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I cannot for the life of me get linebreaks in an epub

Community Beginner ,
May 06, 2020 May 06, 2020

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HELP! (sorry for bad english)
So i have been trying to export my indesign file to an epub reflowable, and it removes all blank spaces, line breaks and blank lines. I have looked up how to fix it and found a place that told me to use a paragraph style that had "space after" the places where i needed it.. so i did that... and it didnt work.. any other helpful tips? Im not good with indesign, i do not know ANYTHING about HTML or CSS so i feel very very lost. 

 

 

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Beginner , May 06, 2020 May 06, 2020

I made it work. 😄 

But im setting up a book for an author and he finds it very important that there is a line break between the chapter titles and the text. The other authors i have worked with didnt think it was important so i have never had to deal with it before. But now i found a solution that works thanks to people in here and other forums. 🙂 

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Community Expert ,
Feb 20, 2023 Feb 20, 2023

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There should be no "double line breaks" — multiple paragraph returns — anywhere in any InDesign layout, nor should there be any double white spaces of any kind. This is fundamental to professional page layout, and absolutely essential for clean, controllable EPUB export.

 

Soft returns or line breaks should be avoided entirely.

 

ALL spacing in an InDesign document should be controlled with paragraph styles, and there should be no spot overrides applied. Again, this is essential for EPUB/Kindle export.

 


╟ Word & InDesign to Kindle & EPUB: a Guide to Pro Results (Amazon) ╢

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New Here ,
Feb 20, 2023 Feb 20, 2023

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That's why you need to replace them, instead of just removing them, which would alter the flow and meaning of texts. Authors just slam the enter button, they don't care about how it would work in epubs. I just checked and to my amazement, I'm looking at Kindle books that do indeed differ substantially from their paper counterparts. 

 

EXAMPLE:

 

"Blah blah?", asked mister mister. [break]
"Blah", answered miss miss.[break]

That was the end of their conversation. [break]

[break]

Later that after he started to regret is question.[break]

 

As an author I would be livid if that double break would have been omitted in an ebook.

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New Here ,
Feb 20, 2023 Feb 20, 2023

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*later that afternoon

 

(Can't seem to find the edit function in this forum)

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Community Expert ,
Feb 20, 2023 Feb 20, 2023

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Yes. There's a difference between a manuscript and a formatted book page.

 

If an author doesn't understand the difference/process, it's up to the designer to get the book page formatting right in both structure and visual layout.

 


╟ Word & InDesign to Kindle & EPUB: a Guide to Pro Results (Amazon) ╢

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Community Beginner ,
May 21, 2023 May 21, 2023

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As an author using Indesign, I have learned a lot on my own and have published several books. However, on occasion, some issues arise in the formatting process because a lot of authors who format are self-taught, like myself. I personally rely on these forums for little issues like this to prevent me from being stuck for several days. I don't think it's fair to beat someone down for going to a forum with a question. If you don't want to waste your free time answering it, then don't. For the problems I have solved, I have put the solutions on this page to prevent others from wasting time on little issues that could prevent them from continuing. At this point, I am doing a poetry book and applying individual spaces between lines using the paragraph style function is a bit of a pain, which is why I'm here. I've already had to enter 150 page breaks for the reflowable epub. Now, I'm looking for a simple way to create spaces between individual lines. So if anyone has a quick solution, I would much appreciate it.

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Community Expert ,
May 21, 2023 May 21, 2023

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By mastering InDesign styles... which is the summary of almost everything that's said above.

 

There's nothing wrong with being self-taught. Many users here, including advanced ones, are — that is, they didn't sit through months of training courses to learn this. But it's essential to learn the right techniques, avoid the faulty ones, and learn enough judgment to both discern between them... and listen to experienced advice on the differences.

 

A simple answer to your question is to make every line of each poem a separate paragraph — a line ended with a paragraph return. Then develop as many styles as are needed to both space and indent them. If you want a complex text structure, it will take a complex set of styles. Using soft returns to break lines is a bad practice whether it's a sloppy school report or trying to break lines and stanzas in formal publication.


╟ Word & InDesign to Kindle & EPUB: a Guide to Pro Results (Amazon) ╢

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Community Beginner ,
May 21, 2023 May 21, 2023

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Thanks, I appreciate it! I've had the the worst week. 

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New Here ,
Dec 12, 2023 Dec 12, 2023

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LATEST

Wow! This guy has a PhD in sass.

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 07, 2022 Jul 07, 2022

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Thank you. You have saved me hours of frustration.

 

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Participant ,
Jun 23, 2021 Jun 23, 2021

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I have returned to this page several times. I would like to report both Bob Levine and Derek Cross for being very unhelpful to put it politely. Their community professional credentials should be revoked. Either answer the questions or dont say anything at all. Saying "go get training" or "you're in over your head" is just obnoxious and these guys have no business being in help forums. 

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Community Expert ,
Jun 23, 2021 Jun 23, 2021

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Telling people that they require training is sometimes the best response. InDesign has a high learning curve and if you want to use it for EPUB without any knowledge of CSS and HTML you are in over your head.

 

If you don't like it, that's just too damn bad.

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New Here ,
Jun 24, 2021 Jun 24, 2021

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Hey BobLevine,

 

Can I just check please if you have provided the answer. You mentioned before 'If you're trying to force things with multiple line breaks, etc, stop doing that...it's futile' how can you force it? I don't mind going through my both and insert something like <br> or something.

 

I just want any solution to make it work so I can put simple line breaks in between my paragraphs where it needs to be 🙂

 

Thank you for your help

Alex

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Community Expert ,
Jun 24, 2021 Jun 24, 2021

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For reflowable the best advice I can give is to make sure that everything has a paragraph style assigned. If you want more space, set the space after and see how it looks. You're going to have to experiment and you need to remember that the user will have full control over the font choice as well as size.

 

This will effect the way the epub looks and of course each reader device has its own quirks.

 

And one last point...NEVER use soft line breaks. 

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Community Expert ,
Jun 24, 2021 Jun 24, 2021

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Anyone, please? I understand basic HTML and I was wondering was there a code I can put in to force line breaks.....I just want any solution to make it work so I can put simple line breaks in between my paragraphs where it needs to be 

 

As I mentioned above in my post from last year HTML doesn’t allow you to create space with empty paragraph returns—you have to use the CSS margin or padding property. If you generate a CSS style sheet with the epub export, InDesign Paragraph Styles with Space After will export to a CSS style with a margin-bottom property in pixels. The CSS pixel dimensions are device pixels, but the InDesign pixel dimension is a static print output dimension of 1/72", so the InDesign print white space and the displayed HTML white space will not match exactly:

 

Screen Shot 1.png

 

You can unzip the epub file and edit the CSS—the margin-bottom could be set as a percentage.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 24, 2021 Jun 24, 2021

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Or you can write your own CSS and add it during the export.

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Community Expert ,
Jun 23, 2021 Jun 23, 2021

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I still stand by the two posts I made earlier in this thread, that is, creating Reflowable ePubs is not intuitive and a LinkedIn Learning tutorial may be helpful and that BBEdit is an excellent ePub editor for Mac users.

 

As for questioning Bob's credentials; he's provided 3,774 solutions and 7,721 likes in this forum. I note you've had 15 likes and offered 0 solutions and seem to feel we are obnoxious – I suggest you read the forum rules regarding politeness. 

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New Here ,
Aug 31, 2021 Aug 31, 2021

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I agree. They were not helpful in the least. 

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Community Expert ,
Jul 07, 2022 Jul 07, 2022

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EPUB, like its HTML roots, inherently removes all duplicate white space, including multiple paragraph returns, tabs (converted to a space) and multiple spaces. You can't do spacing with multiple returns, tabs, spaces or anything of the like.

 

It usually removes soft returns (line breaks), and it's good practice to avoid them in layout, but there is an export option to allow or remove them. The spacing above and below, and left and right margins are the way to control text and paragraph spacing. (There are some gotchas with that as well.)

 

Spacing pretty much passes through from ID to EPUB, but it's tricky, and the ratio of one point to one display pixel (usually 144ppi) is not always clear.

 

Spacing above elements cannot be directly controlled. If you have spacing above a secondary heading and that heading falls at the top of a virtual page, it will be spaced down from the top. There is no automatic space-collapse as ID, Word and other layout programs manage it.

 

But ask away if you have any further problems. Most have solutions.

 

ETA: Didn't see this was an old thread. And while we can give answers to specific problems, some topics (such as EPUB creation) are broad and complex and it can be difficult to give a simple answer when a user doesn't have the full context of the process. I try to give answers on EPUB/Kindle creation that will help a newbie over a hump, but those answers may not be enough if a user doesn't have a full grasp of how the answer applies to their problem.

 

Training, of one form or another, is the complete answer. 🙂

 

 


╟ Word & InDesign to Kindle & EPUB: a Guide to Pro Results (Amazon) ╢

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Community Beginner ,
Jul 24, 2023 Jul 24, 2023

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Where are you uploading the epub? If you are uploading to Amazon, you need to convert the file in kindle create then upload it. But if you already uploaded to Amazon in another format, then you need to create a new ebook and start over since Amazon does not allow you to upload more than one format after already uploading one. If you can't get the epub to work there are paragraph settings in Indesign to adjust it. However, to solve the problem completely with kindle you need to separately format the file in Kindle Create (which is free by the way). I had this problem after calling Amazon 7 times. So your better off just using Amazon's program, especially since they updated their software and the regular Indesign epub files are not converting well. Hope this helps! 

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Community Expert ,
Jul 24, 2023 Jul 24, 2023

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Almost none of this is correct. You can upload EPUB directly for Kindle, and have been able to for quite some time. And you can upload updated EPUBs for the same book as many times as you like.

 

I suggest you are informed by some of the many, many, many greatly outdated pages and blogs out there on the topic.

 

Kindle Create is... an amateur's tool. Anyone who can use InDesign has no need of it.


╟ Word & InDesign to Kindle & EPUB: a Guide to Pro Results (Amazon) ╢

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