Typography of ebook formatting - Standards (Yay or Nay?)

[amalthia]

I've been thinking of making a series of posts about typography in fan fiction ebooks. This is something I've been giving thought to lately because currently there is no set standard for how people create epubs and mobipocket ebooks of fan fiction.

The big question is should there be a standard?

There is a general standard for how people post fiction to archives, LJ/DW, and in other communities. Authors use a standard template of sorts to share relevant information such as Title, Author, Summary, Rating, Length/Word Count, Warnings, and Author Notes.

However, how an author formats the rest of the story is up to them, such as margins, font type, section breaks, indents or blank space between paragraphs. Through years of online fandom people came to a general consensus as to what looks best on a browser and as to what information is most important. Those that share their fic in purple font on black backgrounds in type 8 Times New Roman fonts are generally ignored by anyone with eyes that can see.

With ebook formats there isn't a fandom approved set standard.

I have a standard I've come up with after three years of trial and error. Reading on my device was the best teacher as to what works and what does not.

I've found that for myself I prefer to get as much out of my battery as possible and as a result I've chosen to go with indenting paragraphs instead of paragraph spaces. On smaller screens the indents make the most use of the limited screen space. What works on a 15-22 inch computer monitor does not work as well on 3-6 inch screens.

I've also stuck with Times New Roman because for me it's easier to read at a smaller font size. I find that I love when Chapters start on a brand new page with a certain amount of space between the header and the beginning chapter.

I've also found that I like obvious section breaks such as ***** or +++++ or some other unique keyboard characters. This has more to do with actual converting html to epub/mobipocket. Section breaks that rely on blank spaces do not translate well and disappear. That one took me awhile to figure out what was going on. I had originally thought that the author's did not have a section break when they switched pov or scenes. It made for some very confusing reading until I figured out what was going on. Further investigation showed that the authors relied on blank paragraphs to create their section breaks. Earlier versions Calibre had stripped the blank lines in order to remove spaces between paragraphs and create indents. (this discovery falls into "wish I knew then what I know now") Now I know to watch out for extra blank paragraphs indicating a section break and manually add **** to indicate a section break. So when the file is converted the section break is not lost.

I also love having a Table of Contents. Not all stories formatted in epub or mobipocket have one. For shorter stories this is not much of an issue but for anything over 100k words it's nice to have.

I like the artwork in the story I'm reading to be centered.

These are just some general standards I have come up with over the years.

Ebook devices are growing in popularity in fandom but there is no real dialogue amongst those creating ebooks for portable devices. I'm not sure who all is even creating them. I've met a few authors who've done remarkable things when they created an epub version of their fan fiction stories. They did things I sadly do not have time to do like dropcaps, stylized chapter headings, and etc.

I'm not sure it's really possible to create a standard because most of us have our own preferences and I'm not sure if it's actually necessary. The only standard I can think of that is a necessity is the Author and Title not being left off the actual story.

My friend pointed out that it took years of fighting and wank before we have the general posting standards we have now for stories posted online in web browsers. And there is no real consensus for warnings.

Currently I don't know any two people who even merge stories the same way. I'm not sure we'll ever get to the stage of two people converting stories the same way. Though if the major archives make it possible to export into mobipocket or epub that'll maybe take the ebook fans a step closer to some sort of standard.

Not sure when or why I'm so interested in typography and standards but I've been noticing that many people who create ebooks off fan fiction treat the file as if it's going to be read on in a browser on a computer monitor that has a lot more space. I'm not sure if it's a style choice to keep the blank space between paragraphs or if it's something they would like to remove but don't know how?

But as to my original question as to whether there should be a standard.

I myself do not know.

I think on one hand if authors knew exactly how the epub/mobipocket story would turn out maybe they would be more receptive to sharing their works in multiple formats?

However, on the other hand what if everyone likes eating up their screen real estate with empty paragraph spaces? And would it kill ebook design creativity? I have some lovely epubs on my device that don't fit my current conversion style. I'd hate to never see anyone go full out on their own fic because they are trying to stick to a "standard."

I think I've narrowed down what is most important to me as a reader of ebooks on portable devices. That's a Table of Contents, clear title and author name, summary, indented paragraphs, clear section breaks (like *****), centered images, and chapters starting on a new page. I think if ebooks hit these bench marks then margins, font type, and font size aren't nearly as important.

I think tomorrow or later this week I'll cover why I don't think PDF is a good ebook format for portable devices.

Comments

via network

[jumpuphigh]

AO3 is working on having stories in downloadable formats. I'm sure they'd love your input. cesy was looking for testers just the other day.
http://cesy.dreamwidth.org/415252.html

Re: via network

[amalthia]

I've been helping test out the downloads. :) And sending in feedback though it's been a hectic few days since I got back from vacation. I'll have to see if there has been any chances since I last test downloaded the files. :)

[elf]

I have plenty of PDFs for my device, but probably because I know how to make PDFs exactly as I like them, and I'm still very lost on the ePub production; I know *nothing* of css, and can't get calibre to add page breaks per chapter.

