HELP! Problem with amazon ebook

[Kivgaen]

I do not understand this issue a customer is having with one of our ebooks... The book is "25 bridge conventions you should know Part 1: Learn these first".

I downloaded the sample for the "Kindle for PC" application, and this is what I see:

http://www.luiselee.com/images/my%20screenshot.jpg

But the customer sees something completely different:

http://www.luiselee.com/images/his%20screenshot.jpg

Both of us are reading the exact same book and using the exact same software appliation.

Does anyone have any ideas on what might cause this odd behaviour? I sent him the symbol.ttf file just in case he didn't have it on his computer (unlikely) but he had the exact same file on his computer. The only differece I could see was our operating system -- he was on Windows Vista, and we are on Windows 7.

The process we have used to create the ebooks is:

1) encode the suit symbols in our html files like: ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ in the style sheet, font family is set as "font family: sans-serif;". We do not embed any fonts.

2) Use Calibre to convert our .epub file to .mobi

3) Transfer the .mobi file to the kindle device for testing... everything looks beautiful at this stage.

4) Upload the .mobi file to Amazon at kdp.amazon.com

Amazon has told me that my file is incorrectly formatted... They have said:

"I checked the content of your title "25 Bridge Conventions You Should Know - Part 1: Learn These First" and I can confirm the presence of the formatting issue.

This is caused due to the incorrect character set that you've used before converting your content into the AZW/MOBI format. If you used HTML to format your content, before converting your content to MOBI, please open the HTML file in Notepad and save it with "Encoding: ANSI" (this is an option in the 'Save As' Notepad dialog). On non-Windows platforms, make sure to save it as ANSI or ASCII, avoiding 'UTF-8' or 'Unicode' as the encoding type.

Further, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing supports text in the 'Latin-1' (ISO-8859-1) format and all characters in that character set. "

(The suit symbols show up properly on the device when I convert the file to .mobi and then load it directly to our Kindle!).

PLEASE HELP! I am pulling my hair out trying to find a solution to this issue.


(I posted this addition in the thread when I discovered this additional information:

Okay just to add to the confusion and throw another thing out there...

I downloaded the sample file for my Kindle for PC application 1.6.1 -- sample looks perfect, as I mentioned before...

HOWEVER -- then I BOUGHT the book, and guess what?? I see the boxes instead of the charaters. SAME book -- same file. sample works, purchased book does NOT work. (Imagine my frustration as a customer seeing this?).

Our kindle for testing in the office has walked away on us and I can't confirm this in house -- we're working on borrowing someone's Kindle to buy the actual book to see what happens. But if the same thing happens on the device when we BUY the book, then this is a complete disaster! )

[EowynCarter]

Looks like some font/charset problem. Amazon's help seam to be on the right track.
Ask the customer what his / her local is. (That is, the language the PC is set to.)

Else, it might be you installed a font, making it work for you, but not present as a default. The font is indead not the same, that seams the most likely culprit.

[charleski]

This would obviously be better in the mobi forum.

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

Further, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing supports text in the 'Latin-1' (ISO-8859-1) format and all characters in that character set. "

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishi...A3UPL1JFRLJ2II

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing supports text in the 'Latin-1' format and all characters in that character set. The only characters from that set not currently supported are: spades, clubs, hearts, up-arrow, down-arrow, alpha, beta, gamma.

It's a problem with the Direct Publishing platform rather than the Kindle itself. You'll need to embed the suit glyphs as inline images.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

I do not understand this issue a customer is having with one of our ebooks... The book is "25 bridge conventions you should know Part 1: Learn these first".

I downloaded the sample for the "Kindle for PC" application, and this is what I see:

http://www.luiselee.com/images/my%20screenshot.jpg

But the customer sees something completely different:

http://www.luiselee.com/images/his%20screenshot.jpg

Both of us are reading the exact same book and using the exact same software appliation.

Does anyone have any ideas on what might cause this odd behaviour? I sent him the symbol.ttf file just in case he didn't have it on his computer (unlikely) but he had the exact same file on his computer. The only differece I could see was our operating system -- he was on Windows Vista, and we are on Windows 7.

