eBook formatting - does a 'cheap' media excuse poor attention to detail -

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sujay Reading The Glass Guardian by Linda Gillard

09 Nov 2011, 01:01 PM | Post: #11

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RE: eBook formatting - does a 'cheap' media excuse poor attention to detail

There is nothing more annoying than trying to read an ebook and finding formatting errors. I often find there are way more in the more expensive books from big publishers than you find in self published Indie authors. Is it because they are closer to the book and therefore take more care of their baby as it were, or is it just a case of the larger publishers not caring what a book is like, they are just interested in the £ signs popping up?

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Lou Reading Ryria Series by Michael J Sullivan

09 Nov 2011, 01:50 PM | Post: #12

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RE: eBook formatting - does a 'cheap' media excuse poor attention to detail

Quote: It's taken me an hour just doing the first 20 pages in spell checker as the OCR has run loads of words together.

I think it's understandable for old books that they may have to be OCR'd, but what's the excuse for books where it was originated electronically to make the paperback version. Surely they can't be OCRing the paperbacks to make the eBooks?

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joo Reading Punchline by P.A. Fenton

09 Nov 2011, 02:56 PM | Post: #13

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RE: eBook formatting - does a 'cheap' media excuse poor attention to detail

No idea. I would hope they have some electronic version. The book I'm looking it was published in 1982.
If the book was originally published by a publisher then reverts back to the author, would they get electronic copies if they had given it to the publisher as typewritten notes?

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Lou Reading Ryria Series by Michael J Sullivan

09 Nov 2011, 03:01 PM | Post: #14

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RE: eBook formatting - does a 'cheap' media excuse poor attention to detail

I guess 1982 may be pushing the boundaries a bit, but surely anything written since the rise of DTP should have an electronic copy available.

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LexiRevellian Reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

09 Nov 2011, 03:31 PM | Post: #15

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RE: eBook formatting - does a 'cheap' media excuse poor attention to detail

I think one factor is that an indie quickly learns to get the formatting right in Word, so as to save problems later. No random spaces or tabs, using Headings etc..

I recently worked on a group book with some trad-published authors, and some of their formatting was dreadful. I couldn't resist tidying it up. I suppose they rely on publishing professionals to sort it out, and maybe this doesn't always happen with ebooks.

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Aislynn Archer

09 Nov 2011, 04:34 PM | Post: #16

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RE: eBook formatting - does a 'cheap' media excuse poor attention to detail

Having worked in publishing for quite some time, I can assure you that even though everyone here is obsessed in a lovely way over making sure formatting is right, that's not the case with all people. Some cannot wrap their heads around Word's indent feature. They have some kind of mental block or something. They make indents with tabs, and they even make indents with the spacebar. No part of their formatting is consistent. They don't know how many spaces should be between sentences. They confuse the tab key with the spacebar. They confuse a manual line break with a paragraph break. It's enough to make a publishing person pull her hair out (some days it's like there's a hair carpet around my office chair).

Not only that, even if the author follows, say, the Smashwords formatting guide, sometimes just uploading a nicely formatted Word document to Amazon results in random paragraphs with no indents, usually groups of short paragraphs (it could be just a Mac thing, I'm not sure).

The few formatting-challenged people who manage to realize there's HTML coding going on behind the scenes then start sticking their fingers into the code and really mess things up.

Then add the fact that different e-readers display/reflow documents differently.

It's a gong show. And it's way too easy to upload a file and press that publish button, even for people who are trying their hardest but don't have a clue what they're doing.

/PMS Wink

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Lou Reading Ryria Series by Michael J Sullivan

09 Nov 2011, 04:48 PM | Post: #17

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RE: eBook formatting - does a 'cheap' media excuse poor attention to detail

I can see how errors creep in, but what about quality control when we're talking about big publishing houses? They would never let a printed book go out with terrible formatting problems, so why do they feel that they can with a Kindle edition.

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Aislynn Archer

09 Nov 2011, 04:59 PM | Post: #18

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RE: eBook formatting - does a 'cheap' media excuse poor attention to detail

(09 Nov 2011 04:48 PM)Lou Wrote: I can see how errors creep in, but what about quality control when we're talking about big publishing houses? They would never let a printed book go out with terrible formatting problems, so why do they feel that they can with a Kindle edition.

Because they have a budget to meet for each book. Say you pay a proofreader $300 per print novel (never mind the content editor and the copy editor, who are more expensive). Most houses spring for an electronic round of proofreading and a hard-copy round, btw, so that $300 becomes $600. You then need to pay someone to convert the electronic MS to various e-book formats. But then you need to pay several more proofreaders, which puts you way over budget. The bean counters' panties are in a knot. The CEO is breathing down your neck. What to do? What to do? What to do? Oh, I know! Never mind about that final round of proofreading for each and every electronic format (gasp, $900 or more), just turn the e-books out into the world, close your eyes, and hope your company's track record with print books carries you through the mayhem your badly formatted e-books has created.

Apparently not /PMS. Whistle

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Lou Reading Ryria Series by Michael J Sullivan

09 Nov 2011, 05:02 PM | Post: #19

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RE: eBook formatting - does a 'cheap' media excuse poor attention to detail

That's starting to make a bit more sense now Smile

So has anybody actually complained to a publisher or Amazon about errors / formatting in a book they've purchased?

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Aislynn Archer

09 Nov 2011, 05:10 PM | Post: #20

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RE: eBook formatting - does a 'cheap' media excuse poor attention to detail

(09 Nov 2011 05:02 PM)Lou Wrote: That's starting to make a bit more sense now

So has anybody actually complained to a publisher or Amazon about errors / formatting in a book they've purchased?

That is a great idea. I haven't, but I'm going to start.

Who's with us?

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