Quote:
Originally Posted by Lagopus
If you're referring to the reply you got at the amazon forum, I'd say it's a little misleading.
The mobi format is a "container" format. It can - and often will - contain "itself" - that is, a mobi file can be unpacked into several files that are valid mobi files by themselves. The outer "container" is also a valid mobi file, though. There's generally no reason to start digging into it to split out the internal versions.
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Thanks Lagopus. Thanks for the explanation as to what a mobi is. It does sound a little convoluted (not your explanation, but the file, the container containing mobis and yet being a mobi itself). And it seemed nutty that the mobi in the "compiled" folder would be different than the mobi in the "converted" folder (except for whatever changes I might have made).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lagopus
As for your original question: The "converted" folder is created by Kindle Previewer. Say you have a file named
"Bell,Gregg-ANovel.epub"
You open that file in (a recent version of) Kindle Previewer. Previewer creates a folder named
"converted-Bell,Gregg-ANovel.epub"
and saves the mobi version of your book inside that folder, with a name on the format
"Bell,Gregg-ANovel_2014-03-30-21-55.mobi"
If you open the epub again a little later, Previewer will repeat the conversion process and store the result as
Bell,Gregg-ANovel_2014-03-30-22-06.mobi
I think - although I must admit I'm not 100% sure - that the "compiled" folder serves the exact same purpose, except that it is created by an older version of Kindle Previewer. I.e. there's no real difference between the folders, except that they're created by different versions of Kindle Previewer.
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Thanks for the explanation. But in some ways it's not lining up with my experience though. With the two folders in question, the "compiled" folder and "converted" folder were both made on the same day (the compiled folder was made 40 minutes before the converted folder) using the same version of Kindle Previewer.
I got the sense from you said,though, that no matter which file (from either folder) I used, it would work properly (and similarly) in people's ereaders. Would you agree?
To me, and I don't have a Kindle Previewer right now because I'm on Linux so I can't experiment with it, the only thing that makes sense is that I dropped my epub on Kindle Previewer and that made the "compiled" folder and the mobi within it. Then I uploaded that mobi into Kindle Direct Publishing's uploader and that process gave me a mobi to download so as to review it. Then I take that mobi and open it in Kindle Previewer (to review it) and Kindle Previewer then designates the newly opened folder a "converted" folder.
I've got reviewers who want .mobi files. I just need to know how to get them. Even forget this latest situation. Say I write a new book and make it into an epub and drop it on Kindle Previewer (or use Kindlegen in the command line). Is that the .mobi I want to send them. Or do I want the mobi that has gone through KDP's uploading and then been opened in Kindle Previewer? Or something else?