{"id":3998,"date":"2011-03-07T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2011-03-07T06:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/?p=3998"},"modified":"2014-12-23T16:26:24","modified_gmt":"2014-12-23T10:56:24","slug":"bad-formatting-bad-book-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/bad-formatting-bad-book-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Formatting = Bad Book Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"

Expert: Claudia Jackson<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Mrs.Ahh, yes \u2014 there is nothing quite like sitting down and reading a good book. Part of the experience is not just the story, but in the presentation itself. In days past, we enjoyed holding the book and the feel of the paper as we \u201cfell\u201d into the story without distraction. Now, we sit back with our eReaders and focus on the story. But wait?!? Has the book\u2019s formatting made our \u201ceyes cross,\u201d left us in confusion, distracted us from the story at a critical moment?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, a bad side effect of the eBook\u2019s quickly changing technology is that the reader\u2019s experience is also changing \u2013 sometimes not for the good. More importantly, failure to deliver a quality eBook format is now adversely affecting the author\u2019s reviews! The experience disrupted by the fact that we now sometimes are befuddled by where paragraphs end and begin, sometimes having to look over the fact that there is a page number or book title in the middle of a sentence can, and will, change how we feel about the book. The reader has lost patience with reading the book and now finds fault with the story and gives it a bad review. When in reality the reader was unhappy because where there was supposed to be an \u201cescape into the story.\u201d The sloppily formatted eBook has removed that from the reading experience.<\/p>\n

How do we prevent this potential disaster?<\/strong> The answer: Your book needs to be properly formatted with an amazing level of dedication to proper formatting in the most generic presentation possible and be available in as many media types to have it viewed by the broadest audience.<\/p>\n

One of the first steps in self-publishing is getting your manuscript ready for upload to the publishing channels that you have selected \u2014 hopefully all of them!!! To get the maximum exposure for your book, you need it to be available in perfect form (or as close as you can get to it) in all of the eBook platforms including the Kindle, the Nook, the Sony eBook reader and the iPad. Sounds easy? After all, it\u2019s just text and the upload must be simple. Sorry, there are no standards, there are no common word processing file types, eBooks are page-less and paper books are page-defined. To make matters worse there is no one standard for eBooks and it may not get easier anytime soon as various hardware companies all want their own version of an eReader. For example some of the various formats are:<\/p>\n

\u25aa \u00a0 ePub
\n\u25aa \u00a0 Sony Reader (LRF)*
\n\u25aa \u00a0 Barnes & Noble Nook
\n\u25aa \u00a0 Apple iPad*
\n\u25aa \u00a0 Kindle (.mobi)
\n\u25aa \u00a0 Palm Doc (PDB)
\n\u25aa \u00a0 PDF (Adobe)
\n\u25aa \u00a0 Rich Text Format (RFT)
\n\u25aa \u00a0 Plain Text (TXT)<\/p>\n

Below is an example of what an eBook looks like when it is not formatted correctly. Many publishers, even those that advertise that they are specialists in the self-publishing world, just upload the PDF file that they used to have the book printed. The problem is not just limited to little-known authors. Many of the eBooks released today that were written by author super stars suffer these same indignities. Note some of the problems highlighted below:<\/p>\n

\u25aa \u00a0 No paragraph breaks or indents
\n\u25aa \u00a0 Page number ends up in the middle of the page
\n\u25aa \u00a0 The \u201ccenter\u201d feature is lost.
\n\u25aa \u00a0 \u201cItalics\u201d is lost (red highlight).<\/p>\n

This is not how the author intended to present his book, but this is the impression of the reader. In general, unless the user is reading with a PDF reader, PDF files do NOT make good eBook files.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Same Page \u2013 Formatted Correctly (See Below)<\/strong>
\nThis book has been reformatted according to the recommendations of one of the eBook distributors. Notice the difference. The page is clean and the reader can focus on the story and not be distracted by the formatting.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bad formatting, especially in an eBook where page endings and special formatting does not exist (again as I write this, the rules are changing faster than I can type this article \u2014 the EPUB format, for example) dramatically affects the experience for the reader. Again, unfortunately, this can reflect badly upon the author. We see reviews that even comment on this \u2013 not to the author\u2019s credit. The reader becomes so distracted by the formatting that the story is forgotten, no matter how well written.<\/p>\n

How close did you look at the \u201cgood example?\u201d Yep, there is an error \u2014 they are easy to miss.<\/p>\n

So, when you are about to format your eBook, please read the style guides of the eBook distributor, stay within the rules and boundaries, and most importantly, KISS (keep it simple sweetie)! Your eBook will love you for your extra effort and attention to detail. More importantly, your readers will love you for it!<\/p>\n

A very special thanks goes to John Locke (Twitter: @DonovanCreed<\/a>), author of \u201cLethal People,\u201d \u201cLethal Experiment,\u201d \u201cSaving Rachel,\u201d \u201cNow & Then,\u201d \u201cWish List,\u201d and \u201cFollow the Stone\u201d for allowing me to use the above samples.<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo Credit: Mike Licht,\u00a0NoltionsCapital.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"With over 20 years of experience as a corporate computer trainer and consultant, Claudia now works with a Digital Private Press \u2013 Telemachus Press<\/a> who have launched NovelHelp Universit<\/a>y this year as an inexpensive solution. This site offers all of what the do-it-yourselfer needs to know, including hands-on training and step-by-step guides. Follow Claudia \u2013 Twitter<\/a> | Blog<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Expert: Claudia Jackson Ahh, yes \u2014 there is nothing quite like sitting down and reading a good book. Part of the experience is not just the story, but in the presentation itself. In days past, we enjoyed holding the book and the feel of the paper as we \u201cfell\u201d into the story without distraction. Now, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4001,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[353,3,720,718],"tags":[9,420,418,226,421,422],"class_list":["post-3998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bbmtc","category-book-marketing","category-guest-posts","category-how-to-guides","tag-authors","tag-e-books","tag-e-publishing","tag-ebooks","tag-formatting","tag-kindle-formatting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookbuzzr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}