Publishing practices that drive me crazy

[geek1011]

The thing which bothers me most is when the EPUB Package Document is a mess. I care a lot about metadata quality. When there are multiple authors, the roles and ordering should be set correctly. Series information does not belong in the book title. The unique identifier should be meaningful. The publishing date should be set to the publishing date, not the e-book creation date. Recent books have no reason to be EPUB 2s. There should be one content file per chapter, and there should almost always be a TOC entry for each spine entry (e.g. don't stuff multiple chapters into a content file, and don't have a separate content file for the section/chapter header). And these are just some of the more common issues I've noticed.

[ownedbycats]

How about the fake 'stickers' on covers saying "BESTSELLING AUTHOR!!!" or "NOW A MOVIE!!!!"? To be fair, I don't see this quite as much on the eBooks as on physical copies, but it's still frustrating when you're trying to find a nice high-res cover.

Also, when a book gets adapted for a movie or tv show or whatever and the cover now shows pictures from the adaptation. Most times I just prefer the original covers.

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Also, when a book gets adapted for a movie or tv show or whatever and the cover now shows pictures from the adaptation. Most times I just prefer the original covers.

That one is kind of irritating as well as when they switch the cover style for a series halfway through. Although, a few movie cover adaptations are good, especially when they do it in a more abstract rather (e.g. the Game of Thrones and the Hunger Games ones) rather than just taking scenes from the movie. The biggest turn-off for me is having people on the cover for a book not centered around that person's story (i.e. pretty much any science fiction or fantasy book), especially if they're real.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by DyckBook

Well here's another editing faux-pas that drives me crazy. Adding 's to the end of a word that already ends in s. For example Collins's book should be Collins' book. At what point am I no longer just correcting minor editing missteps for legibility and peace of mind; and am now trying to hold back a tidal wave of global ignorance?

Sometimes it’s “s’” and sometimes it’s “s’s”. There are rules how it works and also some exceptions.

[Quoth]

Whose

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Weren't alphabets all capitals all the time back then?

Sumerians didn't have an Alphabet. Only one Cuneiform script used an alphabet. About 12th C. BC. The Hebrew, Phoenician, Greeks, Etruscans, ProtoCelts (Keltoi) and Romans had related alphabets from a single semitic source and no concept of UPPER and lower case lettering.

Norse and other Runes as well as Ogham are later alphabets than Roman.

The Drop Caps etc came in after the invention of minuscule or insular alphabets, certainly before the Tenth Century and probably after the Fifth Century.

Alphabetic Cuneiform.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugaritic
Cuneiform of the Akkadian era much easier to write than read because a glyph might be a word or sound or idea in Sumerian, Akkadian or the Goddess Language because Akkad absorbed Sumerian Culture after conquering them and it survived in some places. But Sumerian isn't Semitic and Akkadian is a Semitic Language. Imagine Latin and Chinese using the same ideograms. Sometimes on the same tablet!

[JSWolf]

DiapDealer, can you find me some novels (in print) where the formatting is no indent, paragraph space, sans-serif font, and right justify?Or some combination there of?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

My two questions are:

1. Why would any publisher/author think this enhances a book in any way?

2. Does any book reader actually find all capital letters in the first several words (or more) of a chapter pleasing?

Another thing that's a bother is when they use smallcaps in the first sentence of the opening paragraph and they get the size wrong.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by geek1011

The thing which bothers me most is when the EPUB Package Document is a mess. I care a lot about metadata quality. When there are multiple authors, the roles and ordering should be set correctly. Series information does not belong in the book title. The unique identifier should be meaningful. The publishing date should be set to the publishing date, not the e-book creation date. Recent books have no reason to be EPUB 2s. There should be one content file per chapter, and there should almost always be a TOC entry for each spine entry (e.g. don't stuff multiple chapters into a content file, and don't have a separate content file for the section/chapter header). And these are just some of the more common issues I've noticed.

I find when they put "a novel" in as part of the title that really is annoying. I'm not stupid and I know I'm reading a novel.

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I find when they put "a novel" in as part of the title that really is annoying. I'm not stupid and I know I'm reading a novel.

Very true

P.S. The entire post title is the title field...

[Frenzie]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

DiapDealer, can you find me some novels (in print) where the formatting is no indent, paragraph space, sans-serif font, and right justify?Or some combination there of?

While I agree with you (i.e., the vast majority of books use indentation, etc.), it's not that hard to find a counter-example.

On the left-hand page you see a new paragraph (no indentation), on the right-hand side you see a new section.

That's in a June 1957 copy of Ich bin das Schwert, ich bin die Flamme, a Heinrich Heine prose anthology.

The second picture is sans-serif, from the 2006 novel L'élégance du hérison by Muriel Barbery.

Of course these are exceptions. I'm not sure why there is an argument here.

[John F]

Maybe not directly relevant, but I was updating metadata in Calibre, and the details said something like "This special edition comes with a beautiful leather bound cover"

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

DiapDealer, can you find me some novels (in print) where the formatting is no indent, paragraph space, sans-serif font, and right justify?Or some combination there of?

I don't know my serif from a hole-in-the-ground (armchair font-experts being another thing spawned by ebooks I don't care for), but as for the rest, I literally grabbed books at random from shelves that no longer exist and books that were sent to Goodwill (cue the "a likely story" posts ). But it's not that hard. Grab a few books from any decent-sized collection that's not limited to one genre and/or one decade and you'll find them. There's a thread here at Mobileread where I actually did the experiment, but I've been unsuccessful searching for it.

[Sarmat89]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

DiapDealer, can you find me some novels (in print) where the formatting is no indent, paragraph space, sans-serif font, and right justify?

No indent is common in German books.
Sans-serif is also commonly used, either Futura-like, or a special font for children's books.

[Quoth]

It may depend on country. I've about 3,000 paper books, mostly UK publishers, some Irish and USA houses. It's hard to find fiction / novels not using:

Serif
Paragraph is always and only an indent. Maybe a very small number of books for very small children here have paragraph spacing.
Extra paragraph space is more common than * * * etc for a scene break.

But it's definitely not an absolute thing. I do have maybe 50+ pre 1914 books (actual print years, not reprints) and they all use the common scheme.

Reference books, technical books, text books and manuals vary a lot more in formatting. I don't remember ever reading fiction with sans-serif. It's in a very few non-fiction.

We have every Genre and decade of printing from about 1905 to today.

[DiapDealer]

Same conversation, different year.