Self-Publishers: Do You Need Nurturing?

I get several emails a week from people who are self-publishing or thinking about self-publishing. They ask me questions about the process.

Sometimes I can answer: “What’s a good program for making an ebook?” (look here)  “My ebook has weird characters. What’s causing that?” (look here) “What does Smashwords do?” (it’s an aggregator that distributes ebooks to various retail sites. Click here) “I have a backlist, but the books are old and I don’t have the manuscript as a digital file. Can it be turned into an ebook?” (not as difficult as it sounds. Here.) “Will you publish my book for me?” (I produce books, I don’t publish, but I can show you how to do it.)

Sometimes I have no answers: “What’s the most effective type of marketing and promotion?” (who knows?) “Will I make money selling ebooks?” (maybe, maybe not)

Sometimes I get worried. A writer will send me a link to a vanity publisher or the latest scam cooked up by formerly legitimate publisher and ask me if I think if it will be money well spent. Um… no.

A common thread running through most of those emails is this: I feel alone and I’m not sure what to do.

I want to assure those folks that one) self-publishing DOES NOT mean going it alone; and two) by asking questions, you are doing EXACTLY THE RIGHT THING.

The number one reason I hear for going the trad pub route is this: “I just want to write and let a publisher or my agent take care of all the business-production-marketing stuff.”

I understand that. I honestly do. When I’m caught up in creative throes, I don’t want to bothered by, you know, life. Here’s the reality. I sold my first piece of writing in 1990. I’ve worked with several publishers. I have a stack of book contracts. I’ve belonged to several professional writer organizations. I’ve listened to and talked to hundreds of industry professionals–writers, editors, publishers, publicists, agents, and booksellers. So I’ve been around the block once or twice. One thing I know for a hard fact is this: The industry is full of weasels and sharks, and if you abdicate your responsibility to your writing and your career, you will get bitten. It might be a small, barely noticeable wound, or you might get eaten altogether.

This isn’t about traditional versus self-publishing (choosing to do either is an option, doing both is an option–whatever is best for you and your work). It isn’t even an admonition to writers to wake up and take responsibility.

It’s actually more in response to something I’ve heard several times in the past week. Proponents of traditional publishers and agents proclaiming their valuable role in “nurturing” writers.

Um… no.

Nurturing is what mothers do for babies. Writers are not infants. Most aren’t children, either.

Despite my raised hackles over such condescending bullshit, I still understand the appeal. Writing can be lonely. Loneliness leads to frustration. Frustration requires relief lest it fester. You need someone to tell you that you aren’t wasting your life on a dream. You need assurance that you are doing at least something right. Gold stars and pats on the head don’t do a thing for me, but I do understand the very real need for recognition and acknowledgement for a job well done.

So this is for the writers who are looking at self-publishing, but are afraid that it’s a leap into a lonely abyss. Afraid it is too hard. Afraid they’ll make mistakes.

First, you will make mistakes. Everybody does. But self-publishing isn’t parachuting, so mistakes are rarely fatal.

Second, self-publishing is hard work, but it’s not complicated or difficult. If you’re smart enough to write, you’re smart enough to self-publish.

That leaves the lonely abyss. The scary place. The place where “nurturing” sounds like a good idea.

You don’t need nurturing. You need connections and support. One of the most fabulous aspects of self-publishing is that the community is large, noisy, active and supportive. Generous, too, with information.

Information is knowledge and from knowledge springs wisdom.

Want the daily news about what is going on in the world of publishing? Follow The Passive Voice blog. Facts and figures? Joe Konrath spills all, and David Gaughran is becoming world-renowned for his industry analyses. Day to day realities? Check out Dean Wesley Smith and Kris Rusch. Worried something might be too good to be true? Visit the good folks from SFWA who publish Writer Beware. Want the nuts and bolts about producing your books? This blog, Paul Salvette at the BBEbooks site and Joel Friedlander’s blog will answer almost any question you might have about production.

That’s just a tiny sampling of the many, many people who share what they know and learn. Spend a day, or even a few hours link hopping and you’ll see what I mean.

