Dear M/M Publishers:
My name is Aunt Lynn and I am a great consumer of your books, the vast majority of which are in electronic format. First, let me thank you for making so many titles available in eform. It is much appreciated. My beloved Sony eReader 700 has about 300 books on it and I am going to have to look into removable storage soon to accommodate all of them. I love ebooks; they’re portable, I can change the font size, I can easily switch between books, I can search for specific words, I can easily (generally) copy lines to use as quotes in my reviews. I pimp my Sony all over the place to whoever will listen because I lurve it so muchly.
That being said, I have some issues with ebooks that have been, over time, quietly grating on my nerves. There are several — inconsistencies in font-size formatting between you pubs so that one requires a magnifying lens and another can be read from arms’ length, line wrapping problems (see Jenre’s post on this), security blocks and DRM to name a few — but this here post is about one specific problem, one that has little ol’ mild-mannered, laid-back me riled enough to put my fingers to the keys.
Last night I had the opportunity to load eight books onto my reader (PDFs, each one from a different of you pubsies) and all but one of them had titling problems of some kind. I am not talking about the filename. What I mean is this: once I have transferred the file (i.e. the book) to my reader, when I open the book list there are entries that have no title, no author — sometimes both — incorrect titling, the editor instead of the author, etc. Imagine going into a library and on the shelf are 300 books, all blue and all of the same size, and a third of them having no title, some no author, some with titles that have no relation to what is inside, some with what may be the editor’s name and nothing else. It would be a mess and this is what I am up against.
In this recent group:
- one book had no author or title at all
- one had the filename (not the title) and no author
- one had a single letter for the title (“T” — not the title of the book) and a single name for the author that didn’t match at all
- one had the filename of the book and the credited company for Layout and Formatting as the author
- one had “book title” as the title and a single name for the author that didn’t match
- one had the correct title, though there was no spacing or capitalization so itallrantogetherasoneword; the author was correct
- one was missing a word in the title; the author was correct
- one was correct in both places
This is unfortunately a fairly common occurrence, but EVEN THOUGH I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO, many times I can fix it. Now, I’m pretty tech savvy, so I know that the control for the title and author is located in the properties area of the PDF. Probably half the time or more I can go into the properties and make the change easy peasy to the correct title/author EVEN THOUGH I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO, but there are times when I can’t because the file is security protected from any changes. Five of the eight instances that I list above are the latter, meaning I now have three books that I have no idea what they are just by looking at the list (I can deal with a filename as a title as long as it tells which book it is, though the librarian in me doesn’t like it even one little bit). I can export the PDF to a RTF doc, fix the properties, then re-save it as a PDF — or leave it in RTF as my Sony can read that format — BUT I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO (besides, that screws up the spacing). Unless I do this to these files— and I’ve done before to other books — I will take them off the reader and only read them on my laptop. But I have a reader for a reason; if I wanted to read on the laptop, I wouldn’t have spent $400 on the Sony.
I am tired of shoddy, sloppy work on the part of some of you publishers (don’t get me started on non-ebook-specific issues; see Wave’s post from yesterday on criticism of the genre, and no, this was not an intentional follow-up). There is no excuse for this to happen. Would you consider printing a book with no title or author listed on the cover? I think not, and this is how I view this problem. While I am sympathetic and understand that books go through many different hands during the process, some publishers are very small and/or new with limited staff, and many times the file is made into numerous formats, whoever has it last should make sure that this part of the file is correct. This is how many of your readers find books in their devices. It literally takes me less than 30 seconds to make the change and re-save the file — when I’m able to do so, that is — so I don’t want to hear time as an excuse. If it’s an oversight and you didn’t even know this was an issue, here is an impassioned plea for you to realize it’s a problem and correct it from here on out (and go back and fix your backlists as well for new buyers). And if you choose to ignore me — which is your right, certainly — at least give me the ability to make the change by not having it secured.
Thank you for your time and attention,
Aunt Lynn (in Berkeley)
***********************************
Okay, now that that’s out of my system… 🙂
Does this bother anyone else? Am I the only one who finds this to be a problem?