The process we have used to create the ebooks is:

1) encode the suit symbols in our html files like: ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ in the style sheet, font family is set as "font family: sans-serif;".

2) Use Calibre to convert our .epub file to .mobi

3) Upload the .mobi file to Amazon at kdp.amazon.com

Amazon has told me that my file is incorrectly formatted... They have said:

"I checked the content of your title "25 Bridge Conventions You Should Know - Part 1: Learn These First" and I can confirm the presence of the formatting issue.

This is caused due to the incorrect character set that you've used before converting your content into the AZW/MOBI format. If you used HTML to format your content, before converting your content to MOBI, please open the HTML file in Notepad and save it with "Encoding: ANSI" (this is an option in the 'Save As' Notepad dialog). On non-Windows platforms, make sure to save it as ANSI or ASCII, avoiding 'UTF-8' or 'Unicode' as the encoding type.

Further, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing supports text in the 'Latin-1' (ISO-8859-1) format and all characters in that character set. "

(Incidentally, when I convert the file to .mobi and then load it directly to our Kindle, the suit symbols work beautifully!).

PLEASE HELP! I am pulling my hair out trying to find a solution to this issue.

Kindle does not support embedded fonts--that's your first problem. You cannot assume that what you see on K4PC has any bearing on what people will see in an actual device, either, as K4PC renders like a browser, NOT like the device. I suspect it's a mild disaster on the device itself, as the aforementioned embedded fonts won't display, and probably won't display as you expect, either, even if they DID display.

Charleski is correct; you'll have to embed those images as images, and, worse news, you can't align them, so you cannot have (as an example), 4 card "images" next to each other, horizontally; Kindle can't handle float. You'll have to shoot screenshots of EVERY hand and use that as your embedded image.

HTH,
Hitch

[dwig]

I just ran a test and found:

1. My Kindle 3 (v3.1 firmware) displays the sample correctly.
   
2. My Kindle for PC v1.4.? failed like your problem customer's.
   
3. After upgrading to Kindle for PC v1.6.1 (I was getting ready to do so anyway) the book displays properly

BTW, both versions of Kindle for PC display the annoying gray background seen on some text in your screen shots. This was not the case on my Kindle device, where the background gray didn't display.

I suspect the problem is a Kindle for PC bug, perhaps fixed in the newest version.

[DiapDealer]

My Kindle for PC v1.4.? failed like your problem customer's.

My Kindle for PC 1.4.1 (Vista) displays the various suits in the downloaded sample just fine (just like your first screenshot) ... although I too see the annoying gray background on some of the text.

[Hitch]

Yeah, I agree; surprisingly, the sample is fine (apparently, NOT a font issue, fortuitously)...gotta be the encoding. @DiapDealer--I suspect the "annoying grey background" is deliberate emphasis for the reading apps, although obviously it's not visible in the device itself.

We had a weirdo issue having to do with a download mechanism, but that was an html issue, not a sample or made-book issue, in which we were getting improperly encoded html from a browser DL...but I can't see how that could possibly apply. @Kivgaen--did you use any of the Calibre encoding options? Either the Input char. encoding, or transliteration encoding?

Honestly, other than something weird in Vista (boy, THAT was tautologic), I can't imagine what it could be, if it's not font-related, which it seems not to be.

?
Hitch

[dwig]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

My Kindle for PC 1.4.1 (Vista) displays the various suits in the downloaded sample just fine (just like your first screenshot) ... although I too see the annoying gray background on some of the text.

Sorry, I failed to mention that my K4PC tests were done on XPsp3. Also, the v1.6.1 test may have actually been v1.7.0.

My K4PC was saying there was a new v1.6.1 when I OK'd the upgrade. Later in the day I encountered another K4PC bug and did a manual download and reinstall (no fix BTW) and found the version to be 1.7.0.

[sjkramer]

It doesn't appear that anyone has mentioned this, so I thought I would. Instead of testing the file on Kindle for PC, why not test using the Amazon-provided Kindle Previewer emulation program? It is described as "an application to help authors validate content formatting prior to publishing to the Kindle Store." You can see what your book will look like on the various Kindle devices, including all the iterations of the Kindle itself, Kindle for Iphone and for Ipad. It's not entirely foolproof, but might be enlightening for this job and for others in the future. It's available here.