While you’re learning about self-publishing, develop your side skills. Do you have an eagle eye for typos? Become a master proofreader. Do you have an artistic streak? Try your hand at making covers and designing blogs. Do you have editorial skills? Formatting skills? Can you write blurbs and promotional copy? Nobody is good at everything, but everybody is good at something. When all those “somethings” come together, communities are born and magic happens.

Which leads me to how does one find a community, and more importantly, become a part of it?

GIVE

Take a look at the most successful and well-known self-publishers, those with the strongest community ties. The write different things and have wildly differing personalities, but one thing they ALL have in common is generosity. They share time and hard-won wisdom and resources. Take a look at how much they give and it’ll be no mystery at all why they are so successful.

When you’re feeling frustrated or lonely, the best cure of all is giving.

So, to answer the question: Do you need nurturing?

NO

You’re grown-ups. Your momma nurtured you and now you can take care of yourself. You need education. You need support. You need friends. If you’re ready and willing and unafraid of hard work, that’s exactly what you’ll get.

Fun With Ebook Formatting: The Title Page and Front Matter

I have a conflict…

I love front matter When I open an ebook I want to see all the good stuff the writer wants to include: title page, epigraph, publishing history, dedication, introduction, foreword and whatever else there is. I read all that stuff. I get annoyed when I get a new ebook and it opens to the first page of the story. I have to go back, go back, go back (sigh) to get to the real beginning.

The conflict comes with samples and “Look Inside.” When I’m contemplating purchasing a book, I want the writing, the story, and I get annoyed if I have to page through all the front matter, especially if there is a lot of it and precious little writing to sample.

How to resolve this conflict? Until the distributors allow the producer to customize the sample, this will continue to be a problem for me. I honestly don’t know if it’s a problem for anyone else.

We’ll leave that alone for now and talk about the mechanics of title pages and front matter.

Does your book need a title page? I think so, yes. An ebook without a title page feels like a manuscript and I don’t pay to read manuscripts. In some cases, such as for distribution through Smashwords, it’s a requirement. Let’s get that out of the way first. For Smashwords you need a title page that looks like this:

The Greatest American Novel Evah
JW Manus

Smashwords Edition
copyright 2013, JW Manus

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

_____________________________________

That’s what is says in the style guide. That’s what you should insert in your Smashwords edition.

With just about everything else, how your title page looks and what information it contains are entirely up to you. I like the fancy bits. As for what to include on the title page, as long as the title and author name are in place, you have a title page.

A title page is a good place to insert the publishing history and copyright information.

If you don’t want a separate “legal” page, you can also include disclaimers and design information.

A quick word about the Table of Contents in the front matter. They’re a pain in my patoot. New devices have an excellent built-in ToC. If you click “Go To” on a Paperwhite or Fire, you’ll open up a window with a complete Table of Contents (if the ebook has been properly built). On older Kindles, though, the Go To menu sends you to the user generated Table of Contents. I have heard rumors that Amazon will automatically start the ebook after the ToC, ignoring whatever the producer has designated as the beginning. Ay yi yi. That’s swell–unless your ebook has 70 named chapters. Then readers who “Look Inside” will see page after page of Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, etc ad nauseum. I am trying a bit of a cheat.That’s the “official” Table of Contents, the very first “page” in the ebook. Click the index and it takes readers to an index that contains all the chapters along with links to photos.

My best advice is to figure out how the devices work and learn to work with them, always keeping in mind that the Look Inside and sample features are selling tools and readers want prose, not a long list of cryptic chapter titles. That said, if you are formatting a non-fiction project, a detailed Table of Contents might actually be one of your best selling tools. I know when I’m looking for reference materials, for instance, the first thing I look at is the ToC to make sure the book contains the information I’m looking for. The same thing applies to anthologies with multiple authors.

What about other front matter? Dedications are nice. Acknowledgments tend to be longer. My rule of thumb is, if it fits on one “page” then put it in the front matter. If it’s longer, put it in the back of the book. The same general rule applies to A Notes to the Reader or A Note From the Author.

