Formats, Formats, Formats

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Sorry, I'm not being clear: I was using their KindleGen program.

I certainly never saw an option for a KF8 output, but possibly I missed it.

There isn't an option for KF8 output. Recent versions of Kindlegen generate a combined output file that has

(1) an original Mobi format
(2) a KF8 format
(3) a zip of the source files

all wrapped up together. Older Kindle software and devices should display the original Mobi file. Newer ones should display the KF8 file. I suppose Kindle Preview will display one or the other depending on what Kindle it's imitating, but I haven't checked.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

There isn't an option for KF8 output. Recent versions of Kindlegen generate a combined output file that has

(1) an original Mobi format
(2) a KF8 format
(3) a zip of the source files

all wrapped up together. Older Kindle software and devices should display the original Mobi file. Newer ones should display the KF8 file. I suppose Kindle Preview will display one or the other depending on what Kindle it's imitating, but I haven't checked.

Interesting. I only used it long enough to see that the Kindle e-Ink version was dreadful in the Previewer and then uninstalled the whole lot and moved on to Calibre. Good to know.

[Muckraker]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Recent versions of Kindlegen generate a combined output file that has

(1) an original Mobi format
(2) a KF8 format
(3) a zip of the source files

And that triples the "delivery cost" on the 70% royalty plan. How convenient that yet another value-add for Amazon comes at the expense of the self-publishers.

So to make sure that a 10mb e-comic works on new and old Kindles Amazon thoughtfully increases the file size to 30mb--then charges us $.15/mb for every sale if we want to maintain the illusion we are receiving a 70% royalty instead of the paltry 65% offered by BN. Guess it's a good thing Amazon let's us take the 35% royalty when we find ourselves paying a $4.50 delivery fee on a $2.99 comic.

The fee is completely counter-intuitive. They want high quality content and here we are decreasing the quality of our images. They want to show off the color of the Fire so they make it financially crippling to publish a color book. They want cross-compatibility but here we are using Kindlestrip to cut our file sizes in half by nuking the EPUB. And we do all this to stomach fees that I guarantee nobody but the micro-publishers are paying.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Muckraker

And that triples the "delivery cost" on the 70% royalty plan. How convenient that yet another value-add for Amazon comes at the expense of the self-publishers.

So to make sure that a 10mb e-comic works on new and old Kindles Amazon thoughtfully increases the file size to 30mb--then charges us $.15/mb for every sale if we want to maintain the illusion we are receiving a 70% royalty instead of the paltry 65% offered by BN. Guess it's a good thing Amazon let's us take the 35% royalty when we find ourselves paying a $4.50 delivery fee on a $2.99 comic.

The fee is completely counter-intuitive. They want high quality content and here we are decreasing the quality of our images. They want to show off the color of the Fire so they make it financially crippling to publish a color book. They want cross-compatibility but here we are using Kindlestrip to cut our file sizes in half by nuking the EPUB. And we do all this to stomach fees that I guarantee nobody but the micro-publishers are paying.

No, that's not how it works. You upload the combined file to Amazon and they split it out. The Mobi-only part gets downloaded to older kindle devices, and the kf8 part to newer kindle devices. Goodness knows what they do with the source archive.

I don't know how they calculate the delivery fee if the KF8 and Mobi sections are very different in size. I suspect that it's unlikely that they will be significantly different.

[Muckraker]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

No, that's not how it works. You upload the combined file to Amazon and they split it out. The Mobi-only part gets downloaded to older kindle devices, and the kf8 part to newer kindle devices. Goodness knows what they do with the source archive.

I don't know how they calculate the delivery fee if the KF8 and Mobi sections are very different in size. I suspect that it's unlikely that they will be significantly different.

The "delivery fee" is determined by the size of the file you upload when you are setting up your listing. It actually has nothing at all to do with "delivery," how many times a customer loads a book on a Kindle, or the file size a customer receives or downloads when they make a purchase.

If you upload your 30MB $6.99 eBook file, and are on a 70% royalty plan, you get dinged for a $4.50 delivery fee with every Amazon sale. Your 70% royalty for each sale is actually [6.99 - (30MB x $0.15)] x 70% = $1.74. Since your 70% royalty is actually only 25% you are then advised to just use the 35% royalty plan because there is no "delivery fee" at 35%. If I wanted to make the $4.89 royalty implied by the 70% plan I would need to price my book at $11.50 so as to accommodate the delivery fee.

