Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
Why are two ISBNs needed, if it is the exact same book? As well say that the MOBI needs a separate ISBN from the AZW3?  |
Because otherwise, eschwartz, Amazon will ingest the not-meant-for MOBI ePUB and convert it, and then have two versions of the same book on the shelves. My point was, if you (the publisher) need a "real" ePUB that's going to be used for B&N, iBooks, etc., and you are going to be FTP'ing to your distributor, all at once, you end up with a sub-optimal MOBI, because you cannot use media-queries to OPTIMIZE the mobi file. You can only do that if you provide Amazon with an ePUB for it, alone (using the correct ISBN), so that only ONE of the ePUBs gets converted.
Having used the FTP ingestion method, I can tell you that it's not meant for "exceptions." For example, half the distributors out there can't/won't intake MOBI, at ALL--they'll only intake ePUB, which means that an author can't do anything beyond vanilla. No FF, no comics, nada. The only way around this is to use an ePUB ISBN, a MOBI ISBN, and ensure that the MOBI ePUB, w/media queries, gets ingested at Amazon for conversion.
An ePUB with media queries is NOT the same book as the ePUB without them. That's the point. Whereas a MOBI and an AZW
are the same book, simply modified, from the delivery point (Amazon), not the ingestion point, to
target the receiving device. Not using media-queries to target the OUTPUT of the conversion.
See what I mean?
Hitch