Do you edit your eBooks?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Either:

1. The author is not the one putting the book together and therefore is not responsible for the awful formatting. Or
   
2. The author did attempt to put the ebook together, which explains everything.

2b or they keep 'converting' to fix an issue a 20 second edit of the CSS would solve
(to wit: 3 nested spans changing font size or face )

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by theducks

2b or they keep 'converting' to fix an issue a 20 second edit of the CSS would solve
(to wit: 3 nested spans changing font size or face )

I see that as the solution on Reddit quite often.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by HLS

Why would you edit? we do not have permission from authors to edit their work.

True for copies or publishing. Copyright is about distribution of copies (by any means, free or paid).

What you do with your own copy is your own business.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by John F

I was under the impression that once something is "written" it is copyrighted, regardless of a written copyright notice?

Take a look at the many kerfluffles around computer code. How copyright law applies to computer code and the court decisions around it are more than a little weird.

Say I convert an author supplied Word document into an ePub using Sigil. I modify the stylesheet, add accessibility items, media queries (if needed) and all the other fun bits to make the ebook readable on multiple apps & devices. I can't claim copyright on the ebook—that remains the creator's right Oddly, since it can be easily claimed that the stylesheet(s) in the ePub are derivative, I would have difficulty claiming copyright on them unless I am willing and able to claim that my stylesheets were developed in a clean room environment having never looked at any other stylesheets.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

2b or they keep 'converting' to fix an issue a 20 second edit of the CSS would solve
(to wit: 3 nested spans changing font size or face )

3. The author of the code is using a really awful program such as InDesign or Vellum.

[twowheels]

Originally Posted by SpicyPoison

I edit each and every ebook I purchase
Self taught HTML & CSS while editing eBooks.
There are 400+ eBooks in calibre library.

That sounds like a lot of work, time that could be spent reading the books.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by twowheels

That sounds like a lot of work, time that could be spent reading the books.

After a few years of practice, most ebooks take 5-10 minutes. Even for me, a small fraction of the time to read the ebook. For the most part, I'm not talking about a complete re-do of the CSS but rather tweaking header and paragraph styling for the body text.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DNSB

After a few years of practice, most ebooks take 5-10 minutes. Even for me, a small fraction of the time to read the ebook. For the most part, I'm not talking about a complete re-do of the CSS but rather tweaking header and paragraph styling for the body text.

Editor Chains also simplifies the process.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by twowheels

That sounds like a lot of work, time that could be spent reading the books.

Decent code takes only a couple of minutes to touch up.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to change a line-spacing or font value.
Both Calibre and Sigil have a built in Goto Style that jumps from the text (to be adjusted) block to right where the style is set (it can be affected by a cascade, but that is less frequent)

Then there is the OMG code mess, where every chapter has a different style (or stylesheet ) .This is not saying Multiple style sheets are bad, but the main body (chapters) of the work should all use the same one (Front matter... could-should have their own if significantly different. Remember the stylesheet is always in use , so lean-n-mean is more efficient)

[Quoth]

Diap's Plugin to edit Spans & Divs is configurable and does a lot maore.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Diap's Plugin to edit Spans & Divs is configurable and does a lot maore.

I use it a lot.

[badrihippo]

Okay, so I thought editing metadata might not count as editing the book, but then I read the first two pages of responses and people seemed to be interpreting it that way so I voted "Yes, always or most of the time". Then I read more and learnt that my original assumption had been right

I almost always edit the covers to make them look nice on my Kobo's cover view, and also fix the title if it's off. I just got into Kobo's (not so) new "Series" feature so I'm going in and tagging all those as well now!

On the other hand I've rarely gone in and edited the epub file itself. The formatting options Kobo and KOReader give me have been serving me well enough so far :P

Theoretically, I'd like to have different books have different styles and fonts so that they feel different but I've never got around to actually doing anything about it. Hmm, maybe after this poll...

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Diap's Plugin to edit Spans & Divs is configurable and does a lot maore.

But it's broken and unmaintained, isn't it?
Sometimes it works, and some times it doesn't.
I reported an error 5 months ago...
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&postcount=198

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Editor Chains also simplifies the process.

On the two occasions when I tried, I found it almost impossible to transfer my Sigil saved searchs and automate list items to Editor Chains. If Editor Chains had been around when I first started to automate, I might have made the opposite choice.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Karellen

But it's broken and unmaintained, isn't it?
Sometimes it works, and some times it doesn't.
I reported an error 5 months ago...
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...&postcount=198

I haven't run into issues with @DiapDealer's TagMechanic with Sigil but it is run at the end of my editing path after I've already corrected errors reported by epubcheck. When I used his Editing Toolbag with calibre's ebook-editor, I did run into a similar issue to the one you reported but after correcting errors reported by epubcheck, the issue disappeared.