Posts tagged ebooks

I took this romance reader survey and there were a couple of questions I had problems with. First, the genres! The problem with their list was that 1) some of those genres aren’t really distinct (“drama” vs. “contemporary”?), and 2) I generally prefer all my romance novels to be erotic romances, no matter what the genre. Doesn’t “erotic romance” just basically mean the book has sexy sexy sexytimes? Can’t an erotic romance be historical, fantasy, sci-fi, action/adventure, etc.?

Also, the choices for why I still generally prefer paperbacks were completely inadequate. None of them applied to me. In fact, I would prefer ebooks if their problems with permanence, accessibility, usability, and privacy were all solved. I don’t give a shit about lending books to friends (sorry, guys), how they look on my shelves, or the feel of paper (come ON).

(There was no write-in section in the survey, so I have to air my grievances here.)

I hesitated to post this since it’s, well, unflinchingly honest…but in the interest of protecting unsuspecting buyers from squandering their hard-earned money, I have to say: Do not buy Leiland Dale’s A Prophecy of Destiny. I tried—tried—to force myself to finish the book out of a sense of fairness, but I couldn’t even make it more than half-way through (I shudder to imagine what the sex scenes must be like). I think, however, that these problems more than justified giving up:

1. Egregious grammar mistakes and misuse of language. Examples: Confusing your and you’re; using apostrophe-s (“alpha’s”) for plural (“alphas”); using “parched” for “parchment.” These are simple mistakes that any copyeditor should have fixed.

2. Basic errors of fact. Examples: Wolves don’t have retractable claws; red wine is generally not served chilled. (Yes, you could certainly write about a kind of wolf-like creature with retractable claws, and, yes, there are some table wines that are served chilled, but at no time did I get the sense that the author was aware that these would be exceptions.)

3. Poor craftsmanship. At times, the author spends an inordinate amount of time describing things that are irrelevant (e.g. buying coffee) and then forgets to mention other things (e.g. a description of a place will suddenly begin, but no mention was made of how the character got there).

What makes me especially sad is that the book is not self-published, so someone at the publisher must have read it and thought it was worth putting their name on. Presumably they then didn’t bother to have it edited—frankly, I’m not that surprised since I didn’t have a particularly high opinion of this “publisher” (Silver Publishing) in the first place, but it still is a stain on indie genre publishers. It would be a shame if someone who wasn’t familiar with the good work that is available from other tiny niche ebook-first publishers picked up this one first and was turned off from exploring any further.

(wtf, this book has a 5-star rating on ARe! Maybe the author has a lot of friends…?)

I keep trying to read Loretta Chase’s new book, Captives of the Night, but I’m a third of the way through and I still don’t care. About anything—plot, characters, setting, anything. Does it get better?

(Also, the ebook version doesn’t clearly show scene/POV changes, which is super irritating.)

I was reading a so-so ebook and the writing was not too bad although there were more than a few typos. Fortunately, they were mostly the kinds of typos anyone can make—they seemed to just show that the publisher didn’t proofread the thing, not that the author had a tenuous grasp on the English language. But then I came to the one that tipped the scales from slightly annoyed tolerance into severe disappointment with both author and publisher:

I must say, one of the positive things about reading ebooks on my iPod Touch is that I can prop it up on my desk—since it looks like an iPhone and people tend to keep their cell phones on their desks—and surreptitiously read gay erotica while at work. Not that I’d ever do that of course.

(In unrelated news, I finished a really good one today about avian shapeshifters. It was a retelling of The Ugly Duckling, but with gay sex and BDSM. Trust me, it was awesome.)

Despite owning over 450 ebooks, I really fucking hate them right now. Here are some reasons why:

• In order to backup and preserve my ebooks, and to read them on my reader of choice, I have to go through an incredibly arduous process of file conversion, editing, and tedious file transfers (which I think I have described previously).
• When I upgraded my computer recently, I somehow broke the delicate Calibre/caliber2opds/DropBox/iPod connections and now I can’t update or access my online catalog anymore. I can’t find the original instructions I used to set it up (stupidly complicated in their own right), so for now it’s just staying broken.
• Today I bought 3 ebooks from the same publisher. Two imported into Calibre just fine. One wouldn’t import. Same kind of file (HTML), but nothing happened. I tried other free online HTML-to-ePub converters—none worked. Finally, I opened the HTML file in Text Edit, saved as PDF, opened the PDF in Calibre (which worked—who the fuck knows why), converted THAT to ePub, and could side-load it onto my iPod. (P.S. The HTML file opened fine in a browser, so I can’t even claim it was a corrupt download or something.)
• I fucking hate that I can’t tag or sort my ebooks by “read” and “unread.” Because of this, I have sometimes “lost” ebooks that I haven’t yet read (I apparently didn’t put them on my iPod right away, and they disappeared into the hideous morass of random files in my “ebooks” folder).
• Changes in technology can mean not being able to even read my ebooks anymore. Or at the very least, having to re-learn how to use new reader software, convert my library, etc. All stupid stuff that takes away from my reading time.

I’ll keep buying and reading ebooks because most of the ebooks I read are only available in ebook format, and content is of course king. But I am so frustrated right now. I know to some people this is going to sound like “get off my lawn!” but I never had these fucking problems with print books. I don’t care about the aesthetics of print books vs. ebooks (at least not for novels), I don’t have particular nostalgia for beautiful hardcovers, I have no problem reading on screens (backlit or not)—but when the goddamned format gets in the way of the content, I get fed up with this bullshit.

Publisher’s Note: This book contains explicit sexual content, graphic language, and situations that some readers may find objectionable: BDSM theme and elements, dubious consent, male/male sexual practices, ritualistic sexual practices, ritualistic impalement, sex in partly shifted tree form, violence, voyeurism.