eBooks that really aren't properly hyperlinked
I'm getting tired of ebooks that aren't properly formatted, and so I posted the following on the Fictionwise discussion forum, in response to Fictionwise's founder Steve Pendergrast saying it only costs $20 or $25 to convert a title to an ebook, and they can convert 50 or so a week, with just one staffer doing it:
If I may be so bold, both your in-house and outside service-bureau converters are doing a crappy job of late on conversions. It used to be if you bought an ebook in a secure format, footnotes or endnotes were properly formatted as hyperlinks that you could jump to; now, they very often aren't -- making the ebook harder, not easier, to use than the printed version, because of the difficulty of flipping to the footnotes.
A recent example: Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.
For an ebook that you're charging six dollars more for than Amazon charges for the print edition, that the notes aren't hyperlinked is just unacceptable.
Rather than getting the process down to the cheapest, most quick-and-dirty method, I respectfully submit that the long-term health of ebooks depends on making the ereading experience more rewarding and user friendly than the print experience. But have a look at, say, your mutliformat release of this book, which you say you did in-house:
The Complete Guide to Writing Science Fiction.
Your hyperlinked table of contents is completely useless in this anthology of articles, because there's no clue as to what topic the links will take you to. All the chapters actually have titles and individual authors. Chapter Four, for instance, is "The Many Faces of Science Fiction: Sub-Genres" by Kim Richards. But your quick-and-dirty table of contents just gives a useless list of non-descriptive hyperlinks:
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
etc.
No doubt it did cost you only $20 or $25 to do this conversion, but spending a little more to get it right would have been preferable from the consumer's point of view. Touting the hypothetical benefits of ebooks over printed ones but not actually delivering those benefits in the finished product is no way to grow an industry.
The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site
Labels: ebooks
Posted by Rob on Saturday, December 22, 2007
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11 comments
11 Comments:
Give'em heck Rob! This issue doesn't affect me as much, since I mostly ready short form fiction or novels in e-book format, but it's the principle of the matter! Plus I want the e-book market and industry to be solid and robust, which means the publishers like Fictionwise have to get it right for everyone!
You go, Rob! We need to demand more of ebooks. There is no reason that they shouldn't be more effective and cheaper.
It may just be the frustration of having spent the last 24 hours dealing with the airlines and trying to retrieve two pieces of luggage, but yes, Rob, go! I'm so tired of companies congratulating themselves for doing what is clearly subpar work.
The E-book industry has so many problems, that your nit-picks are barely worth mentioning.
A) There has not been any standardization on a single format.
B)If they put DRM on the files, it will be pain in the neck of all legitimate users, and will be broken by pirates. If they don't put DRM on the file format, it will be available in the torrents or in news groups. The publishers are damned if they do and damned if they don't.
C) The e-book devices are way to expensive, and the books aren't inexpensive enough to justify the huge upfront cost.
And these are just the most obvious problems at hand.
Actually, we're seeing a lot of reduction in the number of formats -- nobody really has to worry about supporting Rocket, HieBook, Franklin eBookman, etc., anymore, for instance. Granted, the format wars aren't over, but there were way more formats to worry about two or three years ago than there are now. Scott Pendergrast of Fictionwise says there are only four formats of note anymore -- still a lot, I grant you, but for their non-DRMd titles, you get all four (plus any future formats that are added) for one price.
Yes, DRM remains a problem for all electronic distribution of intellectual property; however, I think the eReader.com model works well (books are keyed to a personal number you're not likely to give out to anyone else except family members -- your credit-card number -- and can be used on as many devices as you like); Mobipocket is getting better at DRM, too, allowing four devices per book, and easy and frequent changing of device codes.
And dedicated ebook readers aren't how most ebooks are read, so the cost-of-reader argument is somewhat off target. Most ebooks are read on smartphones, portable computers, PDAs, and so on -- devices bought for other purposes.
And, by the way, every one of your arguments could be levelled at high-definition DVDs, as well. Doens't stop there from being interest, or an industry. :)
however, I think the eReader.com model works well (books are keyed to a personal number you're not likely to give out to anyone else except family members -- your credit-card number -- and can be used on as many devices as you like);
What happens when the credit card is canceled? or when due to bankruptcy I am unable to get another one?
Mobipocket is getting better at DRM, too, allowing four devices per book, and easy and frequent changing of device codes.
Why four? why not five? I paid for the book why can I not loan it to however many people I want to loan it to?
