Why are eBooks so bad?

I don't mean the content - although it's undeniably true that the lowering of the barrier to entry will result in a flood of mediocre work to trudge though. No, I'm referring to the eBook format.

It's just such a poorly executed standard. Here's just a few of the things that drive me crazy.

Too Many Font Sizes

Depending on the format you will be presented with a range of choices for font size. Why? How much difference does it make if the book is displayed in 10 point as opposed to 12 point type? We need three sizes - small, medium, and big. Having eight or more choices is unnecessary complexity. Having so many different possibilities just makes the pagination that much more unpredictable. Speaking of which...

Unpredictable Pagination

The thing that jumps out at me more than any other about the poor quality of eBooks is the way things that ought to be consistent will, instead, move around the screen. A sense of place in the book can be important, but when the length of the book is arbitrary that sense is destroyed.

Where it becomes downright diabolical is footnotes. When I follow a footnote in a Kindle eBook by touching on the asterisk, I'm taken to another page where the footnote resides. OK - makes sense. But then when I follow the link back to where I was, it doesn't present the page to me as I left it. Instead it tries to put the link at the top left of the screen. Sometimes it manages to do it, sometimes it doesn't, but why does it try at all? Why am I not presented with the page in the same state as I left it? When the position of the footnote returns to the top left I'm sometimes left without the preceding text, which sets up the context for the footnote.

The simple act of flipping the book between landscape and portrait will cause the whole book to change. If I want to refer to a previously read section it can be hell's own task to find it again.

Here's another example. These three pages are what you see if you start at page 19-20, go back to page 17-18, and the forward to 19-20 again. Notice how the text at the top left of page 19 moves backwards to page 18 and shifts to the middle of the right side of the screen, and then stays there and disappears off of page 19 when you go forward again.

 

And the worst... the thing that kept me away from publishing as an eBook... the thing that has been the biggest disappointment to me since I did... is captioning.

Cap
(This is a joke. You'll understand in a minute.)

tioning

It seems such a small request that any caption should remain tied to the photo or illustration it refers to. And yet this seems impossible. In my own book I have instances where there is a caption and then a photograph, but the caption refers to the photo on the previous page. And the photo on the next page appears with a caption, but it's the one for the photo on the left. The proper caption is on the next page.

I can't tell you how much this infuriates me. Especially when BookBaby assured me that the book could be encoded in a way that prevents this. If it can, they didn't. I confess I am underwhelmed by BookBaby. I really wanted to like them, but I am disappointed.

Low Quality, Poor Formatting for Photos

The other simple (or so I thought) demand I had for my eBook was that the photos take up the width of the page, and that, if possible, the reader could zoom in and see them full screen.  Instead, photos are often small and of poor quality. Double tapping on the photo enlarges it slightly, but thereby reduces the quality.

Seriously folks, this is all really basic stuff. The eBook standards should never have been released into the wild at this stage.

I took apart an eBook to see what was inside it and found what is essentially a subset of the HTML 1.0 standard. Some of you may not have been alive at the time, but HTML 1.0 was, to put it mildly, crude. It was an experiment more than anything else. I am at a loss to understand why the eBook format is such a gigantic step backwards in the display of text and images.

Bring Back The Book Designers

For centuries book designers have trod the fine line between aesthetics and usability, and created some of the finest examples of our intelligence, creativity, and sophistication as communicating beings. I hope the eBook standards people will lock the engineers out of the room and allow book designers to drive the advances in eBook formatting.

Book designers look at the content of the book and decide how to shape that content so that the experience of reading is supporting the content - sometimes even adding extra dimension to the content. The eBook formats simply blend it into a smooth slurry and cram it down a cheap pipe.

It actually kind of shocks me that Steve Jobs got on board with this standard and didn't push for something better - or simply do an end run around the standard and create something better. Perhaps that's what the iBooks Authoring tool is. I hope to give it a shake down shortly and will report on my findings.



eBooks are okay for reading simple, text-driven narratives. Not great, just okay. For anything with even the slightest sophistication or graphic content they are sorely lacking. Consumers are notoriously poor at demanding better design from technology companies, so I hope someone on the other side of the fence will wake up and realise that we need - and deserve - better.

