Support for Indie Authors discussion

Hi, I'm finding my kindle program on PC doesn't read the section breaks I put in between each chapter, so that I have [last paragraph of previous chapter] followed immediately on the screen with the next chapter heading, instead of going to the next page, and I've already painstakingly put in section breaks in the word file. I even went Nuclear with the file for Smashwords.

Is it necessary to put in additional breaks?

I'm using a free word alternative, and used Calibre to convert it to ebook formats. Also have Scrivener, not sure if that would be better than Calibre for this purpose as Scrivener just loves to double up on " marks (so you get ""pain in the ass!"" Jess said, as an example).

GRRR!

I haven't run into that problem.

Nor have I ever run into problems with Scrivener doubling up on quotes, and I've used it to compile over 50 books to Kindle format.

Hi Daniel. On the program you use, are there page breaks that are separate from section breaks? In Word, I use section breaks only to denote where page numbering begins (on print files) and page breaks to start chapters clean on a new page. This could be a simple issue of section breaks being read differently than a page break.

I create my eBook files in HTML, so I put page breaks before chapters in the chapter header style (CSS style sheet).

Looks like you're doing it in Word, so you should be able to define a chapter heading style. Click anywhere in the chapter heading, in the Styles tab right-click on the style being used, select Modify Style. At the bottom left of the window, select Format, then Paragraph. In the Paragraph window click on the Line and Page Breaks tab. Check the Page_break_before option.

However, before doing all this it's highly recommended you use the nuclear option and get rid of ALL formatting in the document, and then address all formatting using the above Styles method. Yes, it's a real pain and you have to jump through hoops to preserve italics, bold, underlined, etc. but it leads to far less headaches in the end. (This is essentially the Smashwords protocol for creating the master document.)

... Which is why I've opted for HTML formatting to begin with. Took a while to figure that out but once I got a working document it was easy to replicate the process in subsequent works.

Good luck!

I use Word for my files, and work in .doc
I use page breaks for chapters.
Then save as html; web page, filtered
No problems.

Saying that, just uploaded my revision for a book, and although it looks fine on the ereader viewer, the tablet version has put annoying hyphenations in to continue words across two lines.
Despite selecting not to do this in Word.
Grr!

Yeah, I already used Nuclear and tried to make the styles thing work but nothing would turn the chapter headings into different styles, must be either the low-end PC or the free alternative to word I'm using. I'll try those options and see.

Try Guido Henkle's "The Zen of Ebook Formatting." It takes a little discipline to learn to use CSS and html, but worth it in the end. If you want me to walk you through the process, let me know. I have much more control over breaks and headers than I have seen with any other process.

Are you using the kindle previewer? I find it doesn't give an accurate representation of page breaks. They seem to get all mashed together but look different upon upload into KDP. I usually email the converted file to my kindle to see how it will look before I start to go crazy trying to fix things.

I dunno...maybe it's just me, but when I read on-screen, that blank page does only one thing: provides an easy place to stop reading. And who wants a reader to do that?

With a clear chapter ending indicator, like: ° ° ° ° plus two line breaks and a centered Chapter XX to introduce the next chapter, the reader has been given the end of chapter jolt will see the words of the next chapter, and hopefully, be hooked to continue reading.

I preview my books on my kindle, and if any issues appear, I fix them. Each kindle user ID has a kindle account they can email their book to, and it will dl to their device.

Or I could sync up my kindle to my PC and drag and drop my book to the documents folder.

The thing is...it doesn't look the same whether you look at it in Kindle or in a Kindle app... You can never win. :P

I tried styles again and that seems to be working, doesn't solve it but generally makes it better because NOW Styles works, so I'm going to be adding Page Breaks to my Section Breaks as well as see how that goes.

The problem with e-readers is they do not all use the same formatting. So what may look perfect on your iPhone may be all over the shop on your PC. I use HTML/CSS coding, I also recommend Guido Henkle's Zen of e-book formatting as mentioned by Morris above. I knew nothing of HTML until I picked this book up and now I do all my own formatting.