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Thread: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II


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Charlie S

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 18, 2014 2:38 PM   in response to: M. A. Baehr in response to: M. A. Baehr
 
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M. A. Baehr wrote:
So ... fonts ... the bane of my existence.

What's the consensus on using embedded fonts, then? None at all, like Notjohn suggests? Or is limited usage okay? (Chapter headings, etc).


Chapter headings etc, yeah. It's just the body font you want to avoid specifying for the most part.

I'm not sure why you're having all this trouble. It has me concerned that the uploader might be malfunctioning, so maybe the rest of us are going to have trouble in the near future too.

~~~
eBook Pioneers (A formatting service. I format in HTML to have more control over the fine details.)

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booknookbiz

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 18, 2014 2:48 PM   in response to: Charlie S in response to: Charlie S
 
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Charlie:

The uploader's been a bit bollixed for over 6 months now. We have been in communication with Amazon about it, specifically vis-a-vis fonts. We double-make every book, just to check it for this very reason.

Hitch
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Charlie S

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 18, 2014 3:09 PM   in response to: booknookbiz in response to: booknookbiz
 
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I haven't had any trouble yet, but I normally only specify fonts in fixed layouts. I don't do many of those, so that's probably why I've escaped the problem thus far.

~~~
eBook Pioneers (A formatting service. I format in HTML to have more control over the fine details.)

Making eBooks With Jutoh (A free Jutoh training movie for people who want to tackle formatting their own books but don't want to learn HTML/CSS.)

"I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it." ~ The Big Sleep - Ray Chandler
M. A. Baehr

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 18, 2014 3:59 PM   in response to: M. A. Baehr in response to: M. A. Baehr
 
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For fonts, I've used Rosario for chapter titles throughout, but there are numerous other fonts used in the body of the text, such as Komika, Note This, Allura and Gothic Ultra. I realize that's quite a list, particularly for text within the body, but it does match some of the typographical things going on in the print edition.

Note that these all came from Font Squirrel and were originally a mixture of OTF and TTF fonts. However, it doesn't matter which font format is used, I always get whatever default font is used on the online previewer.

I did put in some other, random fonts just to see what happens, but still nothing. I've even tried to specify only serif and sans-serif in CSS, but it all ends up as the default font.

Edited to add:

If I download the preview mobi file that has been uploaded and converted, then extract the contents, I can see that the Fonts folder is entirely empty.

Edited by: M. A. Baehr on Feb 18, 2014 4:24 PM
booknookbiz

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 18, 2014 4:34 PM   in response to: M. A. Baehr in response to: M. A. Baehr
 
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Edited to add:

If I download the preview mobi file that has been uploaded and converted, then extract the contents, I can see that the Fonts folder is entirely empty.

Yup, yup, yup. That's what happened to us, with a book we were doing about...six months ago(?). The fonts folder just disappeared. You have a font in your list, somewhere, that doesn't work with Amazon, and it's causing what you're seeing. I hate to be the one to tell you, I really do, but you're going to have to take all the fonts OUT, and then add them back in, one at a time, to find the culprit.

P.S.: big hint: OTF BAD. Try replacing those first. Also, I hate to ask, but for the millions of readers who still have Kindles, Kindle2's, early K3's, and DX's, how are they going to know what the missing fonts are saying?

Hitch
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M. A. Baehr

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 18, 2014 4:55 PM   in response to: M. A. Baehr in response to: M. A. Baehr
 
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..."you're going to have to take all the fonts OUT, and then add them back in, one at a time, to find the culprit."

That I can do. Time consuming, but do-able.

"OTF BAD. Try replacing those first."

I've already replaced OTF with TTF, but now will attempt to narrow things down one by one.

"...for the millions of readers who still have Kindles, Kindle2's, early K3's, and DX's, how are they going to know what the missing fonts are saying?"

On those devices, wouldn't those fonts just revert to a device default? At any rate, I may also explore the option of not embedding altogether and see how that works out.
M. A. Baehr

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 19, 2014 6:57 AM   in response to: M. A. Baehr in response to: M. A. Baehr
 
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Well, I removed all embedded fonts and references to them, changed the CSS so that chapter titles were specified as font-family:sans-serif;, and nothing. I also tried applying styles inline in each chapter, but to no effect: No matter what I do, all references to font-family are stripped out anywhere its found.

