Why publishers format ebooks differently than paper books?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Just because a paper book doesn't have spaces is not a reason an ebook shouldn't have them. That's the beauty of ebooks - you can have them presented to you the way you want. It seems like more people don't want them than do, but that's different than saying there should be no spaces because paper books don't have them.

Well, there is probably a reason that paper books prefer indentation. And I believe that is because it is better at page break because it reduces the risk that the reader misses the start of a new paragraph at page break.

And ebook rendering also is worse at typography so I would say that the risk is even higher for ebooks which uses spaces between paragraphs.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Just because a paper book doesn't have spaces is not a reason an ebook shouldn't have them. That's the beauty of ebooks - you can have them presented to you the way you want. It seems like more people don't want them than do, but that's different than saying there should be no spaces because paper books don't have them.

I simply meant, that if publishers thought that people needed or even wanted whitespace between paragraphical content in order to follow along, I think that they would have done so before now. We've had every type of publishing for the past 200 or more years; pre-typesetting, hand-crafted, hand-duplicated (go, monks!), typesetting, post-typesetting, word-processed, etc., and the generalized standard has been no additional whitespace between paragraphs, except for early readers, kids' books and textbooks, for the reasons stated above. Even the earliest preserved works don't have it (there will now commence a big long discussion about how the only reason that was so was due to scarcity of materials, just wait for it.)

Amazon expressly asks that additional whitespace not be used; I think B&N does (don't remember), and KOBO. Don't know if iBooks mentions it anywhere.

My personal preference as a reader is certainly not for wasted whitespace, but if the trend changes, and more people want web-style formatting, then, fine, that's what we'll do in my business. {shrug}. I'm not the paragraph police, but I will say, not trying to ruffle anyone's feathers, that it seems very silly to me. If having web-style formatting helps someone keep their place in what they're reading, then, certainly, I can see why they might prefer it. It's not my personal choice.

Hitch

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

+1
I need blank lines between paragraphs or I tend to lose my place more easily.

I prefer Indented And a blank line. Calibre will not allow that setting. It is an either-or setting

I simply use the Book-Editor (or Sigil) and change the appropriate Paragraph style to margin-top: .5em; (when indented. .8em with squared edges).

Note: using an empty line between all paragraphs can leave a empty scene break line ignored (2 blanks are treated as one). There is also less code lines using the margin setting

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by theducks

I prefer Indented And a blank line. Calibre will not allow that setting. It is an either-or setting
...

Sure it will. When you convert a book, go to the "Look & Feel" tab, and check
"Insert blank line between paragraphs" and set how much of a gap you want on the same line at the right. "Remove spacing between paragraphs" above that is also checked so that you can set how much of an indent you want at the right of that line.

I played around with it awhile ago so I know you can do both, and found .5 em line size between paragraphs was livable, although I still prefer no space.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, there is probably a reason that paper books prefer indentation. And I believe that is because it is better at page break because it reduces the risk that the reader misses the start of a new paragraph at page break.

And ebook rendering also is worse at typography so I would say that the risk is even higher for ebooks which uses spaces between paragraphs.

I guess I should have said that I prefer having both indents and blank lines. I first started ereading with blank lines only and ran into that very problem.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

Sure it will. When you convert a book, go to the "Look & Feel" tab, and check
"Insert blank line between paragraphs" and set how much of a gap you want on the same line at the right. "Remove spacing between paragraphs" above that is also checked so that you can set how much of an indent you want at the right of that line.

I played around with it awhile ago so I know you can do both, and found .5 em line size between paragraphs was livable, although I still prefer no space.

One thing to be careful of is that when a book uses blank lines to create a scene break using "Insert blank line between paragraphs" can cause the scene break to be lost. Some books have a tag for scene breaks that have margin-top: 2em and the way the blank line is created is to use margin-top: 0.5em and margin-bottom: 0.5em. Or at least it used to.

[icallaci]

I have been reading for many, MANY years (and, no, I am not going to tell you how many). During all the years that I read nothing but paper books, I very rarely (actually, never) noticed the formatting. For some reason, a lot of the formatting in ebooks annoys the heck out of me, and I can't rest until I "fix" it. However, this has had a deleterious effect on my reading paper books, because I now notice formatting problems in paper books too! I am sure they were there all along, but I never noticed.

