Last year I reported on how Kindle’s new page-flip feature might be screwing up earnings for authors in KU. Since then, things have improved somewhat for some authors, while others are still seeing fishy things happen with their page reads.
So how do you disable page reads for your book altogether so you can stop worrying about it?
Many authors have reported that using Vellum (an ebook formatting software for Mac) does the trick.
But I’m not a Mac user, so I wanted to find a simpler way.
Apparently, you can “break” page-flip by embedding an SGV file into your ebook.
I made a video about that process and posted it below.
You can use this white rectangle JPG (it’s invisible but I marked it with the arrows. Drag it to your desktop to save.
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Then use this conversion tool to convert it to SVG, which will look like a bunch of code.
You might be able to just copy this code directly into your ebook with Sigil.
<?xml version=”1.0″ standalone=”no”?>
<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD SVG 20010904//EN”
“http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-SVG-20010904/DTD/svg10.dtd”>
<svg version=”1.0″ xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/2000/svg”
width=”300.000000pt” height=”24.000000pt” viewBox=”0 0 300.000000 24.000000″
preserveAspectRatio=”xMidYMid meet”>
<metadata>
Created by potrace 1.13, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2015
</metadata>
<g transform=”translate(0.000000,24.000000) scale(0.100000,-0.100000)”
fill=”#000000″ stroke=”none”>
</g>
</svg>
You might need to cut the first two lines and just add:
<svg version=”1.0″ xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/2000/svg”
width=”300.000000pt” height=”24.000000pt” viewBox=”0 0 300.000000 24.000000″
preserveAspectRatio=”xMidYMid meet”>
<metadata>
Created by potrace 1.13, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2015
</metadata>
<g transform=”translate(0.000000,24.000000) scale(0.100000,-0.100000)”
fill=”#000000″ stroke=”none”>
</g>
</svg>
I added both just in case.
Update: Uploaded my new file, and an hour later “page flip” has disappeared from my book on Kindle. So it worked!
Credits: First I saw this hack, courtesy of Jutoh, for adding in an svg file to “break” the page-flip feature. Then my friend Ingrid wrote her own post. My articles is based on their methods.
I’m a philosophy dropout with a PhD in Literature. I covet a cabin full of cats, where I can write fantasy novels to pay for my cake addiction. Sometimes I live in castles.
3 Comments
Question: is it the SVG that does the trick, or the JPEG? I ask because I use Sigil to embed my covers as SVGs.
Thanks for sharing. Do you insert the code into any file, or does it have to be a specific file? And did you find a change in your KENP?
the svg file is code, so you need to convert to epub and open in sigil so you can add the code. It won’t work if you just copy into Word.
Personally, I didn’t see a big change in page reads, but I know other authors who have seen a big boost, so it’s worth testing.
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