I Hate Your Stupid Face

Kindle formatting is different.

The Kindle’s been my preferred reading method for some time now. Here are some formatting suggestions for publishers of nonfiction work:

1. Simplify your hierarchy. Your readers can’t see as much context as they can in a printed book, so there’s no need for eight levels of header. Two is probably fine. This goes for other content, too.
2. Ditch the sidebars, or figure out a sensible way to integrate sidebar content into the rest of the text. Some “info box” content might be best grouped and given its own section.
3. Ditch margin pointers and other widgets. Since you can’t flip pages and browse chapters the way you can in a printed book, these little visual aids don’t serve the same purpose.
4. Make pull quotes distinct. The Kindle edition of Code Complete has a bunch of quotes flowed right smack in the middle of other text, with no divider before them. It’s easy for a reader to get all the way through a paragraph before finding out he hasn’t been reading the author’s words for a while.
5. Rewrite simple tables as text lists. Nobody wants to scroll right, and we’re probably losing the benefits of comparing the alignments, anyway.

I’ll add to this list as I think of more.

Amazon encourages publishers to chuck whole Word files at their custom converter, but many nonfiction and technical books require thoughtful finessing to translate well.

Publishers, I would love to do that for you. Drop me a line.

Note: It has been pointed out that most publishers have no interest in spending time or money on converting their properties, and would wish this whole e-book thing into the cornfield if they could. Sad but true.

Tim Carmody says:

Now, as the whole industry’s moved towards multimedia tablets and touch interfaces, I find myself thinking, “you know, maybe just focusing on text, and making that experience as useful and enjoyable as possible, is a really good idea. Text and textual interfaces are incredibly resilient and powerful. Bring back the command line!”

YESSSSS. Now that I think about it, my beloved Kindle + Instapaper team is a really natural fit, considering that’s how I’ve been doing it all along. For most online writing, a neutral, faceless type treatment is a step forward, considering the ugly, distracting setting most sites provide.