Send to Kindle as a book

[hleo12]

Originally Posted by A Lurker

Really? Amazon made a big deal of the fact that Kindles now support epub. I assumed that format could be loaded onto a Kindle device. But you're saying the announcement really meant Amazon will accept epubs and then convert them?

They're only accepting epubs if you're sending them through email or the send-to-kindle app, then amazon will convert them to either azw or azw3 depending on your device.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by A Lurker

Really? Amazon made a big deal of the fact that Kindles now support epub. I assumed that format could be loaded onto a Kindle device. But you're saying the announcement really meant Amazon will accept epubs and then convert them?

A lot of people interpreted it that way. However if you read their actual announcements Amazon never promised that.

(Similarly some people are probably expecting that they will be able to just write annotations anywhere on their books using the new Kindle Scribe. In reality it won’t work that way. It only supports clunky sticky note attachments for most books.)

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by jhowell

A lot of people interpreted it that way. However if you read their actual announcements Amazon never promised that.

(Similarly some people are probably expecting that they will be able to just write annotations anywhere on their books using the new Kindle Scribe. In reality it won’t work that way. It only supports clunky sticky note attachments for most books.)

Amazon is a master at being misleading, and it sure seems deliberate.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by A Lurker

Really? Amazon made a big deal of the fact that Kindles now support epub. I assumed that format could be loaded onto a Kindle device. But you're saying the announcement really meant Amazon will accept epubs and then convert them?

Watch this.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Amazon is a master at being misleading, and it sure seems deliberate.

This is from the PW5 listing in the UK. See the confusion that Amazon creates. The US listing does not mention ePub.

Content Formats Supported
Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, EPUB, PRC natively; HTML DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, PMP through conversion; Audible audio format (AAX).

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by A Lurker

But you're saying the announcement really meant Amazon will accept epubs and then convert them?

Yep! ... sometimes. It's really picky and a lot of epubs will just silently fail conversion or end up weirdly mangled.

Originally Posted by Quoth

One thing I've never understood is why I can't use email or the Send to Kindle app to send awz3 files. Despite being the preferred format of Kindles, those are always bounced back with a warning they are not accepted and I must use mobi, epub, etc. Also, it's not listed by Amazon as an acceptable format: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...4490_626412530

Yeah. I'd guess it's backwards-compatibility: wanting MOBI to always work. So this might be improving soon.

What is acceptable is 'dual MOBI', which is MOBI and AZW3 together in a single wrapper: Amazon picks them apart and sends the right version to the Kindle.

(It's still not clear to me what happens to sending periodicals by email once Amazon finally kicks in the no-more-MOBI rules, given that periodicals are necessarily MOBI. Does that just stop working? Thanks, Amazon.)

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

This is from the PW5 listing in the UK. See the confusion that Amazon creates. The US listing does not mention ePub.

Content Formats Supported
Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, EPUB, PRC natively; HTML DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, PMP through conversion; Audible audio format (AAX).

That's *really* misleading given that ePub is not natively supported. I guess if faced with this they'd claim that the 'natively' bound only to 'PRC' -- but then we'd have reasonable grounds to point out that AZW3, AZW, TIT, PDF and MOBI *are* in fact natively supported, so the 'natively' must bind to the whole list...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Yep! ... sometimes. It's really picky and a lot of epubs will just silently fail conversion or end up weirdly mangled.

Weirdly mangled is because the encoding is not set to UTF-8 correctly with the ePub. That can be fixed using the Modify ePub plugin.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Yep! ... sometimes. It's really picky and a lot of epubs will just silently fail conversion or end up weirdly mangled.

Much like Amazon's Direct Publishing program where epub is been a preferred format for a couple of years now, Garbage In, Garbage Out definitely applies. An epub that is compliant with the epub specification will convert happily. An epub with errors will not. These errors can be as simple as the epub not being UTF-8/UTF-16 compliant which is a requirement to styles that are not supported or are incorrectly entered. In my limited testing, if an epub passes epubcheck, it will convert without problems.

For those who prefer to stay with Amazon software, you can use Kindle Previewer (Windows or Mac) which will also complain about non-compliant epubs though it will accept some errors that epubcheck will detect.

[innocenat]

Originally Posted by DNSB

An epub that is compliant with the epub specification will convert happily. An epub with errors will not.

This is simply not true. I have seen many valid EPUB that pass epubcheck but failed Amazon conversion. This is just on top of my head.

• Multi-part dc:title. Amazon just error out when multiple titles are present.
• Out-of-order TOC. This is discourage by EPUB spec, but it is allowed. Previously was rejected entirely -- now just get a blank TOC instead.
• Didn't get time to investigated this much, but it seems that books in languages not supported by KDP/Amazon themselves are (or were) being rejected.

Not to mention that EPUB spec require the file to either be in UTF-8 or UTF-16 so Amazon's default assumption of CP-1252 doesn't make sense in this context either (I know the reason why Amazon do this but this does not align with EPUB spec)

[A Lurker]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Watch this.

Thanks for sharing this video. I definitely interpreted their announcement to mean native support rather than conversion. The fact that Amazon did nothing to make that clear suggests they wanted people to make this natural, but false, assumption.

[John F]

Originally Posted by A Lurker

Thanks for sharing this video. I definitely interpreted their announcement to mean native support rather than conversion. The fact that Amazon did nothing to make that clear suggests they wanted people to make this natural, but false, assumption.

Where did you hear "their announcement". It seems like the mis-information started snow balling from goodereader?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by John F

Where did you hear "their announcement". It seems like the mis-information started snow balling from goodereader?

Look at post #35 in this thread. I posted what's on Amazon UK which does make it clear as mud about ePub support.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by John F

Where did you hear "their announcement". It seems like the mis-information started snow balling from goodereader?

GoodEReader definitely jumped to conclusions and spread misleading information. Still, Amazon's messaging on this should have been clearer.

When you send a MOBI file to your Kindle using email Amazon returns an email containing the statement:

Compatible formats now include EPUB (.epub), which you can send to your library using your Send to Kindle email address.

It is fairly clear from the context that "compatible formats" means compatible with emailing. However they really should have mentioned what happens after you send it to your library. By leaving the conversion process unstated they left room for wrong assumptions.

They continue:

We’ll also be adding EPUB support to the free Kindle app for iOS and Android devices and the Send to Kindle desktop app for PC and Mac.

"adding EPUB support to the free Kindle app" is imprecise and misleading. Those apps support delivery of books from Amazon (not as EPUB), sideloading (no EPUB allowed), and send-to-kindle (the actual change.)

Amazon's documentation indicates that RTF and DOCX are supported file types, however it has long been known that these are actually handled by conversion. They should have made it clear that EPUB falls into the same category as these.

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Look at post #35 in this thread. I posted what's on Amazon UK which does make it clear as mud about ePub support.

Sure. But that is not an announcement.

The information on the U.S. site varies last time I looked. No mention on the new paperwhite details. On the Scribe, it says supported through conversion.