Getting What You Want By Making People's Lives Easier

This is a piece of advice that really applies to almost all aspects of one's life. There are lots of times when you want someone else to do something. In this context it applies to book reviewers, bookstores, your audience, and the media, just to name a few. You want the media to pay attention to your book and help promote it. It would be great if they published a photo of the cover of your book, or perhaps a photo of the author. You want bookstores to stock your book, and more than that you'd like them to be enthusiastic about it. You know what I mean.

As far as I can tell there is no (legal) way to compel them to act in your best interests. But there is a way to increase the odds of it. Make their lives as easy as possible.

You know how busy you are? How many emails you have in your inbox and how little time you have to track things down? Well most people are just the same. The way to get what you want is to simply make that an easy option.

When I was preparing to launch This Place Is Awesome, I created a Web page for media people. I posted a short description of the book and all the most important details (launch date, where it could be purchased, etc). I included a link to the press release and made my email address and phone number very clear and easy to find. I chose half a dozen photographs from the book that I thought were the most interesting and posted high resolution, print ready versions on the site. I also put a high resolution image of the book cover and a couple of photos of the author. In my case I also added links to a couple of songs by the band that was the subject of the book and a couple of sample chapters.

Instead of simply mailing off copies of the book to every magazine and newspaper in the area and waiting to see who made the effort to find out more, I chose specific people and contacted them directly. I sent them the press release and a link to my "media site", and asked if they'd be interested in helping to get the word out.

The idea of the media site was to make available to them everything they might need to cover the story. I didn't want them to have to contact me with six hours until deadline asking for a photo they could use. One of the wonderful things about the Web is that it can be your 24 hour a day receptionist, able to handle common requests any time, any day, without delay. My hope was that I could make the media peoples' lives and jobs that little bit easier.

Anything you can do to help people leave work on time and look good is worth the effort.

This applies to bookstores as well. I gave them posters, bookmarks, and buttons. The bookmarks in particular were appreciated. On my Web site I list them all, complete with address, links to their shop's Web site, and links to their location on Google maps. I plan to go back in the near future and simply ask them, point blank, "what else can I do to help bring people to your store and get them interested in my book?" If they're a good shop they'll know what bring customers in.

If you've been doing this for a while, you probably have a good idea of what works. If you're a newbie, ask questions and take an interest in the people you are asking to help you. Be easy to work with, responsive, and reliable. I know that sounds obvious and trite, but it's shocking how seldom it happens I was turned down by one local shop because he was sick of dealing with independent authors who did no promotion, and then looked put out and annoyed when the shop hadn't sold any of their books. I told him that I completely understand and I'm sorry that was his experience.

I know the music editor at an important local weekly and I know how he is under constant, crushing deadlines and other pressures. I asked him when the best time was to email him if I wanted to be sure that I didn't get lost in the flood. He told me about a specific time of the week when the pressure let up briefly and he had time to look at things a little more closely. He also told me about a key phrase to put in my subject lines that was likely to grab his attention. (Yes, it involves profanity, and no, I won't tell you what it is.)

I can't stress enough here that you need to go in with the right attitude. No one likes to feel like they're being manipulated (and a clumsy manipulation is possibly the worst mistake you can make). You need a gentle touch, a polite manner, and an honest approach. Don't pretend you're their friend unless you really are. They know you want something from them. A little humility and a lot of courtesy, can help you figure out what is going to make you look good in their eyes, and what will make them look good to the people they work with and for.

If your book is rubbish then no amount of sucking up will help you and if you're a well-known and consistent draw then you're in good shape already, but if you are somewhere in the middle then taking the time to understand and help people could be the thing that tips the scales in your favour at a critical moment.

Another Perspective on Self vs Traditional Publishing

This item - Self-Publish or Not? - written by Harold Underdown strongly suggests that you consider traditional publishing for a number of very clear and sensible reasons.

