Amazon kindle books added by USB vs. downloaded off the cloud

[Solarin]

Hey guys, new here and had a question.

Is there a difference between books you download to your computer from amazon's site, and then add manually via USB to your kindle - vs ebooks digitally delivered to your kindle through the cloud?

I know amazon sometimes updates ebooks, fixing typos and whatnot. Do you still get the most updated version when you download the book to your PC from amazon?

The reason I ask is, I purchased Count of Monte Cristo and had it downloaded off the kindle cloud to my kindle. The book on my kindle looks great, has a table of contents and everything else you would expect from a retail ebook. However, when downloading it to my PC and then adding it to Calibre - I notice that it has no table of contents and is for some reason in MOBI format. The file that I added to Calibre very clearly ends with .azw3, not mobi. No idea what to make of this.

[susan_cassidy]

Could you have converted it when you added it to Calibre? It sounds like you did. Nothing added to your Kindle via Calibre will communicate with Amazon. No syncing, etc. if you just transfer via USB The normal way, it should sync. No page numbers, though. Those don't download with the book when you select download and transfer via USB.

Updates should download to your Kindle if you have autoupdate turned on. I believe it is off by default.

[Solarin]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

Could you have converted it when you added it to Calibre? It sounds like you did. Nothing added to your Kindle via Calibre will communicate with Amazon. No syncing, etc. if you just transfer via USB The normal way, it should sync. No page numbers, though. Those don't download with the book when you select download and transfer via USB.

Updates should download to your Kindle if you have autoupdate turned on. I believe it is off by default.

That's a logical conclusion, but the problem is that in calibre my preferred output is AZW3.

What I'm really worried about isn't future updates, but that the books I downloaded off amazon (and transferred thru USB) today are the same versions as ones I could have digitally delivered to my kindle today.

Here's another example that makes me doubt this: when I download books off the kindle cloud to the kindle, the cover is the same one shown on Amazon. When I download the file off amazon and put it into calibre, there's just a generic cover, maybe one that calibre generated.

Perhaps I'm over thinking this, I just wanted to make sure the ebooks I bought are up to date, haha.

[eschwartz]

However you download from Amazon, it is the same book, same version.

(Recent ereader firmwares are beginning to download versions optimized e.g. for image resolution/size, but the principle is the same.)

As long as the book has not been further converted, it will have the same ASIN, so the device will see it as the pourchased copy, and sync the annotations etc.
Updated versions need to be updated manually on http://amzn.com/manageyourkindle (you can also set this to automatic) but will then message your Kindle to delete the current copy and download the new one. This too is handled via the embedded ASIN.

...

Why do you get a different copy when downloading via Kindle for PC?
Well, you apparently downloaded a MOBI instead of an AZW3. Not sure why, I thought Kindle for PC supported AZW3...
Or maybe it is a dual-MOBI (has both AZW3 and MOBI inside).

Due to having several generations of format, and needing to maintain support for various past and present device models, the specific format you have can get a bit confusing.

[eschwartz]

To be clear:

You downloaded in Kindle for PC, got a *.azw3 file in the "My Kindle Content" folder, and added this file to calibre?

And calibre shows a MOBI format.

[Solarin]

Thank you for your above post, it's good to have confirmation that it's the same book regardless of how it is downloaded

Originally Posted by eschwartz

To be clear:

You downloaded in Kindle for PC, got a *.azw3 file in the "My Kindle Content" folder, and added this file to calibre?

And calibre shows a MOBI format.

Yes, that is exactly what happened. Calibre shows it as a MOBI format book and it also has an incomplete (no chapters) table of contents, very strange.

[eschwartz]

I wonder if it is a dual-MOBI.
Install the KindleUnpack plugin for calibre, see if it produces a MOBI as well as an AZW3.

I believe calibre will simply treat dual-MOBI as MOBI.

...

Rest assured though, that it is still the same book.
When the publisher uploads it, the same source document is converted into a high-quality AZW3 for newer devices, and a legacy MOBI for legacy devices that don't support AZW3.
Some old books are only available in MOBI, since they predate the existence of AZW3 and were never updated.

I prefer adding books to calibre directly from my Kindle.

[Solarin]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I wonder if it is a dual-MOBI.
Install the KindleUnpack plugin for calibre, see if it produces a MOBI as well as an AZW3.

I believe calibre will simply treat dual-MOBI as MOBI.

...