Introductions and forewords, and even prologues, can be a problem if you’re not careful in how you build your ebook. If you aren’t building your own toc.ncx, you need to make sure your essential front matter is styled with Heading 1 or Heading 2, (h1 or h2) otherwise the conversion program might home in on Chapter One and readers will miss essential information. If the rumors are true, and Kindles are determining the “beginning” as the first “page” after the ToC, you risk ending up with a mess. So test your book on an actual device and make sure the beginning is where you want it to be.

A perfectly serviceable layout for the front matter of a novel:

• Table of Contents (truncated if it’s a long non-informative list)
• Title Page
• Copyright or Legal page (if your novel has a lengthy publication history, it might be best to put this page in the back matter)
• Dedication or short acknowledgement (put a long acknowledgements page in the back matter)
• Epigraph (if you have one)
• Foreword or Introduction
• The Story

What about the rest of you? Any opinions on Title Pages and front matter in ebooks?

 

Print on Demand Books

I have to say, the Espresso Book Machine is cool!

When I win the Powerball lottery, after I remember to buy tickets, I’m getting one of those.

Having gone through the process of producing a POD book, I am very impressed by the quality of the finished product (I used CreateSpace). I am impressed with the cost. Especially the part about only paying for copies I needed right then, and not having to worry about warehousing. I think one of the things I like best about POD is the frugality of it. Waste hurts my heart. When a publisher does a print run of 10,000 copies, and only 6,000 sell, that means 4,000 copies end up pulped. What a waste.

And one must not discount the sheer pleasure, the wonderful thrill, of holding in your hands an object you’ve created.

Where does one manufacture a print on demand book? The three biggest companies are CreateSpace, Lulu, and Lightning Source. (I’ve used CreateSpace–user friendly, relatively painless process) Before you decide which one to go with, do your research and weigh the distribution options.

What do you need to make a print on demand book? A cover file and a book file and some time.

I’ve had several people query me about formatting a print book file, and I’ve had to say no. Print layout is a whole ‘nother animal from ebook formatting. Having screwed around with templates from CreateSpace, and thoroughly muffed them and made big messes, I realized that templates or no templates, there is a learning curve. So learning how to make professional looking print books would take some time. Time I haven’t had time for.

Now! I can stop stressing over it. Now I have Jayne.

Meet Jayne. A talented designer with an eye for typography and layout. She can do covers, too, including taking an existing ebook cover and turning it into a cover for print.

(If she gets annoyed by me standing over her shoulder, watching her work magic on the computer, repeating, “Oh geez, how do you do that?” well, she is much too nice to mention it.)

Random pages from a book, just to show them off because they look very nice, don’t they?

Not only is Jayne wonderfully talented, she has the same philosophy about book production that I do. She loves books. She loves beautiful books. She’s proud of her creations and wants the authors to be proud of them, too.

It’s fun working with her. We’ve done some projects where she does the cover and I do the ebook. (In the above samples, she modified the existing Beauty and the Feast ebook cover for print, and did the original for the Spirituality For America ebook and print cover) It’s much easier to do a cohesive package when the two of us can consult on font choices and tone and images. (Added bonus, she’s a terrific proofreader–and that’s a chore I don’t mind sharing in the least!) Below is a sample of a cover she created and the graphics I made based on her work for the ebook interior.

So, if you’re thinking about print on demand, and wish to discuss your project, give us a shout. I no longer have to say no.

Fun With Formatting Ebooks: Paragraph Styles

Whether a reader is conscious or not of doing it, they are judging at least some of the quality of your writing by how it looks on the screen. When you send your writing into the world you want it to look polished, professional, and assertive. Even if you don’t use fancy bits and curlicues, you can make your ebook look polished, professional and, yes, assertive–as in, “I am a smart and sophisticated writer who knows what she is talking about, so pay attention!“–just by taking care with your paragraph styles.

The most basic of basic styles are indented and block paragraphs. Convention says, indented paragraphs for fiction and block style for non-fiction. Why the convention? Indented paragraphs are quicker to read (not really, but doesn’t it seem that way?), while block paragraphs tend to be weightier, denser, and can add a measure of gravitas to the text. It’s really a preference and not about right and wrong. Readers do expect text to look a certain way, though, and you take a chance of distracting them from the prose if you mess with their expectations.

