July 6, 2009

Kindle Errors and Typos

There have been a lot of discussions on blogs and Amazon forums about the inconsistent, and all too often poor, quality of the Kindle books sold on Amazon’s Kindle Store. The complaints tend to focus on typos (that are not in the print edition), extraneous hyphens, and a plethora of formatting problems.

For example, there’s a post on the Simplicitas blog and a discussion thread on a MobileRead forum.

And here are some of the many discussion threads on the topic on Amazon’s own Kindle Forum:

Tired of Kindle books with non-linked ToCs

Complaint about overly dark covers and images on Kindle

Finding too many spelling errors & typos

Complaint about lack of followable links to footnotes

More complaints about excessive errors, possibly due to poor OCR or other conversions

Concerns about the highly variable quality of Kindle editions

More complaints about too many typos, again likely due to conversion problems

I’ve read through every one of these complaints and see none that can’t be solved, or at least mitigated, by more careful design on the part of whomever is doing the conversion.

Our subsidiary, Five Rainbows Services, has been doing Kindle conversion for 19 months. We have successfully converted a wide variety of books (fiction and nonfiction, highly formatted and not).

Most of the problems addressed in the discussions above stem from the use of automated conversion software (which typically alleges to create Kindle-compatible formats from Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, etc. files). They will, in fact, create files that can be viewed on a Kindle, but the results are rarely satisfactory, nor do they come close to replicating the reading experience of the book’s print edition. Often, extraneous codes are generated by the software and, sometimes (particularly when trying to extract usable formatted text or HTML from a PDF file), extra hyphens and line breaks occur.

The best course, if you want a nicely formatted Kindle book that provides a pleasant reading experience, is to create an HTML file and then carefully manipulate that code to get the display you want. You have to learn what HTML tags are displayed properly on the Kindle, which are not displayed at all (or are displayed differently than on a web page), and how to use the tags that are unique to the Kindle/Mobipocket format (Amazon owns Mobipocket, in case you did not know, and uses the same basic format).

Sometimes, you have to play around a bit to find a way to display a book that contains complicated formatting, while still maintaining a solid, comfortable reading experience. You also need to test the design at the smallest and largest possible display fonts on an actual Kindle.

As with most things in life, shortcuts in Kindle formatting might produce acceptable results…but might not. And your reader may very well notice the difference.

Just for reference, here are a few Kindle screen shots from books we have converted recently (click on a thumbnail for a larger image).

So, if you want great results for your Kindle edition, either learn how to do it right or hire somebody who does.

It really will matter to your reader!

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June 25, 2009

Google Settlement, More Thoughts

Yesterday, I finally got around to listening to the Beyond The Book podcast of an interview with Michael Healy about the Google Book Settlement.

Healy is the current executive director of the Book Industy Study Group and has been tagged as the executive director of the to-be-extablished Book Rights Registry, assuming the courts and the US Department of Justice finally approve the Google Settlement.

The podcast is disappointing … for several reasons:

  1. Very light on specifics
  2. Dwelled excessively on “orphan works“
  3. Only softball questions from Christopher Kenneally (of the Copyright Clearance Center)

By concentrating the discussion on the “orphan works” red herring, both the interviewer and Healy managed to ignore the bigger issues with the Google Settlement. The issue that really angers me is that this settlement gives Google a free ride with no penalty worth mentioning for having routinely violated copyright on innumerable books since they began massive sanning operation in 2004.

Oh, and the fact that all authors and publishers have been forced to opt-out to avoid being lumped into the outcome of a lawsuit in which we had no voice and no choice.

In the interview, Healy makes the following statements:

  • The settlement provides the opportunity for “authors and publishers to express what Google and others do with these digitized books, the display rights, the pricing, etc.” (Of course, the right way for Google to have done this would have been to ASK permission BEFORE scanning the books!)
  • Both supporters and opponents can agree that this is a “complex agreement and the settlement documentation is itself, long and complex.” (And therein lies another problem — the complexity means nobody can really know how it’s all going to play out in the end. Be afraid, kids, be very afraid. Google is certainly no known for respecting the IP rights of anyone in their quest for profits.)
  • “for the first time, it’s going to give readers, researchers easy access to millions of out-of-print books.” (Remember, folks, the settlement says a book will be deemd “out-of-print” if it is “not commercially available,” and a book available only through POD avenues may be deemed NOT commercially available — read pg 59 of the settlement agreement.)
  • “the settlement agreement is breathing new life into out of print books and leaving completely alone the existing market for in print books online.”  (It doesn’t read that way to me — the settlement allows Google to create a lot of, mostly unspecified, commercial uses of scanned books. And, don’t forget, remaining in the settlement forces all disputes into mandatory arbitration rather than leaving open the possibility of further lawsuits.)
  • “[the Book Rights Registry] introduces into the environment a new organization, which is really determined to give an unprecedented degree of control for authors, publishers, and others, rights holders, on how their copyrights are exploited and distributed in this new digital world.” (I think he chose the correct word – “exploited” — which is what Google has been doing for five years already. In fact, however, rights holders are relinquishing a lot of control to an as-yet-unknown entity — the BRR. How much control do you think small, or self, published authors are really going to have over the actions and decisions of the BRR? After all, it is the large publishers — members of the AAP — who have been behind this lousy settlement from the git-go.)