No, you’re not the only one!!! I am so glad you’ve posted this. I have huge problems reading anything but ePub files on my Sony. It seems to really screw up the PDFs that come to me from publishers, and I HATE having to read stuff on my computer now I’ve got the Sony Reader (which I love, btw). I now dread it when people tell me they don’t have ePub versions, as I know that will be a problem for me.
You’re right about the issues with finding books too – I have to scroll through everything to work out what I’ve bought, though I don’t have the largescale problems of others, as once I’ve read something I do ditch it from the Sony, and only keep it on the computer if it’s a DIK.
No idea what the solution is to all this though …
Axxx
Good morning Anne.
You and my partner on on the same wavelength regarding the ePub format. She loved my Sony so much that I went onto eBay and bought her the same one (they stopped making the 700 last fall). Reading books in PDF doesn’t bother me so much because I generally read books in their default “small” font size and therefore the line wrap issue isn’t too bad, but she doesn’t and now that she’s discovered ePub she won’t go back. It’s gotten to the point where her books (she reads LesFic) are drying up — M/M has sooooo many more titles, which frosts her tomatoes 🙂 — and some new ones are only available in PDF, and she won’t buy them. I never thought about Calibre because I am generally happy with PDFs as a format, but I just downloaded it and will see if converting PDFs to ePubs will do the job for her (and help me with some font sizing issues — I’m looking at you, Samhain, with your teeny-tiny default print!).
I need to go through and do some weeding on the reader as there are books I’ve rated less than 4 stars on it and have forgotten to take off. It would definitely help with my space issue…
@Aunt Lynn
I’m sorry to hear your pdfs from Samhain are too small. If you buy the Sony editions that Samhain offers, they should be larger.
By the way, if you purchase books from Samhain’s sister site, My Bookstore and More, you can revisit your bookshelf at any time and redownload the book in a different format.
I myself have used this function when buying Dreamspinner books. I wanted different formats for my laptop and reader.
I realize you may have bought ebooks elsewhere and this isn’t relevant to you. Everyone has their own favorite site to buy from! But for readers here who do purchase from MBAM and are using new devices to read on, I wanted to make sure they knew they could get their books in different formats.
(And perhaps other sites offer this too, I’m just not sure and can’t speak for them.)
I hope it’s okay that I jumped into this discussion!
This is a very valid point! It’s so easy to forget to enter the proper metadata, since it isn’t something that shows up in the manuscript itself. From my experience, this can be entered in the Word document (File>Properties>Summary Tab) and also in the file’s properties under explorer. That’s at least two places for publishers to forget, which is probably why this is so common. Still, you think they would test the books on as many devices as possible before releasing them.
Hello Jay.
Were I a publisher, I’d be testing the heck out of ebooks on different readers, on PC and Mac, making sure all is well. JCP is doing it right in how she is handling it: she is making an effort to find out what readers want and asking some folks to testthe formatting on her books. Ebooks are not going away, only getting more popular and it takes very little time to make it right. It’s one area of the file, for goodness sake! But maybe I’m being too hard on them. Like you said, it’s easy to forget, and one of the reasons I did this post.
Here, here!
I’m not computer savvy like you, Lynn, so I didn’t realise that you can change the pdf titles manually. Two of my ebooks – from the same publisher – comes up as just a string of numbers on my Sony. Many more are called ‘Microsoft Word’ and have the editor’s name instead of the author’s.
It drives me nuts that I have to go into a book file to see which book is stored on my reader. In fact, I now only store books in my TBR pile on my Sony because I was finding it so frustrating keeping tabs on the book titles. The rest of the books are kept in files on my lap top.
Thanks for raising this issue, Lynn. I hadn’t realised that fixing the problem was so simple.
Hey Jen.
It’s super easy if the file isn’t security protected. And yes, I have alphanumeric gibberish as title, several “Microsoft Word” entries, many file the filename, and quite a few with no title at all. Makes me an unhappy camper.
I don’t have an ereader yet, but that would definitely annoy me! The same thing sometimes happens with a podcast I’ve downloaded and put on my MP3 player, and it’s “unknown” title and “unknown” artist. Grrr.
