Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines 2015.4

[jhowell]

The Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines has been updated to version 2015.4. Changes listed are:

• Reorganized document.
• Updated 2.2.2 Kindle Previewer Software
• Added 2.2.3 Kindle Textbook Creator
• Added 2.2.4 Kindle Comic Creator
• Added 2.2.5 Kindle Kids’ Book Creator
• Added 3 Comparing Formats
• Updated 9.3 Text Guidelines
• Added 12 Creating Fixed-Format Books Without Pop-ups
• Added Appendix A Enhanced Typesetting

2.2.2 Kindle Previewer Software

You can also try the new Kindle Previewer 3 Beta, which supports preview of Amazon's recently launched Enhanced Typesetting features, such as typographically correct drop caps and improved spacing between words through hyphenation, kerning, and ligatures. Users are also able to preview books on a Kindle for iOS skin. You can download the beta version of Kindle Previewer 3 Beta from www.amazon.com/kindleformat/kindlepreviewer

There is new information about book authoring for enhanced typesetting scattered throughout the document. (Better late than never?)

[tomsem]

Wonder if the beta previewer will finally work with a more current (and supported) JRE on OS X. I'll try it out later...

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines has been updated to version 2015.4. Changes listed are:


2.2.2 Kindle Previewer Software


There is new information about book authoring for enhanced typesetting scattered throughout the document. (Better late than never?)

Thanks.

In Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines 2015.4

What does (8.0) "forced typeface throughout the entire book (reflowable only)" mean ?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Thanks.

In Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines 2015.4

What does (8.0) "forced typeface throughout the entire book (reflowable only)" mean ?

I believe it means that you shouldn't force a specific font to be used for body text of a normal (i.e. reflowable) book. Doing this would prevent the reader from picking their prefered font. Special fonts are ok for selected parts of a book, such as chapter headings.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I believe it means that you shouldn't force a specific font to be used for body text of a normal (i.e. reflowable) book. Doing this would prevent the reader from picking their prefered font. Special fonts are ok for selected parts of a book, such as chapter headings.

Thanks.

Thus (to modify an actual example) an SF author who wanted all speech from alienA in a different font and all from AlienB in a third font (and embedded fonts accordingly) would be violating this guideline and indeed if a reader didn't select or deselected 'publisher fonts' this distinction would not be visible.

[jhowell]

I now think that my previous answer was likely incorrect or at least incomplete. Perhaps someone who really knows this stuff may chime in.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I now think that my previous answer was likely incorrect or at least incomplete. Perhaps someone who really knows this stuff may chime in.

I'd say you got it exactly right. The CSS shouldn't specify (say) Times New Roman for ordinary paragraphs.

Special font for proper reasons (e.g. alien speech) would be fine.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'd say you got it exactly right. The CSS shouldn't specify (say) Times New Roman for ordinary paragraphs.

Special font for proper reasons (e.g. alien speech) would be fine.

Fine but would it be useful ?

Wouldn't the result be that in 'publisher fonts' mode you would see the special fonts and some unchangeable default for the ordinary paragraphs whereas if you set Bookerly or Helvetica you would only see it, even for the special text.

If so, why not force a font in ordinary text in 'publisher fonts' mode that is distinctively different to the special fonts.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Wouldn't the result be that in 'publisher fonts' mode you would see the special fonts and some unchangeable default for the ordinary paragraphs whereas if you set Bookerly or Helvetica you would only see it, even for the special text.

I haven't done the experiments, so I don't know, but I'd expect that even displaying 'publisher fonts', text that doesn't have a font specified would be displayed with the user-chosen default font.

[dgatwood]

Bear in mind that there's a difference between setting a default body font and forcing a body font.

Setting the default font on the body tag to a custom font shouldn't prevent the device from changing fonts at the user's request, which means Amazon shouldn't have a cow. And if the device is set to use publisher defaults, they'll get the expected rendition for normal paragraphs.

Forcing, by contrast, typically means doing things like specifying the font on individual paragraphs, possibly with !important, and prevents the normal font switching from working, depending on how aggressively you specify the font. You should do that only if the font is critical, e.g. for decorative text like chapter headings. And fonts specified in that way will remain as specified regardless of whether publisher defaults is enabled.

So for your alien text paragraph example, you would need to specify some sort of CSS style class on that paragraph that enables the font in question.

[tomsem]

The Kindle Previewer 3 beta is not a Java app, so no issues running it on my Mac. Nothing fancy, but it seems to work.