For those of you using anything other than html to format your ebooks, (pardon my shouting) NO TABS! Tabs, and using the space bar to indent paragraphs, play havoc with ebooks. NO TABS. Your word processor enables you to use style sheets–use them. NO TABS.

How wide an indent?  

The narrow indent is a leftover from the days of pulp fiction when every sheet of paper counted against the bottom line and so the publisher needed to cram as much text onto a page as possible. It looks a bit squishy, especially if the reader prefers narrow line spacing on their device. Wide indents are a writer habit, I think, from being used to working on manuscripts with their half inch indents. Too wide, though, and the ebook can assume the look of a manuscript, and that’s not polished. I prefer a medium width indent of 1.4ems (.3″ in a word processor).

Block paragraphs require spaces between the paragraphs so they don’t run together.

Whether you’re using a word processor or html, you need to include that extra leading in your style sheet–not (never) by manually inserting a blank line between paragraphs. Be aware, too, that you do not want to increase the space between indented paragraphs. Doing so means users of the Kindle iOS app will end up with huge spaces between paragraphs. Smashwords will reject files for inserting extra space.

Another style is one I don’t recommend for full paragraphs. Centering.

Don’t forget that centering IS a style. Don’t just highlight the text then click the “center” command in the menu bar. Make sure your text indent is set to zero so the center doesn’t end up off-center.

Sometimes you’ll need to set off text. Quotes, song lyrics, poetry, missives.

The only difference in coding between the first block quote and the lines of poetry is the use of italics.

What if you want to set off an entire section of text?

Keep it simple, aim for sophisticated, and keep your reader’s comfort in mind while you style your paragraphs.

What about the rest of you? Any fun styling tricks you’d like to share?

Fun With Ebook Formatting: First Lines

One of the easiest ways to make your ebook stand out is to use first line treatments. By making the first lines of chapters or scenes after a break look different from the rest of the text you add visual interest to the “page” and (more importantly) you lessen the risk of confusing readers.

Text in an ebook “flows” to fit the screen. Plus, users can adjust the size of the display. If you use an empty line, for instance, to indicate a scene break–with no other visual clues–the page could break at the break and your readers could end up deeply confused about a point-of-view, time or setting jump.

Besides, first line treatments are fun. Here are a few screenshots off Lucy the Paperwhite Kindle.

Ever since I acquired a Fire tablet, I’ve been playing with colored images (I’ll try to get screenshots off a tablet–you’ll know I succeeded if color images show up here.)

(Did I actually write “expecially” in the sample? Crap...)

Another trick is one I don’t care for myself, but a lot of people do like it. With ereader devices improving their displays, the drop cap looks better, too. (much thanks to William for this screenshot) Notice he used an embedded font for the heading and the drop cap. Embedding fonts is tricky not because the coding is difficult, but because fonts are creative property and there are/can be restrictions on their use. Always make sure you read the license agreements and follow the terms of use.

Most of these first line treatments were created with paragraph styles that can be emulated in Word or Scrivener. (Not that I advocate using either program to format ebooks, but let’s get real, many of you do.) If you want to play with first line treatments, be sure you create a style sheet rather than using tabs, spaces or centering.

Realize, too, that different readers handle html coding in different ways. Not every device will display small caps, for instance. My oldest Kindle is flaky about displaying bolded fonts. You need to experiment and make adjustments.

A few tips:

• Be very careful with first line treatments if you are using Scrivener or Word. Changing font sizes to make small caps can trigger bugs in eink Kindles and play havoc with the user’s ability to change display sizes.
• Also, be careful when using Word to submit to Smashwords. If you are using a no-indent style, make sure to use a style-sheet instead of backspacing to delete the indent.
• Experiment with your image sizes. Percentages work better than pixels.
• Don’t be afraid of color. More and more readers are using devices with color displays and that can make your ebook look fabulous! Check how your graphics look in black-and-white to be sure there is enough contrast in grayscale so the image looks good on an eink device.
• You can learn how to do these tricks in html by going to w3schools.com and searching for information on small caps, drop caps, embedding fonts and other goodies.

