How many mobi readers vs. kf8?

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The K3 has had a firmware update that supports KF8. That only leaves the K1, K2, and KDX models that have no KF8 support.

IMHO, Mobi is obsolete and it's not worth the effort to support it. If people find that they need KF8, they can buy a newer Kindle and be done with the old ones.

Early K3 Keyboard models weren't updated. (Mine was; I don't know what the breakpoint was, nor do I remember when I bought it, probably in 2010.) And the DX, of course, is still being sold.

Most owners of Kindles and Fire tablets wouldn't know KF8 if it tripped them in the dark. Indeed, from what I read on the KDP forums, the same is true of most self-publishers. They hack something together in Word, upload it, scream for help, and seem content with the result.

Since I use the same epub for Amazon and all other retailers, I don't use any KF8 media calls myself, nor do I feel impoverished by the lack. Perhaps the day will come when that changes, but for me it's not yet.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Early K3 Keyboard models weren't updated.

Are you certain about this? I don't remember any excluded KK's (physically, based on hardware) when the KF8 capable firmware was first released for those devices. Later ones had better Pearl screens, I remember, but that wouldn't affect KF8 rendering ability to my knowledge.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Early K3 Keyboard models weren't updated. (Mine was; I don't know what the breakpoint was, nor do I remember when I bought it, probably in 2010.) And the DX, of course, is still being sold.

This says nothing about any K3 not having the KF8 update available.

http://the-digital-reader.com/2012/0...till-loves-us/

Amazon has rolled out a new update for the K3 which gives it all the latest features. If you've been holding on to your old device, today you get rewarded.

The K3 now supports the KF8 ebook format, which offers near Epub quality of formatting. (Dropcaps, wrapped images, and embedded fonts, oh my!) And this update adds support for the Kindle fixed layout format. Now you can read the digital comics, children's books, and magazine titles introduced with the Kindle Fire last fall.

As for the DX, Amazon is no longer selling new ones and all that are being sold are used. So there is a fixed amount of them out there.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Early K3 Keyboard models weren't updated.

Mine were and they were day one purchases.

[Notjohn]

I stand corrected!

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by dgatwood

I just wish Amazon would let us gracefully degrade the content ourselves instead of trying to degrade it themselves. Kindlegen's translation of CSS to HTML is abominably bad, resulting in really nasty, hackish workarounds. I'd be a lot more likely to recommend that everyone produce MOBI fallback content if kindlegen let me provide a separate, bare-bones EPUB for the MOBI7 slice. As it is, supporting MOBI7 is painful enough that I tend to agree with the folks saying "It's just not worth it."

Amazon does provide a method to gracefully degrade the contents using CSS entries that are specific for the two formats.

Dale

[dgatwood]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Amazon does provide a method to gracefully degrade the contents using CSS entries that are specific for the two formats.

I'm aware of that, though I would not use the word "graceful". My problems with that approach are numerous. For starters:

• Often the differences between the KF7 and KF8 versions of content are so severe that you're including multiple copies of entire pages. For example, my title page is SVG on KF8, non-SVG on KF7. I might as well use separate files, because it saves nothing to combine them. And my efforts to avoid such high levels of redundancy resulted in really ugly markup in other parts of my books as well.
• Because kindlegen doesn't translate CSS very well, the KF7 versions often require the use of tags like <nobr>, which are illegal in EPUB. This means the KF7 fallback content prevents me from taking my released EPUB and using it for KF8, which is very non-ideal.
• Non-Kindle devices have no concept of the Kindle types, and not all readers correctly support media queries at all (and particularly complex ones, like @media not amzn-kf8 and (screen dimension stuff here)). The forced use of media queries for Kindle can cause real problems when trying to use the same source EPUB for actual EPUB readers and for KF8 ingest.
• Wrapping an entire stylesheet in a media query, followed by a separate stylesheet for KF7 is just plain ridiculous. These aren't minor differences; it's a completely separate presentation; it should be a separate stylesheet.
• It just seems really ugly to me; having the equivalent of an #ifdef every couple of lines makes it hard to make any sense out of the HTML.

CSS tricks like this work well when the differences between platforms are minor. For example, CSS works well for mobile sites because although the layout is different, most of the formatting (fonts, style, etc.) is the same, and more importantly, the renderers are roughly on equal footing.

Kindle's use, by contrast, is akin to using CSS to make your site simultaneously look good on the latest version of Chrome and on Netscape Navigator 0.9b6, by using a custom HTTP proxy that translates CSS into HTML suitable for Netscape Navigator 0.9b6....

It would be *much* easier, IMO, if we could just provide two files, one with formatting for KF8 and one with almost no formatting for KF7, and let Amazon's tools ship the right content to the right devices. It would be even better still if they let us provide a third version for iOS, which supports some features that the KF8 readers don't and vice-versa, and which ends up getting the KF7 slice on all my books solely because my KF8 slice contains SVG....

[SBT]

Kind of ironic that the big selling point of proprietary formats is that one designer/supplier will better be able to ensure consistency of representation...

[Notjohn]

Why is this an issue, since (as we are assured) only K1, K2, and DX readers are involved, and all the DX readers sold are used, their batteries must all be dead or dying?

