EPUB to MOBI - result is outrageous

[sebdea]

Hello all,

I have done an ebook for a client. I converted to Mobi format for Kindle. The client said there are problems with the Kindle format because there are pages where are only a line of text or just the name of the author. The book is a collection of quotes and they are from 7 quotes on a page to 9 quotes on a page. Therefore, some pages are showing the all quotes on a single page flip and others you have to scroll down to see the rest of the page (in which case when scrolling down you will see just a line of a quote or even the author name). Also, between quotes there are small graphical elements that are having white backgrounds when changing the background of the epub (sepia or black).

See the image for example: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14358892/test%20kindle.jpg

So, I start working on it again. I converted all those graphical elements from *.jpeg files to *.png files with transparent background. I reduced the font size for main body text so all the quotes to be displayed on a single page without having to scroll for reading a page.

Finally, the epub is looking great if I visualize it on Calibre or Firefox. I even preview the book with Adobe Digital Edition and it looks good too. So, I start conversion to Mobi, for Kindle. Well, the result can be seen in the image above.

What did I do wrong?

Many thanks for your time and for your help.

Sebastian

[itimpi]

What techiques are you using to control positioning of the text and images?

Points to remember about mobi are:
- It does not support stylesheets, so everything from stylesheets has to be converted to HTML.
- Support for tables is rudimentary, so using advanced table positioning techniques will fail.

[sebdea]

@itimpi: You got me with this question. I laid out the book using InDesign CS4. Exported for Digital Editions, prepared with Sigil and converted with Calibre.