[Dngrsone]

Hm. If that's the extent of your complaints, then consider yourself lucky.

Over the past decade or so, I have built a library of eBooks laid out in various formats; a good number of them manually scanned and OCR'd with mixed results, to be sure.

Many of these books were scanned by the publisher, who appear to have paid someone to break apart a paper copy of the book, scan each page into .pdf or sometimes OCR'd into some other format and yet spent no time on proofreading the end-product.

These books are riddled with errors-- introduced by poor or inefficient scanning, bad OCR, and/or bad editing in the source material.

I find myself spending more time fixing my ebooks than reading them.

It is perhaps fortunate that my memory is no longer as iron-clad as it once was and I will enjoy the fruits of my labors in the future...

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Just because a paper book doesn't have spaces is not a reason an ebook shouldn't have them. That's the beauty of ebooks - you can have them presented to you the way you want. It seems like more people don't want them than do, but that's different than saying there should be no spaces because paper books don't have them.

I think the argument against them is not that ebooks should avoid them just because paper books do, but that the reasons why paper books avoid them also apply to ebooks.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by latepaul

Was it self-pubbed by any chance? A friend of mine was complaining on Facebook the other day that when he uploaded a word doc produced by OpenOffice, as opposed to Word itself, to KDP he lost all his hyphens.

Quite the contrary; this came from a Big Five publisher. It was especially obvious because there were lots-of-phrases-like-this that became lots-of-phraseslike-this.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Exactly. The idea of a blank line between paragraphs never even really appeared, in any recreational reading, prior to the advent of the web and the then-inability to create first-line indented paragraphs for reading. Only textbooks and that type of non-fiction material used white-space to indicate the change from one paragraph to another, primarily because said book would also include other formatting challenges (say, bulleted/numbered lists, charts, tables) that would look peculiar with the traditional first-line-indent paragraphy style.

I mean: just walk around your own bookshelves and pick up books at random and look at them. You will not, in fiction, see any--not one--that has white-space between paragraphs, or block-style. It's a massive waste of space (which is even more valuable on an e-reader) and increased printing costs. I've seen myriad complaints (and read them first-hand from people coming to us to "fix" books that they've self-pubbed) from readers with devices sending emails to Amazon, etc., about how much of their screen-space is wasted by block-style paragraphs for no reason. Smartphone and small tablet readers are particularly aggravated by this, it seems.

FWIW.
Hitch

Additional line spaces do increase paper use and cost in paper books. And it seems to me that a lot of people have issues with wasted screen space in ebooks. I probably have to make a few extra page turns due to my preference for no indents and spaces between paragraphs, but it is so very much easier for me to read that I don't care. One line more or one line less, and it could go either way because of the indents or lack of indents, is just another page turn every 20-30 pages. It is like font size. I read at what is the most comfortable size at the time, not on the smallest I can manage to read so as to get more characters on each page.

Helen

[GeorgeH]

Personally, I prefer indentation and some white space between paragraphs. I also understand that each person has their own preference. With the books I generate, I normally adjust the paragraph style to accommodate that preference rather than using tabs and extra lines.

However, what really irritates me with some commercial books is lack of proof-reading and inappropriate font styles/sizes.

[VictoriaP]

Another person who prefers both indents & space between paragraphs. But really only two things annoy me badly--the minimum line spacing that .azw3 files force on you (which I find too big) and publisher locked fonts. Other than that, I'm pretty mellow.

For the record though, those of us who grew up learning to type on actual typewriters well remember that both indenting at the beginning and double-spacing at the end of a paragraph was the norm well before the Web, as was the now obsolete two spaces after a period before starting the next sentence.

[GeorgeH]

VictoriaP, I well remember typewriter classes way back when (who could forget the home keys!). I'd forgotten about the double space at the start of a new sentence though

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by GeorgeH

VictoriaP, I well remember typewriter classes way back when (who could forget the home keys!). I'd forgotten about the double space at the start of a new sentence though

I still do the double space after a period. Does that make me really old?