I even cut the book down to a chapter or two, removed all images (except for the cover), and validated both the CSS and HTML with no errors with the same result.

At this point, I'm running out of options seeing as how I've tried just about everything I can think of.
booknookbiz

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 19, 2014 2:32 PM   in response to: M. A. Baehr in response to: M. A. Baehr
 
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Oh, wait.

Does anyone remember THAT guy? From last year? Who had a similar problem?

Found it:


http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=218255 Go there. Be warned, it's not short. But he did get it resolved, AFAI can recall.

History:

We started out--I helped him outside of this environment, but he'd posted here, and he'd posted at MR about this--with the same operating assumption, that the fonts were bad/gone off. It ended up being something else, in addition to a problem with one font. Dangit, does anyone remember what that ended up being? It was something really oddball?

M.A., I'm sorry I can't pull it out of my brain instantly, we do a lot of books and I read a lot of emails, etc., and I just can't remember. I'll go rummage around on the MR forum, and see if I can find his thread. We tried all sorts of solutions, and this--what's happening with you--sounds very much like what happened with him. It was an oddball thing--two things that caused it; the "bad" font and the other thing, whatever that was.

I'll try to go rummage around tonight. It wasn't in the forum where you'd expect, IIRC. I should have it in my subscribed folder there somewhere. I'll try to help by finding it. He posted in detail about the solution.

Hitch
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Edited by: booknookbiz on Feb 19, 2014 2:38 PM: found referenced article.
M. A. Baehr

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 19, 2014 4:54 PM   in response to: M. A. Baehr in response to: M. A. Baehr
 
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A most interesting thread! I tried modifying my book a bit with all that heading stuff in mind, but didn't work.

But, if I create a very small book from scratch and embed a font or two without heading tags, the font magically appears.

Although I'm quite good at sniffing out glitches, I would never in a million years discovered this.

I'll see if I can get the fonts in the book I was working on.

Amazing detective work!

Additional Info:

Once I got the fonts working in that non-book mentioned above, I set about trying to get it so fonts wouldn't work. But, in all cases, the fonts appeared.

So, I took a version of the book I had been trying to publish that I was having trouble with, and wouldn't you know, that worked too.

I suppose that means that someone on Amazon has been working behind the scenes to fix this issue?

Edited by: M. A. Baehr on Feb 19, 2014 5:22 PM
booknookbiz

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 19, 2014 5:43 PM   in response to: M. A. Baehr in response to: M. A. Baehr
 
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M.A.:

It was "bracket navigation." If I'd recalled his name, I'd have found all the details because we corresponded through my email; I spent a weekend pulling his file apart. I basically started removing things, convert. Remove, convert. I pared things down until finally, a file converted with fonts. Then I worked back outwards, until I'd found the problems in a short stretch (really short; a single chapter, I think it was, or section) of the HTML. Once I found that, I emailed him, told him "look, it's in here somewhere," and he then narrowed it down to the heading tags. This is now rattling some other issue, somewhere, in my brain, that came up recently somewhere, but of course, I can't dig it out, now, but it too had to do with header tags, cascades and overrides.

I seriously doubt that after all this time, the gremlins have suddenly, in the span of a few days, fixed it. We had the disappearing fonts (folder) problem before he did, by some months. Then he had it happen, and both of us had a lot of discussions back/forth with the Zon. I was emailing with Seattle, not Cust. Service, and still, it was never fixed. Whatever else you did, something else, however minuscule, changed--is that possible?

In any event, at least now, you're on the road, I hope, to getting it working.

Hitch
We produce ebooks
Listed as an Amazon Professional Conversion Service: http://bit.ly/uFwMwb
An INScribe Preferred Conversion Partner
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Follow me on Twitter: @BookNookBiz
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M. A. Baehr

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 19, 2014 10:26 PM   in response to: M. A. Baehr in response to: M. A. Baehr
 
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Unless something goes haywire by tomorrow, I would consider my question answered.

Lots of good info and advice from everyone which I (mostly) took on board (except for a font or two I just had to use ... couldn't help myself there), and which should contribute to making the book reading experience on the final file a little more seamless.

