Limitations on Kindle Cloud services support when you upload your own books

*Deleted double post*

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by maximus83

I assume the option is to just live with it manually clicking links back and forth from page, to footnote, and back to page (unfortunately, that only works when the footnotes are ALSO linked back to the original page; they aren't always).

No need for a reverse link. Just tap the "Back" button to get back to your previous position.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by maximus83

First of all, there's a distinction between what you use as your authoring format, and what you use as your publishing format. You could conceivably author in any schema you want, including TEI, but still publish in an output format such as HTML, PDF, or EPUB.

I actually did this many years ago for one of my PGDP books. I even wrote a transform that output wrapped and aligned 80 column text, to meet the PG requirements. Unfortunately at the time I don't think PG accepted the original TEI as a format, so all that got uploaded were the derived formats.

In fact, we author technical source content in markdown, and then transform and publish to the web as HTML5.

I was thinking about this last night, and got to the same point, that if you are marking up display rather than semantics, then something simple like markdown is really all you need, at least for standard text.
If I could have all my ebooks in markdown, and have readers read that, it would be greatly preferable to the current situation, where I never know how any given book will render until I actually transfer it to the reader.

Originally Posted by murraypaul

I was thinking about this last night, and got to the same point, that if you are marking up display rather than semantics, then something simple like markdown is really all you need, at least for standard text. If I could have all my ebooks in markdown, and have readers read that, it would be greatly preferable to the current situation, where I never know how any given book will render until I actually transfer it to the reader.

Yes. I still see the need for specialized DTD's/schemas including TEI. For instance if I were an academic marking up a classic literary text in fine detail, so that it could be searched, parsed, collated, and compared with other texts in painstaking detail, I'd definitely consider something like TEI, or a subset of DocBook, as the source authoring scheme. And then use transforms to output to whatever format is needed, mostly likely PDF, HTML5, and yes, epub. Ok, and Mobi too.

But...if just authoring modern content...especially ordinary prose, I'd think it would save authors so much hassle to just author against a very simple, minimalist schema, or even use something like markdown, which is even more simple and lightweight than using HTML5. ETA, here's an interesting write-up on using markdown for book authoring: http://ianhocking.com/2013/06/22/wri...sing-markdown/

So, as I'm cleaning up my old Kindle library books and consolidating external books into Azon docs, I've run into a few relatively minor issues. Here's one I haven't figured out the workaround yet.

With 1 book in my original Kindle library, when trying to deliver them to other devices (My Kindle for PC app, and my Android phone), why would you get a message like "This book is incompatible with this device." Basically, one of my old collections is a large set of juvenile fiction that my daughter had bought when in middle school. I'm trying to clean up and remove them from my library, liberate and convert to Mobi in Calibre, and hand back to her so she can upload her own books into her own Amazon account. With this one book, it won't deliver to other devices but says it will deliver if you connect a Kindle device.

Is this likely because this book uses the KFX format, and for some reason my Kindle for PC app and Android phone cannot handle that? My Kindle for PC app is intentionally not the latest version, because the slightly dated version enables me to still DeDRM my Kindle books when needed. That could explain why that book won't deliver to Kindle for PC. But in the case of Android phone, I'm running latest version of android, and latest version of the Kindle app. So, why wouldn't the book be able to deliver to that devices? It would seem crazy to me that Amazon would sell books that you could ONLY read on a Kindle or on the absolute latest version of the PC app.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by maximus83

With 1 book in my original Kindle library, when trying to deliver them to other devices (My Kindle for PC app, and my Android phone), why would you get a message like "This book is incompatible with this device."

What is the ASIN?

Scratch the earlier theory about KFX, I just delivered my daughter's whole collection (except the 1 book) down to my Kindle for PC, imported all into Calibre, every single one of them was KFX. I was able to convert them all to Mobi and open the books.

So it just leaves that 1 book that won't deliver, but apparently KFX is not the issue.

ASIN: B003XF1XOQ

ETA: Here's something else weird. If I understand your post correctly about dealing with Kindle for PC (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=283371), given that I'm running Kindle for PC v 1.24, I should have had to do the command line hack in order to disable KFX so that I could download, import, and DeDRM those other KFX files in Calibre. But I didn't have to. I just imported the KFX directly into Calibre, and ran a MOBI conversion on the files, and it worked. Has something changed, or did I misread your post?

