Kindle and quality.

[ilthit]

I love Kindle because it's so easy, and I can get books to my iPad and phone with the minimum of fuss. I also like the word-lookup function and the navigational functions.

The only downside is that so many of the books look like they're hastily put together. I've been reading the Phryne Fisher novels' Kindle editions, which seem legit and not pirates, and there are extra paragraph breaks and sometimes missing paragraph breaks all over the place, and in the latest one, a paragraph that started twice. (A chunk of it was repeated.)

How common is this, what do you think? Not just with Kindle, but with ebooks in general? I mean, I'm sure it's the fault of individual publishers not proofreading the Kindle editions closely enough, but it's funny that it happens in ebooks so much more than in dead-tree books. I have half a mind of asking for my money back sometimes, but then I do like the books, and I like to pay for what I like. I'd just like a version doesn't have these distracting mistakes.

Comments

[jumpuphigh]

I've been finding that the quality of books in epub format has been getting better. I still encounter stuff that is bad formatting on occasion but less and less with newer releases.

[ilthit]

Some books have been absolutely perfect, like the e-version of The World of Gangs that I read recently. I guess it must be down to publishers in a hurry. I'm not sure what the best way to improve this in the future is - I guess I'll just write to the original publisher (rather than Amazon) to complain about it, but keep my flawed copies in lieu of anything better.

[jumpuphigh]

There are definitely differences between publishers. Baen is usually good with the occasional bit of weird formatting. Harper-Collins seems to have more problems. Some publishers are still thinking they are making pdfs and any publisher that I've seen that is doing anything like cookbooks or knitting pattern books seems to have yet to figure it out.

[jumpuphigh]

And because the Universe likes to call me a liar, I am now reading an epub from the library where pretty much every single page has at least one word where the first letter of the word is missing. The first two books in this series were fine.

*le sigh*

[ilthit]

Nothing's perfect!