Ebook Conversion Terrible

[MichaelErlewine]

Note: this poor review (1 star) has to do with the Kindle2 support of your personal MS Word documents, etc. My interest in Kindle2 was not to download their popular books, but to move a lot of personal writing in MS Word 2003 format into the Kindle2, so it could be portable.

I bought a Kindle2 and liked it. However, note that the Kindle2 does NOT itself read PDF or MS Word documents. To get these, you must send your files to a special email address and they are supposed to send by Kindle2-compatible files in their proprietary format.

They offer you two ways to do this: (1) Pay them a fee and (2) do it free. Well, I took the second option for obvious reasons. The long and the short of it are: I got back maybe one in five files, with no explanation as to why the others never returned. They were not too large. I did this day after day.

I first began sending them emails about this problem, following their careful instructions to properly describe the file size, etc. It takes time. I would always get some auto-answer back, but the problem remained the same. You can't email them, but just have to start over with a new message and all the descriptions of the text, etc.

Next I called their phone line, only to find that they were really powerless and uninterested to help. Their often-repeated response was: you better return your Kindle2 for a refund before your 30 days are up OR you will get no refund. Forget about my problem.

I would carefully explain that my Kindle2 worked fine and that it was the document service that was screwing up. They could care less about fixing the problem. Return the machine or lose your investment was the refrain. Well, I reluctantly took their advice and returned the machine and am now looking at the Sony reader.

If you don't want to buy their books, but want to import your own writing via PDF or MS Word, be careful and don't expect any help. You won't get it. They are too busy selling the Kindle2 to worry about making sure that what they promised you in writing actual works.

I understand Apple is working on an e-reader. I look forward to that!

[Patricia]

Both kindles also read mobi/prc format.
It is really quite straightforward to make a conversion with Mobipocket Reader (preferably the publisher edition). It's free, too. I have done whole novels in minutes.
Calibre is also very useful for this.

[JSWolf]

Since you want to be able to read MS Word documents on your K2, the best suggestion is to go to the Workshop forum and have a look at the Book Creator thread (it's a sticky) and install that. It will help you convert your MS Word documents to Mobipocket.

[sirbruce]

Or just get Calibre. Resave the DOC files as filtered HTML, then convert those HTML files to MOBI.

[wallcraft]

I agree with sirbruce. In Word, use File -> Save As -> Other Formats -> Web Page, Filtered. Then import the HTML into Calibre and export as MOBI. Calibre will even do the transfer to your USB-connected Kindle if you want.

I am a bit surprised that the Kindle e-mail conversions failed. It is using a program similar to MobiPocket Composer to do the conversion. That is one reason for recommending Calibre - it isn't using MobiPocket software for the conversion (and the Calbre developers will quickly fix bugs if you come across any).

[RichardBK]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

Or just get Calibre. Resave the DOC files as filtered HTML, then convert those HTML files to MOBI.

Many thanks! I do not need a sophisticated format and the HTML saved version converted nicely with calibre.