An Alert for Starforge Readers – If You’re Seeing Odd Formatting Or the Like … · 6:14am Mar 5th, 2023
Hey folks. Max here with a heads-up about Starforge. That big finale for the UNSEC Space Trilogy.
Well, it appears that it might be a bit … large. And this has led to some issues for some readers.
Okay, let me lay it out to you. Ereaders are not complicated programs. In fact, they’re quite simple. But this can mean that as you progress through a very large book, your reader of choice may start experiencing … oddities.
For example, I first discovered this when reading through The Wheel of Time back in the day on my old Kindle. Sometimes the formatting would get a little … funky. I’d close the book, reopen it, and voila! The issue would be gone.
Well, while doing the copy edit for Starforge, I did find that on one reader, for one format, after a good ten or so chapters, the formatting would have a chance to go … sideways on me. But it wasn’t because the file with the actual formatting was incorrect. It was because the reader itself was just having a bit of trouble after so many consecutive page turns. It happened largely with one format, but today I heard reports that someone else had seen something similar going on and was worried the book had broken formatting or other issues.
Well, it only appears that way, but the file itself is clean. What’s happening here is an ereader program that’s just kind of starting to let little errors pile up, built for 300 page books, not 2000 page ones. And as Starforge is DRM-free, this could especially be the case if you purchased it but converted it to another format.
So, if you’re reading Starforge, and see something funny, maybe broken formatting such as odd page breaks, paragraph splits, or justification (text being centered instead of on the left) issues, don’t panic. The book isn’t broken. Here’s what you do.
- Back out of the story. Sorry for the interruption.
- Open another book with your reader. This loads it into the program’s memory.
- Back out of that book.
- Reopen Starforge. This loads it back in, right where you were, but without any accrued reader issues.
Voila! Your formatting issues should be fixed. If they are not, then take the more extreme tactic of restarting your ereader program or device. And if that does not fix the issue, try either A) redownloading the file or B) reconverting it to the format you’ve chosen, though if the error appears again, it may be a problem with your converter.
I do apologize for the inconvenience, but ereaders can in some cases be very simply programs or devices, which means errors are generally ignored under the rule of “How long could the book be?” meaning they aren’t usually an issue. And myself being fairly tech-literate, when I encountered the issue during the copy-edit, after confirming that it was the reader and not the file in each case (a fairly simply check), simply fixed it with the aforenoted process and called it good.
However, it did not occur to me that there would be plenty of people who had never encountered an ereader issue like this before and would be befuddled when faced with this.
So, if this has happened to you (especially if you converted the file into a different format), here are the ways to get it taken care of. I hope it hasn’t soured your Starforge experience, and if it helps look at it this way: It’s a limitation of the technology, the same way it would be if I’d printed it bound and your arms had gotten tired all 20+ pounds of it aloft, and you’d dropped it and broken a few toes.
Anyway, I’ll be tagging this on the Starforge blurb on the books page, but if you have seen these issues, hopefully this resolves them for you. Enjoy!
I didn't have any problems like that but I also would briefly read other stories on mine. I enjoyed the story and it took me a month to read. That's a long time for me. It was time well spent.