Are my eBook Formatting Issues Due to Kindle for Windows Phone, or More Universal?

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I usually read books on a dedicated eBook reader, typically my Kindle Paperwhite. But lately I’ve done a fair amount of eBook reading via the Kindle app on my Lumia 928, and I’ve discovered an unusual bug. At random intervals the formatting will become wonky, cutting off sentences during page turns, and requiring an orientation swap to fix it.

Swapping the phone from portrait to landscape isn’t hard, especially since the Kindle app for Windows Phone doesn’t have orientation lock. Guess this is a case of a lack of a feature becoming a feature! It seems minor to complain about having to rotate the phone to fix the book, but it breaks up the flow of reading; when it happens repeatedly, it becomes more of a pain.

I polled the other Gear Diary editors, and Judie and Mike both said they’ve never had this issue, leading me to think this might be just a Windows Phone bug. Dan, however, said he’s seen this happen in iBooks, so it seems like it may be a more universal eBook issue than I thought. Has anyone else encountered sporadic, but fixable, format issues in eBooks? If so, let us know the smartphone platform as well as the eBook retailer. Perhaps there’s a universal thread or fix!

 

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About the Author

Zek
Zek has been a gadget fiend for a long time, going back to their first PDA (a Palm M100). They quickly went from researching what PDA to buy to following tech news closely and keeping up with the latest and greatest stuff. They love writing about ebooks because they combine their two favorite activities; reading anything and everything, and talking about fun new tech toys. What could be better?

5 Comments on "Are my eBook Formatting Issues Due to Kindle for Windows Phone, or More Universal?"

  1. I have a different issue with the Kindle app on my Lumia 920, but maybe related. Occasionally the text on a page will be missing. This will happen when I change pages, the next page will just be blank. If I go back a page, everything is still there, and if I go forward two pages, everything is fine. But one page will be blank. Changing the text size usually fixes the problem. Also, once in a while, it happens only to one or sentences that will “go missing”. Again, changing the text size fixes it. I also read a lot on my iPad, Surface, and Kindle Paperwhite and have never had this problem on any device other than the Lumia.
    I’m also hoping they’ll give us a better library experience on WP at some point. The long list of books, sortable only by author or title, is a royal PITA…

    • I’ve seen this too, just not as often! Let’s hope Amazon pushes a bug fix update out someday…
      Sent from my iPad

      • I hope so! But I’m not holding my breath considering how long it took them to release a version that even supported WP multitasking and app-resume properly.

  2. I run an ebook design shop and do a lot of daily ebook testing across devices and apps… it’s a bug.

  3. There’s also a bug in the latest version of the Kindle app for iOS. I have an eBook that is in full color when displayed in the Kindle app for Windows 8 (desktop). The eBook loses its color when displayed in the Kindle app for iOS.

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