[zebideedoodah]

Hi

First time posting on here - if there's a better forum for this, please point me towards it.

I'm trying to create a Kindle file for an ebook of short stories. I have a lot of experince with InDesign, so I built a print version as a Book file in CS6, then produced an epub from that. It looked good, so I the converted that to mobi in Calibre. I then mailed the file to my Kindle address for both the Kindle itself and the phone app.

However, the mobi lost all its spacing, most noticeable the space between the header and the text, and the paragraph spacing. All spacing was originally governed with paragraph tags in InDesign, so I tried various options (separate text frames for header, then producing chapter headers as images and using those as separators) - all guesswork really, but with little result.

I wanted the header to appear about a third of the way down a new page, then a sizeable space (say = 8 lines of text) before the body text begins. I'd also added a drop cap of three lines in bold. That also disappeared in the mobi, although it retained the bold. The paragraph spacing has completely disappeared.

I also tried producing the file as an AZW3, but can't get my Kindle Fire HD (admittedly a few years old) or my Kindle app for Android (latest version) to read it. It won't even display in either library. It does display in Calibre's reader, though, and looks great. Is there a DRM switch I have to deal with when creating the AZW file? I had a feeling there was, but I couldn't find it referenced in Calibre.

I also have the problem of extra pages at the beginning of the book, duplicating the cover and the title page (which I created as an image for convenience sake). I think I can deal with those, though - both the cover and the title page are images created in Photoshop and placed in the InDesign file. I'm guessing the extra pages are probably caused by the 'page breaks before image' setting. At the moment I'm concentrating on the text, although it's driving me slightly loopy. I feel like I'm missing something really obvious, but can't for the life of me see what it is.

I've avoided mentioning CSS so far, simply because as much as I have tried to get to grips with it (and understand it in principle), I just don't understand it when I read it. I also tried to edit the ebook in Sigil but I can't even get it to display. I get error messages referring to .ttf fonts and though I read up on woff fonts, and converted some as a trial, I can't get them to install in the fonts folder on my PC.

All the while the epub file looks great and is exactly what I wanted. It hasn't seemed to need a .css file so far - should I have one just for mobi? I am really beginning to feel like an idiot.

Whatever thoughts you have on this, disparaging as they might be, will be very welcome. I want this to be on Amazon before the end of this month, but I really feel like I've hit a brick wall.

Thanks for reading.