A request from an avid reader

[gmw]

Originally Posted by HarryT

True, and of course the line between "badly formatted" and "not in accordance with my personal preferences" can be a hazy one.

What looks best can also vary even for the same person. For me: reference material can be better with greater spacing - even line spacing. The font choice can make a difference as to what looks best and reads easier in terms of line and paragraph spacing (I recently implemented JSWolf's version of Charis SIL (ChareInk) and while I like it very much, I did have to boost the line spacing to make it usable for me). Even just the style of writing can make a difference: many older books have lots of huge paragraphs and any extra spacing between paragraphs just looks odd (to my eye).

From a publisher perspective I tend toward the conservative because conservative reduces the chance that different ereader software will muck it up, and because conservative tends to make it easier for users to customise.

[Rellwood]

@Avantman42

Regarding Calibre and using it to reformat a book to my specs, I do that. I just didn't mention it because I didn't know how the other authors posting here would take it. I was worried that the idea of stripping a DRM and/or reformatting the books to my specs would anger those who wrote them. However since no one blasted you for mentioning it, I figured I would admit to it.

I purchase and download each book into Calibre but go in and check the css files for line-height then I just reconvert the book into the desired format, I have a two Kindles and two Kobos, so I have to have EPUBS as well.

Until Amazon allows for better manipulation of books on their devices I will always side-load them so that the series and series index precedes the title. I can't see what book is next if I cant see the series name. Kindle doesn't have enough space on their title lines to show it all.

So I guess after spending $4000 in the past 4 years on Kindle books I suppose I can't be faulted for wanting to have the books formatted the way I like. I just wonder how the authors allow this kind of editing to happen in the first place because no one would put up with it if they were opening up a dead tree version.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Rellwood

@Avantman42

Regarding Calibre and using it to reformat a book to my specs, I do that. I just didn't mention it because I didn't know how the other authors posting here would take it. I was worried that the idea of stripping a DRM and/or reformatting the books to my specs would anger those who wrote them. However since no one blasted you for mentioning it, I figured I would admit to it.

I purchase and download each book into Calibre but go in and check the css files for line-height then I just reconvert the book into the desired format, I have a two Kindles and two Kobos, so I have to have EPUBS as well.

Until Amazon allows for better manipulation of books on their devices I will always side-load them so that the series and series index precedes the title. I can't see what book is next if I cant see the series name. Kindle doesn't have enough space on their title lines to show it all.

So I guess after spending $4000 in the past 4 years on Kindle books I suppose I can't be faulted for wanting to have the books formatted the way I like. I just wonder how the authors allow this kind of editing to happen in the first place because no one would put up with it if they were opening up a dead tree version.

Hi. Welcome to the land of professional authors. The authors here are pretty cool.
Many of them probably use Calibre.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Rellwood

@all,

Thank you for not trolling me for my comment. I appreciate it since it was made in good faith. @Cinisajoy, I am mostly seeing this on the KU books, but it also does occur on some of the more expensive books as well. I can't think of them off the top of my head, but it happens more often than not that I download a book open it to find that the spacing and the line height is atrocious. I agree with the consensus that an indented paragraph with no extra spacing be used.

Actually, the line-heights for Kindle formatting are required and specified (1.2), and not changeable. If you override them, you can expect a KQN (Kindle Quality Notice) and possibly withdrawal of one's book from being sold, until it's fixed. Period.

I didn't realize that this could be a problem attributed to by Amazon, I figured that they would accept whatever book and formatting is given an just send it like that.

They do, but they will issue KQNs for poorly-formatted books, and require that they be fixed.

<SNIP>Since KU pays the author by page,

Amazon does not pay authors by the page. They pay authors by the KENP (Kindle whatever Normalized Pages), which is based on CHARACTERS and WORD COUNT. Not "pages." What you are seeing is simply the extension of a generation that thinks that web-page formatting is how books are "supposed to be" formatted. I am constantly gobsmacked at how many would-be authors have apparently never read another book in their lives, as evidenced by their attempts at their own formatting.

it only made sense for me to believe that no one would want their books to look this way (line-height: %200) with the additional space between indented paragraphs. Personally, I liked justify for a time, but now I like going back to the left (ragged right side?) because it looks like a paper book (which like you all, I grew up reading).

Again, if Jane Author uploads her Word file for Amazon to process/convert, the line-height of 1.2ems/120% over the font size/height is set by Amazon, not the publisher or author. Even if the publisher pays a book formatter to make the book, commercially, it's 1.2ems.

