Begin chapter a distance from top of page - exported document issue

[esnav48307363]

Good day everyone

I am busy designing a book (a newbie to Indesign hence the difficulty) and I am having this one recurring problem. It is an issue of positioning I suppose.

I want my chapter titles to beging a set distance down the page. Instead of it being right at the top of the page, I want it to start, say, 3cm below it. The rest of my pages must be start from the top. However, despite using text-frame options to produce this effect, there is an issue with the exported document. It doesn't carry over that spacing. The chapter Title is right after the end of the previous chapter. If it is any influence, the effect is showing up in Adobe Digital editions, and the tablet epub reader app called pocketreader.

Any help you can give in regards to this would be appreciated.

Oh, one more thing. IN Pocketreader, there is an option to have a continious flow, meaning you don't swipe left or right, but down to see more text. There is a black line that shows the difference in pages. How would I reproduce this? I am very new at Indesign and book design in general, so if you could help me in any way, it would be appreciated

[Derek Cross]

Insert a rule across the top of the page and have the text start a fixed distance below it and make the rule transparent.

Create a Paragraph style for the first line of text of the chapter (e.g. Chapter 1), with a Rule Above and offset the required distance from the rule to the text and make the color of the rule None.

[esnav48307363]

Thank you for your answer, but I'm not sure if I am doing what you said correctly. When I try to offset the text from the rule, the rule just goes upward and off of the page. Also, when I place the rule, it starts below the text, not above it. I don't know that is significant or not. The Indesign I have is 2019

[Peter Spier]

Select Rule Above rather than Rule Below for the rule, and there should be a checkbox to keep the rule in the frame.

[esnav48307363]

That helped a bit, but the exported document still doesn't show any change. The rule, which I left black for testing purposes, doesn't even appear on the exported file, and it still hugs the top of the page.

I've attached the InDesign document. Sorry for taking up your time with this

[Lukas Engqvist]

What are you exporting to? From taggs I can deduce it is EPUB, there is not that kind of typographic control on reflowable EPUB. Part of the reflowable idea is that the reader has more control over how their document is presented. You may need to go in and generate a custom CSS to attatch to your EPUB.

You would need something like:

h1 {margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom:0em;}

See: https://ebookconversion.paulbrookes.net/css-heading-styles/

You would need to do something like this: https://youtu.be/Hb77ddOqqOE