Do you want paragraph spacing in your Kindle books?

[Quitch]

Even though I have a physical copy somewhere, I decided I wanted to have a copy of one of my favourite books ever no matter where I was; so I purchased The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks for my Kindle. Sweet.

Except, there's this annoying spacing between paragraphs. Every Kindle book I've read so far uses indents, with spaces dividing chapters and jumps in time or location. I find it quite distracting, there are so many divides that I'm finding it breaks the flow of the text. Perhaps it's because I'm on the second smallest condensed font set and see a lot of gaps, or perhaps it's because of the books I've read up to this point, but it can't help but bug me.

I then considered that perhaps this is how people like their Kindle books and there have been complaints about "wall of text " syndrome or something. Hard to imagine, that's how books are, but you never know.

Here's what it looks like:
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb108/Quitchy/Forum%20Images/th_ThePlayerOfGames.png (http://s211.photobucket.com/albums/bb108/Quitchy/Forum%20Images/?action=view&current=ThePlayerOfGames.png)

Here's what'd I'd expect it to look like:
http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb108/Quitchy/Forum%20Images/th_ThePostman.png (http://s211.photobucket.com/albums/bb108/Quitchy/Forum%20Images/?action=view&current=ThePostman.png)

Is it just me? I checked the physical copy and it doesn't have that spacing either.

I have fired off a note to the publisher regarding this.

[Lamalo]

Photobucket is not your friend. I see no images.

Also, I'm with you, a full space between the paragraphs on my kindle is a pain, considering I read in somewhat medium/large font.

[triggercut]

Yes please. Spacing between paragraphs whenever possible. I am conditioned to not mind when reading in a real, physical book...but also conditioned to hate it when reading digital text.

[Jonathan Crane]

The Player of Games is excellent Banks, so credit for starting off with a wonderful book.

I've got to disagree with Triggercut - I would find that kind of extra spacing completely distracting - like having ... between every paragraph. It knocks out the flow of the text and makes me think the author wants a significant pause after every paragraph. Ugh. Will the good people at Amazon refund your money?

[forgeforsaken]

I don't see that on my Kindle. Even checked a Banks book, no spaces like that.

[BleedTheFreak]

This drove me crazy to, one some .pdf files I wanted to put in my Kindle.

The solution is to use Calibre - there is an option to remove paragraph spacing when you convert to the Kindle.

1. Right-click the book.
2. Convert
3. In the Look and Feel section select "remove spacing between paragraphs"
4. Save and copy to your Kindle!

Worked like a charm for me.

[Chris Nahr]

You'd think there would be an option for this sort of thing, the Kindle being an electronic device and all...

[Quitch]

The problem is the novel uses paragraph spacing for location and time transitions IIRC, but the publisher has put them everywhere.


Will the good people at Amazon refund your money?

I haven't asked, but I like the book too much to send back. I'm getting used to the format now, but it's not my preferred way of reading the book.


I don't see that on my Kindle. Even checked a Banks book, no spaces like that.

Are the books you're checking published by the same people? Note the region too.


Photobucket is not your friend. I see no images.

Images are public and even logged out of Photobucket I can see them here.

[Lamalo]

Images are public and even logged out of Photobucket I can see them here.


Indeed, now it works great, but initially it didn't for me. Maybe Tapatalk does not like Photobucket.

[stusser]

Every ebook is formatted differently-- there isn't even any commonalities inside publishers. It's the wild west.

Forget formatting, at this point I'm happy if my purchased commercial ebooks don't have any obvious OCR errors.

[mkozlows]

They may be poorly made, but at least they only cost the same as a hardcover. (Thanks, publishers!)

[Daniel Ford]

I've never seen that before, and I've bought forty-one ebooks from Amazon. My guess is that I'd find it moderately irritating, given how long it takes to move to the next page. But at least it's not in Topaz format; I've reached the point where I'll send Amazon a request to cancel the order if I purchase a book and it's a .tpz file.

[Kryten]

Paragraph spacing? Pfft. A book I purchased last night is entirely in Italics. I'm just working out how to complain to Amazon now...

[TheLastBaron]

This drove me crazy to, one some .pdf files I wanted to put in my Kindle.

The solution is to use Calibre - there is an option to remove paragraph spacing when you convert to the Kindle.

1. Right-click the book.
2. Convert
3. In the Look and Feel section select "remove spacing between paragraphs"
4. Save and copy to your Kindle!

Worked like a charm for me.

This. I use Calibre for everything now.

[Quitch]

Impressively, the publisher has come back to me saying they have now fixed the issue.


Thank you for your email. We are always glad to have feedback from our customers and are keen to improve our products, so we really are grateful when a customer takes the time to let us know if there is a problem with one of our titles.

The spacing issue you encountered was, unfortunately, a feature of some earlier ebooks. However, I have now fixed the formatting of this title and resupplied it to the Kindle store. Allowing time for processing, the corrected title should be available by the end of this week, at which point you should be able to re-download it through your Kindle account.

Now that I have been informed of this problem with one of Iain M. Banks’s titles I will be able to look at his other titles to make sure the same error does not occur in them. I will endeavour to rectify any problems as quickly as I can, but please do feel free to email me if you encounter spacing (or other) errors in any more Hachette Digital ebooks.

Many thanks again for your time.

Best wishes

Becca

[Chuck]

I want the ability to edit text, so I can manually fix all the format errors and word run-ons (italicized text sometimes ignorespaces forexample).

[Nawid A]

Ebook formatting is pretty atrocious in general.