(Have downloaded most current version of Calibre; about to install it on the Vista machine and start figuring out how to make it Do Things. Soon.)

[amalthia]

You're the only person I really knows that makes PDFs for a 6 inch screen. :) Did I send you the link to the tutorial I made for how to create epub ebooks? It doesn't require much use of css because I can send you the codes I use and label them so you know what part goes to what.

I can also send you a sample html source so you can kind of see how they go together if you're interested?

p.s.

[amalthia]

I do have the most current version of Calibre and I'm loving the DeDRM plugin! and there are other tweaks...It's been pretty interesting testing out things. :)

p.s. again

[amalthia]

Forgot to add there are two ways to add a page break before chapters

you can use this code before each page break

P style="page-break-after:always"> 

(I removed the < from the first P in the above code)

or use an < h2 > tag for your chapters and in calibre under the look and feel section add this code to the css override.

h2 {text-align: center; font-size: larger; padding-bottom: 20pt; page-break-before: always;}

the key item from that code is the page-break-before.

If you've done all this and it has not worked then it may not hurt to ask the mobile read forum (calibre forum) for help. That's what I did to get most of this figured out.

[valiha]

I can give you one reason why I think pdf can still be a good format for portable devices, if care is taken to set it to fit the device in question.

I bought a 6" Astak EZ Reader recently, mostly so I could transfer all the articles and notes I took for my postgrad studies. I live in the south of Europe and my language has a lot of diacritics (Ć, ć, Č, č are only some of them) and no matter what I did, I could not convert it to epub to show these characters. Calibre couldn't manage it, Sigil neither, and I also tried several online converters. I asked for help at the MobileRead forum but even with @font-face and proper fonts in the correct folder it didn't work for all characters - there were always a couple that came out as gibberish.

Considering that this was a textbook I needed to study for an exam, I was very frustrated. Finally, a forum member offered to convert the original html files to properly formatted pdf. The resulting file was perfect for my screen size, it wasn't very large and all the characters I needed were there.

I think pdf (or any format for that matter) can be good for portable devices provided it's produced with those devices in mind. That means changing the size of the paper and margins in Word or your preferred text processor instead of simply using page settings meant for printing.

[amalthia]

What you pointed out is a very good point and I'll make sure to add it to the pro list for PDFs. :)

Sadly, I know of only one person that actually makes PDFs sized for 6 inch screens. But I know what you mean about the character encoding issues. I'm currently trying to figure out how to get three different languages to convert to epub and it's just not working. Polish and Russian aren't very well supported on ebook devices yet. I don't even want to think about Japanese or Chinese...I ended up leaving the story as an RTF because I could not get the diacritics to convert properly either. But out of thousands of fan fiction stories I've only run into this problem once. (though I think the Russian fans may run into this issue more often than I have)

One of the other points I was going to bring up is if they ever do get the character encoding thing down for epubs it'll have an advantage over PDF because now with the 5 inch screens a person would have to make two PDFs if they wanted it to look good on the 5 inch portable devices. Epub is more flexible in terms of fitting to various screen sizes in a way PDF is not.

[valiha]

Ouch! I wouldn't like to be in your shoes right now.

I think as things stand now, I'll only be converting for my own needs, and mostly non-fiction, where I care tremendously how everything will work and flow together. I'm prepared to let a lot of things slide in fanfic, though lately I find that my tolerance for typos and such is getting lower and lower.

I will probably switch to epub completely once they solve the character encoding issue because learning html and css was one of the subjects we were taught, and I love tinkering with css. :) I'll still continue converting fanfic for my own needs, but perhaps I'll find someone in my own fandom to share the files with. Right now I download and keep them as txt files, but I've made templates for my device which I will test once I have some more time on my hands.

I just get a kick out of reading a western fandom such as Magnificent Seven on a high tech device. Makes me want to search for steampunk Mag7! :D

[astolat]

FWIW, what I am currently thinking about for the AO3 as an eventual goal is to allow different users to have ebook downloading style preferences. We're just adding skins right now, and probably what we would like do long-term is something like let people specify a skin for downloading (possibly different skins for different formats) and then use that when creating the different formats for that particular user. :)

[amalthia]

This would be nice. :) It may take awhile to create but it'll be worth it to give users flexibility and options.

[sholio]

Ooh! This is very useful to me, because I don't use e-readers myself, but especially with my original stuff moreso than my fanfic, I would like to eventually offer it in different formats for different readers' needs. *bookmarks*

[amalthia]

Yeah, strangely enough what works in a mass market paper back works rather well on an ebook device. :) (though there is really no need for a header or footer) the devices display the page numbers automatically and headers take up space at the top of the screen.