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by HarryT

No need for a reverse link. Just tap the "Back" button to get back to your previous position.

Amazon require a reverse link.

Amazon Kindle publishing guidelines

7.1 Internal Link Guidelines

Footnotes (see section 9.3.11)

Amazon requires formatting footnotes with bi-directional hyperlinks (the text is linked to the footnote and the footnote is linked back to the text). This makes it easier for customers to return to the text after viewing the footnote.
==

comments in the ebook format forum here suggest that not all readers have a 'back' Button.

And being able to link to the text when browsing the notes is nice.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by maximus83

ASIN: B003XF1XOQ

That is a popular book. I can't explain why it isn't downloading for you.

You could try contacting Amazon customer service via chat and asking them to "push" the latest version of that book to your account, in case there was an update to it after your purchase that affected compatibility with different devices.

Originally Posted by maximus83

Here's something else weird. If I understand your post correctly about dealing with Kindle for PC (https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=283371), given that I'm running Kindle for PC v 1.24, I should have had to do the command line hack in order to disable KFX so that I could download, import, and DeDRM those other KFX files in Calibre. But I didn't have to. I just imported the KFX directly into Calibre, and ran a MOBI conversion on the files, and it worked. Has something changed, or did I misread your post?

If those books imported into calibre as KFX format and not MOBI or AZW3 then you must have the KFX Input plugin installed. In that case you inadvertently used method #4 in the post you mentioned.

Originally Posted by jhowell

That is a popular book. I can't explain why it isn't downloading for you. You could try contacting Amazon customer service via chat and asking them to "push" the latest version of that book to your account, in case there was an update to it after your purchase that affected compatibility with different devices.

Will do, thx.

Originally Posted by jhowell

If those books imported into calibre as KFX format and not MOBI or AZW3 then you must have the KFX Input plugin installed. In that case you inadvertently used method #4 in the post you mentioned.

Yep, that's it.

Originally Posted by jhowell

If those books imported into calibre as KFX format and not MOBI or AZW3 then you must have the KFX Input plugin installed. In that case you inadvertently used method #4 in the post you mentioned.

Also should add: thank you for your work on this and other plugins. It's a lifesaver!

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Amazon require a reverse link.

Amazon Kindle publishing guidelines

7.1 Internal Link Guidelines

Footnotes (see section 9.3.11)

Amazon requires formatting footnotes with bi-directional hyperlinks (the text is linked to the footnote and the footnote is linked back to the text). This makes it easier for customers to return to the text after viewing the footnote.
==

Sure, I know what the guidelines say. Just commenting that, on an eInk Kindle, you can use the “Back” button to return to the point from which you jumped to a footnote.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sure, I know what the guidelines say. Just commenting that, on an eInk Kindle, you can use the “Back” button to return to the point from which you jumped to a footnote.

I didn't clarify when I made the earlier comment, I was using an Android phone. In my phone, there's not a 'back' button per se. If you click the Android "back" on the screen, it takes you completely out of the book so that's a no-go in itself. In the Android Kindle app though, I noted with some books when you hop to the footnote (if it doesn't open as a popup in the page), there's a tiny little window below the footnote content, and if you click THAT, it'll go back to the original location. That's a pretty effective approach. However, I've noticed different experience with different books. Sometimes that little window doesn't appear either, and in that case, if I tap the little location slider where the button currently is, that seems to take you back to original. This is all a bit wonky how footnotes work 3 different ways across different books (these are THEIR books, not ones that I've messed with).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by maximus83

I didn't clarify when I made the earlier comment, I was using an Android phone. In my phone, there's not a 'back' button per se.

Yes, I know that the "Back" button isn't present on some of the reading apps. I was commenting in response to you saying that you'd bought an Oasis, though. All eInk Kindles do have the "Back" button.

[shamanNS]

Not return link = no fancy footnote window. Even on eInk kindles. In that case you get the old behavior and have to use Back button to return to previous position in the book.

I'm curious as to how that effects "time left in chapter/book" feature since that is already notoriously buggy and easily "confused" when you start jumping forwards<>backwards within a book.