Vertical text?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Thanks for all your suggestions and interest. I'm embarrassed to have to report that the text is not vertical after all. The author has distributed the several verses of this poem across adjoining left and right pages in the paperback. The publisher supplied a doc file as the source text, and put the conjoined two pages in the in the doc file in such a way that when I read those two pages the text appeared to be in vertical orientation.

The text of both pages has to be seen together to make any sense of the poem - I mentioned it was avant garde. So my current question is: how on earth can I format the poem so as to display both 'pages' when only one page is available at a time on 6" ebook readers? Turning the ereader to landscape mode won't work in this poem at a readable size font because there is just too much text.

I now have a pdf of the poem, but the author is away at the moment so I can't ask her permission to upload it. I'll ask for permission when she gets back next week, and if she grants it I'll upload the pdf. I also need to ask just how much importance she places on the visual appearance of her work. I suspect it's really important to her.

You could do it similar to the way that's already been suggested: display the double-page spread as a landscape-format SVG with rotated text. I really can't think of any other solution if (as seems likely) the "double-page" aspect of it is important to the author.

[Turtle91]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You could do it similar to the way that's already been suggested: display the double-page spread as a landscape-format SVG with rotated text. I really can't think of any other solution if (as seems likely) the "double-page" aspect of it is important to the author.

+1

If not SVG then a regular image may work. Either way that may cause the text in the image to be too small to easily read. Some, but not all, readers/apps have the ability to "zoom" into an image...you probably shouldn't depend on that for a commercial epub.
I'd mention these difficulties to the author and let them decide how important that particular orientation is to them.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Early days, I worked in what was then called an Educational Television station. When a cameraman or director goofed, someone was sure to say: "Don't worry -- nobody's watching anyhow!"

I suspect much the same is true of poetry in e-books. Check out the sales ranking of Donald Hall, once America's poet laureate. Or even Seamus Heaney, our very own Dylan Thomas: #386,822 Paid in Kindle Store for his top-ranked poetry book (even I out-sell Seamus Heaney!).

Yes, that's my other concern. Perhaps three years ago I opened a thread asking poetry readers for their opinions. So far as I remember there was a consensus that people would not use landscape view to read poetry. One poster specifically stated that he would never read poetry on an ereader because the visual effect intended by the poet's author could not be reproduced. The difficulty is getting that across to the publisher and author of the collection I'm working on.