Thanks Hitch - that one had me rolling in the aisles! Goodness I feel your frustration.
It's hard enough being a DIY publisher with only two Kindle books right now, though both top-sellers, one of them made #1 in the entire Top 100 free, not that it made any money, but that's a LOT of folks not getting the experience I *thought* I had so cleverly designed - though not as clever as your treasure hunt clue. Nice.
I really appreciate you sharing that info about their workflow. What the bleeding point of having a "preview file" then? Grrrr. I can tell you, even though I *can* buy our own books to check, you then have to go through the tortuous process of requesting the forced update (which always seems to take TWO emails from KDP to do it. Like Microsoft, they insist on asking "Are you SURE?"). So it is by no means instant - and if it still doesn't fly the way you want it ... then there goes another 24-48 hours minimum going through the same process.
Funnily enough, I had this reply a few hours back from KDP:
Quote:
Hello Robert,
I'm sorry for the inconvenience caused by this issue.
Our technical team has informed that the Start Reading Location or SRL has now been set for both of your titles.
They have also verified that your titles open at the relevant SRL in the Mobi7 version of your content.
Please note that Kindle, iPad and iPhone modes in the Kindle Previewer correspond to the mobi7 version of your converted content, while the Kindle Fire and Paperwhite modes correspond with the mobi8 version. Hence, these versions will be displayed differently on the actual Kindle device.
With this in mind, we have found that the Mobi8 version of your titles are not currently set to display the SRL as set in the Mobi7 version.
I have notified the technical department, and they have informed that they are working hard to fix it as soon as possible.
We appreciate you taking time to let us know about this error, and apologize for any inconvenience caused.
Thanks you for using Amazon KDP.
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It certainly has me re-thinking structure - and I'm of the same view as you, that putting the TOC first looks like amateur hour. I do agree there is no need to "force" the reader through Author Acknowledgments, Copyright etc, so we've taken to putting those at the end now anyway. But in non-fiction at least, I think there are plenty of times where it is justified to have content before the TOC - but in my opinion, this should always be the publisher's choice and subject to the ultimate arbiter, the reader, who will quickly say if they hate it.
One thing I've thought of is to have a"mini-TOC" at the start, correctly tagged as the proper TOC, then another full-TOC where I want it.
Then the SRL can come after the first TOC.
Would that work do you think?
Or look even more amateur!
Tnx for the added info, and ... I enjoyed the rant!