Comments on: Presenting the E-book Abomination Index

By: Colleen Cunningham

Colleen Cunningham — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:37:06 +0000

I recently bought an eBook – a NYT bestseller in print – that 1. listed the index in the TOC and 2. that index hyperlink pointed to the endorsements page. A WTF moment in eBooks.

We’re currently producing our eBooks in house and a lot of discussion has gone into quality control. I’m in production and, since editorial has to catch up with us, we’re making calls as to whether to include art, keep cross references or put in the time to produce hyperlinks, etc etc. Of course, since this eBook production has been shoved into our regular print schedule there is not a lot of time for this. But I felt better when I encountered the scenario I just described. We know better than that!!

By: Pete Nikolai

Pete Nikolai — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:12:20 +0000

I clicked through to the Abomination submission form, but could not find a link to the page that lists all the offending ebooks that have been reported. Will you please share that link?

By: India

India — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 06:48:00 +0000

Yeah, too bad nobody’s doing anything like that.

By: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:38:27 +0000

Somebody should host a WEBcast on this topic or something.

*cough*

By: India

India — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:51:40 +0000

Yeah, per my exchange with @arachnejericho last night (http://twitter.com/ArachneJericho/status/8995561997), this conversion was probably done blackboxenly by Fictionwise.com, where I bought the e-book. And I’m sure that McGraw-Hill doesn’t have the staff to check every single book that their vendors auto-convert for them, in every format.

But somebody‘s got to check them, and it’s the publisher’s responsibility to make sure that this gets done. As Kate says, as long as they’re outsourcing this shit, QA needs to be written into the contracts.

By: Pablo Defendini

Pablo Defendini — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:21:41 +0000

Being on the same side as you, Kate, I totally agree: it’s not easy, and the workflow isn’t set up for it. But that’s no excuse; it goes back to the point of my previous post: publishers need to take responsibility for these processes, build competencies in-house, and bring this work into its core production workflow. Relying on outside suppliers who run files through black boxen yields crap results.

By: Kate Rados

Kate Rados — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:06:16 +0000

This is such an amazingly frustrating point-counterpoint in my head. From being on the production side, I know what it’s like to battle retailers who won’t give you the opportunity to QA your files. I also know how difficult it is to find the help/staff/time/etc. to actually work through the QA for hundreds of books.

BUT!!! I do not tolerate excuses well. Even my own. So when I see eBooks in a craptastic layout, with unreadable fractions, with horrifying tables and charts, I get just as frustrated as any reader would.

Maybe putting us in the ‘gallows’ will help get pubs invested in QA and putting out a quality product, instead of just slapping up some text and calling it a day.

My advice to pubs: put a gratis company reader (kindle, sony, ipad, phone, whatever) AND mandatory gratis QA files/process for every book in your retail contract.