Quote:
Originally Posted by Notjohn
Yet if one slavishly obeys Amazon's KDP rules for formatting (I don't!), one's Look Inside sample is going to be ragged right.
Isn't it? Certainly that used to be the case of many if not most self-published Kindle titles.
I suppose everyone's triggers are different, but a ragged-right book bothers me less than Hitch's advice on the KDP forum to make the title page the first page in a print edition. To me, that's really a fingernail screeching across the blackboard!
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Firstly, as I said to you, on the KDP forums, if you have a kibitz, say it. Don't play cute and pretend to deploy some Socratic method "wise elder" nonsense.
Secondly, if you were paying attention, CGold and I answered a publisher's
question.
Thirdly, in this day and age, a half-title is
pretentious twaddle for most books. I mean, speaking of slavishly following! The entire
point of a half-title, which has been lost to time,
was to protect the then-unbound book. Do you have a lot of those in your garage, NJ?
For crying out loud, the half-title's purpose has been lost in time. It's vestigial, like the stub of the tail at the base of your spine. CMOS can talk about it all they want, but Bringhurst never even MENTIONS a half-title page, for the reasons I've already explained. Nails on a chalkboard, indeed. Aren't you the one that lectures the newbies about NOT padding their eBooks? Then reconcile those two positions.
And while we're at it, am I the only one that's recalling that in POD,
you have to pay for every bloody page you print? But sure, hey, let's waste the publisher's money with pretentious twaddle. Come on, really?
You want to be "right," be right, but what you're preaching was needed nearly four hundred years ago,
and isn't now. (And while you're at it, define the actual difference between the half-title and the bastard title, too.)
Hitch