Quote:
Originally Posted by mjlamb
If not 100%, for now I would appreciate ANY suggestions that will help with ANY Kindle. Surely we do not have to give up on something this important!
My thoughts on your feedback:
1. Yes, I have found that it DOES matter. Really. I have polled readers and found that most either were not aware that they had to back-page or simply assumed that there was nothing worthwhile to back-page for because of where the book opened.
2. You can count on readers of a physical book at least be aware of front matter, and you can draw their attention to important material with a good design. Compare that to a Kindle that dumps the reader into the nether regions of the book so that they do not even know whether previous pages exist.
3. When you say, "Amazon wants the book to open where they want it to open," I have learned that Amazon does not know how to set the Beginning either. I have requested a different Beginning page, and they say they are happy to oblige and have supposedly changed it to that page; but although it then appears to open on that page in all of the emulators, it still does not work in the actual physical Kindles. Their tech support apparently does not have actual Kindles to test with, because they simply do not believe me.
I find this state of affairs to be ludicrous and immensely frustrating -- so again, any tips worth trying would be much appreciated.
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Gang:
(I've covered most of this ground in PM's with Mr. Lamb already, FWIW.)
This issue has absolutely nothing to do with emulators versus actual devices. Surprisingly, the Previewer is remarkably accurate at displaying what the devices will display.
This has to do with Amazon's a) usage data and b) decisions. As I explained to you in the PM, Amazon most certainly knows how to change the SRL, but their change, if you are trying to then re-upload something, doesn't survive the PW (Publishing workflow). You must have them change it AFTER the book is published, not before.
Amazon made a deliberate decision to have the SRL start at the first page after the TOC. Period. There are dozens of "tricks," according to all sorts of experts, and 99.99% of them don't work. The SRL is altered
after you hit "save and publish."
So: harangue Amazon after you've published, and eventually, they'll change it. However, as I noted to you in my PM, Amazon's usage data indicates that, while your reader polls may tell you that the readers "don't know it's there," (that's entirely possible), it's because
nearly 100% of readers flip past ALL frontmatter and "Go To" the first page of the main material. I know that this drives authors, particularly, nuts (not professional publishers, so much, because they already know it), but them's the realities. It's remarkable how many readers won't bother with things like Acknowledgments, Dedication, etc., unless/until they decide that they are interested IN the author, which is a result of being interested by the book in whatever way (intellectual, academic, entertainment, whatever).
Hitch