Amazon made a new feature announcement on the Kindle Blog last month:

First, we are making Kindle newspapers and magazines readable on our free Kindle apps, so you can always read Kindle periodicals even if you don’t have your Kindle with you or don’t yet own a Kindle. In the coming weeks, many newspapers and magazines will be available on our Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, and then we’ll be adding this functionality to Kindle for Android and our other apps down the road. Our vision is Buy Once, Read Everywhere, and we’re excited to make this possible for Kindle periodicals in the same way that it works now for Kindle books. More details when we launch this in the coming weeks.

Second, later this year, we will be introducing lending for Kindle, a new feature that lets you loan your Kindle books to other Kindle device or Kindle app users. Each book can be lent once for a loan period of 14-days and the lender cannot read the book during the loan period. Additionally, not all e-books will be lendable – this is solely up to the publisher or rights holder, who determines which titles are enabled for lending.

The periodicals part will be nice, I’m sure, for those who participate. So far I haven’t been able to justify purchasing the same content I can just as easily get on my PC, laptop or Android smartphone via RSS feeds, however. But that’s me.

The second feature of ebook lending, however, will be extremely popular — depending on which books the publishers allow to be lent. I can already imagine having my Goodreads friends lending one another our favorite ebooks. While the program is technically fully described in the announcement, I’ve already seen confusion on the matter. It’s possible even I’m confused, but what I’ve seen in the Amazon forums, etc. is: one ebook can only be lent once, ever. Not once to every friend, but once for that ebook. During the 14-day lending period the owner is unable to read that book.

The new lending feature will certainly take Barnes & Noble’s Nook reader down a notch, but the Kindle still lacks the Nook’s biggest and most popular feature of all (aside from supporting the superior EPUB standard *cough* ) : checking out ebooks from local libraries. Participating public libraries typically utilize OverDrive, which uses Adobe’s Adept DRM scheme, to let members check out EPUB ebooks. While OverDrive could handle the conversions when necessary to support Kindle ebooks, I am not foreseeing Amazon partnering with them when Amazon’s primary goal with the Kindle platform is to drive more sales from Amazon. It’s a shame Amazon won’t just add EPUB reading to their platform, considering their Kindlegen (and Kindle Previewer) ebook creation software will read EPUB and convert it (quality varies, however) into a MOBI ebook the Kindle does support.

Speaking of converting formats, I’ve also seen mention over the past several months of Amazon sending emails to authors submitting to Amazon’s Digital Text Platform complaining over the usage of the open source software Calibre to handle the conversions.

Hello,

Thank you for publishing your titles on the Kindle Store through Amazon DTP. During a review of your titles, we noticed that you used Calibre to create Mobi books. Please note that if you use Calibre to create Mobi books, they may not be supported if we add features to the Mobi format. Therefore, we suggest that you use applications like KindleGen or Mobipocket Creator instead.

KindleGen is a command-line tool used to build eBooks. This tool is best for publishers and individuals who are familiar with HTML and want to convert their HTML, XHTML, XML (OPF/IDPF format), or ePub source into a Kindle Book. Please click the following link to download this application along with the User Instructions:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.htm…cId=1000234621

You can also find more information and instructions for using the KindleGen in our Kindle Publishing Guidelines document. Please click the below link to download the same:

http://snipurl.com/v632s

However, if you would want an application with an active User Interface, you can use Mobipocket Creator. The Mobipocket Creator allows publishers to create ebooks with an easy-to-use content authoring tool. This software also includes Adobe PDF, Microsoft Word & Text File Import wizards. You would also be able to design an active Table of Contents and a personalized cover image for your titles.

Please click on the link below to download the Mobipocket Creator application:

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloa…ilsCreator.asp

Please note, KindleGen does not support DRM. If you want to apply DRM to your books, you can do that through the DTP web site.

If you have any questions, please feel free to write to us at dtp-support@amazon.com.

Thank you.

Whoah! Now, I’ll be the first to say that I don’t like Calibre going in and altering my markup and ignoring my CSS in favor of its own, but I’m the only one who notices it since I’m looking at the source. But Calibre also (usually) provides a better quality conversion than Kindlegen. It’s interesting that Amazon is cracking down on the usage of third-party software used in any capacity to create a MOBI ebook (Amazon owns MobiPocket).

