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Originally Posted by graycyn
Very true, but different people are going to find different things enjoyable. I personally enjoy some space about chapter headers, it has the feel of print book to me, vs. everything squashed at the top of a page. But some will prefer the second! I did make some changes to my book. Not to the extent you wanted, but spacing changes were made.
One of the first books I did, right after getting my first reader, I sent to two friends. I'd made the book with an HTML TOC up front, along with the regular NCX.
One friend HATED the HTML TOC, telling me her iPad provided a table of contents and she didn't like extra stuff at the front of the book to page through.
The other friend, reading on one of the very early Kindles, told me she LOVED the HTML TOC, because it helped her navigate. Different strokes for different folks.
I just read another library book, has even more white space than the last one. A Mrs. Murphy mystery by Rita Mae Brown. This one has nearly 2/3 white space at my preferred font size. Chapter number, date, day and a cute ornament that occupies a largish first line indent and extends above the line. I'm totally enjoying the look! It may not be terribly practical for small screens, but it gives me that print book feeling in spades. That bit of joy outweighs practical for me.
Anyway, started on one of my Dad's old books, no funky chapter heading stuff there. Centered and spaced fairly close. You'd likely approve.
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I find that in most cases, some things that are done to try to make an eBook simulate a pBook don't work. 2/3 of the vertical space of the screen just for the chapter header (and whatever goes with it) is too large and is not working. Plus, there is no way doing something like that works to make it feel like a pBook. I prefer to have the chapter header stuff be a lot smaller. I agree that there does need to be some space and how much depends on what's there for the chapter header. If you've got the ornaments and subheaders, then yes, you do need more space. So you need 2/3rdof the screen? No you don't. 1/4th of the screen is the most you should be using. To me, it doesn't feel like a pBook because it feels like someone did a poor job of ormatting the eBook. And if you are going to try to make your eBook feel like a pBook, then you need to have no paragraph spaces for the main text and you need indents that are not too large. I prefer indents of 1.2em. I know that a lot of pBooks have a widish margin, but that's because of the spine of the book. But, don't have any left/right margins in main text. Also, don't have any line height. Those are not needed. Most current Readers such as Kobo have options to set the left/right margins and line height. This way the user can set what he/she likes. And don't embed the font used in the pBook version as it usually won't work because it's too light for an eInk screen and some Readers won't be able to override it. Kindles don't default to showing embedded fonts and most eBooks with embedded fonts, the fonts will not ever be seen by most people reading with a Kindle.
SO you have to know what works and what doesn't. The problem is that a lot of eBooks designed to simulate a pBook fail. You have a large amount of space around a chapter header like the pBook and then you have a fail when you have paragraph spaces. You have a fail if there are no indents. You have a fail when you have section breaks with just space and in some cases, you have asterisks where the section breaks fall at the top or bottom of the page in the pBook version. That's a fail because it looks stupid. It cannot be guaranteed to fall at the bottom or top of the screen.
So the solution is to treat the eBook as an eBook. Figure out formatting that works as an eBook and stick with it. Formatting that works is not too much chapter heading blank space used, no paragraph spaces, no line height, no left/right margins, no embedded fonts unless there's a really good reason like for special characters. Indents should not too large. Main text should be left at the default size and that includes offset text which in some pBooks is made smaller then the main text.
Can you give a sample you how you plan on formatting? I would like to have a look.