Drop Caps and custom formatting shattering on older Kindles (CSS Fallback Trap)
I spend a lot of time deep in my digital workings, manually stripping out bloated converter code and rebuilding semantic EPUB architecture for authors most of the time. I wanted to drop a warning about a formatting regularity for reader experience on e-ink devices
A lot of authors use Vellum or Calibre to force fancy Drop Caps or custom chapter headers. The previewer looks great. But when you upload it to KDP, readers may immediately complain that the first letter is floating above the paragraph, or the line-spacing is overlapping
This happens because automated converters often use absolute pixel values (px) or points (pt) to force layouts. When a reader opens your book on a Paperwhite and changes their default font size or switches to a dyslexic font, the absolute CSS refuses to scale. Thus it shatters
The fix is entirely in the CSS writing. You have to strip the absolute values and code your typography using relative em or rem units, and use clean <span> tags for drop caps. This forces the architecture to mathematically scale alongside whatever rare font settings readers may have
If you rely on automated converters, test your file on an actual device and radically alter font styles if necessary. If it breaks, your CSS may be too rigid