Have a 200,000+ page manuscript (non-fiction) which agent has asked for in Kindle. However, it’s about a series of criminal cases with extensive transcript (offset) quotations as well as block quotations. I cannot do it in Scrivener (Windows), which is where the entire project resides, because I cannot preserve the formatting, even block by block.
I’m stunned. This is an excellent (beyond excellent), serious product. How can it not keep the indentation of block quotes on Compile? It’s useless in that context. Unless you’re on a Mac, of course.
Can anyone tell me when 2.0 (or 1.6, 7, 8 or 9) might be coming and whether or not this will be addressed? This has created a major problem that I don’t know, just yet, how I’ll solve, in the short time.
Your problem may well not be Scrivener for Windows or mac, but with Amazon and the kindle format. I have never been able to get block quotes to indent from the left. I have concluded that Kindle does not allow it. Your best bet I think is to go to the Kindle forums and seek help there. It seems there must be some way to do it. At least you might be able to do so using the pdf-like fixed format in the new KF8 format (though older Kindle ereaders don’t handle that format).
Thanks for the reply. I did not know this was a Kindle issue also (would still like to see the “preserve” function for Windows version). I could try a suggestion I read, to compile in EPub, then edit in Sigil and use Kindle Previewer to make a Kindle but, as you can imagine, with a 200,000+ word manuscript, that could take forever and, if you’re right about Kindle, it still might not work. Okay, thanks for the answer. I will plow ahead.
Actually, I went to take a look at “Outrage” by Vincent Bugliosi (the story of the OJ Simpson case) since it contains testimony and block quotes and they do, indeed, work in Kindle. So, I will have to figure out another method for getting it out of Scrivener and into Mobi while retaining the formatting.
If it can be done, that is great news. So my advice to you would be to create a new Scrivener project, very small, one document in it, a few paragraphs, standard and formatted the way you want. Then try to export in various ways: straight to Kindle .mobi, to .epub and then through Sigil to Kindle Previewer, to .doc and then to Kindle Previewer, and so on.
That way you can find the path to the way you want without waiting on restyling the big work. When you have a method that does work, you’ll know how to do it for the big ’un.
(Mod note: Split this discussion into its own topic from the Windows update announcement post)
The best way I can think to do this is to use some specific formatting within your Scrivener document to define your block quotes, for instance just set the font colour to red or blue, something distinct from the rest of your text. (When you compile, disable “Remove text color” from the Transformation options.) This will create a unique class for all the blockquote text.
Compile to the epub format and open in Sigil. Open the stylesheet from the contents on the left and find the style pertaining to your blockquotes. If you use colour as the definining characteristic, this should be easy to find as it will be the only one with the color attribute. Delete that color line and replace it with
text-indent: -2em;
margin-left: 2em;
Use whatever amount you want, just make sure to use the negative value for the text indent.
Then do a search to replace
<p class="scrivener1"><span class="scrivener6">
in all HTML files with
<p class="scrivener6"><span class="scrivener6">
where “scrivener6” is whatever class you just assigned your blockquote settings (in the image, it’s “scrivener6”) and “scrivener1” is the class used for all your body text; it probably looks like:
I am unable to compile a .mobi file for my kindle that looks like it does in the scrivener editor
The attached file shows an example of what it looks like in the scrivener editor. When I compile, everything but the first line of a paragraph goes back to the far left side of the page.
Is there a way to create a self-formatted mobi file on PC?
Please help if you can! I am not sure what I can do other than finding some other software and copy and pasting my entire book over. I do not understand any of the code in the last post.
If this isn’t supported:
Is there someone I can pay to do this for me?
I think this might be supported on the mac version. If I get scrivener on a mac, can I copy the project folder over and the mac will be able to open it?
I am not sure what I can do other than finding some other software and copy and pasting my entire book over. I do not understand any of the code in the last post.