Something which annoys me about ebooks

I'm naming and shaming in this post so be warned.

The other day I was having a short email conversation with (big name drop coming up) Jordan Castillo Price about the formatting of the Pdfs of the Petit Morts stories.  She was asking me how the format looked on the Sony reader because she'd had to spend some time faffing about with the format to ensure that it read properly for book readers.  In other words so that there were no page numbers or book titles coming up in the middle of the page.  I was happy to assure her that the pages looked fine on my Sony, even when I'd had to enlarge the font.

This got me thinking about other publishers and whether they spend time trying to get the formatting of their pdfs right too and I've come to the conclusion that some do and some don't.  Basically pdfs are just the A4 pages of a  WP document formatted so that you can't make changes to it.  This means that when I load up a pdf onto my Sony the print is approximately 4X as small as on a A4 page.  Fortunately for me, I have a handy 'enlarge' button on my Sony (oh how I love this button, it makes life so much more easy than my Cybook where I had to mess about going into the settings page of the menu) and so when I load up my tiny font sized pdf, I press the button and 'hey presto!' the font is enlarged to a comfortable size - I'd also like to point out at this stage that my eyesight is very good at short distances, so I don't need the 'super-large' font setting to read my books.

The problem arises when some publishers haven't really given a great deal of thought as to how the pdf will look once the font is enlarged.  The publishers that do think about these things have their pdfs set up so that the enlarged lines wrap round and join onto the beginning of the next line.  Those publishers who haven't really given much thought to their pdf formatting have the lines wrapped round but then, instead of joining the next line, they stop mid page and the next line starts below.  To illustrate my point I'm going to use some lines out of the first book at hand which happens to be a copy of Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants by Dav Pilkey (much loved and read book by my kids).

This is how to do it right:

Back in his private laboratory, Professor Pippy P. Poopypants was just putting the finishing touches on two wonderful new inventions: the Shrinky Pig 2000, and the Goosy Grow 4000.


Professor Poopypants called for his assistant, Porkbelly Funkyskunk.  "Mr Funkyskunk," Pippy yelled,  "I am now ready to test my new inventions!"


Porkbelly took notes while the professor aimed his Shrinky Pig 2000 at a hideous pile of rubbish.


"BLLLLLLZZZZRRRRK!"


A powerful beam of energy blasted the garbage heap.  Suddenly, the large pile of rubbish shrank to the size of a gumball.


This is how to do it wrong:

Back in his private laboratory, Professor Pippy P. Poopypants was just putting the 

finishing touches on two wonderful new inventions: the Shrinky Pig 2000, and the 

Goosy Grow 4000.

Professor Poopypants called for his assistant, Porkbelly Funkyskunk.  "Mr Funkyskunk," Pippy yelled,  "I am now 

ready to test my new inventions!"

Porkbelly took notes while the professor aimed his Shrinky Pig 2000 at a hideous pile 

of rubbish.

"BLLLLLLZZZZRRRRK!"

A powerful beam of energy blasted the garbage heap.  Suddenly, the large pile of 

rubbish shrank to the size of a gumball.

See what I mean?  It's very difficult to read the print on the second example because the lines are so disjointed, they don't flow correctly.  I find it immensely annoying to read books like this and several times I've given up on my Sony and read the book on my lap top because I've found it difficult to concentrate on the book in that format.  Surprisingly enough it's the larger pubs like Samhain and some Loose Id books where this happens whereas the smaller pubs like MLR Press and Dreamspinner Press (although DSP is becoming more of a major player these days) who manage to format their pdfs so that they read just fine with an enlarged font.  One has to wonder whether some publishers actually give any thought at all to how their product is presented for us ebook reader users.

One final thing that I find completely baffling is that Torquere Press pdf ebooks switch their format randomly throughout the book.  They do have correctly formatted pdfs which look nice when the font is enlarged but then, for no apparent reason the file loses its formatting for a few pages and reverts back to tiny print (and I mean tiny, as in need a magnifying glass to read).  No amount of pressing the 'enlarge' button seems to change that.  Then after a few pages it goes back to the larger font.  Why?  I've absolutely no idea, but it's very irritating.

I've had a good old moan about this today even though I can't see there being a solution to the problem, unless those publishers who don't give a great deal of thought to their pdf formatting actually start to do so.  I don't care about fancy fonts, or decorative curly letters at the beginning of chapters (they don't format too well on the Sony either), or prettying up the text in any way.  What I want in my ebook is to be able to read the book comfortably and easily in a font size that is clear.  Is that really too much to ask?

ETA: Since writing this I've discovered that Samhain do a special type of Pdf just for the Sony Reader so obviously I've been buying the wrong sort - typical!