Why publishers format ebooks differently than paper books?

[icallaci]

Originally Posted by kacir

You are not alone ;-)

It is so annoying! In printed books, I never noticed how many telegrams and letters, for example, do not have equal top- and bottom-spacing to set them apart from the rest of the text. Or block-indented paragraphs that have unequal side-spacing. Or poems that are sometimes centered and sometimes block-indented (never mind what the format of the original poem was). Or chapter quotes that are sometimes italicized and sometimes not, sometimes inside quotation marks and sometimes not. In the same book! Arrrgh! It drives me crazy. And I blame ebooks for making me notice these things.

[Dngrsone]

So, should we expect our e-books to look like their print versions?

Given the flexibility of the medium, perhaps we should make the electronic versions as simple as possible, format-wise; allowing the reader to set their preferred style, etc except where a specific style is necessary and such.

Personally, I'd just as soon stick to pain old text-oriented word processing and none of that object-oriented business that seems to be a major driver behind all this excess formatting craze.

[ST-One]

Originally Posted by Catlady

A preference for indents does not mean that the use of an extra blank line instead is wrong.

It's not wrong in that sense. But aesthetically it's wrong, wrong, wrong...

Originally Posted by Catlady

ETA: Just curious. Do you folks who change formatting to echo that of paper books want all lines justified?

At the moment I prefer a justified text-block (except for last line of a paragraph, of course).

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

Publishers should allow for the fact that the reader can adjust things like spacing between paragraphs, set full-justification or ragged right, etc. (either by a setting on their ereader, or by editing the book's stylesheet.)

So alignment for the main text should be left undefined so that the reader can choose full-justification or ragged right themselves. Of course titles, chapter headings, and other text that shouldn't change when the main text alignmant changes should be set by the publisher.

Scene breaks should be indicated in a way that allows the user to change the spacing between paragraphs without losing the scene breaks. I.e. indicate a scene break with a special symbol (* * *, etc.), or by capitalising the first few words of the scene, or using a drop-cap, etc. That way the scene break remains visible if the reader changes the paragraph spacing.

Edit: If using space alone to indicate a scene break, at least add the space as padding rather than margin, so if the reader chooses to add spacing between paragraphs then the scene break will still be visible as an extra space.

The problem with adding the space as padding is that padding doesn't play well with most of the ebook conversion software out there. Smashwords for one, expressly states not to use padding.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

So, should we expect our e-books to look like their print versions?

Given the flexibility of the medium, perhaps we should make the electronic versions as simple as possible, format-wise; allowing the reader to set their preferred style, etc except where a specific style is necessary and such.

Personally, I'd just as soon stick to pain old text-oriented word processing and none of that object-oriented business that seems to be a major driver behind all this excess formatting craze.

Exactly - for regular fiction anyway. Non fiction and poetry will have different needs, but it should be easy for me to read fiction the way I want to.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Well, this thread is a depressing lesson in human stupidity. Why DO they do these things?

Personally, if editing an ebook to adjust for my personal preferences, I like to follow a basic rule of
<h2>Chapter #</h2>
<p>paragraph with <b>bold</b> and <i>italic</i> words (maybe).</p>
<p class="scenebreak">* * *</p>
and a text-indent on the paragraphs, center the chapter, center and marginize the scenebreak.

As a reader, mostly of Fiction where pictures are perhaps not as common, I find it difficult to see why any more than that could ever be needed, although I bet the experts here could find something to prove me wrong.

I prefer to use a <span class="foo"> in place of <b> or <i>

I can do so much (all in one place) in a stylesheet
I had a case with a font that the italic font: looked poor/missing glyph.

It was simple to do a stylesheet tweak (alternate face call)

Baen (Arnold era) used a <30 line stylesheet for all their EPUB

I do like a little more, but it ONLY exists to support visual embellishments (styled headers, dropcaps, special paragraphs...)

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Catlady

But the OP did not mention the use of both extra lines and indents in the same work--of course that's redundant.

A preference for indents does not mean that the use of an extra blank line instead is wrong.

ETA: Just curious. Do you folks who change formatting to echo that of paper books want all lines justified?

My rule: 'No hard-and-fast rules'
(OK, I do have ONE. No absolute sized margins, indents for basic body structure)

It just has to pass my visual check on my 5" e-ink device
(I do a mid range zoom check and don't worry about the edge range cases)


Not All lines justified.

Verse I do not justify (and I usually display it the same as the original).

Blockquotes are always depends on the content. The position (symmetric or Asymmetric) is also open.

I stick close to paper books, because they were designed to be visually pleasing. Why mess with success?

IMHO all ebooks should come with a pleasing (original) Default style for those that don't wish to override. They should also allow the device to take charge.

[Dngrsone]

Originally Posted by theducks

I stick close to paper books, because they were designed to be visually pleasing. Why mess with success?

Yet what works for paper does not necessarily work on a phone (or tablet, or monitor).

What about added content? Should the e-book version mirror the paper, without extras such as a navigable table of contents (and/or index), other hyperlinks, or high definition (or even, heaven forfend,interactive) maps and images?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

Yet what works for paper does not necessarily work on a phone (or tablet, or monitor).

What about added content? Should the e-book version mirror the paper, without extras such as a navigable table of contents (and/or index), other hyperlinks, or high definition (or even, heaven forfend,interactive) maps and images?

How does EXTENDING the existing layout hurt?
If the word now has a activated link to the footnote, does it really change the main body of the work (other than the typical coloring for a link) ?

