Quote:
Originally Posted by davidnwelton
@Doitsu - sure, I read that. Is there anything authoratitive, anywhere, that explains the 'first content' decision?
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David:
Hitch here, nice to see you. There's nothing "authoritative" that has been published publicly, but I can tell you that in myriad emails with my Tech Account Rep and ECR that they absolutely decided that the SRL (Start Reading Location) would be the first content page (chapter) and that it *must* be after the TOC. This has been the case since the January before last (January 2013) at least; they implemented the change sometime around Nov-Dec 2012. And, yes, I've had a number of moderately heated emails with them over this topic, but...
The intake system at KDP is designed, primarily, to work with WORD files, not ePUBs, and, humorously enough, not built-mobi's. I can prove this by the simple expedient of showing the varied results in taking HTML source, and uploading it as a) zipped HTML, b) ePUB or c) MOBI, all with precisely the same content--you'll get three different SRL's, three different sets of fonts, etc. I've seen books that (I'm sure you've seen this) move the SRL to the last page of the TOC; but the new stupid pet trick, which has emerged in the last month, is that the SRL moves AFTER THE COVER IS UPLOADED. And even more fun, it moves INTO the chapter, so that it's on the 2nd, 3rd page of Chapter 1.
And, yes, we've sent a ton of test tiles, demo files, etc., to Amazon. They haven't budged on this in 20+ months, so I don't see that happening any time soon. Those of us who are the fleas on the elephant's back aren't really their concern--the hundreds of thousands of "Word file" uploaders, and THEIR demands on customer support and tech support--that's their concern. I guess they figure that those of us making the books professionally are big enough kids to look after ourselves. ;-)
Hitch