Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
One thing that I've noticed is that kindlegen creates a file around three times larger than the epub. I recently read in the MR Wiki that this is because the mobi file actually does contain three copies of the book. |
The KindleGen output file contains a mobi file (the old mobi7 format), an azw3 file (the new KF8 format) and the source files. You can extract whatever format you need with the
KindleUnpack plug-in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
(And there's a note in the Calibre conversion that suggests some devices might have trouble with such files.)
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IIRC, this refers to hybrid mobi files and non-Amazon ebook readers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
I've tried following instructions on the wiki to use Mobipocket Creator v4.2 (I get the impression it's now long out of date).
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It is indeed out of date and only marginally useful for generating dictionaries, because KindleGen's dictionary code hasn't been updated in ages.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Do Kindle users downloading from sources like Smashwords care if the mobi file is three times larger than the epub?
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I've never used SmashWords, but from what I've heard, they've only recently accepted ePubs and don't accept the direct upload of .mobi files.
IMHO, the best strategy for creating small files is using KindleGen with the -c2 (compression) switch and then extracting both .mobi and .azw3 files with KindleUnpack.
If you use the -c2 switch on the command line, for example:
Code:
KindleGen -c2 mybook.epub
the resulting .mobi and .azw3 files are generally only 10 to 20% larger than the orginal .ePub file.