You’d think ebook publishers could quite easily put together a final checklist of things to make sure are done before they actually put the file out there for downloading. I know myself how easy details like that are to forget.
Hi JFM.
Exactly. It’s all about the metadata, as Jay said. Electronic files are electronic files, and somewhere in the software in an area that controls that. One extra step to ensure your book (or music or movie) can be easily found. And yes, a checklist seems to be called for here.
Lynn
I’m not tech savvy as you know, above all others, 🙂 because whenever I have a problem I usually ask you for help. What I will do is send a link to this post to all the publishers we deal with so that they can understand that there IS a problem and that it’s an easy fix on their part, which will be appreciated by owners of ereaders everywhere.
I frequently have to send my PDF files to amazon.com to be converted to prc for my Kindle and sometimes they can’t convert them because the file is secure so I end up reading the book on my computer. As you said, why would I spend so much money on a Kindle if I wanted to continue reading my books on my computer? I did a post about a year ago about ‘secure’ books and DRM, maybe it’s time to revive it.
Thanks for this Lynn. I’m so glad something made you so mad that you came out from under that mild mannered, Clark Kent persona. 🙂 Maybe others will understand why I appreciate and love you (not, not in that sense ) 🙂 so much.
BTW I did a tweet of this post because I know that you’re STILL not in Twitter (I had to ‘out’ you). 🙂
You know, admitting that there is a problem is the first step to healing. 🙂 Teasing. I am always happy to field those questions you send.
Thanks for sending off a link. I’m not sure it will help, but you will have done your part to let them know the problem exists.
Yet one more reason I have a Sony and not a Kindle. 🙂 I would hate having to go through a middle man like that to get my files converted. It’s bad enough when I have to do something like that on my own (like LIT to PDF). And I am sure they charge you for that little service, right?
Yeah, it takes a lot to get me worked up enough to complain, especially publicly, so this is definitely one of them. I’m confronted with this issue every time I look at my book list and I have to growl. And I love you, too. 🙂
Honey, I outed myself 15 years ago to apparently no one’s surprise (maybe it was I always wanted The Cure’s Robert Smith’s haircut?). But yes, me and social media are not friends — too much valuable time — so thanks.
Actually if I lived in the US I would pay to convert my files, but because amazon hasn’t figured out yet how to transfer files using their Whispernet technology they do it as a download and they don’t charge me. I believe for wifi transfers they charge based on the size of the file for US customers.
The reason I have to send my files there to be converted is I still haven’t figured out how to do so. I’ll need some more lessons. 🙂
As Leslie said it’s only because I’m stupid that I send my files to amazon to be converted. 🙂
Wave, here is a link to a web page with detailed instructions on how to convert pdf files to prcs. Hope this helps so you don’t have to depend on amazon.
http://www.cottontimer.com/2008/05/06/how-to-convert-pdf-files-to-read-on-the-amazon-kindle/
It’s not just pdfs or epubs – unsurprisingly, the sloppiness carries through to other ebook formats. the metadata on the mobi ebooks I download varies wildly.I use Calibre to manage it; I load every book I download into Calibre before transferring it to my Kindle so I can ensure the metadata is correct and consistent. If that doesn’t work, I’m very tech savvy and know all sorts of ways to edit the metadata, even on DRM’d mobis.
But not everyone is like me, and in any event, as you say – I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO DO THIS!!
And as you say, the mistakes and inconsistencies are mind-boggling and ridiculous. Some publishers are better than others, but even within an individual publishers, some books will have authors listed last name,first name, others will have the reverse; some will have titles listed and others won’t, etc. etc. If you go into the more esoteric metadata fields it’s even worse – it chaps me how few publishers include date of publication, which is something I really like to know.
Seems they all get “publisher” right, though!!
This is a sign of such sloppiness and lack of care – but we put up with it. I’ve written to a few publishers about it but gotten no response. Though a lot of the time we don’t even get decent basic editing, so I perhaps correct metadata is too much to ask.
(No, I’m not bitter… 😉
I’ve come to just accept it
Good morning Justacat.