Secondly, I've seen exceedingly few commercially published DT books, certainly not fiction, that are left-aligned/ragged-right. For adult reading, I guess I mean. Certainly, children's books could be ragged-right, but even the old classic Nancy Drews were justified. Hell, even the Maida books, from the 30's, were justified. I own several (4K or so) thousand DT books, in my library, and I seriously doubt I could find one that was not justified--and my non-fiction library is larger than my fiction. The paper books that you grew up reading are obviously quite different than those I've read over the decades.

Regarding the readers being able to process the books to a desired setting, this is not true of Kindles. They do not allow for formatting beyond a three set of line spacing and margin spacing.

And fonts, of course. The newer devices seem to be heading toward yet more customization.

I have since purchased a KOBO because it allows for more customization. However, I am stuck with Amazon since I have long since drank their Kool-Aide and now I am 10 years into them. Amazon does have a lot of great books, but I have also been going to the publishing websites and independent sellers (Smashwords) as well.
Thanks for your suggestions!

Well, if you are formatting-sensitive, you must suffer the pangs of the damned at Smashwords. While a handful of our clients do publish there--thereby uploading commercially-crafted eBooks--most of what I've seen there is unreadably bad, both in terms of content and formatting, in particular. Yes, Yes, before any of our other thread members comments, I am aware that a lot of MR-member authors do publish there, but many first-time authors who have invested precisely zero time and effort in learning their craft have, also. Too many of them read the infamous "Smashwords formatting Guide" and drink that KoolAid, too. The "Nuclear Method" has a lot to answer for.

Hitch

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Well, if you are formatting-sensitive, you must suffer the pangs of the damned at Smashwords. While a handful of our clients do publish there--thereby uploading commercially-crafted eBooks--most of what I've seen there is unreadably bad, both in terms of content and formatting, in particular. Yes, Yes, before any of our other thread members comments, I am aware that a lot of MR-member authors do publish there, but many first-time authors who have invested precisely zero time and effort in learning their craft have, also. Too many of them read the infamous "Smashwords formatting Guide" and drink that KoolAid, too. The "Nuclear Method" has a lot to answer for.

Hitch

Snipped most of this post.
I just wanted to comment on this part.
I think some authors only know the word upload. I don't think they have ever read anything.

To the OP: There is a ton of crap "books" out there.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Rellwood

[...] Regarding Calibre and using it to reformat a book to my specs, I do that. I just didn't mention it because I didn't know how the other authors posting here would take it. I was worried that the idea of stripping a DRM and/or reformatting the books to my specs would anger those who wrote them. However since no one blasted you for mentioning it, I figured I would admit to it. [...]

I don't think I've seen an author here (that participates in these discussions) that would object. We'd like to get it mostly right first, but you can never get it perfect for everyone which is where tools like Calibre step in.

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Hi. Welcome to the land of professional authors. The authors here are pretty cool.
Many of them probably use Calibre.

As a computer geek by day, "cool" is not a commonly received description.

I do use Calibre for my reading library, not for publishing yet. For publishing, so far, my process has been: the base epub is generated from LibreOffice and then cleaned up and checked using Sigil which lets me manually adjust the CSS and HTML to remove detritus left by the automation and generally ensure consistency. The kindle version is then generated from the epub using Amazon supplied tools.

Originally Posted by Hitch

[...] Yes, Yes, before any of our other thread members comments, I am aware that a lot of MR-member authors do publish there, but many first-time authors who have invested precisely zero time and effort in learning their craft have, also. Too many of them read the infamous "Smashwords formatting Guide" and drink that KoolAid, too. The "Nuclear Method" has a lot to answer for.

Hitch

To be fair, the "Nuclear Method" is really the only hope for removing the crap that comes out of a Word document after months of work. ... But there is an Irish phrase I've heard that comes to mind, "You shouldn't be starting from here if you want to get there." (Or something like that.) Starting the automatic generation process from a Word document is about as far from ideal as I can imagine.

I've used the Smashwords "meatgrinder" to publish my short stories, but not my novels - it seemed such a waste to have gone to such lengths to create a clean epub, only to have to go back to a dirty document and let their automation loose on it. The problem being that Smashwords won't even offer a preview of a book that you publish only via epub, which puts it at something of a disadvantage (telling people to read the preview on Amazon doesn't really cut it). I think you're supposed to do both (clean epub and meatgrinder version), but so far I haven't bothered except for the shorts. Which would worry me more if I was trying to make a living at this - I'd like to, but that's not going to happen until I write more, learn more, publish more and get serious about marketing (the last part scares the --- out of me).

