Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion

I’m wondering if people have noticed a tendency for eBooks to be published without a TOC these days? I checked the a sample of sci-fi books (popular ones) on Amazon, and was surprised how few had a TOC. Personally, that would drive me nuts, but I do see an issue. The "look inside" feature on Amazon starts at the beginning of the file, so if you have a TOC (and a lot of front matter) that is basically waste for preview purposes -- people have to page thru it to get to your story.

I'm wondering if that is why authors are leaving out the TOC. We have a very long TOC in our upcoming book and I think it helps, but we also worry that it will turn people off.

On the other hand, people who can't handle our TOC are probably going to get lost in our story and be aggravated. So maybe we’ll warn off the right people?

But, that to one side, I'm wondering if this is a trend.

On a related note: there is a “start” or “begin” tag (or whatever it's called -- like the TOC tag) that is supposed tell an e-reader where the beginning is in a mobi file. I’ve never been able to get Amazon’s "look inside" feature to honor the "start" tag in the past. Does anyone know if this has changed? Or how to make this tag work? That would solve the issue.

Edit: There is a “guide” section of an OPF file, and the “start” location can be specified there. Does anyone know if that can be dropped into a straight HTML and it will work? (Unfortunately, there is no way to test that on Amazon before the book goes live, as far as I know.)

When I was talking to a publisher nibbling at my books, they said they never include a TOC because it was "too much work" to get the links to behave nicely through the conversion process. I've never had a problem with it, so not sure if its because they didn't want to put in the effort to track down/delete the hidden bookmarks, or if they were working in a non .doc format.

Either way, it seems that ebook are starting to lose the TOC, and I find that sad. I know that most converters supposedly will look at the file and autogenerate the TOC, but I wouldn't trust that to catch every chapter break.

K. wrote: "When I was talking to a publisher nibbling at my books, they said they never include a TOC because it was "too much work" to get the links to behave nicely through the conversion process. I've nev..."

Maybe that's it. I go from Word straight to HTML, using the "HTML filtered" option in Word 2010, and the TOC is no problem. Even though a bunch of extra name tags often get inserted, they have never messed up the Kindle converter on Amazon (I take them out anyway, because I hate clutter in my HTML). If you don't do that, I imagine your document could be a mess and cause conversion problems.

If this is just a publisher "being lazy" issue, that's one thing. If it's a reader preference issue, I’d pay more attention. (I hope it’s the former.)

I do provide a linked TOC in my ebooks, but I'm wondering about the need for it if the chapters aren't titled. I think you would still have a GOTO menu to navigate with.

I haven't run up against many ebooks without a TOC. Paperback, yes. I leave it off my paperbacks because it isn't necessary for a fictional story in most cases. But I always have one in ebooks because it's the easiest way to flip through. I've only read one book recently without, but that onr had no front matter at all.

Ken wrote: "I do provide a linked TOC in my ebooks, but I'm wondering about the need for it if the chapters aren't titled. I think you would still have a GOTO menu to navigate with."

I've wondered that also. Our chapters are titled and we include (in this book) a date and location reference, so the reader can see how the story is moving around. Our beta readers said they liked that and it gave them a better sense of book. But our beta readers might be a minority in this regard, and the would nice not to annoy people too much.

Do you prefer TOC as a reader, or do you mostly ignore them?

Christina wrote: "I haven't run up against many ebooks without a TOC. Paperback, yes. I leave it off my paperbacks because it isn't necessary for a fictional story in most cases. But I always have one in ebooks beca..."

Good to know. I was kind of surprised at the sample I took. Personally, I don't find the navigation on a Kindle to be good enough to do without a TOC.

Yes, fiction does not traditionally seem to have a TOC in print, unless there are multiple stories in the volume (which our also has).

What can happen on Amazon is that it starts out working before it gets on Amazon. Then if things don't line up it doesn't work. At which point someone has to fix it but it doesn't happen. Sometimes the author doesn't even know it doesn't work until it is pointed out to them. I believe Amazon has a limited idea for some of the common book operations which is why it doesn't go straight through every time. You can look at a series of books by one author and you will see that the TOC works for some and not for others. You can also see a special feature like italics work perfect on Smashwords and bomb out on Amazon. If the author doesn't check everything in every location they may not know until someone tells them. People will not tell you everything that is wrong. If it isn't working it needs to be fixed because all it does is confirm peoples ideas that Indie authors don't know what they are doing. And if you hire someone to do all this for you, you are dependent on them to check everything if you don't check it yourself.

