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I really love my Kindle Fire but...

For discussion about electronic reading devices and related issues (pricing, formatting, accessories, comparisons, etc.)
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Susan
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I really love my Kindle Fire but...

Post by Susan » Mon September 17th, 2012, 5:50 pm

I really love my Kindle Fire but they need to improve the software to enable the enlargement of maps, charts, genealogy charts so the readers can actually read them. Right now I am reading Paullina Simon's The Bronze Horseman which takes place in Leningrad, USSR now St. Petersburg, Russia. There is a map of Leningrad and I would need a magnifying glass to see it. I've been to St. Petersburg and besides helping me understand the story better, it would mean something to me since I have been in that city. So what did I do? I got the hardcover out of the library, made a PDF file, copied the map in a Word file, enlarged it enough so I could read it, and printed it. Yes, there are maps of Leningrad/St. Petersburg online, but the map in the book has the locales of particular settings in the book. Of course websites can be enlarged on the Kindle Fire with a flick of the fingers, but am I missing a way to enlarge maps, etc. in an ebook?

On the plus side, the hardcover has 632 pages and is about 3 inches thick, so I am glad to be holding my light-weight Kindle Fire!
Last edited by Susan on Mon September 17th, 2012, 5:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
~Susan~
~Unofficial Royalty~
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Mythica
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Post by Mythica » Mon September 17th, 2012, 9:00 pm

It's possible that is simply how big the actual images are, which may not be something Amazon can do anything about. I made my family history book into Kindle format and whenever I added large images, the ebook production software automatically sized them down! I was not happy about that. But ebook file sizes do tend to be small - even if it's a black and white or mostly text image, making it too big may make the file size of the ebook too big, especially if there's a number of images, they will add up.

That said, my suggestion would be to view the book in Kindle for PC/Mac or Cloud Reader on a bigger screen to see if it goes any bigger.

ETA: I just opened the sample of Bronze Horseman in Cloud Reader - the first map is pretty readable but the second isn't. However, I'm on a laptop - on a bigger screen, it might be fine.
Last edited by Mythica on Mon September 17th, 2012, 9:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Susan
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Post by Susan » Mon September 17th, 2012, 9:29 pm

I just opened the book using the Cloud on my PC with a large screen and the map seems even smaller than it is on my Kindle! Before I went to the library, I did try to make a PDF of the map from my Kindle Fire, but I think the backlighting made it too light for my scanner. I do have a regular Kindle also and perhaps I could scan from there in the future. I'll transfer The Bronze Horseman there and try it later.
~Susan~
~Unofficial Royalty~
Royal news updated daily, information and discussion about royalty past and present
http://www.unofficialroyalty.com/

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Mythica
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Post by Mythica » Tue September 18th, 2012, 12:04 pm

I just opened the sample on a larger screen in Cloud Reader - here is a screenshot. It appears to me this is simply as big as the map is, since there is plenty of room on the screen for it to go larger, it must have been sized down for the Kindle version, unfortunately. (Also, the forum seems to have compressed the jpg so it's harder to read but on the Cloud Reader, it's a little clearer).
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Susan
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Post by Susan » Tue September 18th, 2012, 1:37 pm

Thanks...the map in the hardcover is 4 1/2 by 7 1/4 inches. When I made a PDF and then copied in into a Word document I enlarged the map to 7 by 10 inches and I am using a printed copy. The map in the Kindle Fire is 2 1/4 by 3 1/2 inches. It can't take that much more memory to make it as large as the screen. I'm going to give some input to Amazon about this and maybe poke around the forums there.
~Susan~
~Unofficial Royalty~
Royal news updated daily, information and discussion about royalty past and present
http://www.unofficialroyalty.com/

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Mythica
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Post by Mythica » Wed September 19th, 2012, 8:51 am

I'm not sure it's Amazon's doing so much as it is the software that produces the ebook to begin with. My family history book is not published on Amazon - I made it for my own enjoyment and so I could distribute it to my family members. I used MobiPocket Creator: http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadso ... reator.asp
It seems once the images are above a certain size, it reduces them itself. Maybe there is a way to change this but I haven't found it yet.

So it might be the publishers you need to complain to, not Amazon.

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