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Old 02-15-2011, 04:14 AM   #17
James_Wilde
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Posts: 802
Karma: 4727110
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Sweden
Device: Iriver Story
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Marseilles View Post
I guess this isn't exactly the discussion the OP had in mind, but I've found it to be very informative.
You're right, David, and that's my fault. Sorry to the OP. This thread should probably be moved now, but I'm not sure where, since it handles four different ebook formats, and two methods of producing them!

To round off the continuing saga of my attempts to get the meat-grinder to do what I want, here's what has happened after I removed the page break from my Smashwords header style, and inserted them manually instead.

I now have epub and mobi with page breaks and chapter titles. The chapter titles are centred, but are in the same 12pt font as the rest of the text. Based on this, I'd be willing to bet that if I removed the larger font size from my Smashwords header style and changed the font size manually as well, I'd get 14pt titles, but I can't be bothered just for the sake of academic testing.

All versions now have tables of contents, which start at chapter 4. I think the reason for this may be that, at the end of the book, I have included three chapters of my next book, and these are called Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. Presumably there can only be one Chapter 1 in a table of contents, and it's the last one that counts!

The lrf version continues to have 14pt chapter titles, but it, too, has the strange toc, now I've discovered how to get the toc to show on the Sony reader (probably had it before, too, but I never checked).

The Palm version as displayed in the Palm reader for the Mac is a mess. No page breaks, no 14pt nor centring for the chapter titles, and it can't even cope with the Swedish letters, åäöÅÄÖ, which isn't asking a lot, but this is probably not Smashwords fault. It can't cope with italics nor with quotation marks, but instead inserts “ in front and †behind. This may be because I prefer proper 66's and 99's and not typewriter quotation marks. Again, these are probably not Smashwords fault, and I think I'll just remove the Palm from the list of versions produced. Anyone reading a 500 page novel on a Palm or any other cellphone type of apparatus is probably more interested in pressing buttons than reading my story.

I'll decide soon which version to distribute, my calibre produced version or the new meat-grinder version after manual editing, and I'll check to see what calibre did with the toc, if it did anything at all. I'll also check to see whether I can add the three first chapters to the new meat-grinder version's toc. But in any event, since I can't determine via Smashwords which version is distributed, I guess I'll have to distribute myself.

If Mark is still lurking in this thread, it might be worthwhile mentioning in the style guide that page breaks should not be included in a style, but inserted manually, and you might like to test whether removing the different font size from the chapter header style and changing that manually will also affect the outcome. Oh, and not to call sample chapters at the end of the book Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and Chapter 3. Maybe it would work if they were called Sample Chapter 1, etc.
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