Creating ebooks for different e-reading devices

by Allison Horton on June 11, 2024

Not every e-reading device supports certain styling features, some of which you might heavily rely on when formatting your manuscript. The below chart covers how the major e-readers render common styling elements. If omitting any of these is a dealbreaker, consider tweaking your manuscript to ensure top-notch quality across all devices.

Renders on:		iPad/epub	Nook/epub	eInk Kindle/Mobi	Kindle Fire/KF8
Typography
	Typeface	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
	Type size	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Line height	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
	Color	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
	Background color	Yes	Yes	No	No
	Highlight	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
	Alignment	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	First line indent	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Space between paragraphs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Bold/Italic	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Spacing
	Above	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Below	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Left	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
	Right	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Lines/Borders		Yes	Yes	No	No
Effects		Yes	Yes	No	No
	Text wrapping	Yes	Yes	No	No
	Drop shadow	Yes	Yes	No	No
	Rounded corners	Yes	Yes	No	Yes

One Kindle-specific formatting note:

The eInk Kindles cannot float images.