Hi! Hope someone can help with a “Front Matter” issue… Images attached.
When I compile, for some reason the “Front Matter” section shows up in Kindle navigation menu as a drop down. I’d like this to not happen. In other words, I’d like only the text files in my front matter to show, not the folder labled “Front Matter” as it is currently doing. I’ve searched through the manual and online but can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. The “Back Matter” section works fine, as is shown in one of the images below.
I’ve made sure both my front matter and back matter folders are not in the draft folder. As a note, this is not uploaded through amazon. This is compiling from Scrivener as an epub file. Then I open this using Kindle Previewer (in which the table of contents looks correct), then I export as a Mobi to upload to my kindle via “send to kindle” app. Not sure if any of that matters, but thought I’d mention.
As to the main question, make sure you are selecting the “Front Matter” folder itself in the selector, instead of its parent item. You shouldn’t see it at all in the Contents list above, just the items within it.
Thanks Amber. I’ve uploaded the images in this reply (hopefully When I compile, I’m selecting an “ebook” folder I’ve created within the Front Matter folder. As you mentioned, this works as expected in the Contents list (I only see the text files I’ve put within the front matter/ ebook folder, not the front matter or ebook folder itself). But still, I get the drop down menu when I upload to my kindle (as seen in pics).
The back matter folder works fine in the navigation menu - no drop down. Which is strange, since it is set up in the same way as the front matter folder. The only thing different is that the first file in my front matter is my cover image. But I don’t see how that should matter since this is how it is recommended to be set up within scrivener.
So have you checked the ePub file itself before going through the conversion routine? If you don’t have a tool for doing so, Calibre has a simple editor built into it, but Sigil is the best tool for this. Using that you can see more precisely what you’re dealing with, and help differentiate between what the book is, and what book readers do to it. For example, in this case I’m wondering if that’s not just something the Kindle book reader does as a convenience for the reader.
Telling is the fact that it is called “Front Matter”, and not “Ebook”, which is what we’d more expect to be getting if Scrivener were adding this data to the ebook structure itself. In theory that would be all it knows about, not the parent folder of “Ebook”.
Sigil has a Table of Contents viewer you can use to preview the structure in a more friendly manner, but the “contents.xhtml” file is where that data comes from.
Thanks Amber. I was using Kindle Previewer, and you’re right… the table of contents looks fine in that program (no “front matter” drop down). It’s only when I export from Kindle Previewer to a .mobi (which it forces me to do in order to upload to a kindle), that the drop down appears. Or rather, when I export to .mobi and upload it to my kindle account to view on my phone and kindle paperwhite. So it may be something going on in this unorthodox transfer process. I’ll look at some of the other programs you mentioned to see if those tell a different story. Thanks again!
Yeah, it could be a matter of converting to Mobi, but like I say it may well also just be a convenience added for the reader’s benefit that isn’t actually anywhere in the structure of the ebook. After all most people who open navigation immediately are typically going to want to jump straight to chapter 1 or a prologue, so having those items “set aside” is beneficial to that.
When I compile, I’m selecting an “ebook” folder I’ve created within the Front Matter folder. As you mentioned, this works as expected in the Contents list (I only see the text files I’ve put within the front matter/ ebook folder, not the front matter or ebook folder itself). But still, I get the drop down menu when I upload to my kindle (as seen in pics).
