Chris Lott

There are many things I like about the Kindle—particularly the Kindle DX, which is amazingly readable—now that I have access to a 3G network. For various reasons, the Kindle’s not a suitable device for me to read fiction, poetry or other creative writing. But it could be perfect for disposable reading (magazines and newspapers) and much of my nonfiction needs. Could be.

I’m not talking about the larger issue of lack of Kindle content outside the most mainstream—I can count with just the fingers of both hands the number of times a Kindle edition of a book I am looking for has been available—but a much simpler problem: the horrible production quality of so many Kindle edition books. It’s one thing when a free, public domain book is the victim of poor conversion, but when I pay very near the paper price for a book and Amazon (or whoever create the Kindle edition) can’t be bothered to even take care of things like formatting paragraphs properly… that’s not cool. And with no way to preview a Kindle book, you essentially roll the dice each time you buy one.

For example, here’s what my recently purchased Kindle edition of Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy looks like:

Notice anything missing? Having sufficient leading between paragraphs—or even indented first lines—might seem like a small thing, but not when you have thousands of screen to read. And this is just one example of many. The books I download have problems more often than not.

Two more examples that clearly stem from faulty conversion and absolutely no effort put into correction: