About Finessing Ebooks

Font Choice

For ebooks, the standard is Times New Roman with variations in size and weight.

Yes, you could add color and small caps and drop caps and lots of other decorative elements.

Except... tell me, how old is your ereader? Even if you have the latest and greatest, there are millions of older models still in use. And those older ereaders aren't sophisticated enough to deal with fancy formatting. Sometimes, they'll show squares or blanks instead of text. Sometimes, images will float around the page instead of staying in the scene break position. What would you do if you came across an ebook with those issues?

Not read it.

Is that what you want to have happen to your book? So, resist the temptation to go fancy in your ebook. Keep it simple for your reader and yourself.

First Paragraph Style

The First Paragraph Style is used to remove the indent for the first paragraph after every chapter heading and every scene break. It’s linked to the Normal Style and will copy that font. For all other paragraphs, the first line indent is .3".

This is a classic sign of a professionally formatted book.

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