So what about you, readers? Any fun tricky-tricks you’d like to share?

Changing Ereader Landscapes: What Can It Mean?

I don’t usually post unless I have reached a conclusion of some sort–even if it is wrong (I trust my readers to set me straight). Now I’m just puzzled. This started when I was trying to figure out yet another bug in my Kindle Keyboard. For those who don’t know, that’s the older Kindle model with the tiny keyboard on the casing. Sturdy, reliable, GREAT battery life, and here recently, full of bugs. This time it affects bold face type. Sometimes it displays, sometimes it doesn’t. And I found an instance where it partially displays.

That same day Jon Westcot sent me an email about Nook ereaders. I couldn’t suss out what was going on, though was able, as usual, to come up with some wild-ass conspiracy theories. Here is what Jon sent:

Here’s an interesting situation (meant in the truest Chinese curse way):

With most of your journal postings, you talk about formatting issues, and most of the conflicts come from the support of the “standard” that the various device developers produce and maintain.

But I have found yet another layer to this mess that I wanted to tell you about. I am currently working towards freeing my Nook Tablet from the restrictive yoke of Barnes and Noble’s operating system and replacing it with a basically fully implemented version of the Android OS. (It’s a long, geeky process, but it’s been informative, frustrating… and even fun. And yes, I know I have a “unique” idea of fun.) As part of that process, I’m trying out various ePub readers.

Oh my freaking God!

What a mess! I first downloaded the Nook for Android application. It can’t even find my library of books because I choose to keep them on the secondary memory card. I can’t even contact B&N support because what I’m doing with my Nook violates its warranty, even though the question has to do with their non-device software.

So, I turned to the Google Apps Store to look for ePub readers. The first one I grabbed, while having a huge number of downloads and a nearly 5-star rating, decided to display everything with a Chinese font!

The next one was okay — at least, it showed readable text! But the formatting was all wrong. It took a lot of wrangling to finally find the setting that lets the user accept the publisher’s formatting defaults! Preposterous!

So, I’m still looking for a good e-reader. Until then, I won’t fully migrate my Nook Tablet to the Android OS. But this whole process really surprised — and disheartened — me. It just never occurred to me that the independently-developed e-readers would be so… crappy. I would have expected just the opposite.

I guess this means that we have more things to worry about than “just” the way device developers create e-book reading software — now we have to worry about the software developers, too.

To which my mind leapt to one truly dark scenario and one big conspiracy theory.

I’ve suspected all along that much of what goes into programming and creating platforms for ereaders is created by people who have little concern–or perhaps little awareness–of end users. Is there any other industry that works this way? Maybe high fashion dress designers.

The industry WANTS us all to move happily into the land of tablets. Tablets are cool, but for reading, the dedicated ereaders are far superior. From the industry point of view, all the ereaders can do is, you know, books. Tablets offer chance after chance after chance to sell the user something.

So no, I don’t honestly think dedicated ereader device makers give a shit about the quality of the books that end up on them. In fact, the crappier the ebooks look, the higher the chance that users will turn to tablets. Case in point, I spent time this morning trying to figure out bugs in the eink Kindles. These are bugs that showed up in the latest update. Now for the longest time my Kindle was perfectly stable. Ever since the Fire came out, every update–and there seem to be a lot lately–makes the eink readers work worse and worse. There is no good reason for that. None.

On a side note, I think the Nook is dead. It might be a great device, but B&N has given up on it. The new ‘owners’ (Google? Microsoft?) don’t care because content is king and they aren’t making money off the content going onto a Nook. The only way they can cash in is to lure Nook users into buying tablets. A really nasty sneaky way to do that is to ensure that cross-device apps DO NOT WORK. I think B&N is going to collapse, too. When it goes, that is basically going to leave Amazon and Apple.

I love my eink, but I suspect the bugs are going to get worse while the Fire gets better. Kobo might have a few years while it worms its way into the international market, but in the end the only dedicated readers are going to be shoved into the obsolete closet and there they will stay.

What a state of affairs, eh?

