Once upon a time, there was an ambitious author named Klaus who wanted to publish his masterpiece "The Infinite Story of the Finite Mind" as an e-book. Unfortunately, Klaus knew as much about formatting as a penguin knows about desert racing. What follows is a collection of his most spectacular mistakes – everything that should never happen when formatting an e-book!
1. The Font Apocalypse
Klaus loved fonts. ALL fonts. On a single page, you could find Comic Sans, Papyrus, and of course his favorite: Wingdings for particularly dramatic passages. Readers later reported that their e-readers had begun to weep in despair.
2. The Image Drama
Klaus firmly believed that more is always better. That's why he added at least three high-resolution photos to each page – each at least 20 MB in size. His 120-page book quickly reached the size of a medium-sized planet. When opening the e-book, devices heated up so much that you could easily fry eggs on them.
3. The Table Tragedy
To structure his complex thoughts, Klaus created nested tables with 27 columns. On a smartphone, the result looked like a three-year-old's failed attempt to recreate a QR code with crayons.
4. The Spacing Nightmare
Spacing between paragraphs? Klaus knew a trick: just hit the enter key until it looks good! On his computer, that was exactly 17 blank lines. On e-readers, this resulted in sometimes three pages of emptiness gaping between two sentences – perfect for readers who wanted to meditate in between.
5. The Formatting Fantasy
Klaus had heard that text can be made bold and italic. So he made EVERY OTHER WORD bold AND italic AND underlined AND in capital letters. Eyewitnesses reported spontaneous migraine attacks while reading.
6. The Table of Contents Inferno
Tables of contents are important, Klaus thought. So he created one – but completely manually, without hyperlinks. His helpful instruction at the beginning of the book: "To get to Chapter 7, please turn the page 342 times."
7. The Metadata Mess
When Klaus uploaded his work, he left the metadata fields empty or filled them with creative entries. Under "Author" he put "The one you all know," and for the book title he chose "⭐️? BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME - BUY NOW!!! ?￢ﾭﾐ️". In bookstores, his work finally appeared under "Miscellaneous Cookbooks."
Klaus's e-book eventually became so infamous that it was included in the National Museum's collection of digital curiosities – as a warning for future generations. So if you one day format your own e-book, think of Klaus and do exactly the opposite!
1. The Font Apocalypse
Klaus loved fonts. ALL fonts. On a single page, you could find Comic Sans, Papyrus, and of course his favorite: Wingdings for particularly dramatic passages. Readers later reported that their e-readers had begun to weep in despair.
2. The Image Drama
Klaus firmly believed that more is always better. That's why he added at least three high-resolution photos to each page – each at least 20 MB in size. His 120-page book quickly reached the size of a medium-sized planet. When opening the e-book, devices heated up so much that you could easily fry eggs on them.
3. The Table Tragedy
To structure his complex thoughts, Klaus created nested tables with 27 columns. On a smartphone, the result looked like a three-year-old's failed attempt to recreate a QR code with crayons.
4. The Spacing Nightmare
Spacing between paragraphs? Klaus knew a trick: just hit the enter key until it looks good! On his computer, that was exactly 17 blank lines. On e-readers, this resulted in sometimes three pages of emptiness gaping between two sentences – perfect for readers who wanted to meditate in between.
5. The Formatting Fantasy
Klaus had heard that text can be made bold and italic. So he made EVERY OTHER WORD bold AND italic AND underlined AND in capital letters. Eyewitnesses reported spontaneous migraine attacks while reading.
6. The Table of Contents Inferno
Tables of contents are important, Klaus thought. So he created one – but completely manually, without hyperlinks. His helpful instruction at the beginning of the book: "To get to Chapter 7, please turn the page 342 times."
7. The Metadata Mess
When Klaus uploaded his work, he left the metadata fields empty or filled them with creative entries. Under "Author" he put "The one you all know," and for the book title he chose "⭐️? BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME - BUY NOW!!! ?￢ﾭﾐ️". In bookstores, his work finally appeared under "Miscellaneous Cookbooks."
Klaus's e-book eventually became so infamous that it was included in the National Museum's collection of digital curiosities – as a warning for future generations. So if you one day format your own e-book, think of Klaus and do exactly the opposite!
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