Page breaks -- best practices?

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

If you need to have the nbsp content to preserve your page display

I'm wondering if i really do -- I'll get to that in a sec, but first with regard to your suggestion...

if you put a simple div (no page-break) with nbsp, or a <br /> with nbsp on the <p> that holds the top image like so:

<p class="header">&nbsp;<br /><img alt="ornament" src="../Images/header-red.gif" /></p>

Then play with margin, font-size to get the same offset that displays after the programmatic page-break on the "catalogue" page.

I actually thought about that before, although I hadn't tried it out because I could see that it would still not resolve the issue of my header image getting bumped down a little. While the title page and that "catologue" page (ToC) would hopefully be even up at the top, later on in the book, if one scene (chapter) of the play ended on the left-hand page -- this is all assuming one is looking at the book with a two-page spread, of course -- and then the next scene started on the right-hand page, then one would still see the issue of the header image not being flush at the top, even with the text on the left.

With all of the other books I've made previous to this one, I never noticed this issue before, because I've generally left a fair bit of white space at the beginning of each chapter anyway.

VERY inelegant, I know.

Yeah, while I do appreciate the suggestion, it is a bit kludgy -- plus the issue that I mentioned before. So it's a kludgy solution that doesn't actually "solve" the problem. In a way, it solves one problem by intentionally adding in another (so to speak).

In any case, I wonder if this is all moot anyway, for me to be worried about needing to add an nbsp in that div? I had actually only been planning on putting this book on the iBooks store -- I long ago got totally fed up with designing for amazon :/ -- and for those devices I guess I don't really need to worry about their things "breaking" at my page breaks because they don't have that problem (unless I'm mistaken about that).

Still, though, I guess it would be nice if I could get a "perfect" ebook that could work outside of that platform -- but it seems like trying to accomplish that is almost like trying to design for, well, amazon.

[Notjohn]

I've never noticed any difference between the way my books display on the Kindle devices/apps than they do on the iPad.

If you are selling books, my experience is that Amazon sells twenty for each one that the "iBooks Store" or Barnes & Noble does.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

I've never noticed any difference between the way my books display on the Kindle devices/apps than they do on the iPad.

I don't know, perhaps I was getting too fancy-schmancy with my designs, but the first couple of books I did were a total nightmare to get to work on Kindle -- and the five (or whatever it is) different versions of it that you have to take into account and make endless kludges for in order to get things to display okay.

If you are selling books, my experience is that Amazon sells twenty for each one that the "iBooks Store" or Barnes & Noble does.

I guess that's part of it, too -- I'm just giving away all my books, even though there's some that I could certainly charge something for. And I'm just doing it for myself, essentially, not for clients or even for a living, so sales aren't really a factor for me -- I just do it for the love of it, for the artistic aspects of it.

[JSWolf]

The problem with Kindles is that books have to work with both KF8 and Mobi. You can have lots of fun trying to make your eBooks work with obsolete Mobi because what you want ot do works well in KF8, but poorly or not at all with Mobi.

(IMHO) Amazon needs to make it such that you can have eBooks that are KF8. it would solve the problem.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem with Kindles is that yours book shave to work with both KF8 and Mobi. You can have lots of fun trying to make your eBooks work with obsolete Mobi because what you want ot do works well in KF8, but poorly or not at all with Mobi.

(IMHO) Amazon needs to make it such that you can have eBooks that are KF8. it would solve the problem.

The whole amazon dilemma (or fiasco) was pretty much the clincher in what burst my whole bubble about ever really making any money from ebooking. I try really hard to make my books elegant, with reasonably-"pretty" designs, and that's really fairly easy to do for iBooks -- but not at all for amazon, as I said earlier it's a veritable nightmare to do.

The problem with going with just iBooks, though, is no sales! I think in my first year I made a whopping $7 or $8 in "profits" -- hardly any sales at all, even with my price set to the very lowest (99 cents). Granted, I didn't exactly have the latest Stephen King thriller or some other bestseller under my belt, but still... and so in the end, I said screw it, and now I just do ebooks simply for the fun of it, the joy of it, and just give them away for free (on iBooks only). At least NOW people are downloading them.

This was all very, very disappointing for me, though. I'm on disability, and I had high hopes that this might be a way for me to bring in a little extra money. Instead, it's become merely a hobby -- one that I love, and at least now I can do whatever I want, whatever sparks my "passion" at any moment (currently Shakespeare). Maybe that is, in fact, the biggest pay-off that I could ask for?

No "little extra money," though.

[JSWolf]

You can make eBooks look good for Kindles if you code for KF8 and ignore Mobi. But if you do that, the books might look poor for Mobi. You have to decide what's best for your books. Also by coding for iBooks specifically, you do have to code in a way that won't work in ePub or KF8.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You can make eBooks look good for Kindles if you code for KF8 and ignore Mobi. But if you do that, the books might look poor for Mobi.

But you don't have a choice over "ignoring" MOBI, do you? I thought that if you put it up on amazon, it's not up to you, but rather up to whomever is buying the book, whatever device they have -- and one doesn't have control over that. That's been the understanding I've been going by, anyway, all this time (and basically why I gave up on it).

