Author Topic: Maybe one for the experts... Ebook formatting.  (Read 1729 times)

The Bass Bagwhan

Maybe one for the experts... Ebook formatting.
« on: January 21, 2019, 07:53:47 PM »

Does anyone know how to make the book open for the first time on the cover image? Mine are starting at the title page.
I write in Word, format in Sigil, and convert to Mobi in Calibre.
Thanks for any help.

EDITED THIS POST, BECAUSE FIRST PROBLEM RE LIBRARY DISPLAY WENT AWAY...
« Last Edit: January 21, 2019, 08:25:11 PM by The Bass Bagwhan »
 

Tom Wood

Re: Maybe one for the experts... Ebook formatting.
« Reply #1 on: January 22, 2019, 12:21:03 AM »
For ebooks, that's considered a feature rather than a bug. I export a .mobi from Scrivener, and those ebooks also open at the title page.  In a discussion at the L&L forums, one of the staff mentioned that they specifically place code to make that happen. I'm guessing that it's a piece of CSS that either Sigil or Calibre places at the point where ebooks are generally expected to open - just after the TOC.

Scrivener arranges it like this:

Cover
TOC
Front End Matter (Title page and any forwards)
Chapter 1
etc

Look in the menus for Sigil and Calibre to see if they offer an option for where the ebook opens. If not, you'll need to figure out the CSS anchor, probably in Sigil.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2019, 04:10:45 AM by Tom Wood »
 

Lysmata Debelius

Re: Maybe one for the experts... Ebook formatting.
« Reply #2 on: January 22, 2019, 03:51:47 AM »
You can insert the code for which page the book will open on using Sigil. I will post instructions here when I am back at my computer. But if it's going to be uploaded to KDP, I have seen reports that Amazon overwrites your code and forces the book to open at what they think should be the first page.
 

The Bass Bagwhan

Re: Maybe one for the experts... Ebook formatting.
« Reply #3 on: January 22, 2019, 09:24:36 AM »
Thanks for any help, and the advice. In the meantime I'll eyeball the code really close. It might look obvious. Cheers!
 

Lysmata Debelius

Re: Maybe one for the experts... Ebook formatting.
« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2019, 03:03:14 PM »
OK I'm back :) Sorry had to sleep.

It's quite simple.  I'll explain how to do it in Sigil, and also how it works under the bonnet. It's a bit of XML in the content.opf page.

In Sigil, look in the "book browser", the skinny panel on the left that lists all the folders and pages in the book.
Choose the xhtml page that you want the book to open on, and right click on it.
Choose "Semantics" from the drop down menu. A dialogue will open with a list of options.
Choose "text" from that list.

This will indicate to the ereader that this is where the text of the book starts, and if all goes well, the ereader will open the book there when it's opened for the first time.

What this does under the bonnet:
Open the "content.opf" page, which is the document that lists everything that's in the ebook. This is the information that the ereader refers to when it wants to see a list of what's in the book, and what each bit is supposed to do. (Sorry, I like anthropomorphisiseing (sp?) tech, helps me understand it)

In there you will see a "guide" section, between two "guide" tags. In the below example, the page that is supposed to open first is called "firstpage.xhtml". See where it says "reference type = "text" ? That's the bit that does the business.
Code: [Select]
<guide>
    <reference type="text" title="Text" href="Text/firstpage.xhtml"/>
  </guide>

As you saw from the semantics dialogue box, there are a lot of other options you can use to indicate what the various pages in your book are. For example, you can indicate that a page contains the TOC, or that it's a title page, or a copyright page, etc.

Hope this helps!
 

The Bass Bagwhan

Re: Maybe one for the experts... Ebook formatting.
« Reply #5 on: January 24, 2019, 05:41:17 PM »
Brilliant! Thanks everyone for all your time and help.