Amazon pulling books that have TOCs at the back

slhuang · Mar 11, 2016

As per the link:

https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2016/03/11/amazon-takes-aim-at-scammers-but-hits-authors/

Move your Amazon TOCs to the front, folks.

amergina · Mar 11, 2016

I'm old and a tech writer, so the concept of a TOC as back matter hurts my brain the same way an index as front matter would.

I'm guessing the idea of moving the front matter to the back was to put as much actual text into the sample as possible?

Niniva · Mar 11, 2016

Thanks for sharing this!

AW Admin · Mar 11, 2016

amergina said:
I'm old and a tech writer, so the concept of a TOC as back matter hurts my brain the same way an index as front matter would.

I'm guessing the idea of moving the front matter to the back was to put as much actual text into the sample as possible?

That, and it was part of the original spec for ePub.

The idea was that you shouldn't have to page through to The Content any more than necessary, and that a properly constructed XML bundle as part of the ePub would include a one-click/tap link in the UI to the TOC.

Polenth · Mar 11, 2016

That's the ridiculous thing with the whole situation... people have been putting ToCs in the back for long enough that a ton of books have them in the back. And now it's being flagged as a major formatting error so bad that books must immediately be taken off sale. I'm guessing their staff reviewing book changes are going to have a heap of extra work in the coming weeks for no good reason, as everyone gets their books redone.

blacbird · Mar 11, 2016

WTF is a TOC?

caw

L. Y. · Mar 11, 2016

Table of contents.

shadowwalker · Mar 11, 2016

I've never seen the TOC at the back of a book. This was actually being done? How strange...

Brightdreamer · Mar 11, 2016

shadowwalker said:
I've never seen the TOC at the back of a book. This was actually being done? How strange...

In eBooks? Yes, it is. I've seen it - though I never knew why until I read this thread.

In an eReader device, though, bringing up a TOC is easy from anywhere in the book*; where it physically appears, front or back, seems irrelevant. I don't mind it either place. Or both. Personally, if Amazon's going to crack down on formatting issues, I'd rather they go after the blatant padding some people add - the many, many pages of praise and ads at the start, the puffery and "excerpts" at the back that constitute 20% or more of the apparent book length/file size, etc. (A little advertising's okay, but 20% of the book? You really think I'm going to sit through that?)

* - Not all eBooks have real TOCs, in my experience; some are shabbily-coded crud that doesn't in the least facilitate easy navigation.

be frank · Mar 11, 2016

I actually have another story-specific reason for wanting my TOC at the back of the book - my MS is dual POV and the chapter titles are the name of the POV character for that chapter. One of the benefits of having two MCs in a thriller is it makes it less-than-certain that they're both going to survive...

But with the TOC at the start of the book, someone flipping through would quickly see whose name is still there through the end. With the TOC at the back, at least it's somewhat hidden.

Sigh.

Filigree · Mar 11, 2016

I hate TOCs for fiction, anyway. Another thing I'll have to worry about, when I look at self-publishing.

Lillith1991 · Mar 11, 2016

Filigree said:
I hate TOCs for fiction, anyway. Another thing I'll have to worry about, when I look at self-publishing.

Why do you hate them? Whether we're talking self-pub'd ebooks or trade published hardcopies, they're useful for reader navigation. I've often skipped ahead to certain parts in a story to reread passages that I love or in the case of something like my 50th Anniversary Ed. of LOTR, used the index at the back to look up favorite bits of poetry. TOC and indexes may be frustrating for the writer, but they're useful as a reader.

Polenth · Mar 11, 2016

It's a little more complicated than being in the way for Kindle books. Calibre's help talks briefly about this. The highlight being: "Kindle firmware tends to malfunction if you disable the generation of the end-of-file inline ToC." So even if you never noticed those ToCs at the end of the book, they may be keeping things running smoothly.

It's obviously a decision that's out of our hands now though. They either have to go at the start or not be included.

I will be interested to see if Amazon goes after trade publishers for doing the same thing, or whether they stick to self-publishers.

Lillith1991 · Mar 11, 2016

be frank said:
I actually have another story-specific reason for wanting my TOC at the back of the book - my MS is dual POV and the chapter titles are the name of the POV character for that chapter. One of the benefits of having two MCs in a thriller is it makes it less-than-certain that they're both going to survive...

But with the TOC at the start of the book, someone flipping through would quickly see whose name is still there through the end. With the TOC at the back, at least it's somewhat hidden.

Sigh.

May I suggest that in a Thriller using that type of chapter format, the reader is actually looking to see how the characters could possibly survive instead of IF they survive? That's certainly what I and a lot of readers I know look for in that situation.

Lillith1991 · Mar 11, 2016

Polenth said:
I will be interested to see if Amazon goes after trade publishers for doing the same thing, or whether they stick to self-publishers.

I doubt they have the clout to force trade pubs to bend to their will on this, not the large ones at least.

Roxxsmom · Mar 11, 2016

I find ToC very useful when I'm looking up specific passages or scenes in a fiction book, whether it's for discussion with other readers/writers or for some research. Also, as a reader, I like them when I want to go back to something I've already read, or as Lillith says, if there's something specific I want to reread in a book I've read already.

I've noticed that some fiction books don't have ToC at all, and that makes it a lot harder to navigate.

Ravioli · Mar 12, 2016

Honest to God, I never understood what a TOC would do at the BACK. In search for it, you might stumble across the last sentence of the story. AFAIK, it traditionally belongs in the front and is more practical like that. It's not like you need to put spoilers in the TOC, ain't that right, Mrs Melody Malone..?

