[Hitch]

Originally Posted by LostOnTheLine

Not one per character, one per NARRATOR. As I stated there are at most 8 different narrators, usually not more than 4 in a single book.

Oh, well, only 8 or so. Hell, we're saved.

The author writing a story writes it for readers in their own language. As I said earlier any translation is a form of adaptation. Just like you know the movie or TV series or stage play isn't going to be exactly 100% faithful to the original, you accept those changes because it's adapting to another media. Just like when a book is translated you have some of the same. If the text says "It's raining cats & dogs" in English the translator has to choose to either give a literal translation which won't make sense in most other languages or adapt it by its intent, like in Welsh a similar phrase translates literally as "it's raining old women & sticks" which in English doesn't make sense because it's an idiom of Welsh like Cats & Dogs falling from the sky is an idiom of English.

Well, this appears to be veering into whether translation supports or needs or requires something other than that which is needed or supported or required for original work...meh.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Really if you want to read all kinds of everything not publishable on Amazon you either need a Kobo for eink, or a decent Android ePub app (some of those are on iPhone too), not a Kindle or Kindle App.

But you don't... Kindle supports embedded fonts... That's what this whole thread is about... As time goes on the experience gets better & can do more things. Before you accepted it as the tradeoff for the convenience, but once upon a time it was just text with no formatting. Then it got better & better as time goes on. Supporting custom fonts is just a step in that process.

Well, "supports" is one of those vague, kinda-nice-to-hear words that doesn't really mean anything. "Supports" implies a level of maintenance, a reliability to the idea, that doesn't really exist. You can't ask KDP what fonts are "supported." For that matter, they can't even give you a comprehensive list that says which fonts are available on what devices.


And...maybe it wasn't in this thread, but yes, it was quite commonplace--and still can be--for KDP's PW (Publishing Workflow) to yank ALL, repeat, ALL the fonts (embedded) right out of a MOBI/ePUB, etc. I can't quite get behind the use of the word "support" in that instance. Just sayin'.

You don't have to be. Choose to read by whatever criteria is import to you, but don't assume others must use the same.
I mean that's not some fringe "experimental" thing, authors have been choosing the font they wanted since before Computers existed.

MEH, maybe the Ben Franklins of the world printing their own stuff but the truth is, most authors don't know Times New Roman from Gill Sans, nor why they should and don't care. They ONLY seem to care about the font issue if/when it's something like this. And believe me, this is a conversation, about what fonts, for what layouts, etc. I've had a LOT. I won't even regale some of you with the requests I've had. I told my crew that if a book escapes from my shop with Comic Sans therein, they can commit me. (That's what this town needs; an uber-friendly drop-off committal spot...)

mean there were less choices but at times I'm sure a author had custom letter types made for their books. The benefit of an eReader is that if you don't like the author's choice you, as a reader can choose to override it. But doing so you are choosing to disregard the author's choice & in doing so you might loose nuances.

Well...my concern is or would be, any book that needed that sort of verbiage infrastructure "support." My thinking is, the book--the BOOK--the writing by the author--not fripperies--should tell me what I need to know, about names, characters, who said what, the beats...to me, as a bookmaker, I would have technological and typographical concerns (especially in the eBook realm) around mixing that many main narrative fonts into the stew and as a reader, I would...well, it wouldn't be my cuppa.

Fonts-wise, for ebooks, as I'm sure you all know, it's not that simple to magically come up with (say) 8 identically-sized fonts so that the line-heights aren't all screwed up. And let's not talk about the differences in how the myriad different renderers, etc. all render those fonts, either--how an 80% something on an iPad (K4iOS) might look, compared to that same coding for a Fire...night and day. Oh and xheights, yheights...descenders, ascenders...it's mot that easy to find 8 disparate fonts that are very close in size. (Goahead, ask me..."Hitch, how do you know that?")

Then we'll have the joy of the line-heights being butchered and...oy.

Anybody can do, whatever they want, in their own books. That's their prerogative. I would try to dissuade a client that wanted it with a book with us, for the mentioned reasons.

Hitch