Amazon CS and formatting question

[Solicitous]

Hi All,

I contacted Amazon today using the link at the bottom of the page of an ebook which had poor formatting and described the issue, stating the differences between it and other ebooks in the series which are formatted fine (essentially the left hand margin was excessive and no coverart).

IF Amazon do look at this and fix the formatting issues, how would I know it has been done? Do Amazon update the published date? Would I just need to check back every so often and re-download the sample? BTW this was based on the sample, not the purchased ebook, if it was the purchased ebook Amazon notify you do they not saying there is an updated release?? Heaven forbid do they fix the ebook and reply to your email saying it has been fixed?? (far fetched maybe but the stories of Amazon CS going out of their way to help you, it wouldn't surprise me at all).

[TheKindleWorm]

I suspect Amazon contact the publisher of the said book and let them know. It is the publishers responsibility to ensure the formatting of the book, not Amazon. Amazon just supply a platform for selling books - they don't make them themselves.

Hopefully someone else can let you know how you would be aware of an update. I suspect it would be too much work for Amazon to contact you personally but perhaps the date changes or something - I don't know.

[whitearrow]

If the formatting issues are impacting readability, you should request a refund. Otherwise, all that will happen is that Amazon will send the information to the publisher. Whether a fix happens is up to them, unfortunately. As for being notified, it's not likely, though it has happened a few times in the past.

[TomF]

Would you mind posting the name of the book and the publisher? I ran into this same problem with a book published by Penguin which was obviously a bad scan job with no additional editing. I told Amazon about the problems and asked for a got a refund. I contacted Penguin and got back a canned response that in no way indicated that they would be doing anything about it.

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by TomF

Would you mind posting the name of the book and the publisher? I ran into this same problem with a book published by Penguin which was obviously a bad scan job with no additional editing. I told Amazon about the problems and asked for a got a refund. I contacted Penguin and got back a canned response that in no way indicated that they would be doing anything about it.

Well I havent actually purchased the ebooks in the series as the sample formatting is not right.

The ebooks are all of the Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series, except two books, Deadhouse Gates and Dust of Dreams. It looks like from my perspective is the initial pages has a character list which has a left and right hand margin indent, which is fine, but come to the actual chapter and the right margin is reset, the left remains indented. Essentially it is making the page look long and narrow. They got it right with 2 of the ebooks, just not the other 7 (cover issue not being considered here).

All of the ebooks have a generic Random House cover (published by Transworld Digital) and not the one advertised on the Kindle page (not a big issue but obviously shows little/no revision of the final ebook). I am in Australia so the version I am allowed to buy has a different publisher to the US. I don't think the books were scanned, just poorly formatted.

Am I being picky? Well some will say yes, but I say no. If I am paying the same for the ebook as I can buy the paperback for, I'd at least like the ebook to look like the formatting in the paperback. I might flick an email to the publisher. The epub version sample (from borders.com.au) shows the same lack of proper cover issue, I would imagine the same formatting problem.

[Cardos]

I've purchased both Gardens of the Moon, and Deadhouse Gates from the Amazon UK store. I don't have any issues with indentation, but there are some annoying issues with typo's that appear to be bad scanning.

Often with italicised text, the word 'I' usually appears as a 1, and there is an issue with a couple of names, Toc is often spelt Toe, and Coll often appears as Coil.

Annoying at first but I got used to it and made the substitution in my head without thinking.

P.S. I don't think you're being picky, those sort of errors wouldn't be acceptable in a paper book.

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by TheKindleWorm

Hopefully someone else can let you know how you would be aware of an update. I suspect it would be too much work for Amazon to contact you personally but perhaps the date changes or something - I don't know.

I've been refunded in the past for a horribly formatted book. I asked, and Amazon did notify me when a corrected version was placed in the store. I don't know how common that might be.

[DiapDealer]

I ran into a similar problem with an atrociously formatted ebook and had no trouble getting a refund--which I promptly used to buy the print version... the book was fantastic but I couldn't continue reading it on the Kindle. It was that bad. I've seen no indication that Tor Books is interested in fixing it.

See for yourself: The book in question is The Last Page by Anthony Huso. You can see what it's supposed to look like by using Amazon's "Look Inside" feature and viewing page 9. Compare that to Locations 90-105 of the Free Sample.

[whitearrow]

Originally Posted by Cardos

Often with italicised text, the word 'I' usually appears as a 1, and there is an issue with a couple of names, Toc is often spelt Toe, and Coll often appears as Coil.

Yup, those are scanning/OCR/lack of proofreading issues.

IMO, we aren't going to get better quality unless we demand it, from both Amazon and the publishers.