AZW3 for all Kindle products?

[jrett]

Hi,

Will all Kindle products take AZW3?

[jhowell]

In keeping with the brevity of your question, No.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by jhowell

In keeping with the brevity of your question, No.

I'd be interested to know which can't do AZW3, and in particular which can't render discretionary hyphens. I assumed I couldn't use &shy without leaving K4 owners out in the cold, but no, it works on my 2011-vintage K4 without trouble. I suspect I'd have to go back to a Kindle Keyboard or even K2 before I found one that didn't have firmware capable of either. (So the books I'm publishing are getting hyphenated -- sorry, KK owners, I don't even have one of your things to test on.)

[jhowell]

Some examples of Kindle products that do not take AZW3:

• Some older Kindle devices, no longer sold new, but still in use by many people.
  
• The Kindle for iOS app. It requires AZK format instead of AZW3.
  
• The Kindle cloud service for personal documents and the Kindle self-publishing platform (KDP). These do not accept AZW3, but will take a master MOBI that includes AZW3 as part of it.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Some older Kindle devices, no longer sold new, but still in use by many people.

Specifically, the original Kindle, Kindle 2 and Kindle DX

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

Specifically, the original Kindle, Kindle 2 and Kindle DX

The 3rd gen Kindle (aka Kindle Keyboard) firmware did not support KF8 initially. There may still be some that have not been upgraded.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The 3rd gen Kindle (aka Kindle Keyboard) firmware did not support KF8 initially. There may still be some that have not been upgraded.

Yes, I suppose that's true.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by NullNix

I'd be interested to know which can't do AZW3, and in particular which can't render discretionary hyphens. ...

(So the books I'm publishing are getting hyphenated -- sorry, KK owners, I don't even have one of your things to test on.)

I don't have an answer to your question about soft hyphen support, but I also don't see the need for it in published books. These days most Kindle books delivered by Amazon support hyphenation automatically via Enhanced Typesetting.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The 3rd gen Kindle (aka Kindle Keyboard) firmware did not support KF8 initially. There may still be some that have not been upgraded.

That can be solved with a firmware update.

[AnemicOak]

There may be some older Android devices (with old OS versions) still in use with old versions of the Kindle app that don't support AZW3 too I suppose? If my memory is working AZW3/KF8 came out in mid to late 2011 when the original Fire came out, but the Android app didn't get support until some time after that.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

That can be solved with a firmware update.

Certainly, but the point is that many devices have not been updated even if they could be. For example, if you look at the Kindle Developer's Corner you can see that there are plenty of people who intentionally use older firmware versions on their Kindles.

So, in the end, there are plenty of Kindle devices out there that are running older firmware that doesn't support AZW3.

[NullNix]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I don't have an answer to your question about soft hyphen support, but I also don't see the need for it in published books. These days most Kindle books delivered by Amazon support hyphenation automatically via Enhanced Typesetting.

Yeah, but you have to wait for them to KFXify the book, they sometimes don't bother, and if they don't, they don't tell you why not. Some of the requirements appear to be undocumented.

If even the KK supports discretionary hyphens, I think I'm happy (anyone not updated can't connect to Amazon by now, thus nobody is realistically likely to buy new books via that channel. Yeah, they might sideload, but these books are not targetted at the sort of people who read this forum! In practice, I suspect zero sideloads will ever happen, and I'm not damaging the look of the book for the sake of that sort of thing.)

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Certainly, but the point is that many devices have not been updated even if they could be. For example, if you look at the Kindle Developer's Corner you can see that there are plenty of people who intentionally use older firmware versions on their Kindles.

So, in the end, there are plenty of Kindle devices out there that are running older firmware that doesn't support AZW3.

You cannot base KF8 support on "maybe someone did not update the firmware". You just have to go with yes, the K3 has KF8 support.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

You cannot base KF8 support on "maybe someone did not update the firmware". You just have to go with yes, the K3 has KF8 support.

It is not your decision to make, it is Amazon's.

At least as of early this year Amazon supported those devices appropriately. A K3 that was on old firmware would be delivered the old MOBI format instead of KF8, both via Wi-Fi and using the Download & transfer via USB option. Only if the firmware was updated and the device connected to Amazon would it be delivered books in KF8 format from that time forward.

I don't know if Amazon has changed their support of these devices since then. Due to a security certificate change, devices running that old firmware can no longer connect to Amazon via Wi-Fi.

[jrett]

Thank you!