A self-publishing author started his book with two epigraphs and a prologue. I originally formatted this as one file, putting the epigraphs at the top of the page (separated by blank lines). The prologue followed.
He objected to this, saying that he wanted each epigraph to appear on its own page. I formatted the three elements in the file (two epigraphs and the prologue) as three chapters inside the one file. This passed the IDPF EPUB validator and displayed correctly in the Kindle app, ADE (Adobe Digital Editions), and on a Nook.
He then uploaded the .epub
file I made for him to the Kobo Bookstore, and viewed the result in the Kobo app on his iPad. He complained that the epigraphs no longer appeared on separate pages, but were displayed above the prologue.
I don't know why a kludge that worked for the IDPF and for several other ereaders did not work here. I asked him to try the file on a real Kobo, not just on his iPad. I have not heard from him. It is possible that the problem lies with the app. Still, the file should work across all platforms.
I consulted a colleague, who told me that page-break-before:always
did not always work. She did not know why. She suggested splitting the one file into three. I did that, but it was not an easy task. I had to change the toc.ncx
, the content.opf
, the contents page, and renumber the toc-anchors
in most of the files. I am not happy with the result. The contents page now has entries for Epigraph the First and Epigraph the Second. That is lame.
Is there a way I can make the three chapters in one file work for the Kobo app?