[Mathew Reuther]

I was recently working on ebook templates for my series and I came across the fact that the Nook, by default, opens a new book and eliminates a great deal of the formatting work done by the publisher.

So, for example, items meant to be centered like book titles and author names, are not. Line-spacing is all wrong, and the Nook line spacing options are inadequate. You can;t actualy adjust fonts independently of using publisher defaults. Reading on my Fire I can easily switch fonts, but on a Nook I am stuck with EITHER font choice OR proper display of the book.

I have been weighing buying a Kindle Paperwhite or a Nook Glowlight for extremely portable nighttime reading, but after seeing how the Nook actually deals with allowing the people who created the content to display it, I am certainly not considering the nook any longer.

Which I think is sad, because I already have two Kindles (three total in the house) and wanted to add in some variety.

Maybe the Kobo? *sigh*

 

[Mike D. aka jmiked]

Ebook formatting is all over the place. While the Mobi and ePub formats do have a published standard, the different reader implementations all seem to display things differently. I wish publishers would learn that just because the book looks good in MS Word or the like, it does not mean that it will look good on a Kindle/Nook/Kobo reader without tweaking for each device. I had a recent experience doing a copy-editing job for a fellow who thought it was a good idea to indent paragraphs and center text using spaces. Not to mention using a double dash for an em dash. I also gave him a virtual dope-slap for setting full justification as default, but that's more of personal taste.

As much as I like reading on an eInk screen, I generally read on Android tablets that allow the user control over fonts, paragraph and line spacings, indents, justification, etc. Almost all Android/IOS apps are better at rendering text than any of the dedicated devices, IMHO.

I'm looking at getting a Kobo reader soon, as according to the User Guide I downloaded, it appears to have more settings than either the Kindle or Nook readers.

Mike

 

[Mathew Reuther]

I read and cringed.

It took a couple of days to get my template working, but the results make me happy enough in .mobi as well as .epub. So long as the reader/viewer is obeying my formatting, anyway. (Amusingly enough, the Amazon cloud reader and sampler does not obey my font size instructions on the title page, for example. This is, of course, a minor issue. It obeys the important things like indents, centering, paragraph spacing, etc.)

My goal was to create as consistent an experience as possible across all the various platforms. Unfortunately the Nook in particular looks wrong unless you override . . .

I too have heard some decent things about the Kobo. Maybe Sony will come out with a lit version this year?