The old practice of putting a lot of white space at the top of your title page and at the top of the beginning of each chapter no longer holds true. This is strictly a matter of, “what Kindle wants, Kindle gets.” Playing by the rules isn’t just for games any more, especially when the game you are playing is all about earning an income from your manuscripts.
Unless you are formatting your manuscript for publication by a publishing house, or getting it ready to upload to Kindle Direct Publishing (self-publishing/print on demand), there’s no longer any need for excess white space in your documents. Title page; chapter headings; extra, blank pages at beginning and end, and between chapters, etc.
Stripping out the extra white space does two things: First, it compresses your content, making it a much smoother reading experience for your customers, who, after all, might continue to buy and read your works just because it has no annoying blank pages to interrupt the flow.
Secondly, Kindle ebook readers allow users to change the font size according to their own personal tastes, which increases not only the individual character spacing, but the length (number of pages) as well. Taking out the white space insures that even if your readers select a very large font size they will not be forced to move through a series of blank pages to get to the next chapter or section, or whatever.
Frank Walters Clark, The Copywriting Whiz
© Copyright 2026 Frank Walters Clark