Ebooks created in Calibre “may not be supported if we add features to the Mobi format?” The Mobi format hasn’t changed in 15 years! The Kindle has a very slightly different DRM scheme than Mobi, and the Kindle added NCX navigation, but neither of those are changes to the Mobi format itself.

This is the problem with creating a walled garden like Amazon has done. You can’t bring in new flowers because of the surrounding walls.

According to Amazon’s Kindle Publishing Guidelines, ebooks submitted for publishing require both an HTML Table of Contents and also an NCX Logical Table of Contents. I’m hearing, however, that books are being accepted without the NCX file.

What the heck is an NCX file? The abbreviation stands for Navigational Control for XML applications, and as the name implies, is itself an XML file. NCX is required for EPUB as well, and EPUB readers typically use NCX the way I was hoping the Kindle would as well.

I started with ebooks with an iPaq then a Dell Axim — both Pocket PCs — using the eReader app. eReader uses PML (Palm Markup Language) which is fairly simple markup to a plain text file, but even back then on such a simplistic system the Table of Contents (TOC) were rendered in a separate UI frame rather than being a full “page” of HTML, or in that case PML, links to chapters and sections.

EPUB readers also use the NCX file to create a logical TOC which can usually be rendered separate from the ebook’s text. I took Joe Konrath’s new DRACULAS ebook, which he published on Kindle without DRM, and converted it to EPUB for most of the following screenshots.

TOC in Nook for PC app

TOC on the Nook for Android app brings up a separate UI frame

TOC in Aldiko renders over the text

The TOC in DRACULAS is flat for two reasons: It’s design does not not require nesting, but more importantly, Konrath is primarily supporting the Kindle platform which does not support nested navpoints in an NCX whatsoever, whereas EPUB does quite nicely.

3 level nested TOC in Les Miserables EPUB version

Kindle, however, takes the NCX literally and uses it for fast navigation control between the specified navpoints.

Notice the Locations bar at the bottom, which shows the current displayed location on the ebook. There are several tick marks along the bar. Using the Kindle’s 5-way controller, readers can instantly skip from section to section. Notice in the HTML TOC above, the DRACULAS ebook does not actually have its individual chapters listed, which is why there is such a huge gap before the first tick mark. Starting from the beginning page of the book, pressing right on the controller will skip the entire story to next section entitled “Bonus Material.” I really like the Kindle using the NCX in this manner; it’s a nice touch. The two-dimensional Locations bar is the reason Kindle does not support nested navpoints in the NCX, so while I still suggest building a lovely EPUB ebook first then converting it for the Kindle, if your EPUB has nested navpoints make sure you build a flat NCX specifically for the Kindle ebook.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the Kindle’s menu renders a separate UI frame over the ebook text. Perhaps I’m just spoiled, overly picky, or stuck in my ways, but I was really hoping the Kindle would also use the NCX data to build a separate TOC UI frame like the EPUB readers do and primarily refer to that, only using the HTML TOC if no NCX file is in the ebook. It’s something that could probably be built into a firmware update. Sorry, but I haven’t seen an HTML TOC yet that didn’t look cheesy. It might get the job done in a pinch but it doesn’t look good doing it.

My Kindle 3 (3G + WiFi) arrived a week or so ago, but other than just playing around with the settings and transfering a few books over both USB and Whispernet, I hadn’t spent much time with it. I do most of my reading during my commute to and from work—a one-hour flight each way—and sometimes at work during downtime.

I did take it on the trip I just finished, however, and this little bad boy rocks! The only real downside is one I knew was coming anyway: the “no PEDs below 10,000 feet” rule. Other than that, the Kindle 3 is the perfect size (while in the case, anyway) and can be loaded up with enough books to cover any mood I may be in.

I ordered the black leather lighted case along with the Kindle 3, which was a good decision despite its hefty price. Just like an iPad gets too heavy to hold for one-handed reading after a few minutes, the “naked” Kindle 3 is too thin for my hands, which begin to cramp from holding the device for more than a minute. The case adds just enough thickness to make holding the Kindle 3 very comfortable for me, while still being easy to transport. At work, it fits perfectly in my flight case so I can lay it on top of my Jeppesen charts then tuck my Telex 850 headset on top of the Kindle, pack up my stuff and go. It even fits perfectly in the top pocket of my tote-cooler, where I keep my Android, Zune, extra pens, etc. (the cooler compartment is for food obviously). I won’t go too in-depth about the case because Amazon’s product page I linked does an excellent job both explaining the case’s features and showing with plenty of photographs. It’s a pretty slick design, however. There are two small metal hooks inside the spine which latch into slots in the Kindle’s chassis. These hooks not only securely attach the Kindle to the cover but also provide an electrical current to from the Kindle’s battery to power the pull-out LED light on the upper right corner. Obviously, being a single-point light source, the E-Ink screen is not evenly lit but it’s not so bad as to be distracting. In my case, I would typically have the airplane overhead light anyway, but the LED light could be used in bed. Haven’t tried that yet.