Let's be honest here - the rise of inexpensive self-publishing options is going to mean one thing above all… we are going to be deluged in a tidal wave of fifth rate, poorly-written, rubbish. The high barrier to entry that kept out all those who weren't truly committed to the craft has dissolved and, as we've seen with music, every dog and their master are going to take a swing at it. This means that a very few brilliant works that might have been mistakenly passed over by the traditional publishing world will get their day in the sun. But it means that we will also see a general dumbing down of the overall quality of books, and a simultaneous massive increase in the number of titles tossed into the world. Brace yourself.

So why didn't I pursue a traditional publisher more thoroughly? There were many reasons why I wanted to put it into the hands of a publisher. I've touched on a number of them already - their established distribution and promotional channels, the amount of my time and effort required to promote a self-published book effectively, the credibility that comes from an established publisher. One thing that I didn't mention was editing. I know my writing is not as good as it could be. Even authors famous for their style and quality have editors. Robertson Davies had an editor. Having someone make suggestions for ways to improve my book would have been greatly accepted - indeed I would have made it a condition of anyone publishing the book.

A few uncommon factors pushed me to self-publishing. One of the key issues was topicality. Much of my book describes universals - people's behaviour in unusual circumstances, being young and full of piss and vinegar, popular music - but it's also quite rooted in a specific band. At some point The Dreadnoughts will cease to be a working band, and from that day forward my book will have a different tone and relevance. There is an eager audience in their current fan base, and I would be foolish to ignore that. Waiting to publish ran the risk of turning the book from topical to historical.

Much of non-fiction will be affected by this to some degree. Fiction is not tied so directly to the real world. A novel won't necessarily date itself so much by waiting for a year or two. Indeed, it may benefit greatly from the extra time to consider and revisit the writing.

It's also important to note that I have been around independently produced and promoted music for most of my life. I feel at home in that world. I'm more comfortable approaching an independent record shop about having them stock my book than I am in approaching a literary agent. For that matter, I know where the record shops and how they work are but I don't have the faintest clue where or how to find an agent.

Every time I read This Place Is Awesome again, I find little pieces I might have phrased differently or things I might have expanded on. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a mistake to push the book out so "quickly" (let's be fair, it did take two years), but I do think I will take a bit more time with the next project. I can see now in hindsight, how and when to go back to my writing and read it with a more critical eye. But even extra time spent pouring over my next manuscript won't be as good as a professional editor. Chances are, I will look into hiring someone. And that's just another cost to factor into a self-published effort.

I am not a self-publishing fanatic, and the point of this blog is not to talk you into it. There are times when putting time and effort into traditional channels is going to be the more logical and productive choice. Underdown's article does a nice job of putting that argument forward and is worth the read.

One thing that Underdown doesn't touch on is the idea that you could conceivably start with one and move to the other. If you self-publish first you will learn in a hurry how difficult much of a publisher's task really is. That may persuade you to chase down a traditional publisher the next time around. Hell, you might even get six months into your own project and say "to hell with this", put your dreams of a book tour on hold, pull in all your consignment copies, and go back to looking for a traditional publisher.

This is a new era in publishing that we're heading into, and while the chaos and uncertainty of it all can be unpredictable and difficult to navigate, it does mean that the rules of play are in flux at the moment. I don't imagine there's any reason why you couldn't be independently promoting and selling your book on a small, local scale, while pitching it to an established publisher for a larger deal. If it's a good book then your ability to sell 100 copies locally ought not cannibalise another publishers sales in any meaningful way.

Of course much of this is speculation on my part. I welcome comments from anyone with real world experience in these matters.

If you do decide to take a stab at traditional publishers, I would recommend The Writer's Market. My mentor and early-encourager slapped this meaty tome on the table the first day I met her and said "here is your homework." It's full of templates for submissions and cover letters, lists of publishers and agents, and tons of other useful information. As I will be exhorting in an upcoming post, you have everything to gain from making other people's jobs easier.

Will my next book be self-published or will I pitch to traditional publishers? I won't hazard a guess at this point. As far as I'm concerned, the answer to this question is going to be "it depends" for a quite a while.

Planning the Book Launch

Having decided to do a print run of my book, This Place is Awesome, I started to think about how to launch the book. A decent book launch seemed like an essential part of getting the project off the ground and getting some attention. Thankfully a dear friend who works at a number of Vancouver's best known and most loved music and social venues took an immediate and extremely enthusiastic interest. With D on board to help make the arrangements the question became "how many people should I expect and how big a venue should I book?"

