Kindle to utilize epub format in late 2022

[Holdwink]

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...f_=as_li_ss_tl

https://goodereader.com/blog/kindle/...b-in-late-2022

Moderator Notice
Clarification: Amazon now accept ePubs for their email-to-kindle process, and later in 2022 their "Send To Kindle" programs will be updated to accept ePubs. There has been no announcement about Kindles being able to display ePubs natively.

[Quoth]

Ah but with what DRM?

Or like Apple with iTunes and music publishers will Amazon convince publishers that DRM is pointless? It is proven to be pointless. Even "unbreakable" DRM can be broken as a camera or microphone works as well as your ears or eyes. Most volume pirated ebooks are copied initially from paper.

Otherwise this should have been 10 years ago.

BUT it might only be about sending stuff to Amazon. KDP preference has been epub for years.

Will it really mean Amazon Sales will be epub, or that FW later this year on some models will add epub?

I'm sceptical it means Amazon delivering epub.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Ah but with what DRM?

Or like Apple with iTunes and music publishers will Amazon convince publishers that DRM is pointless? It is proven to be pointless. Even "unbreakable" DRM can be broken as a camera or microphone works as well as your ears or eyes. Most volume pirated ebooks are copied initially from paper.

Otherwise this should have been 10 years ago.

BUT it might only be about sending stuff to Amazon. KDP preference has been epub for years.

Will it really mean Amazon Sales will be epub, or that FW later this year on some models will add epub?

I'm sceptical it means Amazon delivering epub.

Read the support article Goodereader links. It's literally just that the Kindle Personal Document service will support ePub and I'm pretty sure it'll just be converting your emailed epub to AZW3 or KFX before delivering to your device just like they do now if you email an .epub as a "png" file. Nowhere do they say Kindles will natively support ePub.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Read the support article Goodereader links. It's literally just that the Kindle Personal Document service will support ePub and I'm pretty sure it'll just be converting your emailed epub to AZW3 or KFX before delivering to your device just like they do now if you email an .epub as a "png" file. Nowhere do they say Kindles will natively support ePub.

Exactly. And I would be extremely surprised to see them convert to KFX. Enhanced typesetting is meant only for books they sell.

[Joliet Jake]

Send to Kindle will suspend the ability to load in MOBI, since it is an older file format and won’t support the newest Kindle features for documents. If you have MOBI books already on your Kindle, they will continue to be accessible. Amazon is also disabling to the ability to send AZW to the Kindle.

And why are they doing this?

[hleo12]

Originally Posted by Joliet Jake

And why are they doing this?

From Amazon's website:

Note: Beginning in late 2022, you'll no longer be able to send MOBI (.AZW, .MOBI) files to your library using Send to Kindle. This change won't affect any MOBI files already in your Kindle library. MOBI is an older file format and won't support the newest Kindle features for documents.


I guess Amazon is finally budging on documents having next to no features outside of the basic font and spacing ones. But I doubt they'll give documents the same features as kfx or azw3.

They might also allow embedding amazon IDs to the books/documents you send so they'll have store information (the new book details feature). This is more of a personal wish tho

But knowing how Amazon is slowly closing off its ecosystem, it might also mean your downloaded documents would be like kfx and you wouldn't be able to copy them directly from your Kindle.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

Read the support article Goodereader links. It's literally just that the Kindle Personal Document service will support ePub and I'm pretty sure it'll just be converting your emailed epub to AZW3 or KFX before delivering to your device just like they do now if you email an .epub as a "png" file. Nowhere do they say Kindles will natively support ePub.

I think so. Also possibly encrypted azw3. I don't think it's about epub directly on Kindles.

KFX is as much for extra encryption and more economical mobile/cellular delivery than so-called advanced type setting. A suitable renderer could do the same with azw3, after all the preferred KDP source is epub2 for years and the same source is used to create the azw3 and kfx.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Joliet Jake

And why are they doing this?

So as to reduce support costs. They already don't accept mobi on KDP.

[JSWolf]

It's time Amazon dropped Mobi as a format. Mobi's time has come and it's time to let it go away forever.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Joliet Jake

And why are they doing this?

They finally realized their policy of rejecting EPUB was stupid.

Their automatic conversion engine has worked on EPUB for years, and people have been bypassing the policy by renaming EPUB to have a zip, txt, or png extension for years.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

They finally realized their policy of rejecting EPUB was stupid.

Their automatic conversion engine has worked on EPUB for years, and people have been bypassing the policy by renaming EPUB to have a zip, txt, or png extension for years.

Not only that, but Amazon support themselves recommend epub for KDP upload!
Have done for years.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It's time Amazon dropped Mobi as a format. Mobi's time has come and it's time to let it go away forever.

They did. You can't upload it and they only supply it for Kindles that can't do KFX.
If you've at least a PW3 you won't see mobi for any reflowable book uploaded in years to Amazon recommendations.

There is no point in killing mobi for ancient Kindles. That would be malicious.

[jhowell]

Sending EPUB via email is already active. Other than eliminating the need to use a fake file name extension, it works the same way it always did. It converts to both MOBI (azw) and KF8 (azw3) formats and delivers whichever is appropriate for each Kindle app or device.

And despite possibilities raised in this thread I doubt that there will be further change to this.

• It does not convert to KFX format. Amazon uses the Enhanced Typesetting made available by KFX as a selling point for their store. They have no incentive to convert books from third parties to that format.
  
• There is no sign that DRM will be added to personal documents. It would be pointless.
  
• Personal documents will not be allowed to contain metadata that makes them more functional than they currently are. Linking to Goodreads, grouping series, and other features provide incentive for purchases from Amazon.

[graycyn]

It's a welcome change for me, since I keep my library as .epub and read on both Kobo and occasionally a Kindle. But why oh why did it take them so long?

Seems to me that any company, no matter how successful, should always go with garnering customer goodwill as often as possible, particularly if it's something easy to enable. Obviously the conversion aspects have been in place for ages already, so why make customers jump through an extra hoop of renaming the file extension?

I guess better late than never....

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by graycyn

It's a welcome change for me, since I keep my library as .epub and read on both Kobo and occasionally a Kindle. But why oh why did it take them so long?

Seems to me that any company, no matter how successful, should always go with garnering customer goodwill as often as possible, particularly if it's something easy to enable. Obviously the conversion aspects have been in place for ages already, so why make customers jump through an extra hoop of renaming the file extension?

I guess better late than never....

They weren't being lazy, they went out of their way to reject files with EPUB extensions. It was just luck that they didn't actually check whether a file was EPUB, though it might be that they just treated them as zipped HTML, which is what EPUBs essentially are, but with additional requirements.