Roxxsmom · Mar 12, 2016

Also, what good does it do in the back in an e-book. You can't just flip to it, because the ToC is what allows you to flip to things with an e-book.

be frank · Mar 12, 2016

Lillith1991 said:
May I suggest that in a Thriller using that type of chapter format, the reader is actually looking to see how the characters could possibly survive instead of IF they survive? That's certainly what I and a lot of readers I know look for in that situation.

Weeeell, it depends on the story. Whether I'm worried about "if" a character survives or "how" a character survives varies from book to book. Either way, I'd prefer to avoid spoiling people if it's not strictly necessary.

Roxxsmom said:
Also, what good does it do in the back in an e-book. You can't just flip to it, because the ToC is what allows you to flip to things with an e-book.

On my Kindle I just hit "Go to" then "TOC". So, you can actually just flip to it.

slhuang · Mar 12, 2016

I've had my TOC in the back. The reason being: my chapters don't have names. There wouldn't even *be* a TOC in a print book (and in my print book, there isn't!). But the TOC has to be there in an ebook because it's the only thing that allows someone to "flip" to a certain page.

Most people, in searching for an ebook TOC, do GoTo->Table of Contents. They don't do GoTo->Beginning and then page forward. Thus it makes sense for my TOC to be in the back. It prevents readers from having to scroll through two pages of "Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, ..." at the beginning, which gives them no useful information and might leave one wondering why a book with no chapter names even has a table of contents. (In the Campbell antho, I did put the TOC in the front, because it contained useful qualitative information for browsing the book.)

It's been pointed out to me as a result of this kerfuffle, though, that another good reason for not putting TOCs in the back is that it can eff with the "furthest page read" function across devices. So maybe it's good that I'm having to shuffle things around. But this is a terrible pain for me; because I can't make the books as aesthetically pleasing as I would like putting the automatically-generated TOC in the front, the end result is that I'm going to end up downloading and learning new software and inserting a custom HTML TOC in the front rather than the automatically-generated one in the back, and all for something that should not actually be an issue at all. As has been said upthread, this has been a recommended standard for ebooks before; the fact that Amazon suddenly thinks it's a problem -- and is removing books with no warning -- is egregious.

Dennis E. Taylor · Mar 12, 2016

The "TOC at the back" issue is because people are gaming the system. Payment for lends are based on number of pages read, which is actually just "furthest page read." If you put the TOC at the back, then if someone goes to the TOC, they've read the whole book and you get a full lending payment.
People have been putting anthologies together, with thousands of pages and a TOC at the back. They can get $10-$20 per lend, if the borrower goes to the TOC to see what's in the anthology.

WriterBN · Mar 12, 2016

Angry Guy said:
The "TOC at the back" issue is because people are gaming the system. Payment for lends are based on number of pages read, which is actually just "furthest page read." If you put the TOC at the back, then if someone goes to the TOC, they've read the whole book and you get a full lending payment.

I've heard that theory, but it's debatable. KDP suggests that "pages read" require a certain amount of time be spent on each "page"; of course, they don't reveal what that amount is. If it was just a matter of flipping to the last page for a complete read, scammers would be selling software to emulate that. Well, maybe they are, anyway...

Dennis E. Taylor · Mar 12, 2016

WriterBN said:
I've heard that theory, but it's debatable. KDP suggests that "pages read" require a certain amount of time be spent on each "page"; of course, they don't reveal what that amount is. If it was just a matter of flipping to the last page for a complete read, scammers would be selling software to emulate that. Well, maybe they are, anyway...

Why pay for software? Just put the TOC at the end. If it was true, people would be doing it, and Amazon would start by putting a cap on KDP lend payouts, then eventually bow to pressure and crack down on the practice.

Oh, wait, that's exactly what's happening.

Here's a thread with some specific examples and a lot of discussion. http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,231449.0/topicseen.html

Polenth · Mar 12, 2016

Angry Guy said:
The "TOC at the back" issue is because people are gaming the system. Payment for lends are based on number of pages read, which is actually just "furthest page read." If you put the TOC at the back, then if someone goes to the TOC, they've read the whole book and you get a full lending payment.
People have been putting anthologies together, with thousands of pages and a TOC at the back. They can get $10-$20 per lend, if the borrower goes to the TOC to see what's in the anthology.

Important to note Amazon has been taking down books from authors who aren't in the lending programme. Anyone with a table of contents at the back needs to do something about it now, regardless of whether they're in KDP Select or not.

Amazon's help on it might prove useful, especially for anyone confused between the different types. The one under discussion here is what Amazon calls the html toc. The logical toc is required and there's no change there. https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A140JEYVI0P8KQ

Roxxsmom · Mar 12, 2016

be frank said:
On my Kindle I just hit "Go to" then "TOC". So, you can actually just flip to it.

Where is the "go to" function? I read kindle books on my ipad via the kindle app, and when I have a book open, I have a page with some stuff at the top:

Three little lines on the far left, which lists some features (Library etc). Table of contents is on that list, near the bottom, but it's grayed out, and tapping it takes me to cover, which is the entry below. A list of chapters is below that, but there doesn't seem to be a page with a table of contents anywhere in the book itself, neither at the beginning nor the end.

Note, these are trade-published books, and many of these don't seem to have tables of content in the text of the book itself at the beginning or end these days. Looking at more of the kindle books on my ipad, and I finally found one where the table of contents (listed as "contents") is linked under the "table of contents" under the three little lines at the upper left, but it seems to be in the minority.

So will this require trade publishers to start putting tables of contents in the front of their books too, or does it only apply to self published books?

Amazon pulling books that have TOCs at the back

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