Rest assured though, that it is still the same book.
When the publisher uploads it, the same source document is converted into a high-quality AZW3 for newer devices, and a legacy MOBI for legacy devices that don't support AZW3.
Some old books are only available in MOBI, since they predate the existence of AZW3 and were never updated.

I prefer adding books to calibre directly from my Kindle.

I can't seem to use that plug in since it's an .azw file (sorry, was mistaken, .azw, not .azw3). No big deal though, I was just using that as an example to ask my question, I don't really need to have a perfect version in calibre.

Thanks for confirming that it's the same book. And yeah, I should have added them from my kindle, would have taken less time.

[eschwartz]

OK then, sure thing.

(If it was a *.azw then it most likely downloaded as a MOBI, which explains a lot. )

[darryl]

I can't be sure what version of the Count of Monte Christo you downloaded, but the one I just checked on Amazon shows that enhanced typesetting is available. What this essentially means is that when your Kindle downloads the file directly, it is getting Amazon's new .kfx format which enables hyphenation etc. When you download for transfer via usb, you usually get an azw3 file. However, what you have received is actually an .azw file which is actually a .mobi. There are a few of these still around and they do not appear to me to be as polished as the azw3. You are still getting the same book but in different formats. As .kfx does not play well at the moment with either Calibre or Apprentice Alf, many people in addition to having the .kfx delivered to their Kindle also download the .azw3 via either the transfer via USB option or Kindle4PC for import into Calibre as a backup.

[jhowell]

Amazon doesn't always use the file extensions consistently between different devices. Books downloaded using the Kindle for PC program will have an azw extension regardless of whether they are actually in mobi or azw3 (kf8) format. Calibre will change the extension on import.

If you download books to your Voyage and try import them into calibre, some books will not import because the latest Voyage firmware supports a new format, kfx, which calibre cannot handle.

Also, you may want to read the thread I started based on my experiences with books being updated after purchase. Amazon will only push updates if a book has major errors. If minor changes are made by the publisher you will not receive them unless you ask customer service, and they don't provide any way for you to know that this type of update is available unless you ask about a particular book.

Personally, for books I purchase on Amazon I let Amazon handle the delivery and don't use calibre except to make a backup copy.

[rashkae]

Have you been updating Kindle for PC? I forget what version the switch was made, but older versions of K4PC will download the Mobi.. newer versions (I'm using 1.11.2 currently) will download the KF8/AZW3. (I think this is also the version you'll get if you download from amazon Website, in the manage Kindle Content section.) And, as already mentioned, downloading directly to device will net you the new file format that none else know how to read yet.

Edit: Not all books have a KF8/AZW3 format. If the publisher only supplied a book from older Kinglegen versions, they are only available in Mobi format. It's possible Amazon included this book in their automatic upgrade to KFX format, but only a Mobi version is available when downloading to PC.

The comment that you'll get the same book no matter how you download from amazon is dead wrong, The sad truth is, with Amazon, no one really knows what criteria will get you what version of a book, and everyone is working on trial and error. (Presumably, all these versions are generated from the same source, so the content should be more or less the same.)

Regarding the covers, that one is easy to explain though. Amazon treats the book and the cover as two seperate entities. When a book is send to the Kindle, a Cover is sent as well. Calibre actually does the same thing when uploading to Kindle from USB, but Calibre has to get it's cover from the book itself, (unless you download and add a cover image yourself.) Many books, especially those from the early days of E-books, do not have their covers included by the publisher. (I'm assuming, this is simply because they do not have an explicit license from the artist to include the cover image in e-book format, and since they consider cover in book file to be not that important, they just leave it out.)

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by rashkae

The comment that you'll get the same book no matter how you download from amazon is dead wrong, The sad truth is, with Amazon, no one really knows what criteria will get you what version of a book, and everyone is working on trial and error. (Presumably, all these versions are generated from the same source, so the content should be more or less the same.)

I thought I had made this clearer than I actually did.

Yes, it is the same content, same source document going through automated conversion.
No, it isn't the same file.

There are only a limited number of things it could be, though.
One MOBI version.
One AZW3 version.
KFX has shaken things up by being specific to different models (seems to be mainly image resolution of delivered files?)

[rashkae]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I thought I had made this clearer than I actually did.

I think you did. I just kind of got stuck on that one sentence. The thing is, depending on the book, formatting differences between Mobi and KF8 can be quite extreme, and otherwise not easy to replicate. Probably not such much for Count of Monte Cristo, however.

[eschwartz]

Yeah, but I tend to view that as inherent to MOBI, not an artifact of the original format or of the conversion process.

MOBI is just an old format and long past its prime...