I just put my novel, Aurora Rescue, back on Amazon as an ebook. I signed up for their lending service, so I will wait 90 days before I submit it to other ebook sources.
I have noticed that when I read a lot of ebooks, the formatting is less than wonderful. I suspect part of the reason is because of quirks in the auto-format process in MS Word. Note in the sample above (I put this on edit view that allows me to see all the symbols), that there are several paragraphs. Some of them have a little arrow before the sentence starts (see green arrows), which is accomplished by manually striking the Tab key, and some have no arrows (see red arrows) which is a result of the automatic formatting. I suspect that when ebook paragraphs start flush left instead of being indented, it is because the digital file that was submitted included many or all "auto-formatted" paragraphs. Therefore, the spaces before the start of the new paragraphs are not picked up when the manuscript file is converted to an ebook file.
I know for Aurora Rescue, I went through the entire manuscript before I submitted to be sure each paragraph had the little black arrow in front. I also tried to remove any spaces after the closing punctuation of a sentence. (See the orange arrow for an example of a space after the quote marks.)
The above sample is from my newer novel, Family Secrets. Even though it is not being prepared for an ebook yet, I am making an effort as I go to be sure all the formatting is uniform. I am hoping that by "paying a little now," I will have a clean, well-formatted manuscript when I am finished. It will save me some time so I do not have to "pay a lot later" when I get down to my final editing.
