Prime and KU. Pre-ordered, and in the US. Based on the responses so far, its a crapshoot.
I chose one arbitrary location:
battleship, and resumed firing.
[space we are all talking about is supposed to be right here]
“Target’s shields are holding at twelve percent!” Ensign
Kinda app on Samsung Galaxy tab 4, no spaces. [47% Location 4466]
Kindle (version 1.13.1 (42052) on Win7 Home Premium shows spacing. [48% location 4452]
Kindle app on Samsung Galaxy S5 phone, no spaces [47% location 4463]
I use the kindle app on android, but over multiple devises, one of which is a phone so scaling the page may have put a standard page break into the middle of my page and resulted in the non-breaks.
Seriously we are talking about 2 maybe 3 missing page brakes. I don't really care. I could figure it out, it just took me a second.
Kindle Fire HDX (3rd gen) & I preorderd the book.
I appreciate your understanding, but to me it is a big deal, as I have now had three people scour the manuscript and none are able to find any subscene transitions that are missing the line breaks. This means that Amazon is screwing something up, and I need to come up with a way to counter that problem so that readers are not annoyed.
I don't mind poor reviews when they don't like my writing or my story, but when its because of formatting errors, especially ones that did not exist when the manuscript was uploaded to Amazon, that is of great concern.
Ryk,
I purchased it and read it on my Kindle Voyager, and the breaks were missing and while reading thought you had extra spacing at those times in previous books, so kept checking to see if I had some odd setting that was removing them. After reading this thread, just to check other options I pulled it up in the windows app, in the windows phone app, charged up my old kindle keyboard, and for fun pulled it up on the web reader as well... all of which had the line breaks, unlike my voyager... Just removed it and downloaded it and they are still missing so clearly my voyager doesn't want to show them. So it clearly wasn't on your end, or they wouldn't show up anywhere, but how some amazon devices / apps are rendering it... maybe they have updated the rendering system on some devices for that led to the spaces being removed on those devices?
Even with my reader not placing the breaks on my screen, it was a good read, and I want to thank you for all the books thus far, they have been an enjoyable way to spend some of my time.
Peace
True enough. I just fiddled with various settings (font, line spacing), but nothing changed. However, when I opened the book on my Windows Kindle App, the spacing was shown correctly.
I just downloaded your book again on my daughter's kindle so I could check whether this is due to an updated file. Well, it isn't. Her kindle (also paperwhite) doesn't show the spacing, either.
To make a long story short - or maybe even longer, I'm going to contact customer support on amazon.DE.
Thank you R Regit and Melanie. This insight helps. I really want to find out the cause.
In the meantime, I'm going to go back through the manuscript and edit the first few words of each subscene to make the font small caps, so that it is obvious where there is a change in POV. However, since Amazon's software is already screwing things up, I have no way of knowing if this will work in the way I hope.
I would ask that anyone is missing line breaks please email me at info (AT) frontierssaga (DOT) com so that I can send you the same .mobi file that I uploaded to Amazon for you to side load into your kindle and see if the same problem exists. That would at least tell me if Amazon is removing the line breaks, or if the device is removing them.
Once I upload the new file with the small caps, I'm going to insist that Amazon push the new file to EVERYONE that has the book on their Kindle. I'm not sure how much resistance I'll receive from them, so having evidence that it is Amazon's fault will help.
Thank you all,
Ryk
To bring up a point I mentioned earlier, I saw the same formatting problem while I was reading the end of book 14. I think it is a change made to the Kindle engine in a recent patch, because I didn't remember that problem when I read 14 right after it came out. This is where version control of the Kindle software is needed. 🙁
Mentioning side loading got me to thinking... And so I looked at the files on my keyboard and voyage. On the kindle keyboard file for ep 15 file is an .azw3 on the voyager it is .kfx, (while previous books in the series that are on the voyage are all .azw3). So I copied the .azw3 file from the keyboard over to the voyage and opened it, and it has the line breaks.
Looking at the dates and file formats on my voyage, books from Sept 2015 onwards are mostly in the .kfx format, with a few that are in .azw3. according to their respective pages all the .kfx books embrace the new enhanced typesetting ( http://smile.amazon.com/b?_encoding=UTF8&node=11516960011 ) while the .azw3 books downloaded from Sept onwards don't support the enhanced typesetting. So it appears to be something to do with the newer file format.
Having read through the thread, and having noticed the same on my iPhone Kindle application (sorry, an app is something I munch on with friends before a meal!), just wanted to add my 2 cents worth.
@RykBrown - the first time I noticed the lack of spacing indicating a scene change, it sort of threw me a curve. HOWEVER, once I realized what was going on, it actually was a little enjoyable. It was like "watching" the scenes unfold in real-time, like a movie, with quick bursts into different parts of the scene like ... blink - blink - blink. Honestly, Ryk, I thought it was a new method that you were using of making the battle scenes more intense, "faster playing" and more life-like. There were enough clues after a scene change that you were only disoriented for a very short period ... but in a high-speed encounter, changing Point of View would be such.
I can understand how it could be disruptive, as it was for the first couple of battle scene changes, but after I realized it, the reading actually took on a greater sense of urgency. As I said, I actually enjoyed it.
I used the Kindle App on a Tablet and Thought that I saw 2-3 missing gaps,
Today I sat down and read through part of the battle at Chiya on the Kindle App for my Samsung phone and was subjected to a severe lack of page gaps at 3902, 3924 & 3947 (I was reading for all of twenty minites)
Great Book, love it. Hate that Amazon has done this to your books.
Amazon customer service told me they'd reimburse me for my kindle should I choose to send it back to them. Told them it was not an option.
Anybody willing to take them up on their offer?
About the updated format - I now see a small line between two scenes. It helps immensely with telling one scene from another without being too disruptive IMHO. (I see this formatting both on my kindle and on my PC. However, there seems to be an empty line missing in the kindle format, but that's more of an observation than a problem, really.) Thanks, Ryk!
ETA: It seems the new format I got happened thanks to amazon customer service, not thanks to Ryk. Oops. Anyway, it still helps. I should have checked my mail before posting.
(Sorry for the double post, by the way. We really need an edit button.)
Actually, it was me who edited the file and put in the lines instead of the line breaks. I got tired of waiting for Amazon to answer. The day I uploaded the reformatted file, Amazon emailed me and said the engineers had determined the problem and were correcting it.
I'm planning on making the same format changes to all the previous books as well, and will use the same method for all future books, as I don't trust Amazon to fix the problem.
Thank you all for your help and patience.
Ryk
Just re-downloaded Ep.15 to my phone's Kindle app (samsung). No breaks in combat where I was before download, same after. Stupid Amazon.
Checked on Amazon for the posibility of Updating my version of the book... looks like there is no option to update (Amazon.co.uk)
Either Way I wrote a little review on amazon, singing Ep.15's praises.
