Quality of kindle ebooks

[richrock]

Just wondering if amazon's ebooks are well-formatted, clear of typo's, etc. If not, are they updated? I recall them removing books, so is there the opposite where books can be updated/revised?

[Bikeridr]

The ones I have are good.
I also received an email once that one of the books I had bought was sub-quality, so Amazon requested me to confirm whether or not I wanted the upgrade. This I had to take "own" action by answering the email with "yes" and then turn on Wi-Fi on the Kindle. This procedure was necessary as all notes and bookmarks would disappear when the book was upgraded. (Essensially the old book removed and a new book pushloaded to the Kindle).

[NVash]

Ive bought a few but just finished reading my first. I saw many formatting errors and for some reason the Kindle does not like showing covers. However it shows them when I use the app on my phone. I have no idea whats up with that.

[montalex]

All of the books I have purchased from Amazon have been fine, with one exception, and when I brought it to Amazon's attention, they credited me for the book. It must be pointed out that Amazon has nothing to do with the formatting in ebooks that they sell. It is the job of the publishes to submit decently formatted books to Amazon.

Don't blame the messenger....

[ProfCrash]

I have found a few dudes, almost all of Tom Clancy's, but the vast majority are in very good shape. Amazon has emailed me about 5 or so books that have been reissued to fix typos that others found and I have ahppily replied "yes" to the emails and received the revised version.

[physics]

I think it really depends on the type of books you're looking for. I'm mostly interested in physics and math books, and the formatting on those is atrocious. Equations are butchered- subscripts and superscripts are hit-and-miss, Greek letters are often confused (nu vs. English v, eta vs. English n, psi vs. phi).

After several conversations with Amazon, I can shed some light as to what happens with typos. When I see a book with so many typos that it's pretty worthless, I send an email to the kindle feedback email address that clearly lists the mistakes, along with approximate line numbers. That list gets forwarded to the publisher, who can then decide whether or not to remove the book and "fix" it. The "fix" is in quotation marks because I've had them remove about a dozen books, and none of them have ever reappeared. Most publishers are actually pretty good at removing the books, except imprints of Elsevier.

However, the downside is that because Amazon doesn't make the ebooks themselves, they don't fix them, so you're at the mercy of the publishers. So if you say, hey, the phi at line 45 should be a psi, you're not going to get a fixed version. At best the book will disappear from Amazon's website. I imagine that if you've purchased it you'll get a refund. (I've always sent lists based on the free previews.) At worst, the publisher says, eh, it's not such a big deal and leaves it.

As for books without equations, I've heard that they're much better, but haven't really gotten that many myself. Hope that helps!

[ProfCrash]

Amazon is good about refunding your money for the ebook if you call and complain about the typos. I know of folks who have had done this more then once. Amazon passes the complaints on to the Publisher and more then one book has been pulled for a short period of time and returned cleaned up.

[jocampo]

I bought mainly T-SQL and programming books, so typos are worse on those type of ebooks, but I have not found major issues so far. But like someone else said, typos are usually publisher's fault and if you check the book's reviews, most of the time people complain about it, on their reviews; you can use that as a red flag before putting your hand on your pocket!

[susan_cassidy]

It varies wildly, sometimes within the same book series. Some are fine, others have obviously not been proofed after conversion. I try and highlight the bad stuff (then immediately delete the highlight), and use "My Clippings" to send feedback when I get around to it. I've had a couple that I wanted a refund on, and a bunch of others that were annoying, but not enough to give up the book entirely.

If people don't complain (with specifics - I've found that makes a big difference), publishers will not fix the problems or prevent future ones.

[richrock]

Excellent to get such speedy and insightful comments - I seem to understand that I can report an ebook (I know Amazon is the middleman here) and that I would have to authorise a new version. Am I correct? If so, I'm very happy about that.

I don't own a Kindle yet, but seriously looking. Been using it on my android phone, excellent software. Bought a couple of cheapy novels, and also converted some of my epubs into mobi through calibre, works really fine. It has it's advantages, disadvantages, and I think they're mostly subjective. To me, I'm getting really sold on one. Mull it for a couple more days before taking the plunge, though.

[ProfCrash]

Yes you would have to authorize a new version and you can return books with problems that bother you. It is nice that they ask.

Pretty much any of the major e-readers are going to work well for a person. The differences are really based on what each individual wants.

[Histerius]

I don't own a Kindle yet

Hey man, don't think for too long! I've been looking around for weeks and bought Kindle and that's one of the best investments in electronics in my life

[chamekke]

Originally Posted by physics

When I see a book with so many typos that it's pretty worthless, I send an email to the kindle feedback email address that clearly lists the mistakes, along with approximate line numbers. That list gets forwarded to the publisher, who can then decide whether or not to remove the book and "fix" it. The "fix" is in quotation marks because I've had them remove about a dozen books, and none of them have ever reappeared. Most publishers are actually pretty good at removing the books, except imprints of Elsevier.

However, the downside is that because Amazon doesn't make the ebooks themselves, they don't fix them, so you're at the mercy of the publishers. So if you say, hey, the phi at line 45 should be a psi, you're not going to get a fixed version. At best the book will disappear from Amazon's website.

This answers a question I've had (sort of), but also presents me with a dilemma.

There's a non-fiction ebook on Japanese tea ceremony of which I recently downloaded a sample. The book itself looks well worth reading, but every time a special character occurs - such as the macron over the 'o' in Chado, which is found everywhere because Chado means tea ceremony in Japanese - it appears in a hugely bloated type size. This is enormously distracting, to say the least, and makes even a serious enthusiast like me very reluctant to buy the book.

Now, I know it's possible to render vowels with macrons accurately in MOBI files, because I've seen them. That the text looks this awful is really rather disgraceful.

I've wanted to write to someone (Amazon? Kindle Support? the author?) to alert them, since I'm sure this must inhibit their already-limited ebook sales. However, if the choice is between the book being available in less-than-attractive format vs. not at all... well, let's just say that there are almost no books on Chado in the ebook universe at all. I'm not sure I want to be responsible for killing one of them!

Advice?

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by chamekke

I've wanted to write to someone (Amazon? Kindle Support? the author?) to alert them, since I'm sure this must inhibit their already-limited ebook sales. However, if the choice is between the book being available in less-than-attractive format vs. not at all... well, let's just say that there are almost no books on Chado in the ebook universe at all.

Privately contact the publisher, pointing out that you would very much like to buy the book, but find reading it distracting because of this easily-fixed issue which you think may be putting other potential buyers off?

That way the publisher gets a chance to fix things on their own initiative and a polite reason to do so without being confronted by an Amazon-relayed complaint that might cause them to yank the book from sale in the meantime.

Or there's always the DIY option of buying and fixing it yourself (often highly frustrating, I can tell you from experience, although you should have a pretty easy search/replace if they've just substituted a gif file throughout for ō).

[pidgeon92]

Some books are formatted better than others. I just finished reading the Kate Atkinson series, and the first and third books were formatted just fine, the second book had hyphens all over the place in the middle of a line, on almost every page. Like:

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