[Hitch]

Originally Posted by slowsmile

@Hitch...

"A last note, which slowsmile did not mention, for the love of your own sanity, do NOT EDIT in Kindle Create. People don't realize that there's no way to extract or save or export an updated Word file from KC, but there isn't. "

Really Hitch? Then what is the purpose of the Kindle Create app? The main purpose of KC is to allow the user to finish-off and improve his/her ebook with better-looking interior styling than you would get if you uploaded a Word doc direct to Amazon. To do that you have to edit your ebook in KC. Right? This particularly applies to both reflowable ebooks and paperbacks created using KC. Fixed format is exempt here because it is another beast altogether that I will mention later.

And everybody seems to think that you must always find a way to export your Word doc or go back to your original Word doc if you have to either update or change your published reflowable ebook or paperback book if you use Kindle Create. Which is utterly wrong and complete bunkum.

In Kindle Create, when you've finished your ebook/book you MUST ALWAYS save it twice. First you should save all your KC work to the KC Project Folder on your computer. Then you should also save it as KPF file for Amazon upload. You already know all about the KPF file.

But hey what's this KC project folder all about?? The project folder contains your project file(*.kcb file) which contains ALL the edits from your original Word doc as well as ALL the edits from using Kindle Create. And if you click on that saved *.kcb file -- Hey Presto! -- it will automatically open in Kindle Create and you can then resume where you left off editing your project in Kindle Create. This applies only when you create reflowable ebooks and paperbacks using Kindle Create.

The whole point of having a project folder and project file is to be able to save ALL your work and then be able to resume or update your work later. Heck, I don't know why so many people -- especially on the Kindle Community Forum -- fail to see this and just don't get it. This ain't rocket science for goodness sake. I mean I'm pretty sure any Scrivener, Jutoh or even AWP users will know exactly what I'm talking about with KC because those apps also use the Project Folder -> Project File way of saving whole, complete projects created using those apps.

The only time you will ever have to go back to your original Word doc for any changes or updates after publishing is when you publish a Fixed Format ebook using KC. And the reason for that is because all inbound PDF pages are all automatically converted into page images in KC -- which you can't edit in KC anyway.

Yes, "really," William. You have NO idea how many times per week, we get someone washing up on the shore of my firm, because, sure enough, they have a KC folder and they need their "Word file." And here's the thing--it doesn't matter why they need it. It doesn't matter what YOU THINK. What matters is, they need their source file, to do X, Y or Z.

This attitude that they should take what they get, with KC, and be happy and shut up is really intolerable. Why should they shut up and be happy with it? What happens if they want to do something 2, 3 years down the line? What if they want to send it to--OMG!--an EDITOR? What if they (gasp!) want an ePUB?


They do not understand, upfront, that having committed edits to KC, they're then bloody stuck with it. Anyone who actually works with authors, on a larger-scale basis knows damned well that the concept of a "finished manuscript" is a bloody oxymoron. I've had customers that have ended up with more than 5500 edits. Yes, that's not a typo--Fifty-Five Hundred edits.

I've had a shocking number of clients decide to hire an editor, AFTER we've done their layout, either in INDD or in HTML/ePUB/MOBI. After, not before. With professionals (or Word) they can do that without considerable brain-damage, but not with KC. Is it an ideal scenario, for someone that far into production to then decide that they want an editor? No--but it happens a lot more than you think.

And people are entitled to want more than KC gives. It's ridiculous to assert that somehow, KC is going to meet everyone's needs. It's not.

And in those circumstances where it's not, the user has to go through all sorts of gyrations to do nothing more than get his or her current "final" manuscript in a working document form."Oh, it's easy, just download Calibre, take this file and convert it to this other format and then convert it to this third format to get a DOCX file..." I mean, come ON. The people that are going to use KC, by and large--because it's EASY--are going to be intimidated by all that.

KC is nothing more than a piece of software that holds somebody's hand, whilst walking through assigning styles. Yes, it does one-two more things, but...it's not all that. And while I'm sure that Amazon would LOVE to go to a locked-in scenario, where everybody has to use KC, and end up with a format that is useful only for Amazon (similar to using iAuthor, which I see that Apple is abandoning, mind you), I feel that having all the options open to you--and NOT being locked-in to using KC--gives people the most options.

If you want to keep pitching KC, that's your prerogative, but don't tell people not to worry about edits that they make in it. That is disingenuous and assumes that everything that they want to do, is doable from KC and we all know it's not. It's not harmful to tell them to make sure that they're using a final file, or as final as possible, before they put it in KC. Sure, the KC output can look nice, or nicer than possibly the user could do themselves, but it's a pretty limited set of options.

Hitch