[Psymon]

Multiple replies here (first a couple of short ones, followed by a longer one)...

Originally Posted by DomesticExtremis

Checked this on Calibre e-book viewer and my Kobo Mini. It looks good, I like the artwork too, though I'd say the book is a bit short

Thank you so much for looking/checking! And yeah, I know it's short, but this is just the sample version, of course. Mind you, the entire work isn't really all that long either, but having both the "new" and "olde" versions does double that up, and I do hope that the artwork I included (and with any luck my overall design, too) will help make this worthwhile for people.

Also, you wrote...

One bijou faultette - in your metadata Comments section, you forgot to put the semi-colon after the '&amp'

...and then Toxaris followed up on that with...

Originally Posted by Toxaris

If you change it in the metadata editor, you need of course only insert an & and remove the rest...

That's so strange! I remember encountering some issue regarding that ampersand as I was working on this, too, and thought I'd fixed that -- and then it seems to have returned somehow. I just did what you said, though, just putting an ampersand alone (not a character entity) and that seems to have worked.

In any case, after posting that sample file here I did find a much more glaring, in-your-face error -- there's an "s" on the title page of the "Epistyll" part that should be a "long-ess". I don't know how I missed that (after looking at everything a million times)! That error isn't in the original "olde" text either, so I can only assume that somehow that came about when I did that conversion from the old JSL font that I originally used and the other Fell one.

Anyway, maybe nobody noticed that "spelling" mistake -- but at least I did.

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Hmmmmm... have you tested your ebook in Marvin yet?

I did, actually! It looks fine, but when you're in two-page landscape mode I did notice a rather odd behaviour -- whenever a new HTML file stars in the epub, Marvin seems to insert an extra blank page in-between.

That kinda sucks -- like, at the beginning, instead of having the frontispiece and title page opposite each other (as it should be), you end up with the frontispiece, opposite a blank page, then the title page, opposite a blank page. And every single "new" HTML file has that -- but each individual chapter (of text) in my book is fine.

That really does suck about Marvin -- but I can only presume that's an issue in virtually every ebook one views in it? I do realize that Marvin has apparently become rather popular, but personally, after playing around with it a bit, I can't really say that I like it myself (in comparison to iBooks).

I did also test my book in Sony Reader on the iPad -- I couldn't find a two-page option to try in there, but it seemed to come out just fine (perfectly, in fact).

It's also fine (perfect) in ADE on my PC, and obviously in iBooks on both the iPad and Mac -- although what's frustrating about the latter is that it puts the cover page on the left page, which leaves it opposite the frontispiece, and then the title page on the next page. That throws everything outta wack! But obviously that'll be the same issue for any/every book out there, not just mine (at least when left/right pagination can make a difference, generally at the beginning of a book). iBooks for the Mac is fairly new, though, so hopefully they'll change/fix that eventually.

Also, it depends on where you are planning on selling this in the world. In the US, Amazon dominates the sales in the ebook market, but in other countries, the situation is different. Which is why you typically want your book in EPUB and MOBI (KF8/KF7)... so you can be read on nearly all devices in nearly all countries.

I definitely have to learn about MOBI, and converting to EPUB from that -- I guess there's a forum here somewhere for that. I'm not in a hurry to do so, but I'll find it!

Well, a lot of these specs were designed for extremely low powered devices. This allows you to create them much more cheaply. Having to accommodate such complex CSS and typography would mean the device would need a faster CPU, more RAM, more space, etc. etc. (This would raise the production costs dramatically).

Yeah, I realize that this first project of mine isn't a typical ebook project -- I'd like to think of this as a sort of "e-livre d'artist", kinda thing. My next project will be so much simpler and easy to do, and although I do still intend to make it look "nice" (in platforms that support "nice"), it won't be such a drastic loss or complication for platforms that are more like just "plain text".

I'm really glad that I started with this book, though -- it's been a really great learning experience for me, encountering all sorts of issues that I likely won't need to deal with much in the future, but at least I've got all the solutions under my belt now.

Yes, it would be nice if you could just cut off and forget about a lot of these crappy (compared to the bleeding edge devices of today... and those devices will be crappy compared to the bleeding edge six years from now), but they are still a HUGE share of the market. iPads are just a drop in the water compared to all the old Kindles out there.... not to mention that Kindles are a drop in the water compared to all the other older ereading devices that are still chugging along.

Yeah, I really just don't know what to do at the moment with regard to this particular book and those other readers go -- the modern text for my "Imaginary Friend" piece would be just fine to do up as "plain text", of course, but so long to the entire second "olde" half, not to mention all the lovely paintings, etc. that I included. If I was going to publish -- and sell -- it for those other, plainer platforms at all, well, I guess the price would have to be half-price, too, pretty much. :/

Kindle Previewer = a GUI drag/drop for feeding books into KindleGen, and it allows you to "see how it would look on the different Kindles" (cannot be trusted in a lot of cases... ALWAYS try to test on the physical device itself.. ESPECIALLY in your case, as you are doing very complex things with CSS/fonts).

Yeah, I did have that Kindle Previewer installed before (it's a long story, but my very first version of this ebook was in MOBI format, generated via WordPerfect, but then I later realized that I needed EPUB format for it to work on the iPad). I was indeed concerned at that time about whether or not the "previewer" was showing what I would really see on the actual device(s).

This whole amazon/kindle issue really sucks, actually -- I'd really like to get my book on there, too, just for the potential market available, but the design (or lack-of-design) issues involved seem really quite daunting. :/

Anyway, thanks, you guys (or gals) for checking out my book! Appreciate your looking, and also/moreso your valued feedback!