To which Jon replied:

The fact that B&N doesn’t want people using the NC or NT for anything other than what they intend. But these devices are hackable, no matter how hard B&N tries to lock them down. And they do try; every new release of the OS has blocked previous exploits. But those who hack these devices are brilliant. They figure out ways to get around everything, it seems. And that is a good thing! These are OUR devices that we bought and paid for, and we should be able to use them as we see fit.

What shocked me was… well, it was really two things. First, I was surprised at the number of ePub reader applications I found. Most of them are free, which leads into my second shock — just how bad these applications are! I guess one really does get what one pays for. I don’t think I could write an ePub reader (but it might be fun to try), so I can’t imagine why someone would so do and not charge for it, even a paltry $0.99.

It saddens me to think that the Nook may be going away. I really like mine, but I must admit I have thought about saving up for a tablet, though I would really hate to give up my Nook. I really like the new, larger device B&N released, but I haven’t seen anything about its hackability. I looked at it in-store when it first came out and really liked most of the improvements they made to the OS. I asked the rep at the store if the OS would be upgraded for the older devices and he looked at me like I’d just shot a flaming porcupine from my butt. “That’s old tech,” he muttered in defence. More like in ignorance; there was no reason these devices couldn’t run at least 99% of the new OS’s features. I could have argued it with him, but there wouldn’t have been much point to it.

I do think the dedicated ereader makers (at least Amazon and B&N) do care about how ebooks look on their devices. If they look like crap, that reflects badly on their devices. In my opinion.

To which I replied:

You’d think Amazon and B&N would be more concerned, but the evidence says otherwise. Apple is fanatical about quality control, but I suspect it has more to do with protecting the integrity of their devices. Making attractive ebooks is a side effect.

The rest seem happy to let the producers and consumers duke it out. Meaning, it’s up to the producers to play catch up (if they can) and for consumers to keep buying newer, better, fancier devices. It’s weird to me, but I’m not a business person and don’t pretend to be one.

********************************

So that’s it. Something is going on in the land of ereaders and ebooks, but hell if I have a real clue about what it all might mean. My suspicions are two-fold: One) B&N is circling the drain (my bets are on them showing up in bankruptcy court before the year has ended); Two) Dedicated ereader devices are going the way of the 8-track tape player.

I don’t know for a fact what any of this means for me and thee. I probably wouldn’t even know something was up if I didn’t have three models of Kindles so I could watch as one wildly improves (the Kindle Fire) while the others (eink Paperwhite and Keyboard) slowly degrade with every update. Jon’s experience leads me to suspect that nobody cares enough about the Nook to invest in apps and other support for its users.

Make of this what you will.

How The Kindle Works

I talk a lot about broken ebooks, but judging from the search terms that bring visitors to this site, I suspect many people do not know what I mean. Part of the confusion is because I am actually talking about Kindle books (and I should make myself clearer, sorry). Since I don’t own a Nook (and have never played with one), or an iPad or iPhone or Sony reader or magic toaster, I tend to judge ebooks by what shows up on my Kindle.

I suspect there are a lot of people who don’t own Kindles. Maybe one or two who’ve never even seen a Kindle.

Here is Amazon’s dirty little secret regarding its Kindle. As long the ebook is converted to either mobi or prc, the Kindle can read it. (I convert raw documents all the time since I prefer reading on my Kindle over manhandling reams of paper–I just run a Word doc through MobiPocket creator and load it up. I’ve done that with pdf files, too.) I don’t call those ebooks. A person who isn’t aware of how a Kindle actually works, might be unaware their ebook is broken–after all, Amazon let them upload it and reported no problems.

Now, the wise formatter will convert their ebook using KindleGen and check their work on the Kindle Previewer. Amazon just updated it and it has more options, include some font changing, so it’s more reliable now. To truly make sure the ebook works, it should be loaded on a device and run through its paces. People who produce a mobi file using Scrivener or convert a file in Caliber or MobiPocket or run a Word doc through the onsite converter at Amazon might end up with a broken ebook and not know it. (A kind reader might take pity and send you an email to let you know your book is broken, or they might return it for a refund, or–worst of all–they might decide your ebook is too unpleasant to read and not buy any more of your books.)