But mostly it all comes back to: those that do care about the craft are already trying to do the right thing, those that don't won't be listening anyway.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by gmw

I don't think I've seen an author here (that participates in these discussions) that would object. We'd like to get it mostly right first, but you can never get it perfect for everyone which is where tools like Calibre step in.

I'm certain that's true.

As a computer geek by day, "cool" is not a commonly received description.

I do use Calibre for my reading library, not for publishing yet. For publishing, so far, my process has been: the base epub is generated from LibreOffice and then cleaned up and checked using Sigil which lets me manually adjust the CSS and HTML to remove detritus left by the automation and generally ensure consistency. The kindle version is then generated from the epub using Amazon supplied tools.

Good on ya. But you know you're in the minority. And you're certainly cool, gmw.

To be fair, the "Nuclear Method" is really the only hope for removing the crap that comes out of a Word document after months of work.

OK--here, I shall most violently differ with you. The only reason that ANY cruft comes out of a Word file is because the person who typed it never bothered to take 2 hours, and actually learn how to use Word, period. With almost no effort whatsoever, I can create a 100K Word file (obviously, I'm not talking about the BOOK, itself, I'm talking the mechanics here) and have virtually NOTHING to remove, in the HTML. NOTHING.

If someone takes Word, and uses it like a typewriter, then, yes--it will generate cruft. Ad hoc typing will do that in Word. But here's the rub--so does everything ELSE. I don't give two figs if it's INDD, InCopy, Word, Open Office, Libre Office, etc.--they all, all, generate crap if someone doesn't bother to learn how to use them. If someone doesn't learn styles (heading and paragraph styles/css classes), then yes, the "Nuclear Method" might be needed, but that's also only if the person doing it wants to learn ZERO about HTML, regex, or even fundamental, simple, search-replace.

Why someone that presumably wants to be a full-time, professional writer, won't learn his or her primary writing tool--damned if I know. It's positively mystifying. But, hey--while they continue not to learn it, it helps keep my business in the black.

... But there is an Irish phrase I've heard that comes to mind, "You shouldn't be starting from here if you want to get there." (Or something like that.) Starting the automatic generation process from a Word document is about as far from ideal as I can imagine.

To this DAY, conversion from Word is STILL the fastest, cheapest, and easiest method to make an eBook. You may disagree, based upon your own personal method, but we've had over 3K books come through my shop, and I've seen HTML that would make The Rock cry--most of it generated by people who read a blog somewhere and decided to "fix" their own Word-based HTML, because they believed the constant Gates-hate battle drum of "Word makes HORRIBLE HTML! RUN, RUN, you fools!"

(And, yes, of course, we've looked at OO/LO, and the cruft that's output from there is every bit as crappy as Word. Pages? OMG, far WORSE than Word. INDD? Ditto. We convert from all of these pretty much every day of the week--and our rates for Word are still roughly half of everything else's rates. Why? Repeat after me: Word's so-called "cruft" just isn't that hard to clean up. If you know anything at all about Word, or HTML, or both, you can do it pretty damned quickly. Even if you do NOT, you can freely download Toxaris' wonderful ePUBTools program, and clean up your Word file in a few minutes, and output nearly perfectly clean HTML. It ain't that hard, kiddies.)

I've used the Smashwords "meatgrinder" to publish my short stories, but not my novels - it seemed such a waste to have gone to such lengths to create a clean epub, only to have to go back to a dirty document and let their automation loose on it.

It's the Calibre API--period. There's nothing magical about SW's "meatgrinder." If you've made your ePUB with Calibre, there's an excellent chance that you won't see a thing different with the output book.

The problem being that Smashwords won't even offer a preview of a book that you publish only via epub, which puts it at something of a disadvantage (telling people to read the preview on Amazon doesn't really cut it).

Sorry? This section confused me. You can publish a MOBI there, as well as their other formats--?? And what's the LITB on Amazon got to do with it?

I think you're supposed to do both (clean epub and meatgrinder version), but so far I haven't bothered except for the shorts.

AND, this confuses me, too. Why wouldn't you just load your ePUB there? There isn't going to be any difference, (see above), and the ePUB intake is a slightly different process than the Word file-->.

Which would worry me more if I was trying to make a living at this - I'd like to, but that's not going to happen until I write more, learn more, publish more and get serious about marketing (the last part scares the --- out of me).

Indeed. That seems to be the largest challenge, facing our clients. Of course, we see a goodly number of books that escaped, too, rather than being released. I guess I'd say, marketing AND editing, are two of the biggest challenges that I see, surrounding self-publishing.

But mostly it all comes back to: those that do care about the craft are already trying to do the right thing, those that don't won't be listening anyway.

