Back to the drawing board – Ebook formatting

One of my biggest frustrations with reading ebooks is how they are formatted. I’m not talking about the file type (i.e. Epub, PDF, PDB, lrf, mobi, etc), I’m talking about how the ebook looks on the device’s screen. Like most other things with ebooks, there is no standard, at least not yet.

Right now I’m reading Stephen King’s new novel Under the Dome (aff link) as an ebook – one I purchased from Sony’s ebook store for my Sony Pocket Edition. When I first opened the ebook on my reader, I had to flip through about 10 pages of the usual copyright stuff, acknowledgments, a page with just the title on it (lest I forget what I’m reading between opening the ebook and clicking through those first few pages).

Very annoying. As an ebook, you would think they could format it better so you don’t have all that ‘extra’ junk that a lot of print novels have. Couldn’t they condense it down to about 2 pages, maybe 3 at the most? I realize how important those copyright pages are, especially to large publishers. Sometimes they go overboard. Like when they list both the ebook ISBN and print ISBN. If I’m reading the novel as an ebook, I don’t need to know the ISBN for the print edition.

Keep page numbers simple

I also noticed when I began reading the novel is that the pages and corresponding page numbers have been duplicated to match those of the print edition. Why? This means that if you’re on page 10 (for example) page 11 might start halfway down the screen. Or page 11 might start 1/4 the way down. Why is it so important for the pages of the ebook match the pages of the print book? It’d be much easier to have one page per screen.

Unnecessary Spacing

One more complaint I have regarding ebook formatting is spacing. While this problem is not present in Under the Dome, I have seen it in other ebooks I’ve read. Sometimes ebooks have spacing between paragraphs, even dialogue. This is a huge waste of space on small-screen devices. I’m not the only one annoyed by this. My good friend David Rothman over at the Teleread blog agrees:

Tastes vary. But I myself hate spaces between paragraphs when I’m reading e-books on a Kindle, Sony Reader or other gizmo with a small screen. Wastes space.

And it’s especially frustrating when I’m reading dialogue.

The post goes on to say that the spacing issue can be fixed with most non-DRMed ebooks.

Despite the above issues, I still love ebooks and continue to read and buy them with increasing frequency. But I’m not going to be unrealistic and say ebooks are perfect, because they’re not. Most of the issues are because ebooks are still in their infancy and standards have not been set. This will take a while.

What are your pet peeves about ebooks? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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