[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Oliva

Somewhere on this forum I read that if you upload to KDP a KPF file made with Kindle Create or with Kindle Previewer 3, the customers who have older KF8 devices (which are not enhanced-typesetting enabled) will receive just the old KF7 version and not the better KF8 version.

So the workaround would be to instead upload an EPUB, formatted for kf8 and kf7, and tested for enhanced typesetting compatibility.

Yes, using EPUB as input is usually the best way. This gives you full control over all the resulting MOBI/KF8 code.

As long as you aren't doing anything too crazy (SVG Images, MathML, etc.), you should get the "Enhanced Typesetting" green checkmark no problems. This means KFX will be generated by Amazon.

So, you use Kindle Previewer or KindleGen:

1. EPUB in.
2. Amazon's "Dual MOBI" out.

This "Dual MOBI" is what you upload to Amazon.

Note: "Dual MOBI" is a made-up term by some of us here. It's the .mobi file output by Kindle Previewer which includes 3 files inside:

• 2 Amazon-proprietary formats
  
  • MOBI (KF7) for old Kindles + KF8 for newer Kindles.
• 1 source file
  
  • EPUB, DOCX, or whatever else you used as input.

For many more details, see my 2019 post in "Epub-problems in tablets".

Note #2: Also, only relatively recently Kindle Previewer added a KPF option. Probably best to avoid this for now, because as jhowell said, we suspect that creates a MOBI (KF7) + KFX file only... completely skipping the KF8 format.

Originally Posted by Oliva

the reason i was considering uploading a mobi instead of an epub is that I cannot seem to succeed in validating the epub with epubcheck in Sigil. I always get a bunch of errors which with my very limited technical knowledge cannot understand or fix myself.

Means you have a problem inside the EPUB.

If you post some of those errors, perhaps you can get more help.

Originally Posted by Oliva

For print, I agree, you cannot use print to make an ebook. But I found, vice versa it’s easier: i.e. if you already have a very clean ebook, it’s easy to use that to then modify or add print-specific elements in a desktop publishing software like Scribus or VivaDesigner (or InDesign). Print is its own, completely different, animal.

For the most part, agreed.

But the better the source file is, the faster/cleaner/more-efficient every other future step is. You're already well on your way to achieving that by using Styles consistently.

Originally Posted by Oliva

I’m sure with your experience you have a very efficient and streamlined workflow. I am still flailing around to find out what works for me.

Yeah, as Hitch mentioned, every input->output format is going to have its own unique challenges.

Which workflow you choose also heavily depends on the skills of the person/team:

I wrote a bit about that in 2019 "Workflow for simultaneous EPUB and PDF production?"

Personally, I go "HTML-First" workflow.

I turn everything into a perfectly clean ebook, then derive all further formats from that.

Hitch (and thus BookNook) prefers "Word-First" or "InDesign-First" workflow.

Like she said, if you use Styles properly, you can use Style Mapping and other tools to keep the files in sync (very helpful if authors need to make changes to the original document).

Finalize the Print, then derive all the other formats off that clean InDesign file. Now any sort of InDesign->EPUB workflow is much faster.

Gets you to same results, just different ways of tackling the issue.

* * *

The biggest problem I see creep in is what I call the "bifurcation"—when the various formats get out of sync.

Once you split the files, you double/triple your workload if any errors/changes have to occur:

• Can you fix the equation on Page 15?
• There's a typo in "The brown cow is jumping over the moon." It should be a green cow, and the Earth.
• Can you put this image in instead?
• It should be copyright 2020, not 2019.

Once you split it into Print, EPUB/MOBI, HTML, Format X... now you have to correct it in each one. Instead of 1x amount of work, you have 3 or 4.

Originally Posted by Hitch

Sigil is not "Word (LO/OO) for eBooks."

Ugh, for my own sanity, just stop mentioning OpenOffice. It's 6+ years out of date, not updated, and withering away into dust.

LibreOffice is the true successor, and has tens of thousands of fixes/enhancements over all these years.

Side Note: If you want to see some of the stuff, check out this talk from February 2020: "Libreoffice Turns Ten and What's Next". Around 25 mins, he lists off just some of features added since the OpenOffice/LibreOffice split.

Originally Posted by Oliva

Of course I use styles religiously for hierarchical headings and for absolutely everything else. But I found that using Libreoffice for style formatting is ... painful.

Great to hear your use of Styles. You're one of the very few.

Interesting to hear issues with LibreOffice's Styles though. What's your exact pain points?

Originally Posted by Hitch

It's a bit painstaking, but the truth is, complex non-fiction in anything is painstaking.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Hitch

You never know when Adobe might do something (again) to piss me off terminally, like when they spit on those of us who'd spent many thousands on fonts and introduced their font cloud doodah. As well as, of course, spitting on those of us who'd licensed INDD for Six thou, and made it so cheap that any Tom Dick or Harriet could license it for 3 months.

lol. Only just now they are pissing you off? They've been pissing me off forever! I refuse to touch any Adobe product with a thousand foot pole.

Side Note: And this "The Cloud" and "System as a Service" stuff is absolutely horrendous.

(One of the latest books I worked on, they used InDesign's "fantastic" Creative Cloud Stock Images... guess what, the IDML export had fully watermarked images in there... so I couldn't use those in the ebook either.)

Originally Posted by Hitch

And, there it is. Despite the processes and simplification (and complication) over the last decade, every eBookmaker and print bookmaker has to find their own way. Everybody has a path that they find for themselves.

Agreed. And there is always that unique twist that each format brings.

Sure, on the surface conversion "should be easy", but there's always these weird edge cases that creep up, or unique situations that the tools can't handle.

Fiction? Probably can be converted 100% no problem.

Non-Fiction? Most can probably be converted no problem... but there's always the next weird thing that crops up (remember footnotes-within-footnotes-within-footnotes?).

Originally Posted by Hitch

(TEX, where are you to discuss LaTEX? I mean, yes, LaTEX has plenty of non-fic muscle, but god FORFEND you then need eBooks!)

Do you want this post to turn into a tome?

(Grumble grumble, and ours was a unique case. It's possible, if only that Physics book wasn't needing insane equation alignment and unit notation. It broke all the "it should just work" tools!)

PS. But I promise, this stuff will be turned into future blog posts.