It was very hard for me to guess how many people might take an interest in the launch. Would 100 people show up? Would I be lucky if I got ten? How on earth do you estimate this sort of thing?

For someone who never throws a party because he lives in mortal dread of having no one show up (or even worse - having one person show up - leaving me feeling doubly embarrassed), it was a more difficult decision than how many books to order. In the end I went with the north bar at The Railway Club. It's a venerable Vancouver institution, it was very familiar and comfortable (having shot countless shows there), it was comfortable and familiar to the people I expected to be interested in my book, it was conducive to speaking and being seen, it had decent gin, and it could fit 50 people comfortably - 70 in a pinch - and it wouldn't look completely deserted and sad if there were only 15.

Having a comfortable location was very important to me. As someone who had spent years learning how to be inconspicuous and unnoticed in a venue, I was now faced with the challenge of being the centre of attention. Public speaking is not something new to me, but this was a kind of speaking that I'd never done before. I wanted to appear at home and at ease.

I started to think about how to promote the event. Posters and handbills were a simple and obvious choice. I sent out a press release to all the local media announcing the book and the event, and I created the obligatory Facebook event.

Facebook events are regrettably not the reliable tool that they used to be. For a time they were a great way to let people know about upcoming shows. These days it seems they are a victim of Facebook's success. I sent the invitation out to about 500 people in the local area, but when I spoke to friends that I knew would be interested they said they hadn't seen the invite. It would appear that people are so swamped with invitations on Facebook these days that they routinely just ignore them. (I confess that while I always read each invitation I get these days, I rarely take the time to respond anymore.) I've also noticed, when observing other people's events, that they are not a particularly good predictor of who will actually show up, regardless of what the event page suggests.

In my case, my FB event showed over 100 people attending the event. On the day, I had about 65 people with many "confirmed" people absent. This isn't a criticism of those people - more a cautionary tale for those who might take the FB stats as a reliable indicator.

I should also mention that I did what I could to promote the upcoming event inside the venue. I made sure they had posters and handbills, and that the staff knew about the show. This falls under what I consider to be the "so obvious I can't believe people don't do it" category. Nevertheless, lots of bands fail to court the venue before a show in the belief, I can only presume, that the venue will set aside the attention being demanded by every other band to take an interest in and a make special effort to promote -their- show. With so much stuff competing for people's interest these days it's not enough to assume that anyone will come seek you out and pry out of you the reasons why they should be excited. The best thing you can do to endear yourself to others, and get them to want to pay attention to you, is to make their lives (and possibly their jobs) easier. But that's another posting.

In the meantime I had sent out ten copies of the book to various people in the hopes of getting some good quotes to use in promoting the book. I got lucky and received a very positive review from one of the city's daily papers. The local entertainment weekly picked up the story of the launch and ran a piece both online and in the print edition.

With the date set, the promotional materials in the community, and D excitedly telling everyone she knew that they -must- attend, there was nothing to do but wait. Actually... there was tons to do.

The Day I Nearly Crapped Myself - Delays In Shipping

Lulu.com had estimated that it would take about 5-10 business days for my books to arrive. I placed the order two weeks before the launch date. That way, if I discovered within the first week some horrific typo or oversight in the book, or something went wrong with the printing, I would still have time to get a replacement order in. I ordered 100 copies and hit the "Order" button while staring at the big number beside "Total Invoice."

The lesson today is why you should always have a backup plan. For everything.

I checked the lulu.com site obsessively for a note indicating that the order had been completed. To my delight it happened with about eight days to spare. I was in good shape, it seemed. The next day I went onto the FedEx site to find out where the shipment was and when I might expect it to arrive. I was pretty excited.

It was about 09000h when I found my shipment on fedex.com, next to the status message "order cancelled by shipper." WTF!?!?! It certainly hadn't been cancelled by -me-, so I jumped over to lulu.com to look for a phone number.

