Well, you can be as anal as you wish, but it's not that uncommon, even in print. I don't mean the idiotic practice of putting a full line of whitespace, between first-line-idented paragraphs; I mean the practice of, for example, using a
very small additional amount of space, between paragraphs. I don't mean between scene-breaks, either--which need them. I mean, regular old paragraphs. For example, here's an eBook that we made (don't blame me for the sidebars),
http://www.booknook.biz/media/com_tw...Blood_MOBI.png . That tiny bit of additional space helps the person reading the book get a small visual "break" between her very dense paragraphs. On some devices, like smartphones, you can end up with a wall of text. This is the original print layout--
http://www.booknook.biz/media/com_tw..._Blood_PDF.png and you can imagine what that layout, wihtout that teeny breath of air, looks like on a smartphone. Ignore the sidebar entirely--I can tell you, it's dense. It's not people trying to make it look like a webpage; it's a small cue, to let people know "hey, new para here." That's all.
I can tell you that that book, on KF7 devices, (which don't have that teeny-weeny bit of space) can get pretty damned dense, pretty quickly. Do you ever read on your smartphone, or an older eInk? If you do, then you know whereof I speak.
Exactly. I don't hold with needless space. Or block-style, for fiction/memoirs, etc. But the
entire point of typography--both print and digital--is
to facilitate ease of reading, by the reader. Not merely to look foofy or what-have-you. The point of GREAT typography is to ensure that the book doesn't get between the reader and the story/content. Making a wall of text, just to stick to some idea that ANY space between paragraphs is a sin, is not serving the reader. It's sticking to rules for no reason.
AND, while we're on the subject, I would suggest that everyone who thinks that using that wee bit of space, above/below, around subheads, etc., is against the "rules," that you should read Robert Bringhurst--the modern father of Typography--in "The Elements of Typographic Style," (20th Anniversary Edition), pages 39-43. In those pages, he explains where that additional leading (margin, essentially above/below a paragraph)
must be used. That doesn't change, just because it's an ebook. In print, you can do other things so that the squaring of the page is accomplished--but in eBooks, you
can't.
So, do you give up
readability around blockquotes, around indented content, pullquotes, some letter to a fictional character, etc., in an eBook, just to stick with rules that honestly, don't even exist?
Hitch