Publishers and self-publishers are having a love affair with eBooks. Ever since Amazon announced that digital editions were selling at a 3:1 ratio over print books, people took notice. A new report states that 84% of publishers will be making eBooks this year and 62% stated that eBook quality was the most paramount concern.
Big and medium sized publishers are in an advantageous position with in-house tools that make digitizing a book fairly easy. For everyone else, there is seldom an off-the-shelf solution to generate a proper table of contents, use industry standard fonts, employ proper margins or convert it from one format to another. All publishers need to insure their books are formatted correctly in order to not alienate readers.
The survey results highlight many of the concerns that publishers have with going digital. It takes about what online bookstore people have the most success with and what formats are most popular.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
