Longtime Scrivener user, but my first time posting. I’ve looked for this answer here in the forums and more broadly online, but haven’t yet found it. I have a Scrivener file where the Manuscript contents are one text file per chapter (imported from a Word document, but I don’t think that matters). I can successfully compile it to an ePub format and load it onto a kindle using Send to Kindle . When I open the resulting ePub file on my Kindle, the TOC is there and correct, and will link to the right part of the book. However, the progress indicator at the bottom doesn’t have “x min left in chapter”. It only cycles through “Location x of y” and “x hrs, y mins left in book”. I’d like to format the epub so a reader can know “x min left in chapter” (in addition to the options it already has), which most things I download from KU support. I’ve seen some advice online about messing around with section layout and separators in the compile format, but that advice has turned out to be incorrect. Any advice?
I may have solved my own problem … I believe the issue is with the Amazon Kindle Fire 8 I was using to test. If I open the book in Kindle on my iPad, I can see the “x mins left in chapter” that’s missing on the Fire.
How is “x mins left in chapter” measured on a Kindle? Is it a time estimate based on an assumed average reading speed? Or – as I had assumed – does it depend on the reader’s actual reading speed? And is that maybe why it can only be displayed after the reader has been reading for a while?
I believe it’s based on the reader’s actual reading speed, since when you first open a book it says “learning reading speed” until you’ve turned a couple of pages.
I’m no expert here, but I’m not sure that is something you can do with the basic self-pub tools. The location x of y is built by the KDP conversion process that is done after you submit a properly formatted manuscript. The really big publishers can probably monkey with those settings but likely don’t as since it becomes second nature to look at them by readers, mess with the comfortable at you peril.
The time estimates are generated on device at runtime based on your observed reading speed, and even the locations count changes based on local font size. So I’m not sure there is much point in trying to modify all of that code. And even if you could, it might end up failing a Kindle QC check and downcheck your uploads.
I’ve moved this to the general software discussion area, since features like reading time, page numbers, headers and footers and so on are provided by ebook readers, not anything that would be coming from Scrivener or any other .epub editor/generator.