To be sure, I don't use any KF8-specific tricks (no media calls). With the single exception of width=n% they render just fine on the "Kindle" emulator of Kindle Previewer. I upload the same epub to the KDP as to every other retailer (via Draft2Digital).

If it's just a determination to beat the system, then I applaud the attempt. But is it a worthwhile effort for someone publishing e-books for a living?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

If it's just a determination to beat the system, then I applaud the attempt. But is it a worthwhile effort for someone publishing e-books for a living?

It's nothing at all to do with beating the system. It's to do with ensuring that advanced formatting (which is easily accomplished with KF8) doesn't turn to crap in the mobi version (which is extremely limited in what it can do with layouts/formatting). If all you work with are novels full of paragraphs and a few scenebreaks, it's very likely that you'll never need to worry about media-queries. Poetry, songs, tables, lists, drop caps, advanced image/caption arrangements--these are things that might end up going pear-shaped in the mobi-only version if media queries are not employed to handle them.

I find the "how many devices can be left out there?" argument to be mostly irrelevant. The pertinent point is that if you upload your book to KDP, the mobi-only version is for sale. As long as that is true, I believe it's the content creator's responsibility to make sure the mobi-only version is at least presentable.

I'm not saying anyone should jump through massive hoops to ensure the mobi-only version is nearly identical to to the KF8 version, but I believe an easily readable/presentable version is not too much to ask. I certainly don't think it's responsible to "just not worry about it" any more. You should "worry" about the mobi-only version of your book until no one can buy a mobi-only version of your book.

[DaleDe]

As to using the same source for ePub and Amazon I believe it is pretty easy to substitute a different CSS file in the same source file. I understand this makes two sources but many people already use canned CSS files anyway and substituting in this fashion does not make it impossible to maintain the two sources. If needed a third CSS common to the two versions can be maintain for custom items for the book.

I would agree that a Mobi7 version is still needed so long as Amazon places it on sale and there are many other devices that also support this older Mobi format. Kindle unpack can be used to determine exactly what the differences are and if necessary custom changes could probably be made.

Note that there are really three versions of a book since iOS uses yet another variant.

Dale

[susan_cassidy]

I don't see the point in over-formatting ebooks. I just want to read the text. i don't gives a rat's behind about fancy formatting. We have 2 working K1's, although my husband still uses his (on the original battery), I normally use my K3. My K1's battery has been replaced (K1 was user-replaceable). I think there are a lot of K1, K2, and Kindle Touch users still out there, from all the posts I read about them, especially on the Amazon Kindle forum.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

I don't see the point in over-formatting ebooks. I just want to read the text. i don't gives a rat's behind about fancy formatting. We have 2 working K1's, although my husband still uses his (on the original battery), I normally use my K3. My K1's battery has been replaced (K1 was user-replaceable). I think there are a lot of K1, K2, and Kindle Touch users still out there, from all the posts I read about them, especially on the Amazon Kindle forum.

Kindle Touch handles KF8. It's the K1, K2, and DX that won't handle KF8.

My idea is to create the ePub for KF8, convert it using Kindlegen and then have a look at how the Mobi looks. If the Mobi is good enough, done. If not, then you'll have to fix up the ePub so the Mobi looks good enough.

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Poetry, songs, tables, lists, drop caps, advanced image/caption arrangements--these are things that might end up going pear-shaped in the mobi-only version if media queries are not employed to handle them.

I think that leaves me safe on the opposite shore! I have used the odd song lyric (fair use, of course!) as centered italics, and that looks fine on the "Kindle" emulator. I was a drop-cap enthusiast for a few months after Amazon told us how to format the media call, but then they changed the line spacing and the drop caps blew up. I went back, removed all such, and resolved never to take that chance again.

Thank you!

[Hitch]

I find it VERY interesting that all of you--mostly--are all blithely ignoring the KF7-ness of K4iPad, K4Cloud, KDroid, etc. It's all well and good if you can ignore these things, but in my capacity with my peeps, I know just how many of them get KQN's about Book X or Y, just because THEY thought it was perfectly okay to ignore those dolts who are too stupid to trade in their K2's for something fancier.

And yes: I do think it's worth the effort. Is it extra time and effort? Yes. Will it bankrupt me to do it? No, so I do it. I never want a client to get a bad review because that reader didn't like the book on their K2. Or, for that matter, MY K2, which yes, I still have and still read on. Although I admit I prefer my Voyage or KW.

You guys don't see the vast arrays of KQN's out there. Superstar author gets one for two typos in a quarter-million word book. Another gets one because her "TOC" is entitled "Cast of Characters," instead of TOC, and some snotty reader reports her to Amazon--and, pay attention--the bloody book is TAKEN OFF SALE, because of it. Her book was a series of character vignettes, not sequential fiction, so she thought it would be cute to call her TOC "Cast of Characters."

I had to send a pretty terse email to Amazon about it to get the book put BACK on sale.

You guys are not realizing just how much hurt some doofus with a K2 can put on someone, just to be nasty, or superior. And I don't say that they're a doofus because they have a K2; I say it because I see this "helpful reporting" all the time. Regardless of the device it's read upon.

Just sayin'.

Hitch