[Hitch]

sjkramer:

I checked it in both--Previewer and k4PC, and it looked fine to me.

Hitch

[Kivgaen]

Okay just to add to the confusion and throw another thing out there...

I downloaded the sample file for my Kindle for PC application 1.6.1 -- sample looks perfect, as I mentioned before...

HOWEVER -- then I BOUGHT the book, and guess what?? I see the boxes instead of the charaters. SAME book -- same file. sample works, purchased book does NOT work. (Imagine my frustration as a customer seeing this?).

Our kindle for testing in the office has walked away on us and I can't confirm this in house -- we're working on borrowing someone's Kindle to buy the actual book to see what happens. But if the same thing happens on the device when we BUY the book, then this is a complete disaster!

[Kivgaen]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yeah, I agree; surprisingly, the sample is fine (apparently, NOT a font issue, fortuitously)...gotta be the encoding. @DiapDealer--I suspect the "annoying grey background" is deliberate emphasis for the reading apps, although obviously it's not visible in the device itself.

Correct, although the annoying grey background is supposed to be a grey box around the whole of that paragraph that amazon doesn't display properly (looks brilliant on the ipad... I should remove it from the Amazon version).

Originally Posted by Hitch

@Kivgaen--did you use any of the Calibre encoding options? Either the Input char. encoding, or transliteration encoding?

Honestly, other than something weird in Vista (boy, THAT was tautologic), I can't imagine what it could be, if it's not font-related, which it seems not to be.

?
Hitch

I have no idea -- I don't think so. Should I have tried something specific? I probably just used whatever the default Calibre settings are. What are the encoding options availalbe to me that I should try?

BTW -- when I converted the .epub to .mobi and transferred the .mobi file DIRECTLY to the device (Before uploading it through kdp.amazon.com) everything looked beautiful on the device itself).

Next we're going to try to purchase the product on the device from amazon to see how the paid-for product looks.

Cheers,

Luise

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

Okay just to add to the confusion and throw another thing out there...

I downloaded the sample file for my Kindle for PC application 1.6.1 -- sample looks perfect, as I mentioned before...

HOWEVER -- then I BOUGHT the book, and guess what?? I see the boxes instead of the charaters. SAME book -- same file. sample works, purchased book does NOT work. (Imagine my frustration as a customer seeing this?).

Our kindle for testing in the office has walked away on us and I can't confirm this in house -- we're working on borrowing someone's Kindle to buy the actual book to see what happens. But if the same thing happens on the device when we BUY the book, then this is a complete disaster!

The sample works on the device, but the original doesn't? That's...crazy. I mean, the sample is just 10% of the original file, it shouldn't display one iota different...Luise, if you want to PM me, I have a K2, I'd be happy to help you test a file...

Hitch

[Kivgaen]

Everything on the device works fine. We've downloaded both the sample and the purchased product and both look perfect on the device itself. It is only the Kindle for PC application that had a problem with the book.

SAMPLE of book on Device: Looks perfect
PURCHASE of book on Device: Looks perfect

SAMPLE of book on Kindle for PC 1.6.1: Looks perfect
Purchase of book on Kindle for PC 1.6.1: Boxes instead of spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs


I don't get it... But honestly, I don't care anymore. I'm washing my hands of this issue -- this is an amazon problem. They can fix it. On the device everything works and thats all I care about.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Kivgaen

Everything on the device works fine. We've downloaded both the sample and the purchased product and both look perfect on the device itself. It is only the Kindle for PC application that had a problem with the book.

SAMPLE of book on Device: Looks perfect
PURCHASE of book on Device: Looks perfect

SAMPLE of book on Kindle for PC 1.6.1: Looks perfect
Purchase of book on Kindle for PC 1.6.1: Boxes instead of spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs


I don't get it... But honestly, I don't care anymore. I'm washing my hands of this issue -- this is an amazon problem. They can fix it. On the device everything works and thats all I care about.

Luise:

If you want to PM me the actual info on the book, I'll be happy to give it to my Technical Account Mgr. at Amazon directly--he'll look into it. That's his gig. Let me know if I may be of assistance.

Best,
Hitch