My guess is that if the original file — Word, InDesign, whatever — was correct in its metadata, it would probably carry over to the resulting files for the readers. I know when I am given a LIT for a book, I convert it to Word first because I can control the font size — 13 pt Arial is perfect for me on the Sony as default — and I can create the title and author right there. Then I convert it to PDF (though I could leave it as Word, since the Sony reads that format as well) and it is perfect. I just downloaded Caibre and I am going to see if it will make my life easier.
Yup, the inconsistencies are large in number. Of the batch I listed above, only one had any information beyond title and author (if that!) and it was pretty good in what it included.
Word.
Jordan Castillo Price did just a post at her blog asking about what readers want when she’s formatting her books. I guess this is the kind of thing but to be honest, it never occurred to me that this was weird. LOL
I use pdf on my netbook. The titles are often run together or abbreviated. For example Field of Dreams would be FieldOD and then there are Torquere Sips that are called sip079. When I download I save to my hard drive and I just try to remember to change the name when I save it so I know what I’m looking for. Loose Id puts the authors initials in front LyLo for Lynn Lorenz but I guess I never really thought about it. I do like when the author is correct because sometimes a title doesn’t ring a bell and I do like to mouse over it and see who the author is and often the name is different or missing, I wasn’t sure who that other person was, the publisher, editor, author’s real name.
It seems to me it wouldn’t be that hard to save the file easily Field of Dreams – Joe Smith rather than FieldOD. It’s not THAT much more typing for them to make sure the right names are put in, seems like a bit of laziness but because I don’t use a reader maybe it’s less annoying for me than others, as long as I remember to change the name when I save or I have to put it on “thumbnail” view so I can see the cover.
Weirdest thing I had happen lately was I opened a Taste Test and the cover was for a completely different book. The text was right but the cover was completely wrong. Ooops.
Hi Tam.
Like I said above, JCP is doing it right and the other pubs should be taking note, dammit.
I, too, change the filenames on books when they come in to a standard format: title_author (i.e. TheGhostWoreYellowSocks_JoshLanyon.pdf) so I know exactly what it is. After I read it, it goes into one of seven folders for star rating (1-1.75, 2-2.75 and so on, along with a DIK and DNF).
Heck, copy and paste it in works great. No double typing.
I chuckled when I read this, but sadly, it’s just another form of sloppiness.
I think the reason most filenames are run together has to do with a world wide web idiosyncracy. Spaces in filenames or web page names causes errors on loading/downloading or page not found errors a lot of the times. This said, they can replace the spaces with underscores _ so that the filenames are easily read. And it’s just plain laziness that they don’t put the whole title and author in there because filenames can be up to 255 characters long. There are a few symbols and punctuation marks that can’t be used in filenames due to their being used by the OS as command operators and such ( : / \ * to name a few).
Great post!! I agree completely that the publishers need to get their act together. 🙂
I used to have a lot of problems with how books showed up on my Sony until I started using Caliber instead of the Sony Library. I would convert all PDFs to Epub and if they had title/author issues, which many did, I’d fix it in Caliber.
With the latest version of Caliber the files convert to LRF which works even better on the Sony. I still have issues with the title/author because I buy everything in PDF but once fixed the books read great on my Sony.
Thanks Lily.
I downloaded Calibre based on recs from the comments here. Even though I haven’t had many problems with actually reading the books — generally, that is — I think Caibre will make my life easier. In saying that I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO FIX ANYTHING! 🙂
I read everything on my pc and I chose pdf files. Since I like M.L. Rhodes so much, I have a lot of books from AmberAllure. Their pdf’s come with the title and then the author. It’s a small complaint, but I like the author’s last name first and then the title. It groups all the books together with the author. When you buy from AmberAllure, they ask you to take a survey. I’ve mentioned this change to them, but never gotten a response.
It does seem strange that some publishers identify their books with abbreviated titles and author names. I wonder how they catagorize their own files? How are they sure that they send me the book I order?
Hiya John.
You’re talking about the filename, yes? Until I got my Sony, I read everything on my laptop and it was actually somewhat easier because when the file came in, I just automatically changed the filename to what I wanted it to be. Can you do this? I haven’t gotten a PDF from AA in a while (only LITs, which I convert).
I wonder this my own self.
Yes, the filename.
