Quote:
Originally Posted by jhowell
You overlook some important reasons why someone may want to have a Word file with the edits applied after editing a book in KC. Since there is no way to export a Word file from KC, there is no clean way to obtain this without manually re-applying the changes made in KC again in Word.
If you are unhappy with the way KC produces a print book you will want to go back to a Word document and use that to create a PDF that looks the way you want.
If you want to publish your book outside of Amazon then you will need a source document for that.
If you find that you need to update a list, table, or anything else that KC is incapable of editing you will need to go back to the original Word document and start over.
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"You overlook some important reasons why someone may want to have a Word file with the edits applied after editing a book in KC. Since there is no way to export a Word file from KC, there is no clean way to obtain this without manually re-applying the changes made in KC again in Word."
If we are talking about creating reflowable ebooks and paperbacks only using KC, why would I even want to export a Word file from KC if I can already save all my original Word doc edits + all KC edits in the
*.kcb project file in my project folder using KC? So, as my argument goes, if you can save ALL edits in the KC project file then reverting to your Word doc for updates would seem to me to be completely unnecessary and pointless.
Of course, if you're talking about a Fixed Format ebook then you're right, the only way to update your published Fx ebook would be to go back to your original pre-PDF Word doc. I think I've mentioned this already in the last paragraph of my last post. And anyway who, in their right mind, would ever consider using KC to create a Fixed Format ebook with all its tragic downsides??
"If you are unhappy with the way KC produces a print book you will want to go back to a Word document and use that to create a PDF that looks the way you want."
Well, two things really. First, there are a lot of people using Kindle Create for print books now. Secondly, I think you might agree that most of the problems that appear on the Kindle Community Forum(KCF) now are usually all about problems uploading PDFs direct to KDP Print as print books. There seems to be very few indie authors having problems using KC for their print book uploads on the KCF. Indeed I would perhaps put it the other way round -- it might even be the case that frustrated indie authors, who cannot sort out their error-less PDF upload problems for print are now moving across to KC in droves to create their Amazon print books because it's so much easier with far fewer errors on upload.
What you're saying is also wrong -- you certainly don't have to go back to your original Word doc to update a published print book using KC. Why? Because if you create either a reflowable ebook or a paperback book using Kindle Create both workflows are essentially the same. See below:
Workflow for ebook using KC:
Word doc -> Kindle Create -> Save project folder and upload KPF to Amazon KDP
Workflow for print using KC:
Word doc -> Kindle Create -> Save project folder and upload KPF to Amazon Print
So what I'm saying is that for both reflowable ebooks and paperbacks you just load a prepared Word doc into KC. And you can save ALL edits(from Word and KC) -- for both your ebook and print versions -- in the project file within their respective project folders. Later, if required, you should be able to make any update changes to these published books/ebooks via their KC project files and republish them as needed viz. the original Word doc is NOT required for reflowable ebook updates or print book updates.
"If you want to publish your book outside of Amazon then you will need a source document for that"
That's true. It doesn't really bother me though. Even if you prefer to upload epubs to online retailers, you will always have to upload one epub version to Amazon and a differently formatted epub version for the rest of the epub retailers either individually or via a single aggregator like Draft2Digital. That's pretty much par for the course for Amazon Kindle. So, for me anyway, that's not such a big deal.
"If you find that you need to update a list, table, or anything else that KC is incapable of editing you will need to go back to the original Word document and start over."
That's also true. Lists are a bit finicky in Word, epub or KC anyway if your creating a reflowable ebook for Amazon. I don't normally use endnotes and I normally format tables as images in both epubs and Kindle Create which works fairly well.