It's a Strange World Out There

I was amazed when I read a review of MAD DOG HOUSE on Amazon. It commented about the formatting problems encountered by the reader/reviewer. The review said that many sentences did not begin with capitalized letters, that organizations such as the FBI were typed in small letters, and that there were other problems with punctuation. The review even said that the text read like “stream of consciousness.”

I worried that perhaps there was a “corrupted” version of the e-book and looked into this. Here’s what I learned:

That all Kindle book files are Mobi files, which, in theory, are compatible across other devices (even the Nook) with the proper software on the part of the person downloading the book. The problem usually lies in the fact that Amazon doesn’t use EPUB (which is pretty much the industry format for eBooks) and their Mobi format sometimes doesn’t convert well onto other devices.

So, occasionally, someone with a device other than a Kindle, may download a book that’s been formatted for Kindle and may have a book that shows up on the screen with all kinds of strange—even bizarre—punctuation. The reader may think the book was formatted and uploaded incorrectly and feels the money spent on the book was wasted.

This is the world of e-books. These glitches happen with some frequency and there isn’t much that anyone can do right now to prevent them from happening. Indeed, cyberspace can be strange.

Mark Rubinstein,
Author, Mad Dog House