Kindle to utilize epub format in late 2022

[rashkae]

I think rejecting epub was just easier than having your tech support explain to people why some epubs work and others don't. To most end users, there would be no way to distinguish drm'ed epubs from non-drm.

[Gandulf]

Maybe it's a ways to get fewer people to JB and more to get the firmware updates.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Quoth

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.

That would be progress. Mobi has had it. The US/UK moved to digital TV and everyone had to either buy a new TV or get a converter box to convert digital to analog. Leaded gas had to go in favor of unleaded and you either replaced your car or had it modified to handle unleaded gas. Laserdisc went in favor of DVD.

Things do move on and sometimes you just have to deal. It's time for Mobi to go and let those with a Kindle pre-K3 either strip the DRM and convert to Mobi or buy a new Reader. Sony dropped LRX (LRF with DRM) and those with s PRS-500 had to deal. Life moves on. Yes, it's time and it is fair to drop Mobi.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

...Things do move on and sometimes you just have to deal. It's time for Mobi to go and let those with a Kindle pre-K3 either strip the DRM and convert to Mobi or buy a new Reader. Sony dropped LRX (LRF with DRM) and those with s PRS-500 had to deal. Life moves on. Yes, it's time and it is fair to drop Mobi.

Why is it time for Mobi to "go?" It still works — I still read .mobi books even though I could easily convert them — often I'll download both the .ePub and .mobi version of books I buy on Humble Bundle, etc., so I can read them on either the Kindles or my other eReaders. Feedbooks and others also do both ePub and Mobi on their free titles.

Choice is good.

[Joliet Jake]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Why is it time for Mobi to "go?" It still works — I still read .mobi books even though I could easily convert them — often I'll download both the .ePub and .mobi version of books I buy on Humble Bundle, etc., so I can read them on either the Kindles or my other eReaders. Feedbooks and others also do both ePub and Mobi on their free titles.

Choice is good.

I don't get it either.

My computer still has some .txt files. Those aren't going away since sometimes you need simplicity (usually for programming rather than reading, but still). While I use a Kobo (so have little use for the Mobi format), Calibre can read Mobi (I've done that once or twice and it looked indistinguishable from an AZW or ePub) and I could send a Mobi to my Kobo if I felt like it.

Last year I bought a few AZW ebooks from Amazon that I couldn't get from Kobo. Well, I thought I downloaded AZWs. At least one was a Mobi file. I converted it an ePub and didn't notice anything different between it and AZW files I had converted into ePubs.

Black Library makes their ebooks available as Mobi and ePub formats. If I were using a Kindle, I would have to buy ePubs instead of Mobi now. This sounds... strange. It's not an issue for someone with Calibre but I'm sure Amazon would rather people not use Calibre, lol. I've seen this same setup for a lot of free ebook publishers as well such as Gutenberg (they typically offer ePub, Mobi described as "Kindle", and plain text, sometimes Zip although I don't know what's in the Zip files). Archive.org distributes Mobi but not AZW, and so forth.

I found a post on an unexpected benefit to using Mobi vs AZW. Link: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-engla...shire-61237488

[jhowell]

I did a test and found that the trick of using an incorrect extension in an emailed book works for books in MOBI format. I wonder if this will continue to work even after MOBI is blocked from email later this year. In other words will they block MOBI format or will they be lazy and just block the .mobi extension.

[jhowell]

There are some differences in the conversion to MOBI performed by calibre and Amazon's conversion of emailed EPUBs that are going to result in repeated questions being raised here on MobileRead as this feature becomes used more frequently.


On the plus side the conversion by Amazon using kindlegen results in both MOBI and KF8 formats being produced. So most Kindle users will see richer formatting and have access to custom fonts and the font boldness control which they would not have with just old MOBI.

Amazon's conversion also produces the tables needed to synchronize between MOBI and KF8, which are missing from calibre conversion. So if someone switches between reading on a Kindle and on an iPhone their reading position and annotations will sync properly between devices.

And there are some quirks in calibre's conversion that can lead to problems such as the indexer crashing on Kindles, which are less likely to occur with Amazon's conversion.


On the negative side, KF8 format personal documents on Kindle will only show a generic cover in the Kindle's library. That will bother those who desire proper covers there.

Also Amazon's conversion is less forgiving than calibre's when the source EPUB has problems.

One thing that is likely to come up often is how a lack of specification of the character encoding in HTML files is handled. This is often missing in older EPUBs and those from sketchy sources. In calibre UTF-8 encoding is assumed but for historical reasons Amazon's conversion assumes ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1). The result is usually seen as quotation marks turning into odd character sequences like ’.

Other problems, such as mis-ordered entries in the internal TOC, can cause the conversion to fail completely. In that case a generic error email is returned with no indication of what went wrong or how to fix it.

[jhowell]

One reason for this change can be inferred by who is affected by it, e-book stores (other than Amazon) selling Kindle books. Currently those stores sell a MOBI edition that can be side-loaded, emailed, or used with send-to-kindle. After this change they might still offer MOBI for those who want to side load but will also have to offer EPUB. All of their instructions for Kindle customers will need to be updated and they are likely to experience increased support costs for years to come.

