Months of Runaround From KDP Support: Font Embedding Fails...HELP!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ASterling

Holy mackerel! That's some Cyrillic there!

Indeed. It's my go-to screenshot for those people who come to me, who insist that I'm stupid because "OBVIOUSLY," Cyrillic works on Kindle devcies, because they see a book in Cyrillic for sale on Amazon. {shrug}. Even I get sick of being called stupid, after a while.

I freely admit I don't understand much of the technical discussion ...

Update from class this a.m. - one student stated he thought all textbooks would be digital in 10 years' time. But I think, more students might have said that 10 years ago than now --

Nah, students always believe that crap.

With the textbook people, their production departments are 100% oriented toward print and paper. They use INDD but I don't think too many are using Adobe CC.

Well, that part doesn't matter. The output files are the output files, and we do intake from both--desktop and cloud.

Most want the older versions and they have the older systems. They are definitely hostile to Amazon and have big trouble adjusting.

What I've found, largely, is a real resistance to the PAY of making eBooks. Or the "value," if they are employees of a company. In ye olden days, print layout houses charged thousands of dollars for a layout. The people doing the layout made commensurate monies. I remember that a local bookmaker, here, came to me, asking me to teach her to make eBooks (uh....), but I was relieved of the possible burden of turning her away politely when she found out what she could realistically charge. She was appalled. She could earn more in a few hours than she could charge for an entire, completed eBook and she wasn't going to have any of that!

I don't think it's just the "cheapest alternative," it's poor communications all along the line. I first discovered the "problem" while looking on Adobe Forums and seeing production managers for big textbook companies complaining and sniping back and forth with Amazon and Adobe people.

It's because they simply do NOT want to have to do what needs doing, after you push the button in INDD to finalize the book. And yes--it's a LOT of work. Liz Castro's book makes it all sound easy-peasy, but it's not. Oh, sure, if all you have is text (fiction), or text with a few piccies, it's not so bad, but the moment you start doing ANYTHING that is "formatting," you're doomed. You just can't get there from here with INDD. And it's damn sure not that simple to go from INDD to MOBI! That's a whole other rodeo.

You have so much knowledge Hitch ...

Not really. I'm just more widely versed, than a lot of folks, because I have to be. (I mean, compared to folks like Diap, Kevin, Doits, Tex2002ans, etc., around here, I am a total know-nothing, trust me.)

Despite the fact that I clearly tell folks, a million times, that our products are DELIVERABLES, and not free publishing consulting, I get asked this stuff all the time. Take that, plus the utterly WRONG pontificating and pronouncements on various topics on forums--which need to be addressed, before poor newbs go away with the wrong info--you end up knowing a lot of trivia. Hell, I just saw a post on the KDP that was completely and flatly wrong. But, one of the "experts" pronounced upon it, and he's so vicious that it's not worth it to me to fix it. And if you start swinging over there, even in self-defense, Amazon gets vexed with you, I'm told (fortunately, I don't know that first-hand). So the poor noob that asked the question is going to run around for god-only-knows-how-long trying to do something that she can't do. {sigh}.

If even an AVERAGE textbook version could be made to work, I still think it is a lot of money. I have just now myself noticed the download charge relationship so ... optimizing for file size is also important. It is just so complicated ...

Well, I put up the examples. That book was 1200 pages long, and I forget the total image count...ah, 445 (looked it up) and we managed to get it in under the 50mb limit. Of course, the book sells for a small fortune, so the delivery fees are the least of their (the client's) concern. I'd think that given the prices that MM charges, they ought not care, either. Firstly, they have a publisher's agreement with Amazon, which probably addresses delivery fees in a completely different way than the Indy agreements. Secondly, their books aren't going to be between $2.99 and $9.99, so they aren't PAYING delivery fees; they don't have that charge. AND, lastly, as they upload via FTP, not the KDP, they don't have that precious 50MB file-size limit.

They're golden, IOW. I have no doubt we could make their books. But will we? I do have doubt about that. They'll want some huge company, like Aptara, etc., not a boutique firm in the middle of Arizona. ;-) (Even though...all due modesty aside, IMHO, we make better books than they do. Certainly, our books get more individualized ATTENTION than books done at Aptara or their ilk. Not dissing Aptara; but they are making thousands of books every week, in a huge assembly line. That's a very different approach than ours. Not that I would turn that VOLUME down, of course....)

Hitch

[DaleDe]

Personally I think most of the Textbook publishers are afraid of theft and thus won't touch eBooks. College students are more likely to ignore copyright and the total market base isn't very large to begin with.

Dale

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Personally I think most of the Textbook publishers are afraid of theft and thus won't touch eBooks. College students are more likely to ignore copyright and the total market base isn't very large to begin with.

