Epub to Kindle Book format

[ryuji35]

Hi,

I used to have a Kobo Glo but now that my mom gave me a Voyage for my birthday, I am having problems with what to do with my books. Most of them are NON-DRM epubs, and I have read before that Epub is way superior than Mobi (Which made me decide to get a Kobo after my K4 NT got busted before.) My question is, is there are good Kindle format that I can use to convert my epubs without the loss of quality? I definitely do not want MOBI but I have very little experience with azw or azw3 to understand/tackle them.

[eschwartz]

AZW is the same thing as MOBI, they are two different file extensions for the original mobipocket 7 format (and PRC is another).

AZW3 is the file extension for Kindle Format 8 (mobi8) and is the new-and-improved MOBI. It can more or less be described as an EPUB, but wrapped in the binary mobipocket database instead of a ZIP container.
AZW3 supports all the new goodies, like embedded fonts, dropcaps, SVG images, etc.


In other words, convert to AZW3 and you will be fine.

[ryuji35]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

AZW is the same thing as MOBI, they are two different file extensions for the original mobipocket 7 format (and PRC is another).

AZW3 is the file extension for Kindle Format 8 (mobi8) and is the new-and-improved MOBI. It can more or less be described as an EPUB, but wrapped in the binary mobipocket database instead of a ZIP container.
AZW3 supports all the new goodies, like embedded fonts, dropcaps, SVG images, etc.


In other words, convert to AZW3 and you will be fine.

Will Calibre do the trick? I'm trying to research and some people say that there's still some issues (albeit minor ones) whenever they use epub to azw3 via Calibre. But I dunno. You guys are sure better to know than I am.

[HarryT]

ePub is certainly a richer format than Mobi7, but it's misleading to state that "Epub is way superior than Mobi", because the overwhelming majority of fiction books do not take advantage of any feature that Mobi7 doesn't support.

So yes, converting your books to AZW3 is good advice (because, for example, you can then edit them in Calibre's ebook editor), but the practical situation is that fiction books will look identical in Mobi7 or AZW3.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ryuji35

Will Calibre do the trick? I'm trying to research and some people say that there's still some issues (albeit minor ones) whenever they use epub to azw3 via Calibre. But I dunno. You guys are sure better to know than I am.

Yes, Calibre works fine.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by HarryT

ePub is certainly a richer format than Mobi7, but it's misleading to state that "Epub is way superior than Mobi", because the overwhelming majority of fiction books do not take advantage of any feature that Mobi7 doesn't support.

So yes, converting your books to AZW3 is good advice (because, for example, you can then edit them in Calibre's ebook editor), but the practical situation is that fiction books will look identical in Mobi7 or AZW3.

Often they wil not, though there should be graceful fallbacks.

Some MOBI books have mangled dropcaps, and while I actually approve of removing embedded fonts, they cannot be said to look identical.

Both features are used often enough in Fiction.