It's kind of backwards from what we do on browsers. On browsers the extra space between paragraphs makes it easier to read the story but on the smaller screen the indents work better. :)

I've been converting some of your longer fic into all the major ebook formats. They are located here I haven't finished converting everything but I got your novel sized fics converted.

[valiha]

You know, I found that .pdfs on my Astak don't show a header/footer or any kind of page number, so I do add it to my notes and articles. I also add a different header for different chapters, so I can tell where I am in my textbook. I don't know whether it's because of the firmware in question or if that's the way on most readers - I just don't have a point of comparison.

[amalthia]

With epubs and LRF files on the Sony you don't need page numbers on the file itself because the device displays something like page 11 of 200. On the Kindle I think it gives a percent?

As for PDFs the fonts are so tiny when I move them over to my device I couldn't read the page number. The Sony I think does have a PDF reflow because if I'm remembering correctly I did try PDFs at one point and I think when I was on page 5 the PDF still displayed page 3 or 2...

Most of my experience has been with fan fiction and regular fiction novels. Textbooks are another thing entirely.

[naraht]

Personally I like to be able to download single, well-formatted files rather than having to read multiple chapters online. But I do my reading on my computer monitor, so only being able to access files that were formatted for small ebook readers would be very annoying to me.

[amalthia]

Yeah, the key is to give readers options. (right now not many authors do that)

I think the efiction coders and the OTW archive coders are working at making it possible for those who do read offline to export the story into the format of choice while still giving readers who do read on their computers the ability to keep on reading as they always have. :)

But in many cases most stories posted to LJ are in chapters with no single file download option and if one is provided it's in PDF sized for a 8 inch paper aka the computer monitor. Which does not work so great for portable devices. If you're reading on a computer this post doesn't really affect you at all. Because I don't see authors ever going epub and mobipocket only. (though Firefox does have a epub add-on so users can read epubs in their browers...)

[scribblesinink]

I'm also someone who creates PDFs for her 6" reader ;-) Just for personal use, though, and not for my own fiction but other people's stories found on the 'net. I find it the fastest and easiest way to get a large block of text on the ereader. Having a (almost) bare source file, like optimized-for-print versions, helps very much: it's simply a matter of print-to-PDF on a 6" page size.

I'd like to offer epubs of my fiction, especially for longer files. Some of your tips were very useful. The "problem" is that it already takes an hour or two per story to get it posted to a couple archives, and pimped in a few comms, with every archive requiring its own formatting tweaks. To have to reformat for epub just seems... Too Much Work. Especially since I have no idea if I'm Doing It Right, or if anyone is even interested...!

[amalthia]

Yes! I know what you mean about how much work it is to get a story posted everywhere and in multiple formats. I would not even bother more formats for a story under 15k words myself.

I have a guide on how to create PDFs sized for 6 inch screen but I kept running into trouble with the margins and the fonts. I have made a few but I never quite liked them as much for my own reading.

For the Ebook Library I have to be careful to stick with formats that fit on a 3 inch screen and a 8 inch screen. Once they started bringing out the 5 inch screen readers I kind of gave up on experimenting with PDFs.

From the metafandom delicious

[sally_maria]

It's probably too many years of reading fanfic online, but I find I still prefer the space breaks between paragraphs, even more on the smaller screen. Anything formatted without has me going "wall of text, cannot read".

I don't bother with ebook formats, though. I just copy across the text files that are the usual way I store and read fanfic, and that works very well for me. As long as I can get a single file copy of the story, rather than having to copy and paste all the parts, I'm happy.

Re: From the metafandom delicious

[amalthia]

I was reading published ebook novels as well as fan fiction and the switching between the two formatting types was too much for me.

The stories were shorter if I used indents so I could read more while traveling without having to worry about re-charging my device. :)

I've never met any two people that had the exact same reading preferences. :) So it does not at all shock me that someone does prefer the extra space on their device. Out of curiosity which ebook device do you read on?

Re: From the metafandom delicious

[sally_maria]

I've read a few of the classics that came with my reader, but not actually bought any commercial ebooks. I can see why that would make a difference.

Looking back at them I notice that they do have white space round the outside of the text in a way that text files don't, which does a surprising amount to reduce the "wall of text" effect.

I have a Sony PRS 505, with an excellent battery life, and I've only ever taken it away for weekends, so I can see why that would make a difference as well. Before that I was reading on my iPod Classic, where the screen really was tiny, so this doesn't feel too bad at all.

Re: From the metafandom delicious

[amalthia]

I know when I was reading more RTF files I seemed to go through my battery much quicker but I think it's because I had to make more page turns and I think RTF took longer to reflow?

I'm not exactly a big fan of how most ebooks look when I first buy them so I crack the DRM and reconvert them to my specifications. (especially on the margin front)