I am new to Goodreads and forums, but I just wanted to butt in here to say something.

TOCs are not merely important with ebooks. They are essential, so far as I am concerned. Thus far, I have encountered perhaps two or three that did not have a TOC when I went looking. One of which was a collection of Harry Harrison short stories. Now, having just been turned on to the wonders of Harrison, I did make the effort to keep reading, but I cannot quite remember if I got past the first story (aliens reacting to the Jesus story) or not. I know that the lack of a TOC had a profound effect upon me, however.

The cry and complaint about TOCs not working does not obviate the need for them. As far as I am concerned, it means that new tools need to be made to ensure .epub (yes, .epub, it is an open standard and thus does not lock us into Amazon) has formatting that works, TOCs that work, and can be made what the author will consider pleasant to read. Then it ends up entirely in the hands of the customer to judge whether the author is right.

Just one last point I will bring up here. The Smashwords guide to how to make your DOC file compatible with their process is at best very out of date and horribly incomplete. Which, again, illustrates a need to bring more compatibility between the .epub standard and extant word processors (all of them, not just Word).

Robert wrote: "What can happen on Amazon is that it starts out working before it gets on Amazon. Then if things don't line up it doesn't work. At which point someone has to fix it but it doesn't happen. Sometimes..."

I have no problem putting a working TOC on Amazon. I convert my file to HTML, run it through Calibre to get an EPUB. For a working ncx I run the EPUB through the Kindle Previewer, and upload the converted file directly to Amazon.

Owen wrote: "Do you prefer TOC as a reader, or do you mostly ignore them? ..."

I prefer to have it, but if a working goto menu is included I can do without it and it doesn't bother me that much.

It helps to look at it from a marketing point of view, too.

In his musings about the O.J. Simpson trial, Vincent Bugliosi makes many references to how with a jury of shall we say less intellectually capable individuals, you tie a bib on them and feed them your case as thoroughly as possible. If they fail to understand such then-"big" things as DNA evidence, you explain it to them until they have your explanation echoing in their headspace. And so forth.

Making certain your ebook is formatted well is like that. You want to make it as easy for the reader to read and follow every part of your book as you possibly can. Get the TOC working, get the spacings of the text right, get the chapter breaks right, and on and on it goes. Yes, some readers will just use the Go To function, as Ken has suggested, but in this day and age, one has to accommodate the least astute customer in the room.

Sad but true.

Dean wrote: "It helps to look at it from a marketing point of view, too.

In his musings about the O.J. Simpson trial, Vincent Bugliosi makes many references to how with a jury of shall we say less intellectual..."

I would amend that to say that to say the least astute customer in your room. We aren’t all selling to the same people, and some books are easier to read and to follow than others. (Ours, as it happens, are neither in many respects.) And that is the danger of following the herd: you may be following the wrong one.

Owen wrote: "I would amend that to say that to say the least astute customer in your room. We aren’t all selling to the same people, and some books are easier to read and to follow than others. (Ours, as it happens, are neither in many respects.) And that is the danger of following the herd: you may be following the wrong one..."

I have to agree. I'm pretty sure that anyone who couldn't navigate a goto menu probably wouldn't be able to understand my books anyway.

Point taken, but when you are playing into a saturated market, you tend to have to take readers where you can find them. Or that is how I look at it, anyway.

I used to also write technical reviews of DVD and BD software. Some generalised complaints about the accessibility of discs...

In our case, we try to be careful about "overselling" the books. In fact, we do what we can to make sure people know what they're getting into. I, personally, don't recommend our books to anyone, or ask for reviews or anything in that line. We prefer people find it (I'll happily tell people how to do that, though maybe with caveats), check it out, heed the advisory, and make up their own mind without us trying to "sell it".

Perhaps oddly, this has worked out really well for the first two books.

In days of old, when knights were bold... Printed books didn't used to have contents pages, at least in the genres I read. Anthologies do, so you can skip authors you know you don't like, but not fiction stories. I use named chapters, just because I enjoy making up the titles, so it's logical for me to include a TOC. My Kindle remembers where I am in a story, so there's no need for a TOC when I'm reading a novel. I'm wondering why people feel its essential. At the same time I'm following the crowd and including one. I've found it best to follow the 'old hands' advice - for example I wasn't justifying my text and only realised later that it made the book less readable.

All my problems with Smashwords revolved around the external TOC, the one used in the goto menu, not the one embedded in the front matter. Their software would misread the word document, they'd manually review it and reject it for premium distribution, I'd fix it up according to their arcane rules, and so on. Too much work for too few sales. Don't use them anymore.