The E-Ink display itself is great. When reading on my Android phone my eyes start itching and watering from the strain after about ten minutes. I can last longer on the larger iPad screen–roughly fifteen, possibly twenty minutes–but it’s still straining on my eyes. I’ve been dabbling with ebooks for roughly ten years now, starting back when I had a iPaq Pocket PC then a Dell Axim. I used to read ebooks from eReader.com and while I did have to switch up the theme (both colors and textures) depending on time of day, I don’t remember quite this level of eye strain on those older devices. Today’s LCD screens are much brighter and more vibrant, however; perhaps that is enough to tip the balance? During cruise on one of our flights Tuesday–a bright, clear, sunny day–my First Officer and I compared the Kindle against our Android and iPhones. No contest. In the sunlight we could barely read anything on our smartphone screens while the Kindle’s E-Ink display was just as legible as paper. Perhaps more so, since white paper would have caused a glare while the grey-ish E-Ink background does not.

As for books, I’ve nabbed nearly every free ebook that has shown up in the Top 10 or so for the past week in the Free category on Amazon and a few freebies from Smashwords as well. Then I used the Kindle Store to buy Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Stephen King’s The Dead Zone, and J. A. Konrath’s Shot of Tequila which I am currently reading. For the Kindle-curious (or eBook-curious) I have discovered a wonderful bonus to reading from a device: I can be genre-curious. I’ve never read a romance novel nor a young adult. Now I can feel free to experiment and not have to put up with the weird looks if I decide to read, say, a Twilight book, which I otherwise would not be caught dead with.

From a formatting standpoint,  the ebooks currently in my small collection have been a random mishmash of quality. Some use block paragraphs, others indent. Some do both randomly, which is annoying and distracting. Some use an extra space between paragraphs, others do not. Those are minor aggravations and I can rationalize them as different editors or stylists prefer different layouts. I have discovered two items which, while seemingly minor as well, drive me up the wall and I consider them absolutely unacceptable: Page-breaks for each chapter and a Table of Contents.

I’m going to pick on J. A. Konrath here because his book Shot of Tequila violates both of those. It reads as if it is a single HTML file (it probably was) with chapter breaks right in the middle of the screen. Authors typically use *** (or ### in a manuscript) to designate a scene shift during the same chapter, but the chapter itself will end when it ends, whitespace on the printed page be damned, and the new chapter picks up on a fresh page. The purpose of ebooks is not to replicate the printed page itself (that is PDF’s job) but the purist in me as both a reader and as a wannabe writer still says a page break between chapters has a more dramatic effect of bringing that scene to a close rather than seeing the next chapter pick up a few lines lower on the same screen. It looks amateurish.

Secondly, there is no TOC whatsoever in Shot of Tequila. The book has 39 chapters, an “author’s afterward” section, and a three-chapter preview of Barry Eisler’s Inside Out but there is no way to navigate whatsoever other than pressing the ‘Next’ button a few hundred times. Unacceptable. Joe is one of the most successful self-publishing authors out there. He has fully embraced ebooks and from his blog articles, ebooks seem to be making him money hand over fist. If he is self-styling his ebooks, creating a TOC is not difficult to learn; if he’s paying someone to style his ebooks, that person isn’t doing his job. I’ve been playing around with ebook formatting for only a couple weeks now, and I could have page breaks for chapters and sections as well a NCX file to create what Amazon calls a “logical TOC” for Shot of Tequila in under 30 minutes if I hand-code it. Using tools, we’re down to 10-15 minutes.

It’s. That. Easy.

Mind you, I’m not picking on Joe’s writing at all. I’ve been reading his blog for awhile now and when my Kindle arrived, decided to try out one of his books and it’s a blast so far! I’ve caught two typos in the first half, but otherwise it’s been nearly non-stop action with some interesting characters and witty dialogue. I’m barely halfway finished and I’m already debating which of his books I will buy next.

But the lack of page breaks between chapters and no TOC makes me want to kick a kitten.