Lulu is one of those companies that operate in some variation on the "virtual" model. There was no phone number anywhere on their site. Actually there was just one - it was the phone number for their public relations company, buried in amongst the media resources.

There is no substitute for having direct, real-time communications with someone when things are going wrong. I knew that lulu.com was comparatively efficient at responding to emails, but that only meant that I'd reliably get a response within 24 hours. I needed to know what was going on NOW.

To their credit, lulu.com has a real-time chat function on their site. I was able to get hold of a customer service person within 15 minutes and the investigation began as to what was going on. It was a little clumsy having to type everything. I wanted to make it very clear how concerned I was, but I didn't want to come across as a shouty, inconsolable lunatic. I tried to choose my words carefully to convey the correct tone. I was, after all, setting myself up as a writer here.

One of the unexpected advantages of this awkward way to converse is that I did end up with a complete transcript of what was said - a trick that can be difficult to manage in a verbal conversation, and is frequently thought of as potentially valuable after much as has already been discussed.

The customer service person was attentive and seemed appropriately concerned. The big question was whether the order had actually been printed or not. If it hadn't been printed we needed to know immediately so that we could find out why and get it on the press. If it had been printed and just the shipping was cancelled we needed to know if it was a problem with the shipping or with the finished product. And if it was just a clerical error then I needed to know so that I could safely climb down off the ledge and close the window.

Adding to the sense of panic was the fact that I had a phone interview with The Georgia Straight early that afternoon. There was lots of time to reship a finished order, but if it needed to be printed (or reprinted) then there was no guarantee that, between the printing and the shipping, it would arrive on time. The odds seemed split between having the books arrive the day of the launch, or possibly the day after. Should I mention this in my interview, or just pretend that everything was fine when I knew full well that there was a chance I could be launching a book without having any to sell or even show to the attendees?

The person at Lulu took on the task of finding out what had happened. I decided to just go back to bed. Over the next couple of hours there was nothing I could do to fix the situation, and I couldn't bring myself to do any work to promote the event when I knew it might be for naught. Another hour of sleep seemed like the only sensible thing to do. I was already feeling exhausted and it was barely 1000h.

When I got back up and checked my email an hour or so later there was an email from lulu.com explaining that the tracking number I had been given was incorrect, along with the correct tracking order. A check of fedex.com showed the shipment on its way and due to be delivered the next day. The clouds parted, the sun shone, the cat started purring, and music played.

In the time that I had been in limbo I was wracking my brain for solutions. Should I cancel the launch and rebook it for a later date? How important was it to have books to sell on that day? Could I come up with some kind of coupon that I could sell at the event, which could be redeemed for a free book. If I did a coupon, would I have to pay to mail out the late copies, or was there another way to distribute them? I even considered offering to hand-deliver them - not a huge hardship if only ten people were to show up for the launch.

And that's my second lesson - there are always numerous ways around a given problem. The key is identify what your real goal is. If my only goal had been to have books to sell at the launch then I could have been empirically screwed by a printing/shipping error. But if my goal was more general - to sell books - then a bit of creative thinking would be able to get me there. I might have had to expend a little more energy, or possibly a little more money, but I could make it work. Recognise what your goal is and be prepared to be flexible with your tactics.

Lulu.com Tip #1 - Special Editions

(This is the first in an anticipated series of things I discovered were possible when self-publishing through lulu.com. Other online, on-demand printers probably offer the same or similar capabilities - have a look.)

As I mentioned in my previous post, my original intent with the online printer was just to print up ten copies of a physical book as gifts for the people who were particularly crucial in making the book happen. What became almost immediately apparent to me was that I could do very small runs to fill specific needs.

In the first instance, I was able to print ten copies in advance of my first big order and distribute them to some people to get advance reviews (and an extra round of proofreading).

After that I created a small special edition of ten copies. I added "Special Edition" to the cover art and added a paragraph to the title page indicating that this edition was specifically for special people. When I received the books I hand-numbered them and wrote personal messages on the title page, then delivered them to those people.

When I made my first proper order of printed books, I added "This is the first edition of This Place Is Awesome, limited to 100 copies. This is number ____ of 100" to the title page, and hand numbered them when they arrived. When those 100 copies sold out (in two weeks!) I revised that page to say that it was the second edition (this time 120 copies) and numbered them again.

