New mobi format won't sync reading progress on Amazon

[mkgtu]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The issue is not caused by Amazon recognizing that the book originally came from them. It is a consequence of the conversion from AZW3 to EPUB done using calibre.

When you email a file with an image extension it is processed by Amazon using kindlegen. That program recognizes that the format is actually EPUB and processes it accordingly.

However kindlegen is designed to convert books as part of the publishing process. It often intentionally rejects books with content that fails to meet Amazon's publishing guidelines. That makes sense in a publishing environment where the publisher is expected to deliver a properly formatted book and needs to know if that is not the case.

When calibre converts AZW3 to EPUB it tends to create links to HTML ids that are placed on body elements in the XHTML files. Those links, while correct according to the EPUB specification, are rejected by kindlegen if they occur in the table of contents.

One workaround for this is to use the Kindleunpack plugin to convert AZW3 to EPUB instead of using calibre's Convert Books function. That produces an EPUB that better reflects the original content of the AZW3 file and is more likely to be acceptable to kindlegen.

THANK YOU. PERFECT.
I'd never used or even heard of that plugin. Installed it and works like a charm. Creates an instant epub, which after adding the jpeg extension and uploading to Kindle does preserve the ability to adjust the boldness as well as syncing reading progress.

The only drawback for me personally is that there are no options with KindleUnpack to tweak other aspects of the book. In my case I hate all the white space created by texts that are "justified"; breaks the reading flow. So when converting books I always (by default) make the text "left aligned". I find it easier to deal with ragged line endings than white space within the lines.

So after converting/extracting the epub from an azw3, I still reconvert that epub (to epub) to change the text alignment (unless of course the original text was already left-aligned). (I also usually like to find and add metadata at the beginning of the book) So for me the result is the same; I would usually still convert twice. But the KindleUnpack is so quick that timewise two conversions really don't take any longer than one!

[Dave_the_rave]

I converted the ePub to AZW3 and it preserved most of the formating really well, I then changed then extension to AZW and use Send to Kindle app formatting looks better than MOBI but the book cover is not displaying unlike when I transfer MOBI also I am not sure if the my highlights will be synced or not with this .AZW extension. Any ideas?