I( was just having a problem with this issue. I was looking for a book I knew had bought and downloaded but for whatever reason never read, but I could not find it. I did a title search and auther search, which didn’t work and ended up having do go on my computer to see how it was listed. I am going to look into the caliber.
Now I still love my reader inspite of this issue, the font size and line wrapping issue, and the fact that covers don’t always download from certain sites (Books on Board and Sony Ebook store). I just wish things were a little more simple.
Hi Amanda.
Yup. Been there, done that. Very frustrating.
I like to say that although I adore my reader and couldn’t imaging living without it at this point, it’s not perfect. And this technology — at least how average Joe Blow consumer is using it — is in its infancy. I hope there is a point when some consistency among the pubs occurs.
Just so you all know epub takes so much less room in the sony than pdf. So I can get more books in.
Good morning Arlene.
I am convinced. EVEN THOUGH I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO :), I’ll be using Calibre to do some converting and testing to see if it’s the answer to some of my issues.
Just a response to Wave’s comment (way up there) and your response, Lynn…with the Kindle, if you want to convert files, you don’t have to go through Amazon. That’s just one option they offer. You can also convert files on your own with Calibre or Mobipocket (and probably other programs that I am not aware of). Emailing for conversion is certainly convenient–and there is a 15c charge–but it is not the only way to do it.
I’ve read your post twice and I guess I am not entirely understanding the issue. Are you distressed about PDFs that don’t convert well? And the reason you are converting PDFs is because the book is not available in a format that will work on your Sony?
When I first got my Kindle in April 2008, it didn’t read PDFs natively and, outside of Amazon, it was hard to find ebooksellers that had prc or mobi format books (the format that works best on the Kindle). But, two years later, the situation has changed dramatically–for me, at least. Now the Kindle can read PDFs–granted, the font is pretty small and it can’t be resized, but at least I don’t have to convert. But better yet, I can usually find the book in prc or mobi format, so no conversion is needed. In fact, many times if Wave sends me the PDF for review and I start reading the book and enjoying it, I usually just go ahead and buy it for my Kindle and don’t bother with the conversion step–because PDFs usually convert crappily. But now that I don’t need to convert, I don’t have to deal with the lousy formatting.
I think we are at a cusp point and tide is turning towards wider acceptance of ebooks, which means wider availability. Hopefully the problems the problems we “early pioneers” are experiencing will sort themselves out and disappear once we get past the growing pains stage.
L
Hi Leslie.
It’s not about converting or even the file type at all, actually. It’s about the metadata (i.e. title, author, etc) that is included in the file — or not — that is the problem. The metadata controls what I and others see in our book list once it is transferred onto the eReader, and is generally in a part of the original file’s back-end properties. These metadata properties, when set correctly, include the book’s title, author, key words, publisher, pub date, ISBN, etc. If not paid attention to or set correctly, it will often contain wrong or missing titles, the editor or proofer or even the author’s real name, making it very difficult to determine by just looking at the list what the book is. For files with this problem, I have to open the book itself to find out what it is. For example, here is a small sampling of what I have on my reader now:
Title/Author
BeTheAirForYou.pdf/Elemental Alchemy
book title/CLAR
Don’t Look Back/SilverBullet
In and Out/L.B. Gregg
Layout/1/28/2009
Microsoft Word – LessonsintrustCC/Marty Mathews
T/Thalia
TUSKS/Richard Stevenson
_/05/20/2010
As you can see, only one of these is right in both title and author. Does this make sense?
I completely agree.
Like many others, I use Calibre. I buy books in .lit when I can and convert them to .mobi, which my reader likes the best. In converting, I have it set to replace weird control characters with text – before I started the conversion process and just bought .prcs, I’d frequently end up with books that crashed my ereader (those weird control characters).
As part of the conversion, I normalize all the titles and author information while they’re still fresh in my mind, because you are right – there is no consistency!
I agree that publishers should probably be testing their books a bit more (and looking at them in Calibre) – I won’t tell you how many times I’ve discovered an author’s real name when I added a book to Calibre, because the document properties still carried that information. Probably NOT what authors and publishers want to have happen.
Hi Chris, and thanks for chiming in.