How does appending Extras to the book hurt.
DVD's have had extras (audio commentary,notes...) for years. In no way did they harm the display of the original Movie. Nor did you even have to use them.

So you wish to penalize all those who use a capable device, to be reduced to the requirements of a limited device?

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

So, should we expect our e-books to look like their print versions?

Given the flexibility of the medium, perhaps we should make the electronic versions as simple as possible, format-wise; allowing the reader to set their preferred style, etc except where a specific style is necessary and such.

I was on an ebook panel last year where that very question came up. Another panelist took your first paragraph's position, but I took (and still take) the second. The big strength of reading electronically is the ability to adjust reading settings - magnify or shrink text, adjust margins, and so forth - and I believe the publisher should tread as lightly as possible in that respect.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Dammit Hitch, now you're making me feel bad for doing my own. I haven't got any special characters, so it's a really simple Word doc with just a handful of styles though.

Lemurion:

I have zero issues with authors who learn how to, and do, format their own books. I do have issues with companies who claim to be US-based, owned and operated which are not, and which outsource all their work. That gets up my nose, because there are clients who do want to buy on-shore, for their own reasons. And, obviously, those of us who use NA (North American) based coders for books can't compete with the 3rd-worlders. {shrug}. Just can't.

Vis-a-vis the discussion about all the embedded spans:

That is one of 3 kinds of uncleaned output: 1) Word, direct to HTML, filtered, without any subsequent cleaning, but, more likely, is: 2) AbbyyFineReader output, direct to Word-->HTML or HTML, w/o any subsequent cleaning, or, god help us, 3) InDesign, with character style overrides, w/o any subsequent HTML and CSS cleaning. That's when you'll see that. You won't see that type of ridiculous, embedded spans, and ridiculous embedded EMPTY spans in any type of hand-crafted output. And certainly not from anyone that runs a company like mine.

You will see that moderately often (no offense, Lemurion) in SW output, due to 1) above. You will see that a LOT in any type of backlist content that has been outsourced to India for scanning/OCR, due to 2). Oh, and, I nearly forgot!!! The biggie for that type of output? The godawful, take a PDF into Adobe Acrobat Pro any version (X or XI or whatever) and "export to Word." Outputs THE WORST Word files, under the skin, I've ever seen. Absolutely hideous. You actually do better using AbbyFineReader's free online OCR tool that runs in a web-browser. I kid thee not.

With regard to our books: we use a HOUSE CSS sheet that has everything but the kitchen sink in it, but what we use in the book is whatever the minimum that is required to get the job done, excluding, of course, the ridiculous extra blank spans that we have to throw in to get iBooks to work with text-alignment and other idiocies like that. My only disagreement with my One Twoo Wuv, Ducky, is that we don't use span classes for italics and bold; we use inline HTML em and strong.

Hitch

[Lemurion]

I can't afford to hire anyone. So I have to learn to do things myself.

I'm also under no illusions that the automated versions SW and Amazon produce are fine examples of clean design. But I do find that if I supply them with a relatively clean input file, the output looks at least decent, and that's really all I can hope for with my budget.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

I can't afford to hire anyone. So I have to learn to do things myself.

I'm also under no illusions that the automated versions SW and Amazon produce are fine examples of clean design. But I do find that if I supply them with a relatively clean input file, the output looks at least decent, and that's really all I can hope for with my budget.

Lem:

Nobody, but nobody, has to tell me that publishing is a business. It has to make sense for everyone involved, or it doesn't work. That's why I say, I don't have any issues, whatsoever, with authors formatting their own work, assuming, naturally, that they do a decent job (so I can read it!). ;-)

And, yes: if you give KDP or SW a clean, well-formatted, Styled Word file, you'll get readable, decent output. It's no different than anything else "computer;" GIGO. I've said more than once that any author (for a fiction title, at least, or fiction-like in formatting) who is diligent with Word can create a perfectly viable and readable ebook at Amazon, NookPress (to a lesser degree) and Smashwords (to a more vanilla degree).

So: seriously, you needn't explain it to me. Scout's honor. Folks like you, I admire. You write AND you make. All good.

Hitch

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Hitch

That is one of 3 kinds of uncleaned output: 1) Word, direct to HTML, filtered, without any subsequent cleaning, but, more likely, is: 2) AbbyyFineReader output, direct to Word-->HTML or HTML, w/o any subsequent cleaning, or, god help us, 3) InDesign, with character style overrides, w/o any subsequent HTML and CSS cleaning.

You forgot one.

"I have an old version of Word and can't export to PDF, so I first print the file, then rescan it to jpg's at 100 DPI using a cheap-ass scanner from the 90's (can't do more because it's still USB 1.1), create a PDF from those JPG's using whatever program, and then I'll OCR it, output it to HTML, and have Smashwords create an EPUB automatically."

All done

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Rev. Bob

I was on an ebook panel last year where that very question came up. Another panelist took your first paragraph's position, but I took (and still take) the second. The big strength of reading electronically is the ability to adjust reading settings - magnify or shrink text, adjust margins, and so forth - and I believe the publisher should tread as lightly as possible in that respect.

Agree. An e-book only has to look good and follow (IMHO) basic rules:

- Clearly set apart the chapter header.
- Justify the text.
- Non-indent first paragraph.
- Indent following paragraphs.
- No whitespace lines between paragraphs.
- Whitespace line or a glyph/image as a scene break.

I think that all of my paper books follow these rules. I've never seen a ficiton book with a ragged right margin, for example, or whitespace between paragraphs.

It's very easy to stick to these rules (you basically need a few rules for the - and h tags), and then the reader can easily override them.