Amazon's advanced typesetting isn't always 100% supported on eInk Kindle

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by violent23

Either way, I will definitely be looking into it further and will report back here if I find out anything useful.

Did you ever check in what format the book was delivered to your kindle?

If you connect it via USB and check the "documents" folder you will see the file "The Martian_ A Novel_B00EMXBDMA.kfx" if the book was delivered in KFX. If the file name ends with ".azw3" you have KF8 format.

If you are getting it in KFX the "Alignment" option should be available.

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For anyone who wants to know more:

Publishers often update Kindle books after they are published. Each book has a version number which is changed non-sequentially whenever the publisher updates the book. Normally your account is locked to whatever version was current at the time you purchased it. Most updates are not offered to previous customers unless they correct a serious problem.

Even if the most recent version of the book supports Enhanced Typesetting, an older version associated with your account may not.

One way to determine what version of a book your account has associated with it is to download it in KF8 (.azw3) format using the "Download & transfer via USB" option from the "Manage Your Content and Devices" page on Amazon's web site. If you import that file into calibre and then use the KindleUnpack plugin you can extract the content to a directory. Find the "content.opf" file and look inside for a line starting with "<dc:identifier id="uid">". The number that follows is the version number of the book. (That is one procedure I am familiar with. There may be other easier ways to extract this information.)

The current version of The Martian (ASIN B00EMXBDMA) as of today is 1853634606 decimal (or 6e7c382e hex). If you see something else you have an older (or after today perhaps a newer) version of that book associated with your account. If you contact Amazon customer service and ask them to push the latest version of the book to your account they will likely do so, at least they always have for me. Afterwards repeat the procedure again and you should see the latest version.

Another potential problem is that the Kindle reader firmware has been updated as new features have been added to KFX. If the KFX format of a book requires a feature that your firmware does not support then Amazon will deliver that book in KF8 (.azw3) format instead. You have the best chance to receive your book in KFX if you are up-to-date with Kindle firmware releases. In this case, the KFX version of The Martian requires support for "yj_table 1.0", which is a feature not present in older Kindle firmware.