Have about 50 books on my Nook now, that I purchased from B and N , Fictionwise, Baen or free from Baen. About a third of these I had the formatting issue but hardly ever from anyone but the B and N store. I got them all to format correctly: If it takes longer than 30 seconds to format then I exit out of the book, go back in again, but this time adjust the font size-after doing this a couple(or three) of times, I find that the formatting completes in a few seconds. It's not that the formatting takes forever-not true-the formatting itself is fast, however the Nook 'hangs' after the formatting is complete, hence the continuous 'formatting...' message on your screen. The trick is getting the Nook to recognize that formatting is complete and opening up the book.
I would like to state that this is as annoying as hell, but with this workaround I can at least get the books that are only available at B and N for a decent price, downloaded and pleasantly readable. Another point to mention is that for those who seem to get incomplete books frequently....well they are not incomplete. It can take up to 10 minutes for all the chapters to show. So you may see chaps 1- 5 in the Index pages and cannot scroll down further. Exit the book, go back in...and suddenly you see chaps 6-20 etc.
Again, this is very annoying, but I know for a fact that future software updates will indeed be able to solve these problems. Though there are some books which just haven't been formatted corrrectly by the publishers yet. I read all my books on the Nook now, since the screen is beautiful compared o the Kindle 2(which I also own). Also the price and selection has improved a thosand per cent in the last month. I'm prepared to give it time. To echo one of my fellow contributors: We should all know that this is a new product and will have problems. If you are not somewhat of a techno nerd/geek or whatever and did not do your research, then why would you spend almost $300.00 on a device that was not even available in the stores for most of us? You may expect B and N to sell a perfect product, but in my experience that rarely happens in reality.
Betatesting can only take you so far. People use the Nook in real life very differently-with other stores, badly formatted books by the publisher, varied charging habits, not following correct setup instructions and....well the list is endless. But my point is, that you cannot expect anything close to perfection this quickly. However, the knowledge of the customer service reps is atrocious and often very discourteous. That is because they know nothing about the Nook, unless they transfer you to the digital reps...who are so overwhelmed with complaints...that I have held on for about 90 minutes or more....not exactly ideal...
I have obtained refunds on 2 of my books and am waiting on a 3rd one-all were incorrectly formatted by the publisher-confirmed in the forums. Refunds CAN be given for any digital Nook book that is having problems by regular B and N reps. This was confirmed to me by the supervisor in Digital Services. I am not putting her name and extension here for obvious reasons. However, if any of you do have issues with refunds, then I suggest you ask for the supervisor in Digital services who was very courtous and professional.Just the way it should be.
