Quote:
Originally Posted by Little.Egret
'And there's no way to JUST limit sales to "tablets" or "PCs" or "big devices", ...'
In fact the Kindle store does allow this.
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ACTUALLY, to be very clear about this;
IF you use the DIY Amazon apps that exist today, and even some of the deprecated apps, Amazon limits it--not you. You don't get to take any eBook you make and designate it for tablets, PCs, "big devices" or the like. The idea, in fact, is
limiting and denying, not
enabling your choices. Amazon does not empower you to choose that--they take that away from you.
You use Kindle Create and make a textbook or fixed-layout eBook? Fine, then it's limited to Kindle Fires and tablets. You lose access to ~50% of the Amazon marketplace (and let's not kid ourselves--you are cutting off the single biggest $$$ source out there. Apple, Kobo, etc. don't remotely compare, even all combined.) You use the deprecated Kindle Kids' Book Creator (which, by the way, will absolutely NOT display "one page up" when a spread book is rotated), and it's limited to Fires, pretyt much and sometimes, the "K4..." readers, too.
Ditto the old Textbook Creator and all that.
But it's not your choice. it's
Amazon's choice. They took dozens, or even
scores, of hand-made fixed-layout kids' books that we'd made, NOT using their apps, mind you, back in 2010-2014, and they changed them so that they could NOT be bought on eInks, even though ours did work on eInks, because the KC-cum-KKBC-cum-etc. DIY apps' versions do not.
Oh and let's not forget--you
can't upload a fixed-layout ePUB to make a fixed-layout Kindle eBook, EITHER. That doesn't work, unless you've painstakingly written all the ePUB coding by hand, to work in the Amazon ecosystem. 99.99% of all eBook publishers have no idea how to do that and don't. (And as I said, if you're not playing in Amazon's sandbox...well.)
MOST readers have nothing in common, performance/functionality-wise, with the App Formerly Known as iBooks (Books Reader, the stupidest bloody name ever).
The Kindles certainly do
not. About 90-something percent of fixed-layout coded ePUB3s, that work on Apple's platform, WILL work on Kobo, but that's about it.
You try to upload those FXL ePUBs at Ingram, D2D, etc. and it's
ALWAYS a nightmare (they don't have distinct FXL intake processes and insist on running them through their "garbage-eater" APIs and "fixing" them to be reflowable!!!) and don't get me started about bloody PublishDrive that had the unmitigated GALL to tell one of my clients to 'fix" his Fixed-layout (poetry plus photography) eBook using Calibre. Trust me, they got the back of my tongue.
I received rather profuse and lengthy apologies from them about it, but it didn't compensate me for the bloody DAYS I spent, telling the customer what to tell them. Jackasses.
Quoth knows whereof he speaks. You would do well to pay attention.
Hitch