5 ms·

Not a single sympathizer with the OP? Kindle books have truly terrible formatting and editing in general. Some are riddled with what look like OCR errors; in

Not a single sympathizer with the OP? Kindle books have truly terrible formatting and editing in general. Some are riddled with what look like OCR errors; in others, blockquotes and italicized regions start and end in the wrong places. Images are in awkward places. Sometimes just paging left and then paging right causes the page boundary to move. The main reason, I've heard, is that even if the Kindle format and reader app are reasonable (and I can't vouch for them), it's on publishers to put their books in the right format. They have no idea how to do this, so they outsource it. Some publishers probably don't care about or dislike the Kindle platform. I find it really, really sad and bizarre to read books with so many errors. Maybe you haven't come across a really bad one yet, but since it varies by publisher (and I'm talking about big, mainstream publishers), just wait, you will.

k3n 14y ago
I don't do any e-reading, or else I might be more sympathetic. I'm all for high-tech, and do lots and lots of reading online, but....I like my books the old-fashioned way.
kzrdude 14y ago
You should refund those books.
jpdoctor 14y ago
> Some publishers probably don't care about or dislike the Kindle platform. This is the real source of the problem. Publishers have every reason to suspect that Amazon will eat their profits and would be stupid to help Amazon accomplish its goal.
- greenyoda 14y ago
  Except that a badly-formatted Kindle book reflects more poorly on the publisher than it does on Amazon, since Amazon doesn't create the content. If a publisher really doesn't want to encourage the e-book industry, isn't it much easier for them to not publish an e-book at all?
illuminate 14y ago
Your complaints are entirely targeting Publishers, not Kindle formatting. If the publisher doesn't give a fig about ebooks, their PDFs will also come out with misspellings.
- CountSessine 14y ago
  The difference is that PDF is usually a part of their publishing workflow for the print edition - the original PDF has to be correct.
leephillips 14y ago
"Not a single sympathizer with the OP?" I'll bite. I could have written this, and have said similar things here and there several times. The vitriol directed against PDF and me for recommending it has been quite surprising. PDF doesn't reflow and a PDF formatted for a book-sized page will not be usable on your phone. No kidding! So write a script to run your LaTeX source (for example) multiple times for normal and large-type editions for, say, four canonical screen geometries.
nicw 14y ago
"The main reason, I've heard, is that even if the Kindle format and reader app are reasonable (and I can't vouch for them), it's on publishers to put their books in the right format. " This is akin to terrible apps on any App Store. It's up to the App Store guidelines to raise the standards and only allow certain books of quality. Here is my experience based on building ebook-related products: Amazon: Will allow almost any book of any kind, any formatting. Their singles publishing program is a little stricter since you're giving an exclusive to them and they plan to use those for marketing. Apple: Strictest store in the business. Humans review every submittal and will kick back your book even if they deem the subject 'not wide enough for a large audience'. IF your book is 51% French, 49% english content but submitted in English, it'll get kicked back and so on. I don't agree with Apples purview that you can only submit books that are for a large audience - who are they to judge that? Therefore people head to the wild world of Amazon and fight it out at the free or 0.99 level.

k3n 14y ago

I don't do any e-reading, or else I might be more sympathetic. I'm all for high-tech, and do lots and lots of reading online, but....I like my books the old-fashioned way.

kzrdude 14y ago

You should refund those books.

jpdoctor 14y ago

> Some publishers probably don't care about or dislike the Kindle platform. This is the real source of the problem. Publishers have every reason to suspect that Amazon will eat their profits and would be stupid to help Amazon accomplish its goal.

greenyoda 14y ago
Except that a badly-formatted Kindle book reflects more poorly on the publisher than it does on Amazon, since Amazon doesn't create the content. If a publisher really doesn't want to encourage the e-book industry, isn't it much easier for them to not publish an e-book at all?

illuminate 14y ago

Your complaints are entirely targeting Publishers, not Kindle formatting. If the publisher doesn't give a fig about ebooks, their PDFs will also come out with misspellings.

CountSessine 14y ago
The difference is that PDF is usually a part of their publishing workflow for the print edition - the original PDF has to be correct.

leephillips 14y ago

"Not a single sympathizer with the OP?" I'll bite. I could have written this, and have said similar things here and there several times. The vitriol directed against PDF and me for recommending it has been quite surprising. PDF doesn't reflow and a PDF formatted for a book-sized page will not be usable on your phone. No kidding! So write a script to run your LaTeX source (for example) multiple times for normal and large-type editions for, say, four canonical screen geometries.

nicw 14y ago

"The main reason, I've heard, is that even if the Kindle format and reader app are reasonable (and I can't vouch for them), it's on publishers to put their books in the right format. " This is akin to terrible apps on any App Store. It's up to the App Store guidelines to raise the standards and only allow certain books of quality. Here is my experience based on building ebook-related products: Amazon: Will allow almost any book of any kind, any formatting. Their singles publishing program is a little stricter since you're giving an exclusive to them and they plan to use those for marketing. Apple: Strictest store in the business. Humans review every submittal and will kick back your book even if they deem the subject 'not wide enough for a large audience'. IF your book is 51% French, 49% english content but submitted in English, it'll get kicked back and so on. I don't agree with Apples purview that you can only submit books that are for a large audience - who are they to judge that? Therefore people head to the wild world of Amazon and fight it out at the free or 0.99 level.