Sideload to Kindle from Calibre & Add to Amazon Library

tgiladi · 02-09-2024, 04:10 AM

Hi,
My problem seems kind of specific, and I couldn't find an answer so far. I hope someone could help with this:
I am using the polish feature in Calibre to add a Jacket page to my books, so I could read the book comments. After polishing, I am manually editing the Jacket.xhtml file, to add some data about the author, their picture etc.
This works very well when I am uploading the resulting epub file to various e-reading apps (e.g. Readera, Google Play Books etc.). But if I try to send it to my Kindle via email or using the Send to Kindle web service or any other method, the formatting of my modified jacket.xhtml becomes corrupted.
I think it has to do with the conversion into .kfx that Amazon is doing.
So, I tested what happens when I use Calibre to convert my epub into AZW3, polish it again, modify the jacket.xhtml as needed and then sideload the AZW3 onto my Kindle Oasis via cable, using Calibre.
The result was excellent, and I could see my formatting of the jacket.xhtml as intended.
However, this method is not adding the book to my personal document library on Amazon, meaning it would not sync with my other devices running the Kindle app (e.g. phone, tablet).

So, the question is: is there a way to both keep my custom formatting of the jacket.xhtml file AND also have the book sync across devices?
Or am I doomed to have to choose between nice format and sync?

jhowell · 02-09-2024, 11:01 AM

You must use one of the send-to-kindle methods in order to add a book to your account and have it sync between Kindle apps and devices.

If you provide a sample of a book jacket's HTML/CSS that does not render well after sending then suggestions might be made on how to alter it to provide better results.

tgiladi · 02-09-2024, 01:55 PM

Thanks for your suggestion. Here's the code of my jacket.xhtml. The book and it's metadata are in Hebrew, which is written from right to left, that's why I am using dir="RTL".
The parts of the code which I changed are in the first table, where I removed the word "Tags" and centered the remaining text. And of course, below the book comments section, I added a table with the author's name and information about the author.
When this book is opened in Calibre/Sigil or any e-reading app, it shows just fine. But as I wrote earlier, on Kindle the picture becomes tiny and the tables show an expand button for some reason.

Spoiler:

jhowell · 02-09-2024, 09:47 PM

I need to look into this further, but I noticed that the second table with the image does not set a width for the cell with the image or the cell with text leaving it up to the book rendering software to determine the width for those.

As a quick test I added styles to set the width of the cell containing the image to 50% and the width of the image itself to 100% of its cell which resulted in much better rendering on my Kindle.

tgiladi · 02-10-2024, 01:25 PM

That's a good direction, thanks a lot! I'll experiment with it and see what can be done to improve.

02-09-2024, 04:10 AM	#1
tgiladi Enthusiast Posts: 27 Karma: 30486 Join Date: Dec 2023 Device: Kindle Oasis	Sideload to Kindle from Calibre & Add to Amazon Library Hi, My problem seems kind of specific, and I couldn't find an answer so far. I hope someone could help with this: I am using the polish feature in Calibre to add a Jacket page to my books, so I could read the book comments. After polishing, I am manually editing the Jacket.xhtml file, to add some data about the author, their picture etc. This works very well when I am uploading the resulting epub file to various e-reading apps (e.g. Readera, Google Play Books etc.). But if I try to send it to my Kindle via email or using the Send to Kindle web service or any other method, the formatting of my modified jacket.xhtml becomes corrupted. I think it has to do with the conversion into .kfx that Amazon is doing. So, I tested what happens when I use Calibre to convert my epub into AZW3, polish it again, modify the jacket.xhtml as needed and then sideload the AZW3 onto my Kindle Oasis via cable, using Calibre. The result was excellent, and I could see my formatting of the jacket.xhtml as intended. However, this method is not adding the book to my personal document library on Amazon, meaning it would not sync with my other devices running the Kindle app (e.g. phone, tablet). So, the question is: is there a way to both keep my custom formatting of the jacket.xhtml file AND also have the book sync across devices? Or am I doomed to have to choose between nice format and sync?