Dale

Dale:

EXCELLENT point. I've seen boatloads of copyright-piracy paranoia in my time, and you're probably right that this particular group of publishers would have more reason than most.

Hitch

[quiris]

Originally Posted by V_Shaft

Setup: 1 main linked stylesheet containing only the @import rule + 1 unlinked stylesheet containing all the actual CSS; unlinked CSS imported into the linked one via @import.
Result: Success.
What happened: No fonts stripped from the unlinked CSS. Tested on several books. Fonts show up on both the Offline and Online Previewer, on Kindle for PC, as well as in the actual file when inspected. I confirmed the CSS remains intact.

Is it still a working solution? I have prepared similar experiment today and it completely failed. All fonts were stripped from @imported stylesheet by KDP.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by quiris

Is it still a working solution? I have prepared similar experiment today and it completely failed. All fonts were stripped from @imported stylesheet by KDP.

I can't say. We never did use this workaround; we developed something quite different, utterly unrealted to CSS sheets, @imported stylesheet, etc.

To be frank, I believed that s/he simply got lucky. There have been periods since April 2015, when this started, where--for reasons no one understands--the import will work sans workarounds. For a day or two, and then go back to not working. One guy at KDP (forums) is convinced he's a genius, because he uses font calls, in his CSS, for existing device-embedded fonts, and it seems to work. (I've seen this fail more times than I have digits).

I can also say that we recently did a job for someone who had rather determinedly learnt HTML, XHTML, and CSS (and INDD), only to fall at the last hurdle. He Googled this to death; he tried this @import workaround, and he too did not have any success. I'm not dissing what went into this, nor saying that it doesn't work--I'm simply reporting what I've seen myself or been told in first-person.

Hitch

[V_Shaft]

I'm posting in this topic again because just today I've had to test some books on Amazon and KDP once more stripped my fonts. But when I used the @import rule, it worked, again.

Now, I really don't know if I lucked out or what, but for me the @import solution really does work all the time.

For testing purposes I've made a small validated epub containing a cover and 5 sentences each written in its own font. I've made 2 versions: one with a normally-linked stylesheet, another with the @import stylesheet. I uploaded both to KDP. KDP stripped fonts from the former, left the fonts in the latter. See screenshots below:

Normal stylesheet - KDP Online Preview:


@import stylesheet - KDP Online Preview:


The source epubs were made in Sigil 0.9.3. If someone wants to check and de-bug them and the resulting mobis, download them in a zip file here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j9rbrr31cp...0test.zip?dl=0

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by V_Shaft

I'm posting in this topic again because just today I've had to test some books on Amazon and KDP once more stripped my fonts. But when I used the @import rule, it worked, again.

Now, I really don't know if I lucked out or what, but for me the @import solution really does work all the time.

For testing purposes I've made a small validated epub containing a cover and 5 sentences each written in its own font. I've made 2 versions: one with a normally-linked stylesheet, another with the @import stylesheet. I uploaded both to KDP. KDP stripped fonts from the former, left the fonts in the latter. See screenshots below:

Normal stylesheet - KDP Online Preview:


@import stylesheet - KDP Online Preview:


The source epubs were made in Sigil 0.9.3. If someone wants to check and de-bug them and the resulting mobis, download them in a zip file here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j9rbrr31cp...0test.zip?dl=0

Hi:

I will take a look at this later tonight, thanks.

Hitch

[mattmc]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Hi:

I will take a look at this later tonight, thanks.

Hitch

Hey Hitch,

Curious if you ever tried this out and how it worked for you. I haven't yet had to battle this particular dragon, but I'd like to face the beast knowing its weaknesses, so to speak.

Either way, much obliged to @V_Shaft for posting what works for you!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by mattmc

Hey Hitch,

Curious if you ever tried this out and how it worked for you. I haven't yet had to battle this particular dragon, but I'd like to face the beast knowing its weaknesses, so to speak.

Either way, much obliged to @V_Shaft for posting what works for you!

It has some legs. Depending on myriad factors, it may or may not solve the issue. We still have several other things that we do, in-house, to make it "airtight," (so to speak, or as airtight as it can be), but this has some basis.

Hitch

[KevinH]

My guess is that the software they use to process the css for fonts simply does not grok the import statement and so they miss ripping it out of there too for no apparently good reason.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by KevinH

My guess is that the software they use to process the css for fonts simply does not grok the import statement and so they miss ripping it out of there too for no apparently good reason.

Yes. That's our theory. Simply doesn't know it's there.

Hitch

[capidamonte]

This has been friggin' fascinating. (No irony, really.) I read the whole thread in one go, and my heart hurts for y'all.

I remember the days of trying to figure out all the blind alleys. All the intentional murder of one's fine HTML and CSS. Feeling like we were pieces of human fodder to an uncaring corporate behemoth, largely because we were...

