Oh, I hope the US publisher is looking into this. Also, I'd love it if iBooks had a feature that allowed you to "upgrade to the enhanced version" if you've already bought the non-enhanced.
Showing posts with label iBooks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iBooks. Show all posts
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Friday, March 11, 2011
Just for the record...
It takes a bit of work to make a decent ebook. I've been overseeing the conversion of the Pyr backlist for two months now, so I know. I've also bought about 15 ebooks in the last two weeks on iBooks, and I'm sorry to say that I wish a few of the publishers whose books I've bought had taken a little more time with the conversion process. In one sad case, every single first letter of the first word on every line of the contents page is omitted. In another, every instance of the word "pilot" has been rendered as "pi lot," where about a quarter of all apostrophes are rendered as dashes. A third omits all interior illustrations though the cover and front matter proclaims "illustrated by...".
So when I hear people clamoring for instant gratification, moaning that "why isn't this book I want available right now in all formats" and accusing the publisher of sitting on it deliberately or some such nonesense - I grit my teeth. Right now ebooks are in the same place CDs were when they first appeared. Remember all those quick and dirty AAD conversions - Analog Analog Digital - and the CDs that came with warning labels that said, "this CD may reveal limitations of the original source tape" because the music was just being dumped in, not digitally remastered?
Well, there's a lot of that out there now. This will change, as publishers learn how to make ebooks part of the initial work flow of making a book and as ebooks grow. And in fact, most of the new titles I've acquired have looked pretty good. The majority of the mistakes above are in backlist titles where the publisher has raced to digitize their catalogs as fast as possible and done a sloppy job. Sadly, I seriously doubt they'll go back and fix these books once converted.
So, against all the consumers demanding everything digitized now, here's one consumer that wishes they would all take a little more time. I'd rather they did it right than did it fast.
So when I hear people clamoring for instant gratification, moaning that "why isn't this book I want available right now in all formats" and accusing the publisher of sitting on it deliberately or some such nonesense - I grit my teeth. Right now ebooks are in the same place CDs were when they first appeared. Remember all those quick and dirty AAD conversions - Analog Analog Digital - and the CDs that came with warning labels that said, "this CD may reveal limitations of the original source tape" because the music was just being dumped in, not digitally remastered?
Well, there's a lot of that out there now. This will change, as publishers learn how to make ebooks part of the initial work flow of making a book and as ebooks grow. And in fact, most of the new titles I've acquired have looked pretty good. The majority of the mistakes above are in backlist titles where the publisher has raced to digitize their catalogs as fast as possible and done a sloppy job. Sadly, I seriously doubt they'll go back and fix these books once converted.
So, against all the consumers demanding everything digitized now, here's one consumer that wishes they would all take a little more time. I'd rather they did it right than did it fast.
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