Digital Books Should (still) Not Just Mean PDF

It was years ago when I first started emphatically noting that PDFs were fundamentally different than eBooks. I’ve not been alone in that, and kind of assumed by this point that it was common knowledge.

So I was surprised to learn 1that any publishers – let alone a big publisher – will still just sends out PDFs when they send digital advance review copies.2

An advance review copy is not supposed to be the finished product. While I am a huge proponent of having excellent eBook design (and not relying on automatic converters), that simply does not apply here.

You don’t send ARCs to the public at large. They are for reviewers. For people who are wanting to review the words.

I’m not bashing on folks who use PDF- or those who primarily read on a tablet. A PDF works fine if you have a tablet. And it kind of sucks on everything else. The last book that I reviewed, I half read on my eReader and half on my phone. It would have been difficult to read on the eReader and impossible to read on my phone.

There is no reason to make it hard for a reviewer to review your book.

1 After making an ass of myself by asking questions and not scrolling far enough back to get context first. D’oh.
2 Let alone password protected or otherwise DRM’d versions – but that’s another post.
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