Pardon my less than stellar photography–here is what the menus look like on Kindles.

The font sizes are pretty hard to screw up. There was a Kindle-induced bug that shrunk the font, forcing users with older Kindle models to have to greatly increase the font size in order to read. I think that bug was fixed. But I don’t think I’ve ever run into an ebook where the size can’t be changed. The fonts themselves can be changed.

• Keyboard: “regular” “condensed” and “sans serif.
• Paperwhite: Baskerville, Caecilia, Caecilia Condensed, Futura, Helvetica and Palatino
• Fire: Baskerville, Caecilia, Georgia, Palatino, and Helvetica

A common flaw is a locked font (usually in the ugliest choice). After looking at the html in ebooks that have “locked” fonts, I think what is happening is the producer, using a word processor, has defined a font the Kindle doesn’t recognize. So it displays in the closest match. But, since the font is defined, it can’t be changed.

Line spacing is an option on all models of Kindle. It’s a useful one and it’s also a common “break.” When I format a book in html I don’t mess with line spacing. I define the line height so my text isn’t squished, but that’s different than single-space, space-and-a-half and double space. Word has a really nasty habit of inserting a definition for line-spacing into the document that will override the user menu. Sometimes this is deliberate on the producer’s part, sometimes it is inadvertent because that’s just how Word rolls. In any case, it’s undesirable.

Another common problem is when the margins don’t work. In the older Keyboard model the user can set how many words there are on a line (fewest, fewer and default) and on the Paperwhite and Fire they can set the margins to narrow, normal or wide. Breaks tend to happen when a producer using a word processor, Scrivener or InDesign justifies the text. Why this affects the margins, I don’t know, but it does.

The Fire allows the user to change the background color. White, sepia or black (sorry, Paul, but black? Oh, my eyes!). It’s a nifty feature, but there is a drawback.

I apologize for the crappy photo, but if you look very closely at the graphic I circled in red you will see a white box around the graphic. For some odd reason Kindle does not recognize that background is transparent. It’s not a huge issue, but one I hope is soon addressed. Something to keep in mind when using graphic elements in your ebook.

Speaking of graphics… Kindles can be read in landscape mode. The Paperwhite requires an ebook that is specifically coded to be read in landscape mode (such as comic panels or a children’s book–unless, there is some command I am too stupid to figure out and am just missing it) The Keyboard can be changed through the menu and the Fire by turning the device.

Landscape mode can have a significant effect on graphics, especially those that are sized to fit the portrait screen. What I do is size the graphics in percentages so that no matter what size the screen or if the book is being read in landscape mode, it will “shrink” or “expand” to fit the text.

(I was reading a novel that had an interesting block graphic in the header. It looked great in portrait mode, but when I flipped it to landscape suddenly it was just a dumb looking box perched atop the text. Yikes!)

Another common problem is page break failure. The best I can tell (and I’m sure there are those smarter than I who will pop in and set me straight) this is a problem when a producer converts an EPUB file into a mobi file through Caliber. Why Caliber destroys the page breaks is anybody’s guess, but it often does.

So what is the poor ebook producer to do? Especially if you do not have a Kindle on which to test your files? (And this isn’t a slam against people who don’t have Kindles–I don’t have an ereader that uses EPUB files, so I’m playing guess and by golly, too. One advantage with EPUB files is that if my file is validated and I haven’t inserted any weird stuff that could override defaults, I’m fairly certain it will work properly. I’d love it if a Nook owner wrote a guest post about its features and common problems. Any takers?)

• Download the Kindle Previewer and use it. It’s not perfect and you can’t test ALL the device features, but it will give you a far better display than Caliber or even the previewer at Kindle Direct.
• If you use a word processor, Scrivener or InDesign be very careful with your style sheets. Do not justify the text. Leave the line spacing at single-space. Don’t get fancy with your margin settings. What YOU see is NOT what the end user will get.
• Experiment with graphic element sizes and use percentages (when possible) rather than fixed em or pixel sizes.
• Learn html and get away from using not-quite-right for ebooks programs.

So, now you know what I mean when I say “broken” ebooks. EPUB readers, what are the common problems you find?