Kindle to utilize epub format in late 2022

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Not yet available. From the Amazon help page:

Yeah, figured it was probably later, gator ... I was just being all hopeful last night after hearing email worked now.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Drybonz]

I'm wondering if this has something to do with the increasing pressure to eliminate proprietary systems and formats, etc (blocking competition)... and, if so, this is a good first step, in my opinion.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by Quoth

No, they won't drop mobi because not everyone uses "Send to Kindle".

They can't drop mobi because people have existing books, and if they suddenly make all those books unreadable there will be a public relations firestorm, and Amazon really can't afford that right now: their rep is bad enough as it is. They got a lot of flack for remotely deleting *one book* when the alleged publisher turned out to not actually have the rights to publish it: what do you think would happen if the entire content of libraries purchased before about 2012 started to vanish?

(I'm also wondering what this means for periodicals. Nothing other than the MOBI reader can read them. Does this mean we can't email periodicals to our Kindles any more? If so, this is a major reduction in functionality for me and a good reason to see if the jailbreak provides something similarly convenient I can hack up with cron or something.)

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by NullNix

They can't drop mobi because people have existing books, and if they suddenly make all those books unreadable there will be a public relations firestorm,

I believe that this change is all about trying to make the internal workings of the Kindle ecosystem into more of a black box. Standard formats such as EPUB, DOCX, and PDF go in and we are not supposed to think about what magic happens with them after that. The documents just appear on our devices ready for reading. This will give Amazon more flexibility to change their internally used formats behind the scenes going forward.

Despite their desires to hide it, there is no way that MOBI support is going to be removed from the Kindle ecosystem at any time in the foreseeable future. But sideloading is going to become the only option for some documents.

Originally Posted by NullNix

what do you think would happen if the entire content of libraries purchased before about 2012 started to vanish?

It is not just older books. Amazon only just stopped accepting books in reflowable MOBI format from publishers in August 2021.

Originally Posted by NullNix

Does this mean we can't email periodicals to our Kindles any more?

You can still email periodicals but I do not see any way of getting the special handling of MOBI periodical format without sideloading. There are two problems. First is the special TOC needed to enable the article view and the second is that it is effective only in MOBI format, not KF8.

The first problem can be solved by using proprietary enhancements to the NCX that kindlegen turns into the periodical TOC. It would be possible to change calibre to produce an EPUB with that instead of a MOBI file.

The second problem is tougher to solve. Anything newer than a K2 Kindle is going to get the converted periodical delivered in KF8 format. There is a command line option that causes kindlegen to only produce MOBI output, but I know of no way to induce that behavior for an emailed EPUB.

[tomsem]

It has been quite awhile since I’ve tried it, but isn’t it still possible to download books directly to Kindle from web site like gutenberg.org or calibre server using the browser?

I used to have a cache of books in Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and even Amazon Cloud but browser no longer can login to any of those IIRC.

[hleo12]

Is there some sort of requirement for the epub? I tried sending an epub file via email twice now and I got that 'there was a problem' email from amazon. I even converted it via calibre.

Then I tried another epub file and it worked.

The missing cover thing still bothers me tho, and I'll probably stop using the send to kindle feature after they remove the mobi support on emails.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by hleo12

Is there some sort of requirement for the epub?

The Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines describes acceptable EPUB content and formatting, but it is incomplete, inaccurate, and some parts do not apply to personal documents.

EPUBs sent via email are passed through Amazon's kindlegen program for conversion to the Kindle formats that will be delivered to the user's devices and apps. That conversion process is less forgiving than the converter built into calibre.

You can try running your failed EPUBs though the Check Book function of the calibre ebook editor or EPUBCheck to look for problems. You can also use Amazon's Kindle Previewer to get Amazon-specific error messages.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by tomsem

It has been quite awhile since I’ve tried it, but isn’t it still possible to download books directly to Kindle from web site like gutenberg.org or calibre server using the browser?

Heh heh heh yes, yes it is. That probably solves the problem from my perspective -- assuming this feature still works, and that it works at all for periodicals (never checked the latter, not used the former in ages): I can just grab my calibre-converted stuff from a local website by hand. Clunky UI but if I cared much about that I wouldn't be using a Kindle at all.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Heh heh heh yes, yes it is. That probably solves the problem from my perspective -- assuming this feature still works, and that it works at all for periodicals (never checked the latter, not used the former in ages): I can just grab my calibre-converted stuff from a local website by hand. Clunky UI but if I cared much about that I wouldn't be using a Kindle at all.

