Mini Rant on Digital Book Formats and Lame Excuses

Yes, there are many formats out there. I expect that when I shell out my hard earned money to purchase a book that the formatting is pristine and that I should not have to 1) convert it to *my* desired format, which is epub 2) deal with formatting wonkiness like letters being converted into symbols, or nook pages being off (more on that in a future post) which usually tells me you started with a kindle file (I don't want to know or be treated like a second class citizen just because the author/publisher who created the file only really cared to carefully format the kindle) or 3) deal with formatting issues that are so bad, *I* the consumer have to go in and change them because digital books at most stores are not returnable. Any formatting errors are annoying and there really is no excuse for them.

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I was doing my normal procrastination from working on The Beast and  was reading a post about ebook formatting oddities over at Dear Author, when I hit this  doozie of a comment  (number 7) by Susan Helene Gottfried:

The problem lies in the fact that books start as one file and are converted into many formats. Most of us who do it ourselves can’t afford someone to recode into XML, and for us to do it ourselves means time taken away from promotion and writing new books. It’s a delicate balancing act and often, we are unaware of how our books look in every single format out there. Smashwords alone converts into ten formats.

Readers, please understand that we’re ALL doing our best, no matter who publishes us. This is the Wild West of publishing right now. There are a million bugs to work out, and we’re doing our best. Those extra spaces and words that are run together are entirely a function of the process that takes our book from a file (.pdf, Word, or whatever) and puts it into something your reader can make sense of. It’s not us! (Misspellings and bad grammar are, and I challenge you to find a book, no matter who published it, without either of these.)

(Emphasis mine)

Um, exsqueeze me?

If you are putting your product out there, you had better know that you are offering ALL customers, no matter what their desired format is, the BEST product you can possibly offer. To not do so and to be completely unaware of what EACH format looks like is an insult to any reader who purchases your product. I don't care about future books or lame ass attempts at promotion--the best promotion you can have is a good looking product that is formatted properly, free of egregious grammar errors and misspellings. There is no excuse. Period.

The onus is on the publisher or author (if that author is self publishing) to not only understand how to properly code a book but also to do some quality control. I, as the customer, could not give a flying hoot if there are too many "bugs to work out". If your product looks like shit, then it had better be free or you had better be willing to offer me my money back.

This just speaks to laziness and an utter disrespect towards the readers. You are not doing your best if you turn a blind eye to the files you are throwing out into the world. This is not like accidentally tucking your skirt into your undies, this *is* mooning me because you don't give a rat's arse.


ARGGGHHHH!!!!


/rant