Tuesday 19 April 2016

Republished for Better Formatting

I've republished the kindle and print book.

The main reason is that a few people with older kindle devices didn't have great experiences with the formatting. For some images didn't show properly, for others, the margins were wonky, etc

This is sad because it shouldn't be that hard to get right in 2016. The core problem is that ebook file formats are not open, stable and implemented in an interoperable way. It's like the web 20 years ago - with big companies not implementing web standards properly, and deliberately trying to pervert them to their own ends. Thankfully after 20 years - that's all settled down and usable.

I took the decision to publish the ebooks using Amazon's new Kindle Textbook format. That promises to have much greater certainty over layout, even for complex content, ... like a PDF. This will be great for people who want to see a page more or less as it was intended., and certainly not mashed up.

The following are screenshots from my Android phone's Kindle app - and it looks fantastic!


There is a down side - those with older Kindles that can't support this new Textbook format, won't be able to buy the book. So happier readers, but fewer of them. I didn't take that decision lightly but not having unhappy readers was a priority for me.