You will have to make your own decision regarding whether to remain in the Google Settlement or to opt-out of it (and that raises another major issue — this should have been strictly an opt-IN settlement!!!).

If you want to trust Google and some pie-in-the-sky Book Rights Registry with your intellectual property, be my guest. I’m sure you’ll make millions out of it.

Sure you will.

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June 23, 2009

Ed McMahon, Marine Bird Dog Pilot

With the news today that Ed McMahon has flown off into the sunset for the last time, I thought I’d share this small tribute to his Marine Corps service. This is a paragraph from my book, Cessna Warbirds:

In March 1953, Captain Ed McMahon (later to gain fame as Johnny Carson’s sidekick on the “Tonight Show”) was checked out in a Bird Dog of VMO-6 and flew his first combat mission the following day, eventually racking up 85 missions in the OE-1.  If not for bad weather, he likely would have logged the last Marine Corps mission before the armistice in July 1953.  Although the war ended, the Bird Dogs of VMO-6 continued to fly surveillance missions to enforce the “No Crossing” line just south of the demilitarized zone.

And, for those who don’t know what a Bird Dog is, here’s a short description (adapted from Cessna Warbirds):

In August 1949, the US Army announced a competition for a new Army Observation Aircraft with a fly-off scheduled for April of the following year. Cessna Aircraft Company, with several ongoing projects and only a small engineering staff, elected to reuse the Cessna Model 170’s wing design and the Cessan Model 195’s empennage design.  This allowed them to devote more design effort to a new powerplant installation, fuselage, and landing gear.  The military requirement for a 600-foot landing distance over a 50-foot obstacle necessitated modifying the C-170’s flaps to allow 60 degrees of extension. Cessna installed a six-cylinder, 190-horsepower Continental engine, with a 213-horsepower takeoff rating, behind a 90-inch McCauley propeller.

The prototype first flew on 14 Dec 1949 and won the fly-off in April 1950, and the first Army L-19 Bird Dog entered service in Korea just in time for the second liberation of Seoul. The L-19s flown by the Marine Corps were designated OE-1s and used for light re-supply, medical evacuation, forward air control of allied fighters, and artillery spotting missions.

USMC Cessna OE-1 Bird Dogs

USMC Cessna OE-1 Bird Dogs

So, this old veteran offers a salute to honor an even older one.

Semper fi, Ed!

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June 17, 2009

Thoughts on E-book Design

I keep hearing questions from people who want to create an e-book from their print edition’s files…and get it done cheaply (or, more often, free). Usually, they’re looking to produce Kindle or EPUB books.

Can either format be produced cheap (or even free)?

Yes, of course.

Will the result look and feel anything like the print edition?

Probably not.

At Five Rainbows Services, we have experimented with every e-book conversion tool we can find in an attempt to produce ready-for-print-time Kindle and EPUB books .

We have yet to be satisfied with the results.

I have also purchased numerous e-books in various formats that have, apparently, been done on the cheap.

Most look like it.

For some converters, the quality and format of the source file will dramatically affect the quality of the resulting e-book. If you use Microsoft Word, you will get a very different result than if your source file is a PDF.

Also, the amount of formatting required in your book will affect the results. The more formatting, the more it will likely need some TLC from somebody who knows what they’re doing. To tweak and improve Kindle formatting, you need to know basic HTML, which tags are supported by the Kindle (and which are not), the Kindle-specific tags not included in basic HTML, and the inherent limitations of the Kindle reader itself.

For EPUB format, one of the most common flaws created by auto-converter services or software is the a screwed-up table of contents. Usually, that could have been prevented by properly designing the source file. Even exporting EPUB (developed with help from Adobe) from Adobe’s own InDesign won’t solve problems that were designed-in.

So, here’s my bottom-line analysis:

  • If all you care about is getting the information content of your book out there in the wilds of the marketplace, most any conversion tool can do that.
  • If the quality of the resulting file matters to you, you’re either going to have to learn how to massage those various formats…or pay somebody who already knows how.

As with most things in life, there are shortcuts, but many of them produce less than optimal results.

It’s your book. The decision is yours.

