In the olden
days—like maybe four years ago—Kindle and Nook readers were fairly tolerant of
formatting errors. The technology was brand spanking new and early adopters
always accept a few lumps with hot innovations. Times have changed.
The cost of eReaders have collapsed and, in many categories, ebooks outsell the
old fashioned print variety. Readers have also become more demanding. They want
their ebooks professionally formatted so they're never distracted from the
story or subject matter.
For the most part, I
write novels. My latest book, Principled
Action, Lessons from the Origins of the American Republic, was
non-fiction. Since it had a table of contents, index, footnotes, illustrations,
and section headings, I had it professionally formatted for every eReader on
the market.
I thought my novels
were different. They were narratives with only chapter breaks to interrupt the flow of words. In fact, I
had sold tens of thousands with nary a complaint. Occasionally, I would do an
update when I became aware of an indentation problem or a stray character that
defied interpretation, but these were rare.
Then I got an email
note from Amazon saying a reader had complained that one of my novels did not
include a Table of Contents. Amazon concurred and suggested I add one. At first
I thought this was odd. I don't have chapter titles, so the TOC would merely be
a numerical list. Granted, it could be
navigation tool, but would it really be that helpful in a
straightforward novel? Then I checked the five novels I had backlogged to read
on my own Kindle. Each had a table of contents and most were only a numerical
list. Darn. Times had changed and I hadn't kept up. What else was I missing.
Were there other glitches that would jerk my readers out of the story and back
to reality?
Since I was busy
getting Steve Dancy out of trouble once again, I didn't want to invest the time
to insure that my six Kindle books were completely up to snuff. My solution was
to go back to my non-fiction book formatter. I used "eB Format" and like
the first time, my experience was excellent. The job was done with an expertise
that would have taken me at least weeks to learn, and they were reasonably
priced and quick. If you have ebooks that need added features or need a thorough scrubbing for format
glitches, I highly recommend eB Format. Click on their logo if you would like
to visit their site.
