Kindle indenting issues

This is driving me nuts. I have my novel all formatted and it looks fantastic on my Kindle. But today, I uploaded it to my iPad to check it on the Kindle for iPad app, curious to see how it translated to a larger screen.

The first thing I noticed was that all my images (I'm using .gifs as chapter headings) show a white background, thanks to iPad using a light gray background color rather than white. Annoying, but not the end of the world.

What DOES bother me is the paragraph indents. Kindle automatically indents each paragraph, so you aren't supposed to need to put that into your HTML/CSS code. I haven't, and it works great on the actual Kindle device. But for whatever reason, on the iPad (and from what I've been reading online, on the iPhone, Mac and PC Kindle programs), the first-line paragraph indent is a single space. There is no extra line spacing between the paragraphs, so this makes it really difficult to read. I was hoping someone else here has experience with fixing this and could give me some tips? I'm sure I could do a work-around and put a text-indent value in the CSS for my p tag, but I'm hoping to avoid that. I know people like to be able to modify how their Kindle shows text (I have bad eyes, so personally I always enlarge the font sizes), and would rather not override that ability.

I asked this on the Kindle DTP boards, but the only answer I've gotten so far says that the Kindle software for other devices indents differently, and there's nothing you can do. I'm sure they're right, but since all the other ebooks I have on it have bigger paragraph indents, I can't help thinking there has to be some solution!

Thanks!

Thanks for the advice, David. I hand-code all my HTML in Notepad, so there shouldn't be anything extra there that I don't want. In a regular browser, the basic paragraphs are normal - no indents and a blank line between, the way the p tag usually works in web browsers. I haven't styled it otherwise, since I was letting the Kindle do the indenting for me. And on an actual Kindle, it's perfect. It's just weird that the iPad's kindle app only seems to indent one space.

I have special p classes defined for no indent, centered, headings, etc., but have not styled the basic p tag yet. I was advised on the Kindle boards not to, but after seeing that not all the Kindle software indents the same, I think that's going to have to be my solution. I'll try your suggestion of 1em and see how it goes!

I haven't tried Calibre yet, though I think I may need to when it comes time to do the ePub version. I still need to look into the best ways to do that. I'm hoping to find a way to convert my html to epub rather than using Word docs, since I now have my html exactly how I want it.

For now, I've added a p style in the CSS to do a 1em indent, and it looks much better. (Actually, I tried 2em first, but it was too big, so I'm going to adjust it down before I finalize things.)

Thanks for all the help!

PS: I'm not a fan of blank lines between paragraphs, either.

dgaughran said:

@AllisonK

I think it's good to view it in Kindle-for-PC, increase the font size, and make the window smaller to mimic that of a Kindle. Then you can get a good view of what your formatting will look like, and you can make the appropriate calls on indents etc.

Click to expand...

I've just been uploading it directly to my Kindle so far. And my iPad, to test that version. I also downloaded the Kindle Previewer, which lets you see how it will look on the various devices when you just want to check something quickly. Though it probably wouldn't hurt to install Kindle-for-PC, too, just to make sure all the formatting works there as well. I want to cover all my bases.