Ebooks are hot garbage: Difference between revisions
Created page with "'''dankblog! 2024-02-11, 0349 EST, at the danktower''' Pretty much exactly what the title says. I did not consider ebooks when writing <i>[https://midnightssimulacra midnight's simulacra]</i>. This was both fortunate and unfortunate: unfortunate because it's proven difficult to make an acceptable ebook after the fact, fortunate because I really like the print version, and it's more important to me than the ebook, and properly designing for an..." |
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Pretty much exactly what the title says. | Pretty much exactly what the title says. | ||
I did not consider ebooks when writing <i>[https://midnightssimulacra midnight's simulacra]</i>. This was both fortunate and unfortunate: unfortunate because it | I did not consider ebooks when writing <i>[https://midnightssimulacra midnight's simulacra]</i>. This was both fortunate and unfortunate: unfortunate because it has proven difficult to make an acceptable ebook after the fact, fortunate because I really like the print version, and it's more important to me than the ebook, and properly designing for an ebook would have delayed or weakened the print version. | ||
But goddamn, a lot of people seem to have suddenly developed allergies to a format that worked just fine for 570 years. And I get it. The last time I moved, it required sixty-plus boxes to move the books. I've now got about [[bookshelves|twice as many]]. They cover every surface in my condo along with the majority of the walls. When I travel, they eat precious volume and mass in my bags | But goddamn, a lot of people seem to have suddenly developed allergies to a format that worked just fine for 570 years. And I get it. The last time I moved, it required sixty-plus boxes to move the books. I've now got about [[bookshelves|twice as many]]. They cover every surface in my condo along with the majority of the walls. When I travel, they eat precious volume and mass in my bags (then again, I barely own anything besides books, and I hate traveling). The ability to search is admittedly a huge win, as is click-to-define (though the dictionary in my Kindle Paperwhite is trash). That Amazon can reach out and fuck with your shit is completely unacceptable (btw, I know of only one book that Amazon-US refuses to stock, and can thus plausibly be considered a "banned book" in America: <i>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turner_Diaries The Turner Diaries].</i> No sales from Amazon, and searching for it on subsidiary Goodreads gets "NOTABOOK". This started in 2020, and is some cowardly bullshit). Kindle still can't display characters from certain languages, <i>even if you supply and specify a font that includes the necessary glyphs,</i> which blows my fucking mind. | ||
Anyway, if you want to sell to these people, you need an ebook. And here begins the shit. | Anyway, if you want to sell to these people, you need an ebook. And here begins the shit. | ||
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* use the necessary incantation to get a popup | * use the necessary incantation to get a popup | ||
of these options, the last seems to me pretty obviously the best. Guess what? Every vendor took the EPUB3 standard, furrowed their brow, and wiped their ass with it. Apple, Amazon, whatever the fuck a Kobo is, even Calibre all went their own way on this issue, leading to [EPUB#EPUB-specific_markup monstrosities such as this] and gigantic wastes of my time. Even this godawful "solution" doesn't necessarily work, because Amazon insists on heuristics based off a link cycle. | of these options, the last seems to me pretty obviously the best. Guess what? Every vendor took the EPUB3 standard, furrowed their brow, and wiped their ass with it. Apple, Amazon, whatever the fuck a Kobo is, even Calibre all went their own way on this issue, leading to [[EPUB#EPUB-specific_markup|monstrosities such as this]] and gigantic wastes of my time. Even this godawful "solution" doesn't necessarily work, because Amazon insists on heuristics based off a link cycle. | ||
Speaking of Calibre. You tell people, "I wrote a book, now I need an ebook and it's cost me a hundred hours thus far and it totally sucks." They put their hand on their hip, look at you like an idiot, and say "just put your PDF through Calibre," and think they've taught you something. I don't know who's reading this, but unless you're Kovid Goyal, I was using Calibre before your balls dropped. I have code in Calibre. I personally know Kovid, or at least have exchanged hundreds of emails with him. We've discussed his poetry. You don't need to tell me about Calibre. | Speaking of Calibre. You tell people, "I wrote a book, now I need an ebook and it's cost me a hundred hours thus far and it totally sucks." They put their hand on their hip, look at you like an idiot, and say "just put your PDF through Calibre," and think they've taught you something. I don't know who's reading this, but unless you're Kovid Goyal, I was using Calibre before your balls dropped. I have code in Calibre. I personally know Kovid, or at least have exchanged hundreds of emails with him. We've discussed his poetry. You don't need to tell me about Calibre. | ||