Book publicist Ben Cameron believes that publishers have a long way to go before they get eBooks right. In a piece penned for The Huffington Post, Cameron recounts his experience of reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on his Kindle.
The book itself is an eBook, according to the storyline, yet Cameron points out that the publisher didn’t go anything to take advantage of this fact when creating the eBook. Instead of making it interactive, they simply took the print files and digitized them.
Here is more from his piece: “At the moment publishers are quickly churning out ebook versions of the mainstays of their print backlists. But more often than not they are doing so without giving a moment’s thought to making even the simplest of changes to the printed book. So we end up with an introduction to an ebook that sings the praises of paperbacks or ebook cover images taken straight from printed books that boast of illustrations – when the illustrations have been stripped from the ebook editions.”