The Kindle

Despite my bitching about Amazon’s exclusive use of the ancient (in Internet terms) Mobipocket format, I harbor no illusions about Amazon’s place in the business. With the exception of the times I bumble around a Barnes & Noble store (or a Borders if I’m slumming) I order almost exclusively through Amazon for books, MP3′s, video games, and many other items. So, I present you with:

Thanks for ordering from Amazon.com! Your purchase information appears below.

Delivery estimate: September 28, 2010 – September 29, 2010

“Kindle 3G Wireless Reading Device, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 6″ Display, Graphite, 3G Works Globally – Latest Generation”
“Kindle Lighted Leather Cover, Black (Fits 6″ Display, Latest Generation Kindle)”

I am eagerly anticipating a new toy to play with, despite my reservations about being able to actually use it on my commute to and from work, especially since I have officially been out of space for books for quite some time. I keep saying that I will get a new bookshelf to hold them but it hasn’t happened yet.

The Unicorn Pegasus Kitten

Astute readers may have caught me tweeting about “Clash of the Geeks” a few days ago but I don’t recall it being passed around my little circle of bloggers and tweeters, so I thought I would mention it here for the handful of people who still bother to read this blog.

Clash of the Geeks is an eBook published on September 20 by Subterranean Press as a free download (though donations are strongly requested) to support the Lupus Alliance of America. Jeff Zugale’s cover features author John Scalzi depicted as an orc while actor/author Wil Wheaton is a warrior astride a Unicorn Pegasus Kitten. The book features short stories by several authors, including Wil Wheaton and John Scalzi, as well as a song and an epic poem. Recommended reading for both the novelty and supporting a good cause.

The Milestone

When I first started getting interested in eBooks again a few months ago, author Joe Konrath’s blog kept coming up so I subscribed to his RSS feed. This morning he blogged his latest sales milestone, and it’s pretty incredible. I have noticed over the past couple months that he keeps being referred to as an exception but, tiring of that label, he’s been collecting names of other authors — established and new — who are seeing tremendous ebook sales as well. His numbers also reinforce what I said earlier about Amazon’s place in the current scheme of things. Definitely check out his post today!

Question to my readers: This has primarily been a “gaming blog” and will likely continue to be so, but would you prefer I did not make non-gaming posts here at all?

Continuing from my Learning EPUB post, I have spent a little time investigating the .MOBI format, which is specifically for the Mobipocket reader but also the Amazon Kindle, which is most likely the e-reader device I will end up purchasing.

I must admit that I am a bit dismayed at what I am seeing of MOBI so far. It is essentially a fifteen year-old format, originally based on HTML 3.2 and the old PalmOS .PRC file format. As a former amateur web designer, I am all about HTML for the markup and CSS for styling. EPUB supports that, and more good stuff is coming to EPUB as CSS3 will be adopted and interactivity via limited JavaScript is coming as well (already supported in Apple’s iBooks — here is a sample). For myself, I am primarily interested solely in reading fiction on an e-reader device so I am not seeing an immediate use for such interactivity within that context.

The MOBI format itself is a rather limited subset of HTML 3.2 with extremely limited CSS support, and the Kindle is slightly more limited but only in terms of the proprietary Mobipocket tags. The designer part of my brain kicks and screams at having to go back to the mid-nineties in terms of coding, essentially relying HTML for both markup and formatting. I suppose to make an analogy to blogs, EPUB would be WordPress while MOBI would be GeoCities.

When Amazon purchased Mobipocket in 2005, the only innovations to the MOBI format was changing the DRM scheme slightly (including Whispersync support) and indexing. Neither of those are anything the author nor designer needs to take into consideration, but it does make me scratch my head when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos makes comments such as:

Q: Why doesn’t Amazon support the popular “e-pub” standard used by your competitors and many libraries?

A: We are innovating so rapidly that having our own standard allows us to incorporate new things at a very rapid rate. For example: Whispersync (which uses wireless connections to sync your place in a book across devices) and changing font sizes.

Other standards over time may incorporate some of these things. But we’re moving very quickly to improve the state of the art. It’s very helpful not to have to wait for some third-party standard to catch up.