I started playing with Calibre and it seems to be the answer to some of my problems (I’ve been using other methods to achieve the same results for the most part), though I admit that I SHOULDN’T NEED TO DO ANYTHING but purchase a book in my preferred format and have it be right — metadata, line formating at different font sizes, etc. Now, I do understand that some books are not available in X format, and I am good with converting, but for this particular issue I’m raising today, I SHOULDN’T NEED TO make fixes to things that should have been correct when the file left the pub.
lol. I’m sure you’re right about that.
Thank you Aunt Lynn! Yes, this is really bothersome! At first I thought it was just my reader, but a lot of them do so! It is quite the annoying problem, especially when you have so many books and you can’t find the one you’re looking for!
It’s a bit careless!
Good afternoon Larissa.
Annoying, yes, and careless, indeed. And it takes so little time to make sure it’s right.
Thank you all soooo much for mentioning Calibre.
I`m in HEAVEN !!!
( 5 different readers on my PC – you can imagine..)
I second that!
Ok, so do any of these ‘converters’ help on the substandard content? Say boost a 2.5 rating up to a 4 or 4.5? lol
Ha! You’re a funny guy…
I have been reading ebooks for oh 8 years and lets not go into how many books I have. Do I have a complaint yes. I have books that I could read on the original reader I had however it died- replacing it now for the fourth time. I have books I can no longer read- format issues- I get code- I want an ebook where I can buy from any publisher and have it readable- I despise having to change from pdf to txt or mobi not working at all. ditto with other formats.I should not have to change formats to make the book readable. I should not have over 400 books only readable on the main computer- I like portability of the ereader.
Hi Clovermax.
I hear ya. I am hoping that since we’re in what is the infancy of this technology that at some point there could be an accepted, universal format. Unfortunately, history of technology and competition says perhaps this is pie in the sky. We’ll see and I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
You are definitely not alone in this. I even have one publisher that when you download, the file name that shows on the screen is the books ISBN number. Makes it a hassle if I buy more than one a time from them. Luckily, very few of the books I get are in any of the secured formats so it’s easy to fix the problem, but as you say, we shouldn’t have to.
It is a bit aggravating. I have to agree with what several have brought up here in terms of formatting, etc.
Is it ok to take a moment in this comment to also rant about the cost of some of the ebooks and the inability to search on the publishers websites for specific types of material you want to read beyond broad categories? Most of the books I’ve purchased have been reasonably priced, but I’ve seen some where the costs have edged into printed material range despite being digital – some as high as the cost of printed manga! There was one case where the ebook I was considering was actually more than the cost of the printed book (which was on sale at another vendor site). I was dumbfounded on that one. Of course, I’m talking of ebooks in general, not just m/m books.
As for searching on the websites, sometimes I want to look for titles that have specific types of warnings (if I’m in a particular mood for such types), and it’s so challenging to search. If I key in, say, “dub-con and m/m” as a type of book I want to read, good luck finding much (at least from my experiences on a few of the publisher sites). It would be great if they had search options, like some fiction sites have, where you can select check boxes for certain ‘warnings’ to look for and your search would be narrowed down to that. But, I’m guessing that there’s not much standardization on warnings for the books.
I’m not surprised by this problem and suspect publishers aren’t aware of it. Metadata’s frequently outta-sight/outta-mind, not just in Acrobat, but in programs (e.g., Word) used to generate PDFs.
But yeah, easy to address by tweaking production and QC processes….
I use Acrobat, Preview, and Goodreader, and only ever see filenames. But I sympathize!
P.S. To clarify–I mean, I don’t see the metadata in Acrobat or Preview unless I go to the menu option to show them (I think it’s Properties in Acrobat and Inspector in Preview). I don’t think Goodreader has a way to view the metadata but I’m not sure.
I have a Sony and all the problems with the file names, as well as PDFs that have part of the font normal sized and part really tiny, and no way to modify the font size on the tiny stuff. Like so many others, I have been trying using Calibre to convert to epub.
Since I read this post, I downloaded a free read from James Buchanan’s website and a title that should have been “Measure Up” became “mesure up” which sounds like a bad porn title.
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