ePub 3 loses TOC when published to Kindle

[wmike]

Hi all,

I'm new to ePublishing so go easy

I have used Adobe Indesign to produce an ePub 3 book - this looks and works fine in iBooks.

I uploaded it to amazon - they converted it to Kindle format - the resulting book has no Table of Contents.

I tried Sigil - this managed to provide a TOC for the document but, unfortunately included the full TOC twice. Not good.

Can anyone suggest how I might cure this problem? (I'm using the latest version of Indesign and Sigil).

Many thanks,

Mike

[Doitsu]

Check the landmarks section in the Nav file that InDesign generated. It should have an epub:type="toc" entry similar to his one:

<li>
   <a epub:type="toc" href="toc.xhtml">Table of Contents</a>
</li>

[wmike]

Originally Posted by Doitsu

Check the landmarks section in the Nav file that InDesign generated. It should have an epub:type="toc" entry similar to his one:

<li>
   <a epub:type="toc" href="toc.xhtml">Table of Contents</a>
</li>

Hi Doitsu,

I have the ePub file - that's it as far as I can see. Where would I find the Nav file you mention?

Cheers,

Mike

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by wmike

I have the ePub file - that's it as far as I can see. Where would I find the Nav file you mention?

Just unzip the epub or open it with Sigil. Then open the .opf file and look for a file definition that has a properties="nav" attribute. For example:

<item id="nav.xhtml" href="nav.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml" properties="nav"/>

That file is the navigation document, which is used as a ePub3 TOC, however, for backwards compatibility with older Kindles you should also include a regular HTML TOC file, which needs to have a landmarks section toc entry. Without this entry the TOC menu item will be greyed out.

If you open the ePub with Sigil you can add a landmarks entry by right-clicking toc.xhtml and selecting Add Semantics > Table Of Contents.
(If you haven't generated a separate HTML TOC, you can also tag the nav document as the TOC.)