Kindle eBook Layout Issues

KDP provides electronic proofs mocking up all the major reading devices on your bookshelf page--did you check it there?

Richard

Find people who will test the book for a free copy. You need users to look at the book not only on a variety of Kindle devices, but on tablets, smart phones and computers using the kindle app.

That said, layout is not going to be utterly fabulous on any smart phone that's of the smaller sort; it's the nature of the beast.

But it should certainly be easy to read and navigate.

AW Admin said:

Find people who will test the book for a free copy.

Click to expand...

Or convince them to download a free sample, which is about 10% of the whole.

I did that for your book on my PC, mini iPad, and Samsung smartphone. They all looked equally good. You are using straight text with little or no ornamentation: bold, italics, etc. As long as you keep to that you should not have any problems.

Amazon gives advice on what to do and to avoid. Tables, for instance, are to be avoided. Images can be added, but there are a few things you should do if you decide in the future to do that.

On one of my books I put a full page color image opposite the beginning of each chapter. It worked well both on my ebooks and my print books. I did have to convert my color frontispages to black and white for print and heighten the contrast so that they looked OK on the print.

On two others I put an image below each chapter title and above the opening text of several chapters. This worked because the images were very simple and so were readable even on small Kindles (of which I have four).

On a couple of others I put images inside the text. This worked because I made them (a) simple and (b) not very tall. This last minimizes the introduction of blank space when a reader chooses a format that puts the image either at the end or beginning of a screen.

On my latest books I abandoned including images, not because of technical issues, but artistic and practical ones. First, you have to be a good artist or have one to do the work for you (which I did). Second, the art has to complement your writing, not duplicate it, and that takes judgment and time to apply that judgment. Third, the art was nice but I felt added too little to the text. Better, I feel, for me to spend all the time writing the book.

The layout of the sample looked fine on my Motorola phone. I did find it interesting how you set it up; I've never seen it done quite like that. (I.e. copyright, links, TOC, Intro, Blurb, Sample from chapter 6.)

Although I can see the point of starting where there is more action going on (ch. 6), it makes me wonder if you might turn off some readers who may want to read the book but would be bothered by the spoilers. It also makes me wonder why you don't want potential readers to start at the beginning.

Pricing your book at 1.79 seemed low considering it's 508 pages.

I like your web site concept.

I just downloaded the sample to my phone and the only thing I noticed about the formatting was that you had spaces between indented paragraphs. Normally you only need to insert spaces between block paragraphs, as the space does the same job as the indent. Apart from that it seems okay.

Who the heck can read on a phone?

Okay, I have old eyes. But the bottom line is that you simply cannot guarantee that your book will be perfect on every device out there. The Kindle app does pretty well on most devices, but some people don't use the same settings that you'll test on, some devices will have different resolutions and some will need to be tweaked by the reader to make the book look it's best. And if you test it on a Samsung, Apple and Windows device, you can be sure they're trying to read it on a Blackberry.

That said, borrow your friend's phone and see what is actually happening. It may be they are using an old app, strange lighting setting or old software on the phone. I've found the Kindle app to be about the best reader for across the board compatibility, but nothing is perfect and users can muck up anything.

Jeff

I, personally, don't think that's entirely true. You can assure your work displays correctly on the devices 99% of people will use because the errors are in the code, not the device. Assuming it is a plain prose book, not full or pictures, formulas, or shape poems, a very cleanly coded book will display well on pretty much any platform that is functioning correctly--that is the joy of ebooks. A book with a lot of superfluous code will be unreliable.

I don't have the mobile app handy, but I've checked the sample on:
PC/Amazon Look Inside: Seems fine, though could use a bit more whitespace (extra line breaks around the scene break '***'s and chapter headings would be nice).
Kindle Paperwhite 2016: Looks really good, lack of whitespace is still there but much less noticable.

Nothing is jumping out as a major formatting issue, honestly. I think you need to ask your reader for more details (and screenshots if possible).

Book looks like a good read, it's nice to see all those familiar place names. The current cover is also really nice, big improvement on the previous one on your blog. I hope to have a proper read of it soon!