Kindle and poetry
 

In a comment on the "Reviewing on Amazon" thread, Roger mentioned how much he liked Kindle for prose, but noted that "poetry tends to be formatted incorrectly. So many Kindle books, including Wilbur's latest, leave out stanza breaks and have other grave errors."

However attractive Kindle might be otherwise, this seems like a deal breaker to me. I wonder, is there a fix in the works, or is a better alternative available?

Ed

...or is a better alternative available?

Yes, Ed, there is a better alternative. It has a lot of the same newspapers and magazines you can read on Kindle, and a lot of the same prose and poetry (with no stanza-break problems and other errors). It's called a Library, and the best things about it are that it doesn't cost a cent -- it's for the rich and the poor -- and it's alive.

Gotta love Petra.

In Ed's defense: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's heard of a library. He is asking whether hand-held electronic technology (which is going to be, like, really big in the future) will improve any time soon.

I love books and libraries,
Rick

I love the library, and I use it quite a bit, but like many people, I also like to buy and own books. I've bought many books over the years, lost many to a fire, misplaced others, failed to get them back after lending them to people, etc. And even the ones I still have are difficult for me to find when I get the urge. With a Kindle, though, I can have all my books in one place, with no risk of losing them to a fire, all of them accessible to me from just about anywhere. When I get on a train, I don't have to decide which two or three books to have with me in my bag, weighing 5 or 6 pounds, but I can have an eight ounce device with thousands of books, including a good number of books that were as free as the library because they are in the public domain. I can search the books by key word, as well, or by my own bookmarks and annotations. It's an entirely pleasant experience to read on a Kindle, in other words, and when they start formatting poetry correctly, it will be that much better. I am confident they will start doing so, since, as I remarked on the other thread, it is merely sloppiness and not technology that prevents them from doing so right now.

Hi all

While I am not totally conversant with Kindle technology, I would think that in order to preserve proper lineation and particular formatting, the works should be photographed, which is what I have done sometimes to quote a poem with specific unorthodox format rather than try to emulate the indenting or staggering of the lines.

Chris

Ouch! A fair hit, though. I don't go to my local library nearly enough, except to forage through the excellent used bookstore in the basement. On the other hand, the most recent examples of metrical poetry they have are the collected works of Auden and Wilbur, both of which I own, and the only poetry journal they carry is Poetry. Maybe other libraries are better off, but most of what they have here is old enough to be available online, not to my taste (Rod McKuen, anyone?), or -- despite the modesty of my personal collection -- on my shelves already.

Is it possible to edit e-books on Kindle to correct formatting errors?

Ed,

I have seen this problem, although not often. I did, though, have it with one specific text I bought: Tony Hecht's collected later poems. It wasn't really bad, I could always figure it out, but it was distracting...

Then I found a free program called Calibre http://calibre-ebook.com/

I was using it to convert some files to kindle-friendly format. Figured I may as well open the recalcitrant text in it. So I did, and then resaved it. Worked like a dream. It solved every issue I had with poetry on the kindle.

I've now got an anthology on there it would take an entire bookshelf to hold. Fits in the palm of my hand. And, except for the recently written stuff, it was all perfectly free... ;)

Thanks,

Bill

Bill, I have Calibre, but it never occurred to me that I might be able to use it to fix copyrighted e-books with DRM. Is that what you're saying? Or does it only work on public domain, free stuff?

This only goes to show what kind of a scandal it is that the publishers can't get it right to begin with. If amateurs can simply fix the formatting errors with Kindle, I don't know why the publishers can't manage the same trick, or why they don't vet the product before they release it. They would never release a traditional book with mangled stanza breaks, so what makes them think they can omit to vet the e-books as well?

By the way, for my own personal documents and poetry, I have found that I get the best results by using simple HTML. Use a break code for every line, and a double break for stanzas. Other simple codes, like bold, also translate just fine.

Also, as some of you might not know, with Kindle you can email any word, PDF or HTML document to your own Kindle email account, and within a minute or two the document will magically appear on your Kindle. It's a wonderful feature, since it lets you store, along with all your books, all of your manuscripts and personal papers.