You have to decide what's best for your books. Also by coding for iBooks specifically, you do have to code in a way that won't work in ePub or KF8.

Well, that's pretty much what started this whole thread, I guess, as far as page breaks go. As I said earlier, I was only planning on putting my book(s) up on the iBooks store -- having forsaken everything else -- but at the same time it would certainly be nice if they worked all-around (as EPUBs), that I could still give my books away to friends who wanted to just look at them on other platforms.

But I could live with just resigning myself to iBooks, and leaving it at that, too -- it's a shame, but what the fudge, I'm not making any money off anything I do anyway, I do it "just for the love of ebooks (or, rather, ebook-making).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Psymon

But you don't have a choice over "ignoring" MOBI, do you? I thought that if you put it up on amazon, it's not up to you, but rather up to whomever is buying the book, whatever device they have -- and one doesn't have control over that. That's been the understanding I've been going by, anyway, all this time (and basically why I gave up on it).

What I mean by ignoring Mobi is making the eBook look good for KF8 and how it looks as Mobi be dammed.

Well, that's pretty much what started this whole thread, I guess, as far as page breaks go. As I said earlier, I was only planning on putting my book(s) up on the iBooks store -- having forsaken everything else -- but at the same time it would certainly be nice if they worked all-around (as EPUBs), that I could still give my books away to friends who wanted to just look at them on other platforms.

If your books are only for iBooks, then all I can say is may your sales tank bug time. No books deserve to sell via Apple. Apple is the company that caused the increase in eBook pricing and caused the demise of a number of very good small online eBook shops. So please, don't only go with Apple.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What I mean by ignoring Mobi is making the eBook look good for KF8 and how it looks as Mobi be dammed.

<snip>

If your books are only for iBooks, then all I can say is may your sales tank bug time. No books deserve to sell via Apple. Apple is the company that caused the increase in eBook pricing and caused the demise of a number of very good small online eBook shops. So please, don't only go with Apple.

Well, you do suddenly have me reconsidering things, but not so much for sales -- as I said, I've just been giving my books away for free anyway, because even at the lowest price I had almost no sales at all. But if I was to do that, then I'm pretty much back to square one with what my original query was here (regarding page breaks). :/

[dgatwood]

Originally Posted by Psymon

The problem with going with just iBooks, though, is no sales! I think in my first year I made a whopping $7 or $8 in "profits" -- hardly any sales at all, even with my price set to the very lowest (99 cents).

There's a reason for that. The Apple store system is an archaic system that has a limit to the number of items it can actually show in any category, and the number of books in most categories greatly exceeds that. As a result, they only show the top so many books (IIRC, 65,536, but possibly fewer) even if you're looking at books in alphabetical order.

[Edit: They've changed this since I last looked. Now, they show the first few tens of thousands alphabetically, regardless of sales. So basically, in Science Fiction, if your book's title comes alphabetically after "Atlan 850", it is invisible. I suggested several ways of fixing this in a bug report about two years ago and they basically said that it behaves correctly. Needless to say, I question whether Apple actually cares about the iBooks Store, because they sure don't treat it like they want it to be a quality product.]

What this means is that if your sales don't exceed a particular threshold, people will find your books only if they're looking for them by name. Discoverability in the iTunes store is, therefore, actually zero (as opposed to Amazon, where it is only near-zero).

So IMO, it would be borderline insanity to sell books exclusively on the iBooks store unless either A. you're already a top seller in your category somewhere else, or B. they're giving you a sweetheart deal like an spot on the new releases page. Honestly, the only reason I bother shipping content to them at all is that I want to see Amazon have at least some competition, and nobody else is big enough to do that except Google.

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by dgatwood

Discoverability in the iTunes store is, therefore, actually zero (as opposed to Amazon, where it is only near-zero).

Ha ha, well, at the end of the day I must say that this is all very encouraging, no matter where I might go.

[GrannyGrump]

@Psymon --- I had another thought about your "place-holder" divs that contain the nbsp. Does it behave better if you add display:none to the styling for that div, and not drop down?

For example:
<div style="display:none">& n b s p ;</div> (of course, you would use the normal nbsp code, not this pseudo-code)

[Psymon]

Originally Posted by GrannyGrump

@Psymon --- I had another thought about your "place-holder" divs that contain the nbsp. Does it behave better if you add display:none to the styling for that div, and not drop down?

For example:
<div style="display:none">& n b s p ;</div> (of course, you would use the normal nbsp code, not this pseudo-code)

Just tried it -- I lose the page break, too (in ADE on my PC, anyway)! Too bad, the idea of it sounded promising... until I tried it.

[GrannyGrump]

When I tried it like this:

  <div class="pagebreak">
    <div style="display:none">&nbsp;</div>
  </div>

it seems like it worked, but I only have those first two pages to play with.

The first screen shot is using your original mark-up, the second is with the extra "display:none" div.

[jbacelar]

Another solution that works in A.D.E. and the Calibre's viewer, is:

<div class="pagebreak">

  <p class="header">

    <img alt="ornament" src="../Images/header-black.gif"/>

  </p>
</div>