Quote:
Originally Posted by Hitch
Not sure how you see it as "Amazon's" problem considering you're using 3rd party software to make a book that's goign to be read on someone else's retail eBook site. {shrug} It's patently not their problem.
Hitch
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You obviously have totally missed the point.
It's Amazon's problem that they used to recommend MS Doc format upload and now that seems to be broken.
I upload epub to Amazon now instead.
The Dual Mobi creation for Smashwords has NOTHING to do with Amazon, except only Amazon sell Kindles. I never ever suggested the dual Mobi was an Amazon issue. I only mentioned the MS Doc uploading replaced by epub uploading for Amazon in passing.
The original query I asked here (and I'd not bother asking Amazon) was if any Kindle DOESN'T work with the Dual Mobi created by Calibre, as the Conversion screen in Calibre recommends choosing OLD mobi or separately using the AZW3 converter for newer Kindles.
So far there is no suggestion that dual mobi from Calibre doesn't work on something, but some Kindles will chose the older format in the dual file (supposedly mobi6 according to Calibre) even though they work in some sense with azw files (AZW3/KF8 from Calibre) and newer Kindles do chose the KF8 part.
Why do I even care? Because Amazon knows what you have and if you have uploaded a really good styled & formatted epub, they can deliver whatever your Kindle does. They don't seem to do that now with doc uploads the way they USED TO. THAT is Amazon's problem.
So why I care about Dual Mobi?
Smashwords only has one link for a Mobi download and has no idea what Kindle it's for. So rather than uploading MS doc, which doesn't give as nice a mobi as I can do with Calibre, I now upload a dual mobi, it's ONLY used for mobi downloads. Smashwords don't do anything with it. If you have a newer Kindle (PW3 anyway, maybe 2014 Touch?) then you get the appearance in the KF8 part. Owners of older Kindles get similar to what Smashwords makes from a doc upload, except it's slightly better. Possibly if they DO use Calibre it's because Calibre works best Docx -> ePub and then other formats from that epub. Certainly Calibre results are not exact using ODT (or DOC on Win7, the doc format is unavailable as an input on Linux, or was the last time I looked).
Of course life would be simpler if all ereaders supported mobi/azw and epub. That's not going to happen. I'd be delighted if Smashwords used the ePub upload for conversions and not just epub downloads.
It's certainly Amazon's problem and not mine that "doc" and "docx" uploads don't now have pagebreaks on the mobi preview download, or bought off the USA site for Kindle Keyboard. I'm not actually sure if the retail azw downloads for later Kindles lack the page breaks from the doc uploads. Anyway it looks cheap and rubbishy simply having a big gap before a new chapter heading, and it used to work. Workaround is to upload epub2.