Wednesday, September 2, 2009

And Sony Thinks IT Can Format eBooks?!!?

Just look at this:



It's The Collectors by David Baldacci.

That's done by Sony's people (whether in-house or a service bureau doesn't matter -- these are the Formatting Priesthood Sony blesses with paychecks for their toil!).

That's an eBook in Sony's locked-down proprietary -- and now being kicked to the curb -- format, BBeB. You know BBeB, the format that Sony created just for its Reader. BBeB, the format that Sony wouldn't provide creation tools for everyone to create their own eBooks. BBeB, the format that Sony charges at least two hundred dollars for each title to a publisher to convert into.

Sony still requires publishers to go through its people even for ePub.

How stupid is that?

What kind of world does Sony exist in where there is no Atlantis and no SIGIL?

If Sony had created the Internet, it'd be exactly like AOL was: based on a proprietary and stupid scripting language (Rainman -- I kid you not!) that made grown men cry.

Let go, Sony!

Your own formatting is shown to be crap at times. You think writers who want to succeed would do worse on their own?!

1 comment:

Moriah Jovan said...

And now there's BookGlutton's newest iteration of their EPUB converter.

I used it for the first book I published with good results, but with awful results for the second, so much that I completely abandoned it.

I haven't tried the upgraded version yet but it looks hopeful.

But you still have to know (X)HTML/CSS to use it (ah, the beauty of Atlantis).