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June 15, 2009

Keep Up With Publishing News

Publishing is far from monolithic, and the plethora of related news sources can be overwhelming. And yet, it’s imperative that anyone who’s serious about the business keep up with both the major news and the budding possibilities.

But how can you do that without spending hours every day visiting websites, news aggregators, and blogs?

Use the Internet’s capabilities handle the time-consuming work.

Here are the four tactics I use to keep up-to-date on the constanting evolving world of publishing:

  1. Google (or Yahoo) Alerts
    I use Google Alerts, primarily because I started that account before I knew Yahoo also offered a similar service. It’s just easier to continue with Google. I currently have 32 defined alerts. Here’s a screen shot of a portion of the list of Google Alerts:
    alerts-1And here are close-ups of the left and right halves:
    alerts-lalerts-rIf you click on edit, you can change the type and frequency:
    alert-type alert-freq
    TIP 1: To filter out most of the chaff in the search results, put quotation marks around phrases you’re searching for (including your name and/or book titles).
    TIP 2: Use the plus (+) and/or minus (-) symbols to tell Google to include or exclude specific words or phrases.
    Here’s an example of what my text-only search results look like for my Google Alert for publishing +book:
    alert-resultI can easily scan the headlines and first few lines to decide if I want to read the whole article. If I do, one click and I’m reading it. Some days, I find nothing worth following up in a specific alert; other days, I find several. In either case, it takes me less than a half-minute to scan each alert for items of interest. I imagine Yahoo Alerts work in a similar manner.
    Like I said, I have 32 defined alerts — author names, book titles, company names, specific topics, titles of article I’ve written, etc. Without them, I’d either miss the not-so-major publishing news and mentions of our books and companies around the Internet or I’d have to spend hours every day doing searches.
  2. RSS Feeds
    I generally follow 15-25 blogs, but rarely visit any of them. I use the RSS feed reader that’s built in to my Thunderbird email software. The blogs I follow all offer RSS feeds. Just look for something like this somewhere on the blog’s page:
    rssThe key is usually that little orange-and-white icon. You can right-click on it, copy the link URL, and paste it into your feed reader. You can also usually click on it and see options for how you might want to follow the feed. Once you’ve set it up in your feed reader, your software will retrieve the latest posts displaying, depending on how they’ve defined their feed, either the complete post or just the first few lines with a link to follow to read the rest.
    Here’s what a portion of my Thunderbird display looks like with all the RSS feeds shown under “News & Blogs” (note that some of the feeds are grouped under a common heading, like “Aviation” and “Kindle”):
    rss1Sometimes, I only read the subject lines and delete the messages. Other times, I delete them after reading the initial lines in the message. Some I click through to read the whole post (if the particular blog’s feed doesn’t provide the complete text). I’d never have time to visit all those blogs, but using their RSS feeds allows me to keep up with what they’re writing about. I’m not always following the same set of blogs — I delete some that I find I’ve lost interest in and add new ones that I come across (sometimes by way of a Google Alert).
  3. Newsletters
    I’m sure everyone subscribes to email newsletters. I subscribe to ten or twelve of them. Some I read from start to finish, some I read a section or two, and a few I find myself scanning to find a tidbit of interest. As with RSS feeds, I drop some of them after a while and add news ones. A few of my favorites are:
    The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week
    SpeakerNet News
    InDesign Magazine Tip of the Week
    PW Daily (Publishers Weekly)
    Shelf Awareness
  4. Twitter
    If you thought Twitter was primarily a social networking tool used by folks who only want to tell you what they are for lunch or what they plan to do this weekend, you’re barely skimming the surface of what Twitter is all about.
    I follow a lot of movers and shakers in the publishing business and often get a heads-up on what’s happening well before it hits the newsletters and blogs. If you want to find others involved in book publishing to follow, check out the comprehensive Directory of Book Trade People on Twitter graciously maintained by Jennifer Tribe.
    Of course, you can follow me on Twitter, too!
    If I had to keep up with going on Twitter by using the Twitter web interface, I would have quit a long time ago. Instead, however, I use a desktop client to track and categorize the Tweets and Twitterers I follow — I’ve tried several and still prefer TweetDeck.

Using all of the above tools, I am able to keep up with what’s happening in the wide world of publishing (and several other areas in which I have an interest) without spending hours every day. I’ve never tracked it, but I suspect it takes me less than an hour a day to monitor my Google Alerts, RSS feeds, newsletters, and Twitter. And it is always an hour well spent.

The publishing business is really an information business, and you need to keep abreast of the latest information.

Maybe you don’t need — or want — the volume of things I track, in which case just set up a few key Alerts, subscribe to a few RSS feeds and newsletters, and follow as many people on Twitter as you feel comfortable with.

The tools are readily available, and all the ones above are free. So, don’t say you can’t do it. You can if you want to.

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