Source: USA Today Tech News 7/29/2010

Really? You’re moving very quickly with a format that has not changed in fifteen years? No, I suspect it’s more a matter that Amazon spent a lot of money purchasing Mobipocket so they could own their format, then factor in that Amazon is a behemoth approaching Microsoft proportions in the book retail world. Look how long it took Microsoft to finally come around to admitting standards-compliance is a good thing (just listen to web designers complain about IE6 and earlier users) but to this day have been glacially slow about full compliance in their products. Despite every single competitor to the Kindle supporting EPUB, Amazon has more might behind them, especially now that the Kindle is in retail stores like Best Buy and Target, why add the expense of developing EPUB support into the Kindle reader? ( *cough* Never mind that the actual Mobipocket reader now supports native EPUB… *cough* )

But I also have to step back from the designer part of me and remember that for end users, all they really want is to easily purchase (or import) a book and read it, as MMO Gamer Chick reminded me with her comment in my EPUB article. If I am creating a Mobipocket/Kindle ebook myself, not only do I have conversion tools available to automate the process, but I can hand-code the HTML myself. I will likely stick to creating EPUB where I have far superior ability to format and style then converting to MOBI but I’ll see how things turn out. Blue Kae informed me that my EPUB to MOBI experiment in the last article appeared better formatted than a lot of the professional Kindle books he’s seen, and that has sadly been my own experience in the past few weeks where I have been able to obtain both EPUB and MOBI versions of the same books. As dismayed as I am about the MOBI format itself, that’s nothing compared to my dismay at the state of the few Kindle ebooks I have seen so far.

Still, if I jump on the current generation of e-Ink devices, I don’t see a viable alternative to the Kindle 3 from the end-user experience of being able to very easily purchase fiction from Amazon’s store and simply sit back and enjoy reading. An unpleasant dichotomy, indeed…

I’ve long been wanting an eBook reader but have not yet convinced myself to make the purchase. Amazon’s Kindle seems the way to go, with Barnes & Noble’s Nook reader next in line. I use Amazon for all my traditional books but I admit I am disappointed in their intentional lack of EPUB support, which is the closest thing to a universal standard that currently exists in the realm of eBook publishing.

I’ve spent a little time over the past couple weeks reading up on the EPUB format first, since it uses XHTML and CSS with a little XML thrown in, all of which I have at least a passing familiarity with. Way back in the day on my first websites (one was a twitch-news site for gaming, the other a news and help site for Microsoft’s Gaming Zone — yeah, it was that long ago), the host did not allow any CGI or PHP so I had to hand-code the HTML and the RSS feed for each entry. Later CSS came out, then XHTML. I’ll freely admit I haven’t done any actual web-coding in quite some time, so my interest in eBooks and the EPUB format gave me a reason to dust off the neurons containing what’s left of my web-coding knowledge.

I learn better by just digging in and hand-coding every little bit, so I needed some untouched content to work with. I chose Syp’s novel he wrote during 2009′s NaNoWriMo. To date, he has made public the prologue and four chapters, and I figured that was plenty for me to start with. Disclaimer: I have asked Syp’s permission via a Direct message in Twitter but as of this writing have not received a response. I will assume he is ok with it since it is published publicly on his site and he’s an all-around good guy.

I probably did things The Hard Way, but that’s fine because 1) it worked, and 2) once I learn the tools better I can streamline the process.

First, I highlighted all the text on each of the five pages, then copied it into OpenOffice.org Writer and ran a regex to strip out extra spaces. I noticed Syp used non-breakable spaces to simulate double-spaces between sentences. It’s an old-fashioned style, and the one I was taught myself and to this day have to fight the urge to do that. Modern publishing says single-space between sentences is fine and more importantly, unless forced to do otherwise, web browsers render single-space by default. When you get right down to it, eBook readers are nothing more than specialized web browsers. So my first step was to strip out excess spaces, and save as UTF-8 text.

I was going to use a normal HTML editor originally, then decided to use Sigil which is a WYSIWYG EPUB editor. It allows me to quickly switch back and forth from rendered book view to HTML source.

Once each page was loaded into Sigil, the “fun” began. Sigil added the XHTML declarations for me and put <P> elements around each paragraph for me. I did want to keep Syp’s styling–mainly his use of italics–so I did fast visual scans of each page and put <EM> tags around all his italicized phrases. There was a single phrase that I personally thought also need to be italicized, so as his unofficial editor, I made that alteration. Sigil’s toolbar on the WYSIWYG side uses the <I> tag, which was being frowned upon in favor of <EM> once upon a time. I do not feel like reading up on current preferences, hence manually entering the <EM> tags.

