Why publishers format ebooks differently than paper books?

[Lemurion]

Dammit Hitch, now you're making me feel bad for doing my own. I haven't got any special characters, so it's a really simple Word doc with just a handful of styles though.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Dammit Hitch, now you're making me feel bad for doing my own. I haven't got any special characters, so it's a really simple Word doc with just a handful of styles though.

I'm constantly amazed at how needlessly complex a lot of the ebooks I encounter are, just in terms of CSS usage. I mean, when you get down to it, most novels should use really basic code, especially in EPUB where you can use UTF-8 and just directly embed the occasional accented character.

But no, I always seem to run into the books that define one font for the body, then override that at the paragraph level, and then they change that with a span tag inside every paragraph...

In fact, I was just cleaning up a series of ebooks last night. I love the content, but every paragraph looked like this:

<p class="c1"><span class="c2"><span><span class=c3">Hey, look,
some words!</span></span></span></p>

Every paragraph. Yes, complete with the unstyled span element.

[Lemurion]

I'm using one font, three main styles. That's pretty much it. The styles handle everything.

[Barty]

There should be no hard coded blank lines between paragraphs. That is what paragraph margins are for.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by moonshot

I am new to e readers. I have a Kobo and the first book I downloaded from Kobo was OK but the second book I got from Google books does have issues. Large gaps between paragraphs, no cover photo, some pages are half blank etc.
How can I calibrate ? Is this done from the e reader?

It depends on the whether you are reading the kepub or epub version. The kepub version is downloaded directly to the device from the Kobo servers. You can adjust the CSS on the device using a file. See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=218814 for details.

If you are reading the epub version, you can edit it after removing DRM. Or, the Kobo driver in calibre can add some extra CSS during the send that can probably solve this.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

It's generally seen as wrong when combined with indented paragraphs. As a rule, you get one or the other.

The block paragraphs (no indents) and blank space system works, but it leads to problems with longer documents. If every paragraph has a space after it, it's hard to distinguish scene breaks unless there's a symbol that divides them. Indented paragraphs provide more flexibility because you can use spaces for something else, and they make it easier to tie paragraphs together as a unit.

But the OP did not mention the use of both extra lines and indents in the same work--of course that's redundant.

A preference for indents does not mean that the use of an extra blank line instead is wrong.

ETA: Just curious. Do you folks who change formatting to echo that of paper books want all lines justified?

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

I still do the double space after a period. Does that make me really old?

I never really learnt it but its major advantage is that it is trivial to automatically remove, but converting to put it in is very hard.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by Catlady

But the OP did not mention the use of both extra lines and indents in the same work--of course that's redundant.

A preference for indents does not mean that the use of an extra blank line instead is wrong.

ETA: Just curious. Do you folks who change formatting to echo that of paper books want all lines justified?

I don't think an extra blank line is wrong, but it does make a lot of fiction harder to read because it makes it more difficult to distinguish between a scene break and a paragraph break.

In my own writing, I use a block paragraph with a space before it to start each scene or chapter. I use indented paragraphs thereafter. It makes it easy for readers to see things like changes in POV and reduces reader confusion. If I were to use blank spaces between paragraphs, I'd have to find another way to distinguish scene changes.

It's not something I do to replicate a paper book on a screen, it's something I do because it's the most efficient way to delineate the difference between scene and paragraph changes. I do it the same way in print and electrons because both sets of readers need to be able to distinguish the two.

On the other hand, I do use ragged right on electronic releases because it reflows better than justified text. So for me, it makes sense to break from print practice on justification but not in paragraphing.

In short, I'm not replicating paper so much as applying the same solution to a common problem: how to distinguish new scenes from new paragraphs.

[GeoffR]

Publishers should allow for the fact that the reader can adjust things like spacing between paragraphs, set full-justification or ragged right, etc. (either by a setting on their ereader, or by editing the book's stylesheet.)

So alignment for the main text should be left undefined so that the reader can choose full-justification or ragged right themselves. Of course titles, chapter headings, and other text that shouldn't change when the main text alignmant changes should be set by the publisher.

Scene breaks should be indicated in a way that allows the user to change the spacing between paragraphs without losing the scene breaks. I.e. indicate a scene break with a special symbol (* * *, etc.), or by capitalising the first few words of the scene, or using a drop-cap, etc. That way the scene break remains visible if the reader changes the paragraph spacing.

Edit: If using space alone to indicate a scene break, at least add the space as padding rather than margin, so if the reader chooses to add spacing between paragraphs then the scene break will still be visible as an extra space.

[Lemurion]

Readers can and do do whatever they want. The only thing I'm saying is that there are reasons behind the default formats, and that people should be aware of the effects their changes might have.

[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Oh, and d) they are culturally inculcated to always say "yes," they know how to do something, when they don't. They don't think of it as lying; in India, it means "yes, I don't know now, but I will learn on this how to do this just perfectly to make you 100% happy." In the US, of course, if someone tells you that they know how to do something, you expect them to mean NOW, not when they're done experimenting on you.

Hmmm, I thought there was a class in US business school on Saying Yes to Any Question (You Can Always Learn it Later). The assumption being these geniuses are so smart they can hit the ground running and learn as they go.

As someone who's worked in mortgage banking for over 28 years, I can promise you, they're usually not smart enough....

[eschwartz]

Well, this thread is a depressing lesson in human stupidity. Why DO they do these things?

Personally, if editing an ebook to adjust for my personal preferences, I like to follow a basic rule of
<h2>Chapter #</h2>
<p>paragraph with <b>bold</b> and <i>italic</i> words (maybe).</p>
<p class="scenebreak">* * *</p>
and a text-indent on the paragraphs, center the chapter, center and marginize the scenebreak.

As a reader, mostly of Fiction where pictures are perhaps not as common, I find it difficult to see why any more than that could ever be needed, although I bet the experts here could find something to prove me wrong.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by icallaci

I have been reading for many, MANY years (and, no, I am not going to tell you how many). During all the years that I read nothing but paper books, I very rarely (actually, never) noticed the formatting. For some reason, a lot of the formatting in ebooks annoys the heck out of me, and I can't rest until I "fix" it. However, this has had a deleterious effect on my reading paper books, because I now notice formatting problems in paper books too! I am sure they were there all along, but I never noticed.

You are not alone ;-)

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Well, this thread is a depressing lesson in human stupidity. Why DO they do these things?

Personally, if editing an ebook to adjust for my personal preferences, I like to follow a basic rule of
<h2>Chapter #</h2>
<p>paragraph with <b>bold</b> and <i>italic</i> words (maybe).</p>
<p class="scenebreak">* * *</p>
and a text-indent on the paragraphs, center the chapter, center and marginize the scenebreak.

As a reader, mostly of Fiction where pictures are perhaps not as common, I find it difficult to see why any more than that could ever be needed, although I bet the experts here could find something to prove me wrong.

Oh, sometimes you need more than that; representing letters, poetry, or chat rooms comes to mind. Still, when I ran a small ezine, I gave my writers that same basic rundown and told 'em that if they needed something else, just let me know in the cover email when they sent the piece.

[icallaci]

Originally Posted by Catlady

ETA: Just curious. Do you folks who change formatting to echo that of paper books want all lines justified?

Yes! Yes, yes, yes. (And not ALL lines--just the body of the text.) But we've had this particular discussion elsewhere, I believe.