I'm a self publishing author trying to publish via Amazon; situation complicated because I use free software (Ubuntu and Trisquel) which Amazon doesn't much seem to support. Because I want control and to to understand what I'm doing, I formatted my book in Sigil, including font selections as an ePub. It displays exactly as wanted in the Calibre reader. Yay.
Except it doesn't in Amazon's "simple" online previewer. Fonts and css seems to have disappeared. Amazon also has an advanced viewer for Mac and Windows, so maybe it will display correctly there, but I can't tell, because it isn't fot linux.
Amazon allows me to download a converted mobi file which I tried to view in the Calibre reader but it won't open at all, I get this message:
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ERROR: Could Not Open ebook
X All strings must be XML compatible: Unicode pr ASCII, no NULL bytes or control characters
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That is way over my head.
For all I know it will display properly, but I have no way to tell.
Apparently Kindlegen does have a linux version now, so I will try that, but I would prefer to go direct from Sigil or Calibre than to have to reformat in yet another (proprietary) program. I gather Mobi does not support embedded fonts but the new KF8 is supposed to, along with CSS.
Is it possible to use Calibre to convert my Sigil built ePub directly to the new KF8 (?) format that Amazon will accept?