Next came some punctuation. It turns out Sigil took care of these for me but I was unaware of it for about the first half of manually formatting the pages. I was looking for em dashes and ellipsis. Syp’s HTML had the em dash character but it appeared as a standard dash in the source editor so I was manually entering the &mdash; name and letting Sigil convert it to the Unicode character. The other em dash formatting was to remove spaces around them, which I did one-by-one. This is contrary to my personal writing (at least in informal chat settings) where I prefer to surround my faux em dashes with a space, but every novel I have ever read puts the em dashes right up against the text, so that’s what I did. Sigil handled converting “…” into an actual horizontal ellipsis character for me.

Next came the styling. EPUB uses headers for it’s Table of Contents so I used H1 for the title page and H3 for each chapter. Syp had his chapter titles in full caps but for better readability on devices I normalized them. In the CSS I centered all headers. The only semi-tricky issue was declaring margins. Is the book being read on a PC, a dedicated reader or a smart phone? All different screen sizes and you don’t want to waste a lot of screen real estate on blank margins–anyone who used the old Microsoft Reader on a mobile device knows what I’m talking about. I ended up taking O’Reilly’s suggestion of using an 8-pixel left and right margins, which is what they use on all their eBooks. All paragraphs are indented 10 pixels, and I kept the space between each paragraph, as that is my preferred method of reading. The various eBooks I’ve read to date seem 50/50 between having spaces or mashing paragraphs together.

In a manuscript, scene shifts are handled with “###” in the text but novels often use “***” or other characters or even a script-ish image. Syp used “* * *” on his site but strictly for purposes of sticking with XHTML, I replaced that with a horizontal rule <HR> with a 10% width.

The final styling choice I made was to justify the text. I was amazed (shocked?) at how divided the hardcore eBook community is on this issue. Many vehemently prefer standard left-justification for some reason which eludes me. While I do not believe the goal of any eBook format is to precisely replicate the printed page (that’s what PDF is for), I do think a fiction eBook should read similar to a fiction novel, and that includes full justification.

Finally, I made a Forward page where I took bits that Syp wrote on two spots on his site and combined them into a single forward with links, just to see how people liked that. I fired up Sigil’s TOC editor to make sure a proper embedded Table of Contents was created (I despise an inline TOC) and saved.

The file validated with epubcheck so I set out to test it in a few PC readers: Adobe Digital Editions and Nook. I will freely admit I am not a fan of Adobe or any of their products, and ADE is no exception. Unfortunately, the mobile version of ADE is used in several eBook readers. The book worked perfectly, and looked about as good as anything can look in ADE. Next I popped it into the Nook for PC reader, which is actually quite a nice reading application. It looked and functioned great there as well. Finally, I uploaded the EPUB file to Ibis Reader where again everything worked as planned. Honestly though, the markup and CSS was so minimal for this project, I can’t imagine a reader botching it.

Lastly, I fired up Calibre and ran a straight EPUB-to-MOBI conversion so the eBook can be read on Kindles (or MobiReader). I haven’t gotten into the nitty-gritty of how MOBI files are constructed nor their specific markup so if Calibre screwed with my own markup (and from looking at Calibre-created EPUBs, it did) I wouldn’t know but for the end-user the important question is: does it look and navigate properly? Yes, it does, at least on my Kindle for PC application.

I’ll have to mount my Android and test the books on my eBook reading apps but in the meantime, I will post the files here for you guys to try out.

All said and done, from reading a few final articles on EPUB formatting and construction, to highlighting the first word of Syp’s text, writing the markup and style sheet then writing this article, this took four hours. None of it was difficult, especially since I wasn’t dealing with images or complicated layouts, but I can now appreciate why some freelance EPUB stylists charge $25 per hour to do it.

Anyone who tests these, please let me know your opinions on the styling I used. On the title page, I bumped the “Homecoming” down 20% of the page; is that too far on smaller screens? I kept the H1 header with the book’s title in the TOC; is that ok or would you rather the TOC only navigate between actual sections and chapters, not to the title page? Any other issues (positive or negative) please let me know, I am interested in getting better at eBook formatting.

Homecoming – EPUB: Any EPUB reader such as ADE, Nook, Stanza for iPod/iPad, etc.
Homecoming – MOBI: Amazon Kindle, Mobi Reader, etc.

May need to right-click and Save As… in browsers other than Chrome

I also put the files on my public SkyDrive if that helps?