Quote:
Originally Posted by roland1
Hey there. I published an ebook recently in epub 3 format using SIGIL. After submitting it for distribution, I checked the book's preview at ebooks.com and found that the font was changed to sans serif and there was no leading. It was a disaster to look at — like it had lost part of its css code.
Yet when I went to Kobo or Barnes & Noble, my previews there looked fine. Not spectacular, but closer to what I would expect to see.
Anyone know what might be going on based on your own experiences with online preview engines? (or perhaps that ebook retailer specifically?)
I'm still relatively new to publishing ebooks online, so I'd like to iron out the kinks before submitting more of my work to booksellers. I can't imagine anyone wanting to buy my book with a crappy preview like what I saw.
Thanks for any insights you can offer.
(here's the link for reference purposes 
https://www.ebooks.com/en-ca/book/21...aldt-roland-w/ |
Well, yes,
that's a bit of a problem.
However, I have to say that it's always best to assume that any careful "typesetting" in eBooks, is going to go awry. I wasn't able to find the ebook on B&N, (paperback, yes; eBook, no) despite several searches; I found it on Kobo, but I've been waiting for some time for the Preview to render with no joy.
FYI, 3 other books that I tried to preview on Kobo, previewed immediately, so I suspect that something is
hinky with your ebook. That's something you should look into, given my less-than-stellar results at KOBOBooks.
Anyway, back to my initial comment--remember that half of all eReaders out there may
cheerfully ignore your CSS. Another quantity may well have users that just don't like your taste (nothing personal), who will override your font choice.
You need to make sure that the book you make will degrade, or even fail, gracefully. If you are using, say, a font size of something like 1.3ems with a forced line height...well. You can find yourself with a renderer, like ebooks.com, that ignores your line-heights but obeys your font-size settings, or even worse.
You say you made this with Sigil--entirely? Did this, maybe, possibly, come from an INDD reflowable ePUB export, first, which you then possibly refined and edited?
Is your font, the font you've called, embedded into the eBook?
Hitch