UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

Obviously my day for publishing-related problems though this is an immediate one. I've messaged Draft2Digital and don't know how long they take to respond esp as they are based in the States but I discovered from friends with iPads that the sample file of my book on the site is corrupted. I checked both that and the main file in Calibre and the main file is OK thankfully but there is no provision for replacing the sample as that is all done automatically. All the quotes, apostrophes and dashes are coming out in umpteen weird characters.

Does anyone who uses D2D to publish to Apple and other platforms have any experience of this happening? It could be related to when I tried to use their facility to add on a page at the back with a signup email link, thinking it would be useful as I don't yet have my own mailing list, and it promptly corrupted the file in the way described above so I had to upload a new one and not bother with that addition. For some reason it seems to have taken the sample from the old corrupted one, not the new replacement, and that is what people are seeing if they view a sample on the various platforms it has gone to.

Ouch!

Sadly D2D have not responded to the message sent via their website so I have now sent a plea using their email address. Very unhappy with this experience and now wondering if I would have been better off with another distributor such as Smashwords?

I expect the weird character issues are a character set problem. The file contents are UTF-8 Unicode, (in which most characters occupy a single 8-bit byte, but some take more bytes), whilst the file is being treated as if there are only single byte characters, such as the traditional Windows character set (CP1252), or vice versa. For example, in Unicode, the left double quote is two bytes, 0x201C, whilst in CP1252 it is one byte, 0x93. Don't worry if you are unfamiliar with the hexadecimal notation; you can clearly see the codes are completely different, and so won't be correctly rendered if the wrong encoding is assumed.

Epub files should be Unicode (coded UTF-8 or UTF-16) and Calibre makes sure they are, and indicates UTF-8 (on my system) at the top of the XHTML. But Draft2Digital invite you to submit Microsoft Word Documents ...

HTH

I don't think computer geeks have any idea of the meaning of "user friendly" or "compatibility", or expect that anyone other than they are going to use their program even though they expect to put it out on the market and make some money from it!

Their attitude seems hinge on "the challenge of designing it" rather than "is it actually wanted?", or "does it do anything that is useful?" and if it does, then of course it needs to be compatible and work seamlessly with software that is already out there. But as said, those concepts are completely alien to them. But when even Microsoft deliberately make Windows 10 incapable of importing email addresses from Windows XP, what chance do we the public have of expecting anything better from others?

Thanks folks. Well, the main file is OK, it is just the sample that is messed up and that is something that has been done at their end as they produce the sample.

They have just contacted me after the 2nd plea - I think the support email must be the way to go therefore as their website form got no response - to say they are looking into it.

Leslie wrote: "... But when even Microsoft ..."
No, ESPECIALLY Microsoft. Microsoft built their business on the premise that they can keep selling you the same thing over and over again. Word, Word 95, Word 97, Word 2000, Word 2003, Word 2007, Word 2010, Word 2013, Word 2016, Word 2019 ...

Well after sending a slightly grumpy email the other night because my previous polite one requesting an update was ignored I did get a reply along the lines that their technical people are diligently working on it but it could be some days. I am baffled - I did ask if it would be quicker for me to do my own sample file and email it to them but no response to that of course!

David wrote: "Leslie wrote: "... But when even Microsoft ..."
No, ESPECIALLY Microsoft. Microsoft built their business on the premise that they can keep selling you the same thing over and over again. Word, Word..."

And most people do NOT need the upgrades. The complexity has gotten completely out of hand for ordinary users.

Alicia wrote: "... And most people do NOT need the upgrades. ..."

I cannot think of a single useful additional feature since Word 97. I remember Word 2000 had loads of bug fixes (which you get for free with Open Source) and ran much faster, but I think Word 2003 was a complete re-write with different developer tools, which doubtless made it easier for Microsoft to maintain, but made it bigger and slower, and everything since then looks like change for change's sake.

sums it up nicely David

David wrote: "Alicia wrote: "... And most people do NOT need the upgrades. ..."

I cannot think of a single useful additional feature since Word 97. I remember Word 2000 had loads of bug fixes (which you get for..."

Unfortunately, I need a couple of features from Word that Scrivener doesn't have, each time I format the final version of a novel for print. And then I go through on tiptoe, knowing that anything I do to the Scrivener Compile file results from that point on is irreversible, undocumentable, and likely to bite me.

I have the Scrivener update but haven't applied it yet because I will have to figure out the Word changes again, and I dread that.

It is almost impossible to maintain changes in the print file - and I have to reinstall (if I even can) Word 2011 on my Mac (after two crashes) for the next book.

It's a good thing you can only see the final product in print, and not the mess it takes to get there.

Alicia wrote: "Unfortunately, I need a couple of features from Word that Scrivener doesn't have ..."

I would suggest compiling your Scrivener project to ODT (LibreOffice format) and using LibreOffice instead of Word to make the print formatting tweaks. LibreOffice is free, and much more likely to work on a Mac in 2019 than Word 2011.

Well, progress at last. D2D wrote last night to say they had found the cause of the problem and have now issued corrected files to the stores such as Apple that I am using them to distribute to. Only almost a month to sort it out but at least the sample file I am seeing in my dashboard now looks OK, and I have written to friends with ipads who can take a look for me and let me know when it appears. What a palaver!