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Originally Posted by gdgibson
I'm converting a book for Kindle via InDesign > EPUB > Kindlegen (Kindle Previewer). My client has correctly pointed out that many Kindle titles include an entry for the cover in their in-line tables of contents. So I've set out to include an entry for his cover.
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For what it's worth--which has nothing to do with the rest of your question, obviously--I honestly don't remember the last time I saw any trade-pubbed book with a TOC entry for the cover. Not in an eBook and obviously, certainly not in print. I've just read 22 books in the last few weeks (had someone in the hospital, had a lot of time to read) and I've checked them all--nary a cover to be seen on a TOC. Ranging in fiction and non, both. Nonetheless...on to the question at hand:
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What I've done is go in with a text-editor after InDesign exports the EPUB and create an entry in the TOC using a standard hyperlink to the cover file. This link works in ADE and the Firefox EPUB reader: you can click on the "Cover" entry, and the book will open to the cover.
When I convert to Kindle, however, the link is dead. Clicking on the "Cover" entry brings no response in the Kindle Previewer, on the Kindle Mac Reader, or Kindle for iOS. On a Kindle Voyager, however, the link does work. Which would be great, except my client is proofing on an iPad.
When I exported from InDesign, I used the option to select an external image file for the cover. InDesign then generated an xhtml page for the cover, specified the cover image in the metadata, and listed the cover file in the spine with a linear="no" tag, according to the KDP guidelines.
As a work-around, I've created a duplicate page and stuck it at the end of the spine. The link I've set up to that page works, but once the TOC sends you there, you can't page forward to the rest of the front matter, and paging back puts you at the end of the book.
So is there any way to list the cover in the table of contents? And why would it be so hard to this?
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Well, mostly, because the cover isn't created, in Kindlegen, as a cover.html page. Or, if you do that, you can end up with the dreaded "double cover" after your client uploads at the KDP, when the cover that s/he uploads in Step 5 is embedded in the book file--no matter what you do.
When Kindlegen runs, it takes the first image it finds in the file, and
assumes it's the cover. It creates it AS the cover image, and adds an element to the OPF for the cover, so you'll have the "go to" cover option. (Which is why, when discussing "whys,"
there isn't usually a TOC element for the cover, because of the Go To usage.) As no "page" actually exists for it, before you build the mobi, you can't link TO it. (As you're finding out when you try to force it).
An ePUB, however, does use the cover.html file, but Kindlegen doesn't. The link is dead in your test cases because the page that had the link, previously, is gone--it no longer really exists. I can't explain why it would work on the Voyage--it ought not.
In other words, Amazon doesn't WANT you to do this. They've already provided "go to" functionality for the cover, the TOC, the Start (at a minimum), and they feel that those folks who really want to go see the cover know how to click "go to" cover. (In fact, a startling number of the Ebooks I get from BPH's don't even slap the cover in there. It's done its job; you bought the book. Some have just a blank page with the title on it, IIRC. Someone at Amazon told me that their use statistics indicate that some
huge percentage of the reading population don't even bother reading the front-matter, never mind paging back to the cover.)
You'd be better off leaving it alone, and explaining to the client that it really isn't normally "done," particularly not by traditional publishers. I'm fairly sure that out of nearly 3K books now, I can count the number of times we've even been asked for it on both hands. The client will find out, when s/he uploads at the KDP, that if you've put a cover.html file in, that s/he'll have the dreaded double-cover, both in the real book and in the LITB, which s/he won't want. And, as you've seen, if you put it in the rear (which Amazon gets pissy about, mind you, as they expressly say not to do that in the Guidelines), it doesn't work very well, either.
Honestly, in this case, client education is your best friend. The publishers that are putting "cover" in their TOC are, usually, Word-file uploaders who put a cover in the file, created an anchor link on the page, etc. When those files are Kindlegenned, the "page" still exists, and the link is still in the TOC that they built with Word. That's why you see some Indy-pubbed books with "Cover" in their TOC. (Many don't actually work, however--most don't, for variations of the reason given here.)
Hope that helps.
Hitch