Thanks again for the words of wisdom.

(even though I'll probably end up jinxing myself for thinking everything is resolved)
JE SALTER

Posts: 3
Registered: 07/31/13
Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 20, 2014 1:06 AM   in response to: M. A. Baehr in response to: M. A. Baehr
 
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I've recently experienced strange issues with the e-book versions of my novels and have now withdrawn them until I can get to the bottom of it. Long story short....the first book went live nearly 6 months ago and I had no problems or people complaining about the formatting.

The weekend before last, not so kind reviewers started giving me 1 star reviews claiming that the e-novels were full of formatting errors. I had checked the on-line reviewer, had uploaded an HTML file etc etc and everything was fine.

I now have an IT expert looking at the files and will get back to you, when I know the results. His first impression was, KDP have changed something which has interfered with the format. Who knows, but it's incredibly frustrating.

By the way, this was just on PC E-readers, not IPhone Kindle, Kindle or Kindle HD Fire.

John
booknookbiz

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 20, 2014 4:23 PM   in response to: JE SALTER in response to: JE SALTER
 
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JE:

If I may, without any disrespect to your friend, most "IT experts" who look at ePUB/MOBI files don't understand what they are looking at. They expect ebooks to work exactly like websites, if they are website experts, and they do NOT work exactly like websites. Are they a "type" of website, sort-of? Yes, but they have all sorts of special-use material and limitations that websites do not have. Nor do they use much of the programming power that's out there that most "IT experts" are accustomed to having available for use.

I had a client that decided to switch horses in midstream (over smallcaps, mind you), because "an IT expert told (him)" that fixing all the hundreds of places that he'd used "text-transform" in his WORD file to make smallcaps, instead of using smallcaps, would be "easy" to fix using regex, and "done in minutes." Now, these acronyms were used throughout the book, intentionally, both in smallcaps, and NOT in smallcaps. I'd said something different; that there was no fast-magic way to fix all the smallcaps that should be smallcaps, versus the all upper-case that shouldn't be, and he departed to have his print and ebooks "done properly." Needless to say, upon perusing his books now up on Amazon, (a month-plus after we would have finished them), all his "oh, it's easy to fix" smallcaps are not; they're all just uppercase, not only in the Kindle version, but the print version as well. I guess all that "magic" Mac regex (I forget what it's called on Apple) didn't work quite as seamlessly (and in "five minutes") as the "IT expert" thought it would. ;-)

You didn't say what the numerous "formatting errors" are/were? And how do you know that all the errata is only on the Kindle for PC app?

Hitch
We produce ebooks
Listed as an Amazon Professional Conversion Service: http://bit.ly/uFwMwb
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Notjohn

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Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 21, 2014 2:33 AM   in response to: booknookbiz in response to: booknookbiz
 
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Speaking of smallcaps, I use them (bolded) to introduce a chapter. I like the effect, but a few weeks ago I borrowed a Daniel Silva thrilla from the local e-library to read on the plane, and I was struck with envy. His chapters start with large & small caps! (Large for proper names etc.)

Is there an easy way to do that without lots of spans?

My style:

span.smallcap {
font-size: 90%;
font-weight: bold;
}

And then of course I have to go:

<span class="smallcap">THEN THE HAIRY APE</span>

Thanks! -- NJ

The book: Notjohn's Guide to Kindle Publishing: Ten Steps to Selling Your E-book on Amazon (Or Anywhere Else) (Fourth Edition)

The blog: Notjohn's KDP Guide
M. A. Baehr

Posts: 24
Registered: 02/14/14
Re: Results not at all as expected when publishing, Pt II
Posted: Feb 21, 2014 8:04 AM   in response to: M. A. Baehr in response to: M. A. Baehr
 
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NJ-

Although this isn't quite the effect you were after, you can bold the entire first line like so:

p.firstparagraph:first-line {
font-weight:bold;
}

It works quite nicely on newer devices (but not at all on older ones, of course, where it just gets ignored).

Every once in a while I'll get the smallcap bug, but try as I might, I can never get it to work consistently between devices, even if I use targeted CSS. Usually, I end up using the very same technique you do as that seems to cause the least amount of grief.
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