Re: Fooled again! eBooks and truth in labelling

Joseph Harris
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jon Jermey 
  To: [email protected] 
  Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 8:52 PM
  Subject: [ebook-community] Fooled again! eBooks and truth in labelling


  I recently bought an 'eBook' from a commercial site and discovered -- 
  AFTER paying for it -- that it was only about 20000 words long. Had it 
  been in a bookstore, of course, that would have been obvious. Nowhere on 
  the site did it indicate the length of the book (or the file size) so I 
  came away feeling that I had been cheated: I set out to buy a book and 
  ended up with a pamphlet. After DRM, this would have to be the most 
  annoying feature to me of current eBook distribution. PG is notably 
  cavalier in this respect -- calling things 'books' when they are short 
  stories, for instance -- but some other distributors seem to have 
  adopted the same approach. Fictionwise, I note, is an exception. Baen 
  Books gives a table of contents and an extract via which one can 
  estimate the length, but they don't seem to explicitly state the length 
  in words or kB.

  What information should a distributor have to supply about an eBook -- 
  at the risk, say, of legal action? Here's my list:

  Title -- and alternate titles
  Author
  First publication date
  Length
  Genre
  Price
  Format
  DRM restrictions

  Any others?

  Jon.



  Jon, 

  I broadly agree with that view.   I think the thing that might be added is illustration detail.   Others might have an idea how that might work.

  Joseph Harris



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