I don't know about textbooks, but I did my own small bit of investigating yesterday. I had them send the free sample of my first book. Keeping in mind that I used Kindle app. for PC (I don't know if it's different on the device), I can tell you that the formatting was off. Spaces were missing between paragraphs, indents disappeared, and a couple parts were jumbled in the title page...

Unfortunately I think this has long been a theme in ebooks (as well as bad editing). I can't figure out if it's something in the transfer to Kindle, in this case, or what. I can say that our .pdf for Paris Immortal didn't look like the Kindle version, nor did the .docx.

I uploaded some short stories to Kindle and as careful as I was with formatting, there were still a few strange margins, though it actually looks better than the sample of the novel I read yesterday. But I'm thinking that when something is going to be read on so many different screens, can one truly get one document to display on each one properly, all at once? (I know little about these things.)

Rob - unfortunately this is, as I understand it, the problem with not actually having an industry standard ebook format. Kindle files are based on epub and all epub devices appear to render epub files in subtly different ways.

From what I understand if you want to go down the epub route you need to a proper proofing job on all the various different ebooks versions that might appear. This means checking every rendered epub page on every type of Sony Reader, every rendered epub page on every type of Kindle, every rendered epub page on every type of iPad etc, and on top of this you might check it various different software readers like Stanza and the Kindle app. Realistically no publisher is going to do this.

Although epub is nearly there until it really is the standard and everyone publishes to the standard and all software and hardware treats these standard files in standard ways, I think we'll have this trouble.

To me it gives the lie to the idea that ebooks should be cheap. If you do hem properly they're going to cost money to produce.

I'd like to hear from medical publislishers if there are any out there. They've been doing ebooks for some time and famously sell lots. Their books also often have complex text layouts. I'd like to know what processes they undergo to ensure the layouts work on these devices.

I'd also be interested to know who published the book on Ruby you were reading. Personally I'd expect you to be reading a book on Ruby published by O'Reilly and as they near as dammit invented ebooks they should be getting things right. If it was an O'Reilly book then we're probably all doomed - because if they can't get it right I doubt anyone can.

Apologies for the long rant.

M

Mathew,

Even worse is that the kindle does not in fact base its proprietory format on the ePub at all, but on Mobipocket files, adding in even more confusion.

There is currently a movement to standardise ePubs, and to make them the de facto format that all eBooks readers can handle in consistent ways.

a little way to go yet though!

Tom

I wonder if this disappointing Kindle version is a symptom of the ever-increasing tendency among many publishers to feel that it is not worth spending money in the way that they once did on good editorial staff and editorial procedures. The new technologies are great in many ways but there should always be someone to read the book in all formats in which it is sold before it reaches the eyes of the customer. It has been increasingly regarded as acceptable not to invest in editorial - but the effects of this are much more obvious in e-books. This is a perfect example. If publishers want people to continue to be excited about e-books, they must take editorial responsibility and ensure that the end product is clear, professional and, above all, readable!

Katie Rankine