iBooks Comics Quality is a Disappointment

[happyprozak]

've taken a look at several samples of comic books from the iBooks store and I've compared those to books I have in comixology and the HD comics from comixology are head and shoulders above the quality of iBooks.



Why can't Apple match the quality of comixology? There seems to be a large degree of inconsistency of what's on iBooks. You can easily see this in the manga of volumes 1 and 2 of the Neon Gensis Evangelion 3 in 1 editions. Volume 1 is blurry because of the low resolution. Now take a look at volume 2 and text is sharp. So I compared this to the same editions on comixology and volume 2 from both store fronts look relatively equal in quality. I'd give the edge to comixology but the difference is negligible.



Now on comixogy the quality of both volumes are the same but on iBooks the quality varies wildly. So obviously we can have quality equal to comixology so why aren't we getting it more consistently?



Are there no passionate comic book readers working with iBooks? Is this a case of Apple dropping the ball? Or do they just accept whatever the publishers submit? Comixology has a quality control team so maybe Apple needs to implement this?



I just don't see how publishers could be happy putting out a subpar product the way they are right now. I'd like to keep my purchases under the Apple ecosystem to have everything in one place but the quality between most of what I see on iBooks leaves too much to be desired.



Apple needs to do something if they have any interest in capturing the comic book market.

 

[aberrero]

iBooks overall is just a failure. Apple has completely ignored it.

 

[thewitt]

iBooks overall is just a failure. Apple has completely ignored it.

It's my favorite eReader program by a long shot.

Books that are poorly formatted, or formatted for Kindle, or worse uploaded to some aggregator site as a Word file and converted for iTunes are horrible.

Comics can be creatively and effectively authored for iBooks, but you need to use Apple's authoring software.

 

[happyprozak]

It's my favorite eReader program by a long shot.

Books that are poorly formatted, or formatted for Kindle, or worse uploaded to some aggregator site as a Word file and converted for iTunes are horrible.

Comics can be creatively and effectively authored for iBooks, but you need to use Apple's authoring software.

I don't have a problem with the iBooks software, it's the content quality I have an issue with. As I stated in my original post, from a manga series, volume 2 matches the quality of Comixology but volume 1 falls horribly short.

Why is a publisher pushing out high quality files to Comixology but then turning around and putting out two very different tiers of quality to iBooks? And why is Apple allowing this?

Several other comic books have lower resolution files than Comixology as well.

Apple needs to get serious about getting onto the backs of publishers to start putting out higher quality content or iBooks will remain a failure, at least quality wise.

 

[aberrero]

It's my favorite eReader program by a long shot.

Books that are poorly formatted, or formatted for Kindle, or worse uploaded to some aggregator site as a Word file and converted for iTunes are horrible.

Comics can be creatively and effectively authored for iBooks, but you need to use Apple's authoring software.

It's an off topic point, but I will say that while I really like iBooks as an app on my Apple products, until it has real cross platform support I will never invest any money in the eBooks offered on the platform.

I do feel that Apple has kind of neglected iBooks since it came out, and while I hate the old iOS look for most things, iBooks was much nicer looking in its original design than it is now.