Weird book formatting (not Topaz)

[sherylb]

I ran accross a weird format in a couple of books by Julie E. Czerneda a while ago and I wonder if anyone else has seen this in ebooks before.

The first sentence is normal but the rest of the paragraph is indented. I have only seen these two books with that formatting.

The first one I just about didn't read because it was so weird to look at but once I got used to it, it was ok and wasn't too distracting. I downloaded the second book and found it was the same formatting, but since I had already read and gotten used to it with the first one, I went on to read the second one. (BTW, they were both worth it!)

The books are: Ties of Power and Beholder's Eye.

Thanks,
Sheryl

[Jeff]

Sheryl,

That sounds like an error in the conversion of those particular books, not a special format.

If you want the whole long story: When I converted my books from Microsoft Word to Kindle format the first lines in each paragraph were sometimes indented five spaces and sometimes ten. After a few hours of panic, I discovered that Kindle always indents the first line of a paragraph, if I used a tab at the first line, kindle indented the tab as well. I suspect that in the books you mention, the subsequent lines contain some indent character.

Formatting a book for Kindle is not a trivial task. It will take some time before everyone gets up to speed.


Jeff

[cush]

All five of them on my wife's Kindle have the same strange indenting.

[RovingSoul]

I got a book last night, that doesn't have strange indents, but looks as though some one just took excellent pictures of the pages of the original book, and then scanned them in the the Kindle database. It actually makes the book feel more real, however, I think that it loads as a picture rather than text, cause every page turn takes about 5 seconds.

[Leslie]

I got a book last night, that doesn't have strange indents, but looks as though some one just took excellent pictures of the pages of the original book, and then scanned them in the the Kindle database. It actually makes the book feel more real, however, I think that it loads as a picture rather than text, cause every page turn takes about 5 seconds.

That sounds like Topaz. What's the book?

L

[RovingSoul]

I got a book last night, that doesn't have strange indents, but looks as though some one just took excellent pictures of the pages of the original book, and then scanned them in the the Kindle database. It actually makes the book feel more real, however, I think that it loads as a picture rather than text, cause every page turn takes about 5 seconds.

That sounds like Topaz. What's the book?

L

Uh, Mine till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas. I got another book by her, Wallflower Christmas, and its formatting was completely normal.

[Leslie]

Uh, Mine till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas. I got another book by her, Wallflower Christmas, and its formatting was completely normal.

Yes, that's Topaz. It's also from St. Martin's Press. Mike D. has said that he has seen many books from St. Martin's that use the Topaz formatting. It must have to do with whatever process they are using to convert their books. Interesting.

I am reading a Topaz-formatted book right now and it's fine. The font is pretty big which makes it easy to read. This one doesn't look too bad, either. But some people have really complained. It seems that the issue is that there is so much variability in the quality and look.

L

[RovingSoul]

Uh, Mine till Midnight by Lisa Kleypas. I got another book by her, Wallflower Christmas, and its formatting was completely normal.

Yes, that's Topaz. It's also from St. Martin's Press. Mike D. has said that he has seen many books from St. Martin's that use the Topaz formatting. It must have to do with whatever process they are using to convert their books. Interesting.

I am reading a Topaz-formatted book right now and it's fine. The font is pretty big which makes it easy to read. This one doesn't look too bad, either. But some people have really complained. It seems that the issue is that there is so much variability in the quality and look.

L

Well, the slow page turning is irritating, and the text looked very large, when I enlarged it (just to see what would happen). But I read at the smallest font anyway, so it's not really an issue.