With lulu.com, creating variations and limited editions is as easy as submitting a new set of artwork.

You have to be careful not to confuse matters if you have an ISBN number. Markedly different editions require a new ISBN, as I discovered when I wanted to revise my original book to fix a few typos and make a few minor additions.

The significance of this is hard to overstate. Until very recently, any order of less than 1000 books was a huge waste of money. Now I'm able to print comparatively tiny runs to accommodate special requests or needs.

And then there's the possibilities this opens up in terms of distribution. But that's another post...

Trying Out The Online On Demand Printers

While I was sorting out the details to publish my book as an eBook (a topic I will cover in future posts), I decided to see what I could get out of the online on demand book printers that I knew about.

I have been aware of blurb.com and lulu.com for some time. I downloaded blurb.com's Mac software and tried to put together photo books on at least two previous occasions. (Sadly, their desktop software is utterly underwhelming. I suppose it's probably faster and more stable than trying to layout a book through a Web site, but the experience isn't any more fun or flexible. Both projects got abandoned in fairly short order.) I had looked into their pricing when I was considering book projects in the past, only to walk away when it became clear that their volume pricing is okay, but not nearly what can be had by printing offshore.

But this time I came at it with a different idea. Instead of thinking that I would print mass quantities of the title, I was instead hoping for something good enough to print 10 copies as gifts for the band members and a few people who had made significant contributions to the writing of the book.

I took my book, written in Apple's Page application, generated the necessary PDF and cover art files, and sent them off to blurb and lulu, ordering one copy from each to see what they would look like. I really was not expecting what I got back.

Within a week I received the finished copies from both vendors and I was shocked at how good they looked. Not "coffee table travel photography book" good, but much better than I expected and absolutely good enough to offer for sale. 

I chose a glossy cover and simple, common paper stock for the inside. Half of my book is black and white photographs, and I was concerned about the many problems that can crop up - moire patterns, poor tonal range, lack of detail in the shadows due to dot gain, uneven quality from page to page, excessive softness or distracting sharpening artefacts. None of these were evident in my test copies. I compared them to the printing quality of some of my favourite books of photos from the 70s and 80s and they were immeasurably superior. I got kind of excited.

And the excitement wasn't just over technical issues. I was holding a book in my hands. Having a finished writing it was cool, printing it on the laser printer at home and having a physical manuscript was very cool, but holding a printed, bound, professional-looking book in my hand was genuinely exciting.

It was at that point that I made the fateful decision that I would also offer the book in a printed form. I mean, why the hell not?

I also chose to print the books with lulu.com, although to be fair I don't imagine there is much difference between them and blurb. My decision was based on the only difference I could discern between the two copies. They seemed absolutely identical in almost every respect - the paper quality, the weight, the paper colour, etc. The blurb edition seemed to have marginally finer lines in the text, but it also seemed to be a little less sharp in the photos. They were very slightly washed out in comparison. My guess is that blurb uses the same process to produce their books, but I suspect they print at a slightly higher resolution. This would account for the finer lines in the type, and also the quality of the photos. I also suspect that the books are printed on what amounts to giant laser printers - toner based printing instead of ink based. Printing this way at a higher resolution can add a little bit more detail in photographs, but it also sometimes has the effect of reducing the contrast and, ironically, the sharpness. (If you have any technical understanding of this and care to offer some useful information, please comment below.) The photos in the lulu version seemed to "pop" just that tiny bit more.

My endorsement of lulu.com should not in any way be construed as disappointment with blurb. I simply can't comment on blurb's quality beyond this one copy of one book, and even then all I can say is that I had to make a choice between the two vendors so I decided based on one small detail of personal aesthetics. I'd love to hear from anyone who has dealt with blurb to get their thoughts and experiences.

The other comment I would make is that I hope blurb offers service as broad and good as lulu, because my impression of lulu started out good and has only improved since then.

In other posts I will go into the things I discovered I could do with an online on demand printer like lulu or blurb, but let me end this post with a definitive endorsement of these printers.