[Quoth]

Everyone apart from Amazon offers epub already. I've never seen anywhere that only offered mobi. If there is it's tiny volume. PD all offer both, commercial only offer epub variations (Apple, Barnes & Noble, Tolino, Kobo) and/or PDF (Google, Scribd). Smashwords one of the few offering multiple commercial ebook formats. They all (PD & Commerical) work by download, either to PC, or with Apple, Kobo, Barnes&Noble, possibly to tied device.

Who offers email?

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by rashkae

I think rejecting epub was just easier than having your tech support explain to people why some epubs work and others don't. To most end users, there would be no way to distinguish drm'ed epubs from non-drm.

That's possible, but they are still going to face that now.

Aside from the DRM issue, there are a LOT of poorly constructed epub files out there that may not convert well. I've checked some recent purchases from big name publishers and *those* don't always pass EPUBCheck; fortunately, epub reading devices are pretty tolerant. ePubs from, ah, the seedy side of town, are likely to be even more problematical.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Quoth]

I've never seen any difference on epub uploaded to KDP and a downloaded mobi, azw3 or KFX and those produced by Calibre.

I doubt Amazon uses the KindleGen as supplied for PC.

We don't know yet what difference existing epub to kindle via KDP and propsed send-to-kindle will be. Whatever Amazon does with covers or .epub renamed to .png and emailed today may not be the same as the "new" service.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Everyone apart from Amazon offers epub already. I've never seen anywhere that only offered mobi. If there is it's tiny volume. PD all offer both, commercial only offer epub variations (Apple, Barnes & Noble, Tolino, Kobo) and/or PDF (Google, Scribd). Smashwords one of the few offering multiple commercial ebook formats.

I agree that this mostly affects public domain providers and small stores like Smashwords and Baen. The short term issue is that these providers have been telling their Kindle customers to use the MOBI format and changing that will cause some confusion.

With this change I expect most of them to drop MOBI as an offered format and that will be a good thing for everyone.

Originally Posted by rashkae

I think rejecting epub was just easier than having your tech support explain to people why some epubs work and others don't.

Originally Posted by graycyn

That's possible, but they are still going to face that now.

I don't believe that Amazon will need to face it at all. When customers ask why their EPUB is rejected they will just say that it isn't Kindle compatible and refer them back to whoever provided it. They are not going to discuss DRM removal and EPUB editing with customers.

Originally Posted by Quoth

I doubt Amazon uses the KindleGen as supplied for PC.

Amazon still uses Kindlegen internally, the Linux version not Windows. The MOBI and KF8 formats it produces have long been frozen so there is no reason to develop a new tool to produce them.

I sent myself an EPUB via email just now and when the KF8 file came back to my Kindle the internal metadata showed that it was converted using Kindlegen for Linux version 2.9 build 0721-dedaf5.

Originally Posted by Quoth

We don't know yet what difference existing epub to kindle via KDP and propsed send-to-kindle will be. Whatever Amazon does with covers or .epub renamed to .png and emailed today may not be the same as the "new" service.

True. But we also have no reason to expect changes in what happens when using the send-to-kindle app given that the new emailing of EPUBs is already active and no changes were made because of it.

Amazon has not promised any new functionality for personal documents beyond allowing EPUBs to be submitted.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I agree that this mostly affects public domain providers and small stores like Smashwords and Baen. The short term issue is that these providers have been telling their Kindle customers to use the MOBI format and changing that will cause some confusion.

With this change I expect most of them to drop MOBI as an offered format and that will be a good thing for everyone..

No, they won't drop mobi because not everyone uses "Send to Kindle". My point is it doesn't affect these people. They do epub & mobi/kindle and will continue to do so. It makes their Kindle customers dependent on the whim of an Amazon Cloud service if they have epub only!


Kindlegen for Linux is not Windows Kindlegen.

Also there are Kindles no longer registered with Amazon. Too many returns and Amazon can block your account. Or kindles mistakenly blacklisted.

Anyone offering files for Kindles would be mad to to do epub only. It's costing them nothing extra.

[graycyn]

Originally Posted by jhowell

snippage

I don't believe that Amazon will need to face it at all. When customers ask why their EPUB is rejected they will just say that it isn't Kindle compatible and refer them back to whoever provided it. They are not going to discuss DRM removal and EPUB editing with customers.

I suspect you are correct. Customers are going to be on their own with sending epubs. If Amazon does indeed refer them back to the provider, that's a GOOD THING, I'm thinking! I've seen too many epubs from reputable sources that didn't pass epubcheck and that's something that providers ought to be called on. Encoding issues likewise. I saw that Reddit post....

That said, I just ran an testing epub of mine through on email, and it converted exactly as expected.

I tried using the Send-to-Kindle app (downloaded & installed yesterday), but that does not seem to be working as yet. Or maybe it's me, as I've never tried to use it before now....

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by graycyn

I tried using the Send-to-Kindle app (downloaded & installed yesterday), but that does not seem to be working as yet. Or maybe it's me, as I've never tried to use it before now....

Not yet available. From the Amazon help page:

Note: Beginning in late 2022, Send to Kindle applications will support EPUB (.EPUB) format.