books. And training on that software takes more time, which costs money if you're hiring someone to do it.

There's no *physical* costs involved, like there are for printing. But taking the time and applying the skill to format a book correctly are costs, whether or not anyone gets paid in bankable currency.

[khalleron]

Originally Posted by ahi

There

are

no

cost

considerations

in

producing

a

professionally

typeset

eBook

.

- Ahi

If I needed proof that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, you just handed it to me on a silver platter.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

There are if you're a publisher, because time costs money. There's also software costs, which are negligible per book if you're doing it professionally, but notable if you only want to make a handful of books. And training on that software takes more time, which costs money if you're hiring someone to do it.

There's no *physical* costs involved, like there are for printing. But taking the time and applying the skill to format a book correctly are costs, whether or not anyone gets paid in bankable currency.

Actually most of the so called physical cost in printing are really set up and proofing costs. The run is pretty automated and paper it cheap. It costs less than a buck to print a book including binding it.

[Faenad]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Ahi,

You talk a great deal about the beautiful books that you've created. Why don't you upload some of them to the "Book Uploads" forum here as examples for the rest of us to look at and perhaps learn from?

I'm currently on page 350 of the Memoirs of Casanova, and I find Ahi's version significantly more readable than the other versions available here or on websites like feedbook.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54190
Btw Ahi, you should ask to have this post moved from the Workshop forum to the E-Book Uploads forum, to have it appear on MR ebook listing.

Also :
http://www.paxlibrorum.com/ebooks/

If I had a choice I would rather have all my ebooks looks like these.

I will not stop reading ebooks waiting for it though, as in my case the advantages of ebook already make them far superior to pbooks.

Also, a lot of progress was made these past years. I would definitively not accept today the crappy formatting that was common in ebook I was reading five years ago.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Actually most of the so called physical cost in printing are really set up and proofing costs. The run is pretty automated and paper it cheap. It costs less than a buck to print a book including binding it.

Paperback books; hardcovers are more, I believe. (But not much more, even with fancy dust jackets. $2-3? As much as $5, sometimes? Up to $10 for big textbooks with color pics, maybe? Probably not that much.)

However, the costs of pbooks don't end at printing. Packing, shipping, storage, and inventory tracking are all part of the physical costs that don't exist for ebooks. And each of those adds substantial layers (costs) between publisher and purchaser, which could be bypassed for ebooks. Even ebooks sold by a third-party store are skipping several steps that brick-and-mortar stores have to deal with; a bad winter flood will never wipe out half their stock.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Paperback books; hardcovers are more, I believe. (But not much more, even with fancy dust jackets. $2-3? As much as $5, sometimes? Up to $10 for big textbooks with color pics, maybe? Probably not that much.)

However, the costs of pbooks don't end at printing. Packing, shipping, storage, and inventory tracking are all part of the physical costs that don't exist for ebooks. And each of those adds substantial layers (costs) between publisher and purchaser, which could be bypassed for ebooks. Even ebooks sold by a third-party store are skipping several steps that brick-and-mortar stores have to deal with; a bad winter flood will never wipe out half their stock.

True enough, but eBooks also have costs. There is the machine they sit on, there is the conversion programs and costs upgrading and testing new versions, basically IT costs. There are DRM costs. Customer support problems with eBooks. Customer expectations want free upgrades as errors are found which adds costs. Multiple formats to support. Some publishers farm all this out and pay an outside service. They still have to track sales and do accounting for costs. And they believe every one of these sales cuts into the sale of a paper book.

Dale