That's why I say it's pretty underhanded. They use an ambiguous phrase like "delivery cost" to make us think it is probably situational or doesn't apply to us. Then they bury the details and $.015/MB price so we are less likely to find it. And since text-only eBooks are 2MB or under most of the people selling them don't notice the skimming and don't understand why someone with a large file has a problem with the "delivery fee."

If I publish a color comic book, or children's book, aimed at looking as good as it can look on the Kindle Fire, I either have to charge exorbitantly to counteract the high fees or accept the fact that I will never make more than a 35% royalty from Amazon.

To summarize: If you upload a 30MB MOBI when you create your book listing you will pay a $4.50 fee per sale or chop yourself down to 35% royalty.

Add huge images to an EPUB to get yourself up to 10MB or so. Then convert it to MOBI and upload it as a placeholder for another book. Look at the royalty summary page and you'll see what I mean.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Muckraker

The "delivery fee" is determined by the size of the file you upload when you are setting up your listing. It actually has nothing at all to do with "delivery," how many times a customer loads a book on a Kindle, or the file size a customer receives or downloads when they make a purchase.

I will have to double check. I thought the delivery fee was based on the size of the final file (the one you can download after uploading), not the file you upload.

[anamardoll]

I'm running into similar problems. And -- incidentally -- this is why most ebooks don't come with a "built-in" cover, which absolutely infuriated me when I was only a reader.

I built in my cover, a back cover, character portraits, and images for chapter breaks. That's... costing me. Ah well.

[Muckraker]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I'm running into similar problems. And -- incidentally -- this is why most ebooks don't come with a "built-in" cover, which absolutely infuriated me when I was only a reader.

I built in my cover, a back cover, character portraits, and images for chapter breaks. That's... costing me. Ah well.

I found a couple helpful things. Kovid Goyal is awesome and updated Calibre so that you can opt for it to not convert all images to JPG. If you already have optimized images and check that box on MOBI conversion then your file size will not increase. Prior to him patching Calibre I was experiencing at least 2x the file size on conversion.

The other thing I found that's helpful is to use Kindlestrip if you create your MOBI with Kindlegen. That strips out the included EPUB, which is what was doubling our file sizes whenever we used Kindlegen.

Both of these have brought my insane delivery charges back down to earth somewhat. I won't be happy until Amazon ditches the delivery charge though. It's sneaky and underhanded and not something a major corporation needs to be doing. If they really depend on that income then they should just knock the 70% option down to 65%, eliminate the delivery charge, and quit it with the false advertising and fine print.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I'm running into similar problems. And -- incidentally -- this is why most ebooks don't come with a "built-in" cover, which absolutely infuriated me when I was only a reader.

I built in my cover, a back cover, character portraits, and images for chapter breaks. That's... costing me. Ah well.

A lot of eBooks don't have a proper cover. But we are expected to pay the same or similar to a pBook that has a proper cover. If you can't give me a proper cover, then lower the price as I don't want to pay for something I am not getting.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

A lot of eBooks don't have a proper cover. But we are expected to pay the same or similar to a pBook that has a proper cover. If you can't give me a proper cover, then lower the price as I don't want to pay for something I am not getting.

To be clear, by "built-in" cover, I mean a cover that is part of the file.

Many authors make lovely covers, and then do not have the cover included in the file. It comes onto the device as store metadata and can be lost entirely if you sideload without affixing it in Calibre first.

B&N actually actively strips covers OUT (based on my own upload). This irks me as an author and surprised me as a reader -- I'd noticed that none of my B&N books came with covers, and I'd assumed the publishers were jerks. Nope, it's B&N, and I assume to cut down delivery costs.

I purposely chose to include my cover both as store metadata AND embedded within the file itself. But that costs me on every Amazon purchase, and it was stripped out of the B&N upload.

There are a lot of little hidden things at these stores that you don't really see or know until you have to deal with them. What can you do? Makes me wish there were more indie stores though, that didn't fiddle with format or charge for file size.