A photographic rendering isn't the best solution, Chris, since it gives you almost no control over the text size. If you use the Kindle format, you can adjust the font size to suit your own taste and eyesight. If you do this for a photo/pdf file, the screen size is ignored and text can flow off the side of the screen unless you shrink the whole page to make it fit.

PS-- I took a trial subscription to the New Yorker on my Kindle, and the poems were laid out perfectly. So it can be done if people care to do it right. By contrast, almost all other poetry I have downloaded has been botched in terms of lay-out, whether it is free or paid for.

Roger,

My meetings with publishers over ebooks revealed a surprising reluctance on their parts. It was as if they saw the future coming, and knew they'd have to jump in, but they weren't happy about it.

One good example: in a contentious meeting over pricing, they insisted on holding the line on textbook pricing. I said "You've been claiming that printing and distribution costs are part of the reason for high textbook prices. This solution drives those costs to near zero, so you should at least give the students some break if they're willing to try this." But there was absolutely no give on their line.

You're quite right: these people were the greatest experts in layout the world has ever seen. If they *wanted* to make things look good, they could have. They must have just not been all that interested. Or they were thinking "It already costs us X to do traditional layout, it'll cost us X plus Y to do e-layout as well..." So they left the 'good enough' bar really low. I have a feeling that will change pretty quickly now, since ebook sales have surpassed dead tree book sales...

I'm not sure most poets would even be able to navigate the options and settings in Calibre, or recognize the terms. But a year from now, they probably won't have to... ;)

Thanks,

Bill

I, too, have a Kindle and am very happy with it for reading prose. As Roger says, it is essentially laziness on the part of the publishers. It strikes me that one small and possibly useful thing we could do is write letters of protest or complaint to the publishers guilty of this sloppiness. If they get enough letters showing that there are people who care about stanza breaks and indentations they might just bring the subject up at a board meeting.

There are many poets whose books I own which I would also like to have on my Kindle, for all the reasons given by Roger - especially for travel. So there the publishers are missing out on a possible double sale.

By the way, I now subscribe to the TLS on my Kindle, and it's definitely convenient that way. But they, too, take very little care about formatting for the electronic version.

Anyway, protest, protest, protest...

I have actually exchanged emails with the editor for a prominent poet whose ebook is formatted incorrectly, as well as with people in the department that was responsible for formatting. The editor said it would be fixed right away and that it wasn't her fault because she had sent the techies a perfectly formatted electronic file (apparently never checking to see that they had done their job right). The techies themselves ridiculously claimed that it was a problem with the Kindle and that the e-book on other platforms, like the Nook, was just fine. I told them the solution, yet weeks later, when I checked the Kindle version again (downloading a sample), the same problems persisted, and the Kindle version remained on sale at the same price.

I think part of the problem is that the techies do not have a publishing or editing background, but are computer people, and so traditional editorial standards are not known or respected in their world. They are given a quick job to do, and they do it quickly without regard to the grand traditions of quality publishing. Yet, for some reason, the actual editors don't feel that they have to vet and approve electronic versions before they are released, the way they obviously do when it comes to paper galleys for traditional books. Somehow the idea of e-books has not firmly settled in with many editors, even as the market rapidly grows, and they don't really envision people buying the ebooks and caring about how they are displayed.

Bill, it wouldn't take much money to get it right. As I mentioned, all you have to do is add break codes to the HTML between lines, with two break codes between stanzas, and it comes out right. You could do this to a typical book of poetry in twenty minutes, tops.

Most of the time, this isn't a problem, since prose comes out decently even with little care taken to format correctly, but with poetry it's a different story.

I don't have the energy or inclination, or the knowledge, or even a Kindle - but I'll bet there's the makings of a good article/critique or Op-Ed kind of piece there, aimed at a serious broad market literary journal like the New York Review of Books or the Sunday NY Times Book Section. Or (just to prove I'm not totally New York-centric) Poetry. Go to it, Roger! Robert? Somebody?

I also suspect that (a) one key reason for the sloppiness is that the Kindle poetry market is so tiny compared to other oportunities, and the formatting and editing/checking of poetry is such a pain-in-the-ass compared to prose, that publishers give improving the poetry format a very low priority and, in effect, never get to it, and (b) a good article in a well circulated journal could be an effective call to action.