I hope they don't wreck that @import trick. I may go and build a few ePubs out of nostalgia, now. Hope my virtual machines still work.

Aloha, Hitch! (and all others.)

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by capidamonte

This has been friggin' fascinating. (No irony, really.) I read the whole thread in one go, and my heart hurts for y'all.

I remember the days of trying to figure out all the blind alleys. All the intentional murder of one's fine HTML and CSS. Feeling like we were pieces of human fodder to an uncaring corporate behemoth, largely because we were...

I hope they don't wreck that @import trick. I may go and build a few ePubs out of nostalgia, now. Hope my virtual machines still work.

Aloha, Hitch! (and all others.)

Well....

I hope I haven't/don't contribute(d) to them catching on to it in any way, but I fear we may have. There are some other small tricks or...well, tweaks, let's call them, (Twick or Tweak!), that make the files work as they ought.

Quick explanation as to how we ended up where we are:

Spoiler:

However--Cap, you remember back in 2010, when we were added to the Amazon Prof. Converter's List?--well, long story short, we had to jump through hoops, the last 6 months, to be added BACK to it, because some rocket surgeon decided--without mentioning it to those of us on the list--that the list would NOW only be those companies authorized and contracted to do work FOR Amazon, itself.

We found out when someone said I was a "liar," on the KDP forums, and lo...sure 'nuff, we were no longer on the list. October, 2015. I know I was there in August, so...{ughghgh}.

Anyway, I persistently dogged them for a few months, and they said, "well, okay, but you have to pass our criteria," which was a crapload of private information (annual income, employees, etc.) and proprietary info (how we do X, Y and Z, in detail), and we had to pass 3 series of tests, which, without hubris, I tell you that most folks wouldn't couldn't pass.

The last test was converting a moderate number of foreign-language books, VERY densely formatted, PLUS hundreds of images, captions each, from PDF to ePUB/MOBI, in a very limited amount of time. A few days, total--for ALL of them, not each. A speed test, if you will--but ANY error is a fail. (!) Yup, that's what I said--ANY error, of any kind. [We passed.] SO...without further ado, this meant that...

I carefully asked them questions, during this final test, about what they wanted to see, did they want this, or that, yadda, and I casually asked them if they wanted the fonts embedded that were in the PDFs. And, sure enough, they did. And sure enough, that means that they've seen what we do, assuming that they were paying attention. If they did, they know about the import bit, and those other things that we hold near and dear.

I am, in fact, sitting here nail-biting, because a very big client of ours (a print layout house) has a customer (for whom we did the white-label eBook work) that is rabid about their fonts NOT working in their eBooks. I thought "well, crappity, we must not have done X, Y and Z," but when I tested the book, at the KDP, we did do XY&Z, for the fonts remain. But I myself downloaded the free sample for this book--and the fonts are GONE.

Now, kiddies, listen to your old Mama Hitch when she tells you, that's not what's happened before. Not before today. Until today, I would have said, 100%, if your book displays fonts in the online preview after you've uploaded it, you're home free. Those fonts will survive, into the for-sale book. BUT--with my own eyes and tests, I saw, today, a situation wherein it MAY NOT be so. Now, I say "may not," because of course, neither we nor the print layout house uploaded the book. The publisher did. I fired off a message at quitting time today, and said "is it possible that they uploaded the ePUB?" I took a ss of the online Preview, so the client wouldn't think we were shining them on, showing all the fonts, right where they ought to be.



So, here I sit, hoping beyond hope that these folks just screwed up and uploaded the ePUB, not the MOBI. Or did some other hinky thing that bastardized our lovingly-crafted, font-laden book. IF they did NOT...well, then, y'all will be seeing me again, in this thread, to say "well, GUESS WHAT'S happened NOW?" I already have time committed this weekend, to non-business stuff, but if this is real--if, Odin forbid, they uploaded the MOBI file that we gave them--it's going to be one hell of a long weekend, because we'll be scrambling. Hell, I'd guess we have, I don't know, 70-80 books in, that require embedded fonts?

if I have to pull another long, destroyed weekend trying to figure out new and improved ways around this. I've done that 2x before, and I'm bloody damn tired of it. Not to mention...we do a lot of the aforementioned "tweaking," to make this work. I don't know how many more rabbits we have to pull out of our bums.

Hitch

[jcsalomon]

Here’s a screwy thought, but one I’ve not seen mentioned in this thread: is it possible that the failing font’s permission bits are set to prohibit embedding (this can be different from what the human-readable font license says is permissible), and something in Amazon’s process catches this and removes such fonts?

(Probably not, I’m sure; this would mean some fonts fail consistently while others work, and the difference would have been noticed by now.)

[JSWolf]

Why does Amazon remove embedded fonts? Is it because they have a thing for Bookerly?