Yes, that's abundantly obvious. I see the former in my biz all the time, and unfortunately, the latter out and about on the various and sundry forums--the classics, the ones who put up a book and then 3 months or 6 months later, post to ask "why isn't my book selling?," and when you view it, it's indecipherable, or has OBVIOUSLY never seen a red pencil, or even been proofed.

OT:

Spoiler:

In my humble opinion, the sad demise of writer's groups and critique groups has had an extremely deleterious effect on the "published book" today. Most of what I see, on the KDP, et al, forums, wouldn't even be good enough to submit to a critique group, much less bloody publish. When I was still in a critique group, lo these many years ago, if someone had submitted some of what I've seen, which is patently what SHOULD be a "shotty first draft," rather than even a proofed version, I'd have rejected it from critique. Now, if that's the case, why the frack is the damn thing published?

Anyway--while I agree with most of what you said, the whole "Word produces cruft thing" is like... an urban myth. It's right up there with Alligators living in the sewers, or Candyman coming out of the mirror to get you. Or whatever that is. Can Word output crap? Oh, yes. But why? Because that's what the typist PUT IN. Authors, writers, typists everywhere: take a whopping 1-2 hours of your lives and take a few small tutorials from the MS website, or YouTube. Learning Word's built-in Styles and Headings won't just give you control of the output HTML--it will save you MANY hours of labor, in creating ANY document, and will enable you to use most of Word's most glorious features, 99% of which the typical user has never seen, simply because they do NOT UNDERSTAND the built-in STYLES AND HEADINGS.

It's utterly mind-blowing that people don't learn it. It really is.

/End of my mystified rant.

Hitch

[Lemurion]

All I know is that my process seems to work.

I write in Scrivener, then export to Word for final line editing and formatting. I use custom styles and it just works.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

All I know is that my process seems to work.

I write in Scrivener, then export to Word for final line editing and formatting. I use custom styles and it just works.

Yes, because you're USING Styles. Scrivener simply outputs very basic RTF. It's a process that should work. It would work for others, too, if they'd bother to learn STYLES. That's the entire magical secret of not getting cruft in the HTML output.

Hitch

[gmw]

Hitch, I am content to bow to your greater experience in trying to extract something usable from Word. I don't use much Word myself. My own assessments of its output were made from studying the epubs that I saw coming out of Smashwords, and everything I studied was a mess that made hand tuning of the CSS and HTML impractical. (Even from authors that obviously took great care with all other aspects of their work.)

You are right, of course, that learning to use styles effectively is one key to getting cleaner output from your word processor. As a computer geek of long standing these always felt like the natural way to use a word processor, but I do know that few people make good and consistent use of styles. I will take your word for it (no pun intended) that it is possible to clean out the detritus of an old, long used and edited, Word documents using automatic tools, though I've seen little evidence of this happening in anything I studied. (Disclaimer: It has been some years since I made my studies, perhaps the conversion tools have improved.)

I use LibreOffice and a plugin called Writer2xhtml - part of a larger Writer2LaTeX package - slightly customised by me to work with later LO versions. This produces remarkably clean epubs that neatly reflect my named styles in the CSS. There are still things that I adjust and tidy in Sigil, but there is much less work needed than with anything else I tried.

Originally Posted by Hitch

[...]Sorry? This section confused me. You can publish a MOBI there, as well as their other formats--?? And what's the LITB on Amazon got to do with it?

You cannot publish MOBI on Smashwords, or not directly. You can only upload .doc or .epub files. If you upload .doc then Smashwords will generate all the other formats (including .mobi) from that single source, and this includes the ability to have a preview available. You can optionally choose to upload your own .epub file (instead of, or as well as the .doc file). Smashwords does nothing else with the .epub but make it available instead of a meatgrinder generated version. It produces no preview. It gets no conversion to mobi or other formats.

As a result of these limitations: if you only upload an epub, as I did for my novels, then no preview of the books is available on Smashwords. I did, for a while, entertain the naive notion that people would be content to read the preview on Amazon and still buy from Smashwords if that was their preferred store, but I don't think that happens very often.


I first published on Smashwords not long after they introduced support for uploading epub files. I had high hopes that it was the start of something more, but that seems to have fizzled. (It has been almost two years since I last published anything - I can't quite believe that much time has gotten away from me - so it is possible there are subtle changes in the process I haven't seen yet.)

My guess is that Smashwords is accepting the reality that you and I might not like very much: that they have done as much as the vast majority of their authors are ever going to use. Still guessing, I would say they found that so few use the epub upload feature that it's not worth expanding. (It's either that, or they've thrown their hands in the air and given up.)