Chapter Markers

[jakann86]

Hi,

I'm really struggling with one part of the formatting for my Kindle book. I have completed an html file of the book and everything is working apart from one thing... chapters! I have a ToC at the beginning which works just fine... but if I click in the menu and select 'Go-To' I can only go to Cover, Beginning, ToC, the end. I can't go to the individual chapters directly. This also means that 'time remaining in chapter' doesn't show whilst reading the book. Can anyone help? I've tried creating a .ncx file and .opf file, but I must be coding them wrong because they make no difference whatsoever. Right now I have an html file that is sat on KDP in draft form and is working as stated above.

Thanks,

Jen

[DiapDealer]

You're probably using the html file (only) to convert to a Kindle book. The html file knows nothing about the ncx or the opf file. If you have the opf file and the ncx file coded correctly, you need to use kindlegen/Previewer to convert the opf file--which will know where to find the html, the ncx and any other resource files (provided the paths provided in the opf are valid).

The other option is to create a valid epub and convert/upload that.

If you're just uploading files to KDP--and not doing the conversion on your own computer--I don't know the process well enough to assist.

[Doitsu]

For the TOC GoTo menu item, you'll need to have a corresponding guide item in the .opf file:

<guide>
... 
   <reference href="Text/TOC.xhtml" title="Table Of Contents" type="toc" />
</guide>

For direct chapter selection, you'll need a valid .ncx file with links to each chapter. You can generate both automatically with Sigil, if your chapter titles have been formatted as headings (h1..h6), which are used by Sigil as chapter markers.

[jakann86]

Thanks for the responses. I've uploaded the single html file... which worked apart from the chapters (the ToC does work in the go-to menu - it's just the chapters that aren't working). I've also uploaded a zip file with the html, opf and ncx files and that made no difference. I've tried creating these files with Sigil... no luck (yes, chap titles are formatted with headings). Tried Calibre... no luck. Editing them myself... no luck!

The problem is that, whilst I do understand html to some extent, I am not a programmer so some of the code is alien to me. I suspect there will probably be one stupid error somewhere that is causing these issues.

I use scrivener to write my books and have just tried exporting a mobi from there. When I load that onto my kindle it does allow access to the Chapters from the go-to menu. I didn't really want to do it this way because I prefer to have clean code that works exactly as I want it to... but this may be the best way for me to do it :/ It'll take me a while to configure Scrivener to do what I want it to in compile, but at least everything will be working on the kindle.

Thanks so much for your responses!

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by jakann86

I've tried creating these files with Sigil... no luck (yes, chap titles are formatted with headings).!

Try creating the book (including HTML TOC) from scratch with Sigil using only the html file (and its .css file, if present):

1. Add the book .html file. Right-click Add Semantics > Text.
2. Add the cover image. Right-Click Add Semantics > Cover Image.
3. Press CTRL+T to generate the NCX file and select Tools > Create HTML Table of Contents.
4. Press F8 to enter the Metadata and you're done.

(If the HTML TOC is included in the main .html file, create a copy of the .html file and delete the TOC section, before following the above steps.)

[jakann86]

Thanks Doitsu, I will give that a go!