Turn Publisher Fonts On

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jswinden

On Kindles and Kindle apps you should be able to circumvent embedded fonts by turning publisher fonts OFF. Unfortunately that doesn't always work and it is inconsistent across various devices.

On a first gen Kindle Fire, the Kindle app has no font off ability. I don't know what it does with a KF8 with embedded fonts. Kindle for PC is poor as well in terms of fonts.

[RANT]As far as eBook formatting goes, I'm convinced that most people hired to do that don't know their backside from a hole in ground! Most eBooks are formatted as though they are print books. You can just look at all the stupid questions we get on this forum about formatting from people who claim they are trying to format eBooks for clients. Hell, if they don't know what the eff they are doing then why we're they even hired?!? IMO they need to stay away from embedded fonts, learn CSS and HTML, learn how to format images for eBooks, or get the hell out of the publications business. [/RANT]

Most are NOT formatted as if they were print books. I've not seen print books with things like...inconsistent font sizes, huge margins, large indents, paragraph spaces, left justified, a large portion of the screen taken up with spacing around the chapter title, fonts that are not suited for a screen and textual errors not in the original text (there are probably more things they botch).

Yes, we do get our fair share of people who come here without a clue and ask us how to do their job for them. Why the "boss" wants to give this person the job when that person hasn't a clue is a mystery. Once I find out that the person is getting paid for this, I stop helping as I'm not getting paid and the person didn't bother to tell us up front how clueless.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I think many people who format eBooks use programs in "Visual Mode"; maybe they even use Word, export to HTML, have Sigil create an epub out of that, and they're "done".

I think it's worse then that. I think they have a template that someone botched the hell out of for InDesign. So they use this botched template, put in the text, export a honking (the proper word begins with an f) mess and we get to deal with it.

[jswinden]

Using Word, In Design, or any WYSIWYG editor to design eBooks is probably the biggest reason for crappy eBooks. If someone uses those they have no idea of how to create an eBook, or they are too darn lazy to do it right. For many eBooks, little more than h1, h2, h3, p, ul, ol, and li or even necessary. Yet we see eBooks with span used a million times and with div used to surround p paragraphs to make them into headings, and a plethora of other non-conventional formatting techniques. A person might be a good web designer but a lousy eBook formatter! K I S S!

[HYPE]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Using Word, In Design, or any WYSIWYG editor to design eBooks is probably the biggest reason for crappy eBooks. If someone uses those they have no idea of how to create an eBook, or they are too darn lazy to do it right. For many eBooks, little more than h1, h2, h3, p, ul, ol, and li or even necessary. Yet we see eBooks with span used a million times and with div used to surround p paragraphs to make them into headings, and a plethora of other non-conventional formatting techniques. A person might be a good web designer but a lousy eBook formatter! K I S S!

Couldn't agree more with that.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Most are NOT formatted as if they were print books. I've not seen print books with things like...inconsistent font sizes, huge margins, large indents, paragraph spaces, left justified, a large portion of the screen taken up with spacing around the chapter title, fonts that are not suited for a screen and textual errors not in the original text (there are probably more things they botch).

My guess is that the source that is used for the ebook is the author's submitted copy. Most authors write their books in Word, scrivener or a program like that spits out a doc. My guess is instead of having someone proof the formatting they just make a ebook out of the finished file the author sent that has been edited by the editor and add navigation to it and maybe gives it a quick once over without checking everything.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Blossom

My guess is that the source that is used for the ebook is the author's submitted copy. Most authors write their books in Word, scrivener or a program like that spits out a doc. My guess is instead of having someone proof the formatting they just make a ebook out of the finished file the author sent that has been edited by the editor and add navigation to it and maybe gives it a quick once over without checking everything.

I can easily take the average Word document and make it look good. Since in Word, you can do a search/replace on styles, I could do the _text_ & *text* for bold and italics, export the text as text, import into Sigil, do the splitting there, make the style sheet, add back in the italics and bold, make sure the section breaks are correct and done. It's not rocket science.

In fact, if anyone wants to pay me to fix up your eBook's formatting, let me know.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I can easily take the average Word document and make it look good. Since in Word, you can do a search/replace on styles, I could do the _text_ & *text* for bold and italics, export the text as text, import into Sigil, do the splitting there, make the style sheet, add back in the italics and bold, make sure the section breaks are correct and done. It's not rocket science.

In fact, if anyone wants to pay me to fix up your eBook's formatting, let me know.

You could easily make a macro to do that for you without needing to do a search and replace.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Blossom

You could easily make a macro to do that for you without needing to do a search and replace.

True. But the point being that it can be done and easily. So you can turn a formatted Word document to marked up text to edit in Sigil easier then you can from a filtered HTML.