If the kindle is jailbroken, there is always wget, curl, rsync, scp, or maybe even lynx.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines describes acceptable EPUB content and formatting, but it is incomplete, inaccurate, and some parts do not apply to personal documents.

EPUBs sent via email are passed through Amazon's kindlegen program for conversion to the Kindle formats that will be delivered to the user's devices and apps. That conversion process is less forgiving than the converter built into calibre.

You can try running your failed EPUBs though the Check Book function of the calibre ebook editor or EPUBCheck to look for problems. You can also use Amazon's Kindle Previewer to get Amazon-specific error messages.

Yep. All good ideas if an epub fails to go through.

I find that if Kindle Previewer does not have any complaints about an epub it will usually be just fine going to the Kindle Document Service and will display just as well on my Kindle Oasis 2 as an epub/kepub loaded on my Kobo. In some instances, better, as I recently discovered that Kobo has less built-in font support for some HTML entities than Amazon does, sigh...

By the way, for those concerned about covers, if your epub has a cover, it should remain intact *inside the book*, while you won't see it as a thumbnail while browsing your Kindle library, you should be able to view it if desired. Either by navigating to "Cover" or by back-paging to the very beginning of the book.

Yeah, it's not what we want, but at least it's possible to view the cover art, if the book contains it.

[nesler]

Well then:

Dear Kindle Customer,

Thank you for using the Send to Kindle service to send personal documents to your Kindle library. We wanted to let you know that starting August 2022, you’ll no longer be able to send MOBI (.mobi, .azw) files to your library. Any MOBI files already in your Kindle library will not be affected by this change.

MOBI is an older file format and won’t support the newest Kindle features for documents. Any existing MOBI files you want to read with our most up-to-date features for documents will need to be re-sent in a compatible file format.

Also, compatible formats now include EPUB (.epub), which you can send to your library using your Send to Kindle email address. We’ll also be adding EPUB support to the free Kindle app for iOS and Android devices and the Send to Kindle desktop app for PC and Mac.

If you have any questions, please visit our help page or contact our Customer Service team.

[hleo12]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines describes acceptable EPUB content and formatting, but it is incomplete, inaccurate, and some parts do not apply to personal documents.

EPUBs sent via email are passed through Amazon's kindlegen program for conversion to the Kindle formats that will be delivered to the user's devices and apps. That conversion process is less forgiving than the converter built into calibre.

You can try running your failed EPUBs though the Check Book function of the calibre ebook editor or EPUBCheck to look for problems. You can also use Amazon's Kindle Previewer to get Amazon-specific error messages.

Thank you. I tried Kindle Previewer and it turned out the certain problematic epub had a problem with the table of contents. It works on any other reader app I've tried, Amazon is just picky I guess.

This is kinda a headache tho, aside from the missing cover thumbnail, there's a chance that the epub you bought from other sources aren't formatted correctly (at least according to Amazon's standards). Even re-converting the book using Calibre didn't fix it automatically.

Whispersync on sideloaded content is the only thing that made me stay with Kindles. Covers are a pretty big part of that. I'm hoping Amazon would at least update documents to have covers.

-----------------------------------
Update

I played around with the updated personal documents. Amazon is sending the documents to Kindles as azw3 format now. So we have the enhanced typesetting. That's really the only difference. We can't really take advantage of any of the azw3 features because Amazon doesn't allow metadata on personal documents.

While I'm happy with the options for more fonts, I'd still rather have covers.

[hleo12]

Originally Posted by graycyn

By the way, for those concerned about covers, if your epub has a cover, it should remain intact *inside the book*, while you won't see it as a thumbnail while browsing your Kindle library, you should be able to view it if desired. Either by navigating to "Cover" or by back-paging to the very beginning of the book.

Yeah, it's not what we want, but at least it's possible to view the cover art, if the book contains it.

I don't really view the covers while I'm inside the book. I just want my library to look pretty. Specially now that list view also includes thumbnails.

[ahecht]

Originally Posted by hleo12

I don't really view the covers while I'm inside the book. I just want my library to look pretty. Specially now that list view also includes thumbnails.

The library and the lock screen.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by hleo12

Thank you. I tried Kindle Previewer and it turned out the certain problematic epub had a problem with the table of contents. It works on any other reader app I've tried, Amazon is just picky I guess.

Amazon is particularly picky about the internal table of contents. Links that are out of sequence or that point to undisplayable content can cause the EPUB to be rejected.