Greyed out font in Kindle books

[muraiken]

I recently purchased a Kindle Paperwhite. The 1st book I purchased had some chapters where the font was greyed out rather than black and makes it hard to read. The bold font is already maxed out so it's not that issue and when I called customer service, they couldn't tell me what was happening. Anyone have a clue?

[Tarana]

I think it's an error in the book. To resolve it, use Calibre to remove the DRM and then reload. If it still persists, convert to Epub, delete the mobi or azw file, then convert back to mobi or azw and reinstall on your device. Should work fine then.

I have only run into this with self-published books, but even then, not often because most people seem to follow the rules. Calibre does a lot to fix errors by removing stuff it doesn't expect should be there, apparently.

Note: if you complain with an email message, very often there will be a fix for the book within a short time.

[HarryT]

The font may be set to some colour other than black, which is rendering as grey. The only way to be sure would be to look at the code.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

The font may be set to some colour other than black, which is rendering as grey. The only way to be sure would be to look at the code.

this is probably the cause, yes

[HarryT]

Actually, I tell a lie: looking at the code isn't the only way to be sure . Look at the book in Kindle for PC, or the Kindle App on a phone or tablet, and see what colour the font is there.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Actually, I tell a lie: looking at the code isn't the only way to be sure . Look at the book in Kindle for PC, or the Kindle App on a phone or tablet, and see what colour the font is there.

Or even read.amazon.com in your browser.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by muraiken

I recently purchased a Kindle Paperwhite. The 1st book I purchased had some chapters where the font was greyed out rather than black and makes it hard to read. The bold font is already maxed out so it's not that issue and when I called customer service, they couldn't tell me what was happening. Anyone have a clue?

Customer services seems to be useless in this case. There is nothing wrong. The code in the book is set to use some color other than black. And it is displaying as it should. It's the eBook, not the Kindle.

If the eBook has no DRM or you can remove the DRM and you have it in KF8 (AZW3) format, you can use the Calibre editor and remove the color code(s) from the CSS.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Tarana

I think it's an error in the book. To resolve it, use Calibre to remove the DRM and then reload. If it still persists, convert to Epub, delete the mobi or azw file, then convert back to mobi or azw and reinstall on your device. Should work fine then.

I have only run into this with self-published books, but even then, not often because most people seem to follow the rules. Calibre does a lot to fix errors by removing stuff it doesn't expect should be there, apparently.

Note: if you complain with an email message, very often there will be a fix for the book within a short time.

It's not an error. I have seen eBooks with color codes. They aren't in error. So reporting this as an error is itself an error.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's not an error. I have seen eBooks with color codes. They aren't in error. So reporting this as an error is itself an error.

If it makes it hard to read on an e-ink device and it is sold for use on an e-ink device, it is an error.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

If it makes it hard to read on an e-ink device and it is sold for use on an e-ink device, it is an error.

It is not an error. What the OP may find hard to read, I may find perfectly easy to read. I've seen text in some gray shades on my H2O and I've had no issue reading the text.

It's an annoyance at most.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's not an error. I have seen eBooks with color codes. They aren't in error. So reporting this as an error is itself an error.

Pretend he said an "issue" with the eBook. In other words, his point was that the hardware was not at fault, it was the book itself that resulted in the grayed out text.

[krazy4katz]

I purchased the book about Leonardo DaVinci by Walter Isaacson from the digital library. I read the book on the kindle and look at the images on my cell phone at the same time. Really awful. Probably will have to give up and read it on my computer. Great book, but yes, the color images are washed out.

[Shinytop]

Have had similar issues on two books, both bought from AZ. With both when I went to fonts a Publisher's font was available which made the light portions readable.

[JSWolf]

I've seen some eBooks where the graphics were too small and they needed to be larger as they were important. Sometimes when graphics are used in place of text, they can be too small and very hard to read.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I've seen some eBooks where the graphics were too small and they needed to be larger as they were important. Sometimes when graphics are used in place of text, they can be too small and very hard to read.

FWIW, the latest update for Kindle has a Report Content Error category for Image errors, including Illegible Text and Poor Quality. It seems if enough people report issues, a note appears on the Kindle edition product page that it has ‘quality issues’.

As for greyed out text, I think publishers can also define ‘media queries’ when defining CSS properties and in theory could apply a more appropriate style for Kindles to mitigate this issue. But I doubt many take the trouble to do so.