Most ebooks are read on smartphones, portable computers, PDAs, and so on -- devices bought for other purposes.
I do a lot of my reading on my laptop, and I have a PDF reader, a CHM Reader, Microsoft reader, Mobipocket and FBReader, it's getting out of hand.
And, by the way, every one of your arguments could be levelled at high-definition DVDs, as well. Doens't stop there from being interest, or an industry. :)
Not quite, there are only two formats, and companies are producing players that will play both. Once I buy a disc, watch the movie, I can loan it or give to whomever I please.
Nothing at all happens to the ebooks, Don Quijote, if you change credit-card numbers. Unlike your bank, your ebook files don't know that you've had your card cancelled. :) It's just an unlock code.
And, interesting when you say, "Why four? Why not five?" In point of fact, you can lend your Mobipocket ebooks to three other people, and they can be reading them SIMULTANEOUSLY with you reading your copy; you can't do that with the print edition.
The bottom line is there are differences in the way things distributed electroncially and things distributed as physical products will be treated, licensed, and so on. I have complete sets of all my ebooks on all my computers, but I've only paid for them once -- that's MORE than I can do in the case of a paper book.
And although bankruptcy of an ebook vendor is possible, if major players such as Microsoft, Adobe, or Amazon.com (owners of Mobipocket) go bankrupt, well, the economy is in worse shape than I thought.
Meanwhile, if my house burns down, or I lose a copy of a paper book on the subway, I'll get nowhere at my local brick-and-mortar bookstore crying a river about how I already paid for it once and should be given another copy for free; with ebooks, they're all safe and easily downloaded again.
So, sure, if you want to say ebooks and books are different, you'll get no argument from me or from anyone else. :)
My 2 spare change on ebooks:
I know I may sound like a broken record but this is how I see the near future of ebooks. Ebooks needs to be sold at the retail level. Yes that’s right because not everyone has access to the Internet. There are two ways ebooks at the book store can be bought under my scenario. I call this the “vending machine” approach. Not like I invented the idea or anything. You go up to the stand and browse through the selections. You find your selection swipe your bank card or credit card through, insert your readers USB cable and download. No reader handy or bank card? You can still order at the counter and out spits an SD media card or whatever for the title you need. The clerk hands you the memory card and business is conducted.
The other approach is like the way DVD’s are packaged. You go in and take the ebook off the shelf and pay for it like anything else. The DVD approach is interesting because the DVD’s can be packaged with extras. This brings in more traffic into the store for dead tree readers tired of finding broken trilogy’s and part 93/193 of a book missing. It also encourages more impulse SF/F book buying something Tom Doherty was mentioning earlier.
Ebooks needs to be accesible to more people. But ebooks now are where the first cell phones used to be 20 years ago. I'd say in 20 years from now novels as we buy them today will be a thing of the past. There are still a lot of pay phone booths around and the dead tree novel will never die out enterly.
Jim wrote, "Ebooks needs to be sold at the retail level. Yes that’s right because not everyone has access to the Internet."
Interesting point, but I believe you will find that far more North Americans access the Internet each week than ever go into a bookstore.
The solution used by Amazon's Kindle reader (a soluton pioneered by the Rocket eBook reader, actually) is to have the eBook reading device work independently of the Internet: you turn on the reader, your browse for books from the reader, you read the first chapter for free on the reader, you buy them while using the reader. You never have to go near your computer, or the Internet.
That seems faster, easier, and more convenient than going to a store to plug a piece of hardware via USB cable into a master computer in the store, frankly. :)
Yep. I think we can be quite sure that the Kindle as it's available right now won't be around so long, but that its one feature that turns into a killer app will be their wireless solution. (I didn't know Rocket had pioneered that, but in any case, it will be the Kindle that popularizes it.) I suspect you could wager pretty good money, and win, that within five years at least two companies -- Amazon and Apple -- will be selling personal media devices that function as e-readers, MP3 players, gaming consoles, video players, phones, portable hard drives, and Web browsers.
And if that doesn't happen, it's going to be either because of some godawful catastrophe that really screws everything up, or (more happily) because of a qualitative evolution in technology that renders having to carry even a small device primitive. I hope and pray the former doesn't happen, and I think we're a ways away from the latter.
(And of course, the content companies that win out will be the ones that can provide a user-friendly product -- which brings us back to Rob's original post!)
The Rocket wasn't wireless; you simply plugged it into a regular phone jack, though, and it connected to the online ebook store without need for a computer. Worked quite well, and was pig-simple.
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