Professional Quality Personal Documents: KDP and/or Calibre?

[RMOP]

I'm primarily interested in producing professional quality Kindle-format books for myself and to share with friends. I do have a few small projects that might result in marketable Kindle books, so that is a factor as well, though a secondary consideration.

I've used Calibre, and found it a bit clunky, which probably means that I've simply not mastered its considerable functionality. I've actually gotten better results by sending heavily formatted .doc files to my @Kindle.com account, which places the book in my Personal Documents. Not bad, but I'm not satisfied, as I've been unable to get that approach to display book covers as would a commercial Kindle book, nor have I sorted how to add a Table of Contents or Index using .doc filed. It's probable possible, but I've not done it.

I just learned about KDP, and was wondering if KDP might be a suitable application for my purposes, namely, producing professional quality Kindle books for my PERSONAL use, with only a secondary interest in actually selling any of them. The .doc -> Personal Documents approach is convenient for spell-checking, footnoting and formatting, but not so great for cover art and other advanced features. The KDP application seems to provide the means for adding nice covers and Table of Contents, but I'm sure that it's not intended for my primary purpose of producing Personal Documents. But, perhaps it can play a role in that? It may be relevant to note that I'm taking obscure public domain material, finding and eliminating the (usually) many typos or scanning errors, and adding appropriate formatting and footnotes and annotations. Mundane stuff, but it requires repeated proofing and editing. Lots of editing.

I'd appreciate any comments about how best to produce really high quality Kindle books for personal use. I've probably a preference toward sticking with Calibre and learning it better, though if KDP will work better, I'm happy to go that route. Given the level of editing my texts require, perhaps I need a combination of things. If I can master producing a really good quality eBook, then I'd be more likely to try to bring some material to the marketplace.

Many thanks.

[Toxaris]

I think most first try to produce a good ePUB and convert that to the Kindle format. I think you would be better of in the KDP forum for that.
There are reports I believe that .mobi files converted via Calibre are not allowed by Amazon, but I am not sure about that. Search around, there is more about that all around the forums.
Also, it is better to clean the source in an application better suited for that than in an e-Book editor. Usually that is much faster and easier. YMMV

[eschwartz]

calibre, and specifically the Editor, will allow you to create ebooks. KDP will allow you to publish them.

It's not a bad idea to put up ebooks on the Kindle Store, that have been edited to meet your requirements. I'd like to point out, though, that the only benefit over using calibre to convert and sideload the book (or kindlegen for the conversion) is the Whispersync -- cloud storage, annotations -- without suffering the flaws in the Personal Documents service.

Also, MobileRead has a public domain ebook library lovingly compiled by our members, so check if they are already available, if not, perhaps you could share them here as well!

[RMOP]

Originally Posted by Toxaris

I think most first try to produce a good ePUB and convert that to the Kindle format. I think you would be better of in the KDP forum for that.
There are reports I believe that .mobi files converted via Calibre are not allowed by Amazon, but I am not sure about that. Search around, there is more about that all around the forums.
Also, it is better to clean the source in an application better suited for that than in an e-Book editor. Usually that is much faster and easier. YMMV

Thanks. I've found that Calibre-generated .mobi files are accepted into my Kindle Personal Documents using the @Kindle.com address associated w my Kindle. Agreed, cleaning up the source in a word processor is necessary before going to an eBook editor.

[RMOP]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

calibre, and specifically the Editor, will allow you to create ebooks. KDP will allow you to publish them.

It's not a bad idea to put up ebooks on the Kindle Store, that have been edited to meet your requirements. I'd like to point out, though, that the only benefit over using calibre to convert and sideload the book (or kindlegen for the conversion) is the Whispersync -- cloud storage, annotations -- without suffering the flaws in the Personal Documents service.

Also, MobileRead has a public domain ebook library lovingly compiled by our members, so check if they are already available, if not, perhaps you could share them here as well!

Thanks. Sounds as if I should spend more time getting familar with Calibre. But, ANY book sent to my Kindle account using the Personal Documents service has cloud storage and annotations available across different Kindle platforms.

What specifically, were you referring to with regard to flaws in the Personal Documents service? If I understand things correctly, I should be able to build a good eBook with Calibre and lose nothing when I send the finished product to my Kindle account. I'm still figuring all of this out.

[user743]

I believe eschwartz was referring to the fact that kindle personal document service has certain standard ways of formatting ebooks and won't honor many of your formatting decisions.

(you cant add a azw3 file to the cloud. only a document that amazon converted)

for example it will automaticy add a thin black border to tables even if they weren't there in word.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by user743

I believe eschwartz was referring to the fact that kindle personal document service has certain standard ways of formatting ebooks and won't honor many of your formatting decisions.

(you cant add a azw3 file to the cloud. only a document that amazon converted)

for example it will automaticy add a thin black border to tables even if they weren't there in word.

You can upload a .mobi, and I am fairly certain it will not reconvert it, but I believe some metadata/ToC/cover changes will be made (cover will be missing if you send a dual-formatted MOBI). And .mobi doesn't support embedded fonts, a deal-breaker for many.

To be honest, I'm not really clear on the details, since I prefer creating documents with calibre and sideloading.

I have my own backup/sync service, courtesy of linux rsync.

[RMOP]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

You can upload a .mobi, and I am fairly certain it will not reconvert it, but I believe some metadata/ToC/cover changes will be made (cover will be missing if you send a dual-formatted MOBI). And .mobi doesn't support embedded fonts, a deal-breaker for many.

To be honest, I'm not really clear on the details, since I prefer creating documents with calibre and sideloading.

I have my own backup/sync service, courtesy of linux rsync.

Many thanks to both respondents. I don't know enough about this to even appreciate what a dual-formatted .mobi file is. But I DO want my covers to show up when I upload. I use to sideload everything until I realized that the Personal Documents would sync and backup my highlighting and notes. So, I've got to figure out how to use Calibre in a way that will force my uploaded .mobi files to retain their covers when converted by Amazon. If that can be done. I think the Kindle-issued guides for ToC can be adapted easily enough for my modest purposes. So far, footnotes have converted well, so basic annotation seems to be preserved well-enough. My formatting is probably pretty basic (rare graphics, italics but no other font changes, footnotes).