Things that Bug Me About E-Books
I was going to write this post as a "Three for Thursday" and quickly realized that there are more than three things that bug me about E-Books. I've been doing a lot of reading lately on my iPad using both the Kindle and Nook apps and although e-books have many advantages, there are some things that annoy me about reading them. I won't bother listing the wonderful things about e-books, if you have any experience at all with them, you know that they're super coolio fantastic. Problems with e-books, at least as I've identified them, can fall into either of two categories. The first are related to "Design and Formatting" – these are problems that can and should be addressed by the publisher – the person or persons formatting the e-book. The second are related to the "E-Book Application & Device Design" and are inherent in the way these applications work at the moment.
Design and Formatting
- Typos and mistakes. Just as in a print book, I find typos very distracting. My impression, based on several e-books that I've read, is that less proofing is going into e-books than print books. And no, I'm not picking on self publishers – these are books from major publishers. It may be just my impression, but I've seen so many typos in some of these books that I can't imagine those typos are also in the print version.
- Headers and page numbers left over from the print version. This is more annoying than typos … folks, when you make an ebook, you have to take out the headers and page numbers because they will not look the same in an e-book as they look in a printed book. Having a header come in halfway down a page, on page after page, is downright annoying. And so is having page numbers appear in random places on a page, especially when those page numbers aren't consistent with the page number that the e-reader is telling you. Even a basic e-book formatting guide will tell you to eliminate these.
- Strangely formatted sidebars that appear in line with the text. You know those clever little sidebar boxes in some books – they're either little gray sections of text off to one side of the page or, in some cases, they are blocks of text in a different format to set them apart from the main text. In an e-book those come out all wonky. Most of the formatting that distinguishes the sidebar from the main text is lost and it's just confusing to have these random blobs of text in the middle of what you're reading. Best advice for e-books? Eliminate sidebars entirely and if the information is important and relevant, incorporate it in the main text of the book.
- Table of Contents are often messed up in e-books. There are so many different ways to screw up a table of contents. The first way is by not having one. The second way is by having one but not having it hyperlinked (i.e., you can't move to a section of the book by clicking on a table of contents entry). The third way is by having a TOC that is either too detailed or not detailed enough. One book that I read by a major publisher had pages upon pages of entries in the TOC: they included chapters and sections and in this particular book, each section had repeating subsections – around six per subsection. All of these items were listed in the TOC which essentially made it impossible to find what you're looking for in the TOC. On the flip side, if the TOC only has three of four entries for a three hundred page book, that is not useful.
- References to other parts of the book using specific page numbers. It would seem these would be pretty easy to catch when preparing an e-book, but I have recently read three books (from major publishers) that included references to specific page numbers such as "As mentioned on page 56, the Institute of …" This is just laziness and it detracts from the value of the book. Their page 56 bears no resemblance to the page 56 on my e-reader.
E-Book Application & Device Design
- Navigation using the TOC is cumbersome. I primarily use the Kindle and Nook apps and I am not really happy with the navigation of either to and from the TOC. I often like to refer back to the TOC frequently while I'm reading, especially in nonfiction books. Too often, however, I move off the page that I'm reading, check the TOC and then accidentally press something and can't get back to the page I was reading. I have to try to remember which chapter I was in and find the page I was on. It's like having your child steal your bookmark every five minutes.
- Unreliable synching of reading position. I read on both my iPhone and my iPad and, in theory, they are supposed to keep track of my reading position so that when I switch devices I can simply pick up where I left off. Often, however, this doesn't happen and so I spend most of my reading time finding the place where I left off. (see point about child stealing bookmark above).
- Inability to make a copy. I recently read a diet and exercise book as an e-book that had very detailed instructions for dietary guidelines, workout routines and instructions for specific exercises. I'm not going to take my iPad to the gym with me or certainly not on a run, but I could take a piece of paper stuck in my pocket. But since I couldn't just make a copy of the page and take it with me, I had to write out the details by hand in my notebook.
- Occasional glitches in purchasing books, downloading books or operating the reader. Just like any computer, sometimes these applications can get stuck. I might go to download a book and it seems to take forever. I then realize that I need to restart my device and try again. These glitches are not frequent, thank goodness, but when they happen they're superbly annoying and take away from my scarce reading time.
In spite of all of these issues, I generally feel that e-books still have an edge over paper books in most cases, so don't let my list dissuade you from trying them if you haven't already. The "Design and Formatting" problems that I've outlined above will hopefully be more scarce as publishers and formatters gain expertise and stop treating e-books as an afterthought. The "E-Book Application & Device Design" problems will hopefully diminish as e-books gain in maturity. In spite of how widespread e-books are, we are still in the early-adopter phase and hopefully everybody will continue learning as we go.
So, what about you – do you have any pet peeves about e-books that I haven't listed? Please share!
