Ok, time to gripe. I've been following things for some time
now, done some books myself, proofed some, re-formatted
some etc. A few items that I _personally_ don't like. YMMV,
as they say.


1) RE-FORMATTING IN GENERAL
I.e. changing the original from format X to format Y.
Unless the text has been improved, I see no reason to release
a 'new' version. 

This is a minor gripe but makes keeping track of 
improvements slightly more difficult.

This doesn't mean people who actually improve the original 
(Layout/Proofing) and in the process change the format of 
the original. My personal preference is HTML, so if I 
proof something the improved version is very likely to
be released as HTML.


1.1) RE-FORMATTERS/PROOFERS ETC, WHO REMOVE REVISION HISTORY

In the process they also remove the original version info,
thus making it very difficult to trace back the updates or
distinguish between versions that might be from two different
sources. The end result is one v1.5 from a shitty scan
which is actually a lot worse than a v1.1 where the original
was carefully proofed in the first place. 

This is a MAJOR gripe. 

PLEASE RETAIN THE EXISTING REVISION HISTORY WHEN YOU
'MODIFY' THE DOCUMENT. CLEARLY MENTION WHAT HAS BEEN DONE
TO THE PREVIOUS VERSION TO JUSTIFY THE VERSION NUMBER INCREASE.

- LAYOUT (chapter breaks, scene changes etc.)
- PROOFING (OCR errors, smelling pistakes, missing pages)
- FORMAT (If for some reason overpowering urge makes you
release a 'new' version, at least indicate that the contents 
is _exactly_ the same, just the file format was changed)


1.2) RE-FORMATTERS/PROOFERS WHO SPLIT FILES

There's this perfectly good single file in format X 
and suddenly it's split into several HTML files. The re-formatter
then smugly updates the version number and thinks they've made everyone
a great favour.

What if I'd like to get it back into one piece? Sheesh,
I have only 30 separate files to stitch together. Unless
you're mr. Clueless from Land of No Clues Living Here, 
you should know that you can link within an HTML document
and also keep the CSS in there. Result is ONE (1) file,
not 30.

This is a minor gripe, but annoying nonetheless.

1.3) RE-FORMATTERS WHO DON'T SEEM TO HAVE A CLUE
There's this one fellow who adds five to six times the same
document with different names plus several color and b/w scans
of the book cover into a release. What's the point? Why the
extra files? Why the color vs. b/w cover scans? Hello? Why?

A minor gripe, but confusing.


2) GRAPHICS IN GENERAL
Kudos to those who add cover art to their releases.
Admittedly, it's not worth much but still a nice addition.
If you release a book that's hard to find etc. please
go through the trouble of adding cover art as well.

A very minor gripe, but it's nice to see the cover art :)


2.1) FILE SIZES IN KBs AND PIXELS
I'm constantly surprised how clueless some of the people
who scan books are. They haven't got the slightest idea
about how to scan and _save_ graphics in a suitable
format. I've seen maps in thumbnail size whose usefulness 
is quicklu approaching zero. Then there are the cover
art scans that reach astronomical proportions in size.

a) BLACK-AND-WHITE MAPS ETC -> GIF
GIF is an ancient format but still _very good_ for
black and white drawings etc. A GIF will actually
be smaller in kb than a JPG[1] if you're scanning maps 
or something similar. 
[1] IN B/W, NOT GRAYSCALE. There's a differece (in scanning
software terms the difference is usually stated as 'line
art' versus 'Black and white photo').

b) COVER PAGES, PHOTOS ETC -> JPG
Pay attention to the file sizes. I've seen several
releases where the cover page of the book is 300-400kb
and the actual text around 150kb. Ok, a picture is worth
a thousand words but in that 150kb, there's definetely
more than a thousand words. Adjust you picture size (no sense
in scanning a 2000x4000 pixel cover, 300x500 is more than
adequate and the result is a 50kb image.

Conclusion:
- Pay attention to picture size in KB. No sense
releasing a 15kb book with 400kb cover image that
can be downloaded from Amazon.

- Pay attention to picture size in pixels. If you want
a scan of a map to be useful, make sure that it's also
readable.

And: EXPERIMENT. You can spend 15 minutes playing around
with different scanner and file saving options to
get the optimal result. Do this a few times and you'll
instinctively know what format is the best for which
type of graphic.

A minor gripe but an occasion thumbnail-size map makes
life that much more unbearable.


