“We Don’t Need No Stickin Books” LOL
Hmm. Section 13(1) of the Sale of Goods Act 1979 provides that where the buyer is sold goods by description, the goods must correspond with this description.
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Real men don’t need instructions.
- Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor
I wonder if he ended up on a lot of Facebook pages and support forums complaining a tool was broken when it didn’t function the way he assumed it should, rather than checking in the documentation first. (just asking for a friend) 
Real men don’t need instructions.
** Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor*
That’s why Al did all the work in Tool Time
And Tim had his own named Mug for drinks when he was a patient at the Accident & Emergency Department.
Either last week or the week before, I lost track of time here. But I purchased the RM9 upgrade, as I have had all the prior versions. And it was nice to see that a new book was out, and ordered it at the same time. I received the book very quickly from Amazon, and was surprised when I spotted this post about the book, at first thinking people were having shipping issues through Amazon due to the title of the post. But was surprised on reading the issue was the books printing. I have been reading through mine, since getting it and have have a very good printed book. Did I get one of the first printed good copies? Or did Amazon do a reprint and fix the problem? I left the book out in the car, took it to a doctors visit and was going to go out and get it to flip through to see if I have missed some bad pages … but it is raining cats-n-dogs just now. Just my two cents worth.
Posts suggest that the quality is dependent upon which Amazon POD facility produced your book. Globally UK and Australia seem to have the best copies judging by comments here and on FB.
Mine was from Amazon UK and the screen prints were poor (Full screen ones were unreadable)
It is not just a RM book issue, it is also an Amazon issue.
I bought a different book at the same time and whilst the text is darker than the RM 9 book when I set about reading it I had to put on a light so I could actually read it.
Book now pack and awaiting a return
Bought the Kindle version.
Kind of curious how you did that. As far as I am aware, there is no Kindle version and I just checked on Amazon.
Biggles was referring to the other book…
Renee,
Printing does look to be spotty. Mine (in the US) is passable. My suspicion is the original is in color and conversion to greyscale for printing is causing the issue. Seeing the comments that the preview on Amazon is in color may be backing that up, I’ll confess I didn’t check the preview in advance so I can’t comment on my order specifically.
In any case I’d suggest RM replace the PDF used by Amazon to print-on-demand with one generated specifically for black and white printing. Possibly a common PDF was used to generate an eBook (which supports color) and physical printing. That’s likely not going to create satisfactory results. The fix can be as simple as changing the settings in your desktop publishing software and recreating the PDF.
I was referring to the other book that I bought at the same time as the book for RM9.
The other book also had print issues, not as bad as the RM9 but as the day went dull I could no longer see the text.
At least with Kindle versions you can change text brightness
I was one of those who grumbled about the lack of a printed manual for RM8, so when “Getting the Most…” for RM9 arrived on my doorstep, I was very happy. The content of the book continues the excellent quality of earlier editions. Just reading the first 40 pages cleared up many misconceptions and blind spots I had about using RM9.
That said, the printed edition (mine from March 2023) has serious flaws that I hope RootsMagic will address, not by minor tweaks, but by rethinking the visual aspects of the book. Its flaws are:
- Lack of book design. That is, the printed book has poor “look and feel” in chapter numbering, section headings, and other visual cues that make a book “flow” well.
- Formatting not well-suited to production by Amazon’s monochrome print-on-demand service.
- Typeface for body text not appropriate for reading in book form.
These are all things a publishing professional could easily fix. They are not necessarily problems with Amazon’s printing quality.
In the form I received the book, it leaves me with a dilemma. The information in “Getting the Most…” is golden. The book works well both as a narrative tutorial and (sorry, Bruce!) a software manual. However, trying to read it is hard on the eyes.
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I did an Amazon replacement. They told me not to return the bad one and sent me a new one with darker type.
I haven’t seen this much action on the Bulletin Board in quite a while. Thank you to all those who gave it the thumbs down. Off with their heads! I guess I will wait for them to do the braille version.
Just received my replacement book from Amazon. (I’m in the Chicago area if that somehow makes a difference) Absolutely no difference from the first one. Very disappointing.
I think RootsMagic need to take action to resolve this.
My view is that RM sent Amazon a Colour Letter/A4 sized PDF and told Amazon to reduce it in size and to print as Mono! (This causes the effect seen)
Perhaps RM can sell the original colour PDF version to users.
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Selling a PDF that could become pirated and distributed is not an option.
Why, they have done it before.