02-09-2024, 01:55 PM	#3
tgiladi Enthusiast Posts: 27 Karma: 30486 Join Date: Dec 2023 Device: Kindle Oasis	Thanks for your suggestion. Here's the code of my jacket.xhtml. The book and it's metadata are in Hebrew, which is written from right to left, that's why I am using dir="RTL". The parts of the code which I changed are in the first table, where I removed the word "Tags" and centered the remaining text. And of course, below the book comments section, I added a table with the author's name and information about the author. When this book is opened in Calibre/Sigil or any e-reading app, it shows just fine. But as I wrote earlier, on Kindle the picture becomes tiny and the tables show an expand button for some reason. Spoiler: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>בארץ הרובוטים</title> <meta name="calibre-content" content="jacket"/> <style type="text/css"> .cbj_banner { background: #eee; color: black; border: thin solid black; margin: 1em; padding: 1em; border-radius:8px; } table.cbj_header td.cbj_title { font-size: 1.5em; font-style: italic; text-align: center; } table.cbj_header td.cbj_series { text-align: center; } table.cbj_header td.cbj_author { text-align: center; } table.cbj_header td.cbj_pubdata { text-align: center; } table.cbj_header { width: 100%; } table.cbj_header td.cbj_label { font-family: sans-serif; text-align: right; width: 33%; } table.cbj_header td.cbj_content { font-family: sans-serif; text-align: left; width:67%; } hr.metadata_divider { width:90%; margin-left:5%; border-top: solid white 0px; border-right: solid white 0px; border-bottom: solid black 1px; border-left: solid white 0px; } hr { border-top: 0px solid white; border-right: 0px solid white; border-bottom: 2px solid black; border-left: 0px solid white; margin-left: 10%; width: 80%; } .cbj_footer { font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 8px; text-align: center; } .cbj_comments { font-family: sans-serif; } </style> </head> <body> <div class="cbj_banner"><table class="cbj_header" style="text-align: center;"> <tbody> <tr> <td class="cbj_title" colspan="2"><span class="title">בארץ הרובוטים</span></td> </tr> <tr> </tr> <tr> <td class="cbj_author" colspan="2">אייזיק אסימוב</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="cbj_pubdata" colspan="2">מסדה (ינואר 1975)</td> </tr> <tr> <td class="cbj_author" colspan="2"><hr class="metadata_divider"/> </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> <span style="text-align: center;"><p style="text-align: center;">מד"ב ופנטזיה, פרוזה תרגום</p></span><div class="cbj_footer"></div> </div> <div class="cbj_comments"> <div> <p align="right" dir="rtl">בארץ הרובוטים(באנגלית:The Rest of the Robots) הוא קובץ של שמונהסיפורימדע בדיונישנכתבו על ידיאייזיק אסימובוקובצו יחד ב-1964. בחלק מהמהדורות באנגלית הקובץ כלל גם את הספריםמערות הפלדהושמש עירומה. הספר תורגם לעבריתעל ידיהוצאת מסדהב-1975. הסיפורים בקובץ זה עוסקים ברובם ברובוטיםפוזיטרוניםהכפופים לשלושת חוקי הרובוטיקה, וקשורים לסדרת הרובוטיםשל אסימוב.</p> <p align="center" > * </p> <table align="right" dir="rtl"> <tbody> <tr> <td valign="top"><img alt="אייזק אסימוב - Isaac Asimov" src="אייזק%20אסימוב%20-%20Isaac%20Asimov.jpg"/></td> <td style="width:1%"></td> <td valign="top">אייזק אסימוב (רוסית: Айзек Азимов; אנגלית: Isaac Asimov‏; 2 בינואר 1920- 6 באפריל 1992) היה ביוכימאי וסופר יהודי אמריקאי, יליד ברית המועצות. במשך שנות פעילותו כתב למעלה מ־500 ספרים בתחומים שונים, אולם את עיקר פרסומו קנה ככותב ספרי מדע בדיוני. כמחווה לפועלו נקרא אסטרואיד על שמו (5020 Asimov). זכה בפרסי הוגו ונבולה פעמים אחדות, כמו גם פרסים נוספים ו-14 תוארי דוקטור לשם כבוד. ב-1987 היה הסופר השמיני שזכה בפרס ה"גרנד מאסטר" (הקרוי החל מ-2002 פרס דיימון נייט), פרס מפעל חיים המחולק לסופר מדע בדיוני אחד, פעם בשנה, לצדו של טקס חלוקת פרס נבולה.</td> <td style="width:2%"></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </div> </div> </body> </html> Last edited by BetterRed; 02-09-2024 at 05:53 PM. Reason: add spoiler tags*

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02-09-2024, 11:01 AM	#2
jhowell Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,759 Karma: 86500093 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Charlottesville, VA Device: Kindles	You must use one of the send-to-kindle methods in order to add a book to your account and have it sync between Kindle apps and devices. If you provide a sample of a book jacket's HTML/CSS that does not render well after sending then suggestions might be made on how to alter it to provide better results.

02-09-2024, 09:47 PM	#4
jhowell Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,759 Karma: 86500093 Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: Charlottesville, VA Device: Kindles	I need to look into this further, but I noticed that the second table with the image does not set a width for the cell with the image or the cell with text leaving it up to the book rendering software to determine the width for those. As a quick test I added styles to set the width of the cell containing the image to 50% and the width of the image itself to 100% of its cell which resulted in much better rendering on my Kindle.

02-10-2024, 01:25 PM	#5
tgiladi Enthusiast Posts: 27 Karma: 30486 Join Date: Dec 2023 Device: Kindle Oasis	That's a good direction, thanks a lot! I'll experiment with it and see what can be done to improve.

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