As a reader, I totally agree that having the cover and the back cover blurb would be wonderful. Half the time I can’t remember what book in a series I just finished because I never see the cover, the art, and don’t have the running heads on the page to remind me of the title.

Okay it would be nicer if the publishers already had that in the metadata, but I’ve found that some epublishers already have such things but not always the tags I want to use, so I have to edit the metadata anyway to not screw on my personal system.

I tend to buy .epubs and – rarely – Adobe Digital .pdfs and then convert them into .lrf to read on my Sony 505 (which works quite well with the epubs but not so well with the pdfs).

I have no problem with the amount of space that the covers take up, as I bought a Memory Stick 2GB and a SD Card 4GB right after I bought the reader (they’re not that expensive, considering I bought a dedicated electronic reading device in the first place) and I only use the memory on the reader itself to house my Jonathan Coulton song collection, in case I want to listen to music without bringing along a dedicated mp3 player.

I bought the Sony after Jan’s review here made it clear it was also usable as a manga viewer and the manga files themselves can take up to 20 MB for a 200 page manga in .lrf format, whereas even with the amount of books I’ve bought at BooksonBoard I have hardly scratched the capacity on my memory stick.

It’s definitely a tipping point with me, though, and if I’m only kind of interested but it’s borderline, I’ll walk away rather than dig through copyright dates.

Angie

That being said, I provided many graphics in my own (how-to nonfiction) ebooks because my customers wanted them. Why can’t publishers offer both graphic and non-graphic versions? If readers want it, the publishers should definitely oblige. It’s just good service.

How frustrating to try to figure out what book comes next — or now, if I want to look at a particular book in the series (for whatever reason) I have no idea what order they should be in.

And yes, darn it! I want color covers.

If there was something I’d want to the publishers to know about it would be availability of titles and competitive e-pricing. I think it is wrong for an e-book to cost more than a paper copy — and some of them do when they first come out. Since e-readers are quite an initial investment, many people justify the cost by understanding that purchasing books at a lower price will defray the cost of the reader itself over time.

I do like a cover image, but it isn’t a deal breaker for me. I’d actually prefer a blurb more than a color cover.

I have cover flow on my Ipod and at first it was all…”OOhh, cool. Shiny!” But I barely use it now, I just want my to listen to my songs.

Also–one thing I like about the newest edition of Calibre is that it allows you to add a blurb–and the blurb will appear at the beginning of the book. This is especially handy for my mother, who lamented the lack of blurbs until this feature was added. Sure, I generally have to chase down the blurb myself, but at least when we open an ebook, we know what it’s about.

But I think most people would agree that many e-book romance & erotica covers are… not good. Plenty are very nice, but. you know…

And, frankly, the publishers should know which covers are attractive and which are not — they have eyes! Ignore pride and all that junk, and admit when there just wasn’t the budget to produce something that wasn’t cheesy and/or absolute photoshop fail.

If they need the hideous covers on the puchase sites, okay, (though I’m not sure I agree) but I’d rather have them excluded from the actual file I paid for. Give me and the poor author that amount of respect.

I could tag them in order through Calibre, but it should have been already done by her publisher with metadata (which would ideally contain a book blurb, series order, title, author, etc.) and covers.

Lack of metadata is inexcusable, IMO. I believe that metadata for digital material is the future of indexing (which is a science and an art).

Also IMO, along with accurate and extensive metadata, illustrations and parsed references (like chapter:verse or chapter:sentence), hyperlinks (i.e., footnotes and endnotes, glossaries and maps), possibly music and animations will be the key to successful digital book adoption.

If I had the money, I’d license every song I used to write the books to and embed them into the books. I’d hire artists to illustrate and animate, and an indexer to embed deep metadata.

This brings me back to the thought I had a week or so ago when one of the Sony test drivers (sorry, don't remember who) said one of her issues with the Sony was the inability to browse the covers and blurbs to pick a book from her TBR pile.

Yes!

Also, lack of a series order. Take Anne Stuart’s Ice series, for example. I recently bought digital copies of her Ice series on some people’s recommendations (I fell off the AS wagon a while ago). I still haven’t got round to reading it, because I forget which is which every time I whip out the Reader. I like reading a book series in order.

I could tag them in order through Calibre, but it should have been already done by her publisher with metadata (which would ideally contain a book blurb, series order, title, author, etc.) and covers.

If a blurb isn’t available, then a cover will do because it makes a good visual reminder of what it’s about. I actually prefer plain cover as it’d not influence me, but it can only work if it has a blurb with it, though.

I really agree with people who say having the blurb would be good. My TBR is mostly electronic and some of the books have been there for ages. A title isn’t always enough to remind me of what the book is about. Having the back cover blurb easily accessibly would be fantastic. (I also hate it when paper books don’t have a blurb and that is a likely reason for me putting a book back on the shelf.)

But browsing these comments makes it clear there are people who are annoyed with cover images too…