I'm coming to a similar conclusion to you, Owen, about 'overselling.' Since I write for a specialist taste, I have found that broader exposure doesn't always help the book. Roughly speaking there are booky people and spacey people. When I get reviews from space enthusiasts, they are generally pretty positive, and lead to an uptick in sales. The broader public get bored with the technical stuff. So I need to concentrate on finding weirdo space-nuts like myself.

Okay, let me get my emotions under control... *tries* *pants* *fails* *tries* *etc*

I will just quote one of those sayings. Better to have it and not need it...

I included one in my ebook, but not in the print version. If nothing else, I find it helps with navigation when the Kindle burps and leaves you in a random spot in the book. At least you can go to the TOC and find your way back.

Many people recommend having the TOC in the back of the book so that it doesn't take up preview space on Amazon, but I opted not to do that. It just seems odd to me. That's purely subjective, of course.

I've only really run into eBooks with no hyperlinked TOC in rare self-published works. And except for one case, I didn't actually own the eBooks so I can't tell if they didn't have the .ncx TOC or not.

The one eBook I do own without either was a really good book, but its lack of TOC was really annoying.

In print books, personally, I find the TOC to be rather superfluous. I never look at them. Never reference them. It's easy to flip through them and find a chapter or section that you want to reference, and easy to flip right back to where you were. You don't have to go to the trouble of activating a menu, selecting GoTo, choosing page number or location, then typing in where you want to go and pressing Enter.

So in an eBook I find them to be essential. A lot of eBooks don't have page numbers. and if you want to find a passage (that you don't remember well enough to do a text search for it) that happens 2/3 of the way through the book, and the eReader tells you there are 17,819 locations in the book...what, I'm going to pull up a calculator to find out what location is 2/3rds of the way through? And what if that's not the exact place I want? Page forward and backward until I find it? And then when I want to return to where I left off and I'd failed to manually insert a bookmark, or note the location number I started from...

What a pain! (Actually doing random searches in an eBook is probably the biggest flaw in eBook design...it's a pain even with a TOC, but without it's worse.)

If anything one might ask if the hyperlinked TOC is necessary if you've got the built-in eReader TOC set up correctly.

Michael wrote: "Many people recommend having the TOC in the back of the book so that it doesn't take up preview space on Amazon..."

I started down that road, but also decided it was wrong thinking. Especially if you use chapter titles, having it in the front is a good thing for a potential customer.

For one thing, gives the potential customer a sense of the book's flavor, especially if the chapters are titled.

Secondly, it can give them a glimpse of the book's structure, like if the book has a Book/Chapter set up like Tolkien's LotR did.

And lastly, it gives them an idea of the book's length, something that's not easy to gauge while viewing the LookInside feature.

Micah wrote: "I started down that road, but also decided it was wrong thinking..."

Agreed on all points.

I think a TOC is essential in an ebook. It took me months to figure out how to add one to my books. Everytime I thought I had it I'd try it on Amazon and it wouldn't work. There was a lot of yelling at the computer before I finally figured it out. I don't think an ebook looks done without it and it is definitely hard to navigate without one.

Micah wrote: "Michael wrote: "Many people recommend having the TOC in the back of the book so that it doesn't take up preview space on Amazon..."

I started down that road, but also decided it was wrong thinking..."

That has been my thinking, and we tried to make our TOC more informative in this book for those reasons. (The last one was just a big list of Ch.X, X+1, X+2, etc, and I think that was a minor mistake.)

Thanks everyone for all the feedback so far. It has been most illuminating.

When I have in the past read guides to making and promoting ebooks, a statement that keeps coming out and leaping into my face goes something like this. If you try to make your ebook "just like" the print version, you are setting yourself up for failure.

So "they are not in the print version" is pretty spurious as reasonings go.

Also noteworthy is how structures work with DVD and BD-Videos. I think there has been maybe one title on either format where chapter stops were left out on purpose. And the distributor caught hellfire from the customer base for it. So much so that although said distributor professed it was the director's preference that the disc be released like this, distributors never again repeated that trick with any of his works. The ability to instantaneously skip from point to point with only a fraction of a second's pause was one of the reasons we have an entire generation now who will never know what VHS actually _means_. That same convenience and ease, or the promise thereof, is what attracts many people to digital.

In fact that is what guides many people to new technologies. Being able to enlarge the text so I can read it more easily was where it was at. Being able to skip to a specific part of the book is nice, too. Especially when one is told "look for this specific section because it will help with our communications".