Months of Runaround From KDP Support: Font Embedding Fails...HELP!

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by jcsalomon

Here’s a screwy thought, but one I’ve not seen mentioned in this thread: is it possible that the failing font’s permission bits are set to prohibit embedding (this can be different from what the human-readable font license says is permissible), and something in Amazon’s process catches this and removes such fonts?

(Probably not, I’m sure; this would mean some fonts fail consistently while others work, and the difference would have been noticed by now.)

Caveat: I don't factually know the answer to this question--they've danced around answering it often--and I don't speak for the Zon.

I don't think that's it. I really don't. There was a guy on the KDP who had to be The GUY, you know, and he pontificated (as though this was simply FACT) that this was the reason why Arial didn't work--that the Zon deliberately disabled it because it "belonged to Microsoft."

Now, that's all well and good, if you don't take into account the fact that we, and others, have embedded Arial for this or that for years now. I will say, however, that it's also true that there is something quite hinky about Arial. It seems to have limits, in how MUCH it can be used in a KBook. Damned if I know the why. It's peculiar as hell.

AND, hell, if anything was going to be un-embeddable, due to licensing rights, or lack thereof, you'd think it would be Adobe fonts, right? And we've embedded them all over the place.

How would the Zon know, for example, whether I licensed Font X, or not? Anybody can type in some type of BS "dun bin licensed, y'all" statement. So...I can't see that as it. On the other hand, would I bet my life savings against that being true? Hells, no.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why does Amazon remove embedded fonts? Is it because they have a thing for Bookerly?

Nyah. Hell, they were doing this long before Bookerly came to live on our Kindles. I do NOT know the reasons. I expected, when we got to the third set of tests mentioned above, that they were going to tell us to NOT embed fonts--and lo, I was wrong. They absolutely wanted the publisher's fonts, AND, it would have been a fail had we not done so, or not been able to get them to work. You see the post from...I think it was Quiris, above? Didn't s/he use the Stealth Attack CSS in a book, a few months back, and yet it still was stripped?

Murky waters we are swimmin' in now, indeed.

Update: NO update from the client. Last tested sample download was still missing fonts. <(*&^%$#@!>


Hitch

[Freeshadow]

Well checking the permission bit case should be doable with fontforge shouldn't it?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Well checking the permission bit case should be doable with fontforge shouldn't it?

You're right, of course. I should get up off my duff and check that. I do want to say, though, that it should be noted that the book that is currently in status:limbo (pending hearing from the client's client) is using fonts that worked within the last 10 days, from the same source (my licensed font files). I mean, simply for the purposes of not having to wrangle licenses, I do the licensing myself, for each book. After all, a lot of fonts are reused. Garamond, Janson, many of the oldies-but-goodies. (n.b.: I don't recommend using Garamond as an embedded font for Kindle books. it's simply too light, just to be clear.)

Nonetheless: yes, I'll check.

Hitch

[Freeshadow]

Hm if you say 10 days... To change that behavior without notice would indeed be awkward. Y
A test run would be to take 1 whatever file you have properly licensed (that has the permission embedding bit unset) and make a minimal test mobi. Does some of your font previewers show the permissions?

PS I hope you cash customers extra if they want to profit from your own collection of licensed fonts.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

You're right, of course. I should get up off my duff and check that. I do want to say, though, that it should be noted that the book that is currently in status:limbo (pending hearing from the client's client) is using fonts that worked within the last 10 days, from the same source (my licensed font files). I mean, simply for the purposes of not having to wrangle licenses, I do the licensing myself, for each book. After all, a lot of fonts are reused. Garamond, Janson, many of the oldies-but-goodies. (n.b.: I don't recommend using Garamond as an embedded font for Kindle books. it's simply too light, just to be clear.)

Nonetheless: yes, I'll check.

Hitch

Do you tell the client if the fonts used are not good for eInk screens? I strip out Garamond if it's used because it's not good for eInk.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Hm if you say 10 days... To change that behavior without notice would indeed be awkward. Y
A test run would be to take 1 whatever file you have properly licensed (that has the permission embedding bit unset) and make a minimal test mobi. Does some of your font previewers show the permissions?

No. (showing permissions). All of the previewers, Kindle Previewer desktop and Kindle Previewer Online, display fonts when they are embedded AND have made it past whatever dragons are lurking. The desktop version shows us what we've done, BEFORE the file is uploaded at the KDP. The one at the KDP shows us/confirms that our fonts have survived the upload--at least, until Thursday, that was so. I still do NOT have feedback from the client's client, so ...???

PS I hope you cash customers extra if they want to profit from your own collection of licensed fonts.

Mea culpa. I did not explain adequately. I most certainly do NOT lend out my licensed fonts to clients--and it wouldn't be legit if I did. Each font that is used in an eBook has to be licensed for that book, under whatever licensing strictures exist. What I meant was, if we have, say, 10 clients that will be using (for the purposes solely of the example) Garamond, we license that 10x, but I don't bloody download it 10x, I use the AGaramond faces I have here. Oherwise, my directories would like like bunnies in love--mass overpopulation without suitable predators to reduce the herd. Naturally, if the client "buys" the font, they can download it for their own purposes, assuming that they bought that license, as well, from the font shop in which it's been purchased.

Obviously, for print, if we have the font licensed for commercial use and desktop publishing, no further licensing by the client is required. BUT, if they then want to use the same for the eBook, we either do the licensing, OR, we find them a free-for-eBook-use replacement font. Or, hell, we use the defaults.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Do you tell the client if the fonts used are not good for eInk screens? I strip out Garamond if it's used because it's not good for eInk.

GOD, YES.

Of course we tell them. I have one bookmaker that kicks against using ye olden Garamond for print, because the eBook aspect is so dire, but I'm rather partial to it for DTB. Most of my in-house designs use it, to emulate layout for clients. So...<shrug>, good for print, bad for E, unless it's already ON the device.

Of course--trying to get MOBI embedded fonts (on K devices, folks, let's not go all Calibre here) to play nicely with firmware fonts, not so simple.

Hitch

[mattmc]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Oherwise, my directories would like like bunnies in love--mass overpopulation without suitable predators to reduce the herd.

Ehehehehehehehe...

Not only are you one of the most experienced people around here Hitch, you're also one of the most entertaining.

So...let us know what happens with the fonts. There's several (including me) rather technical people around who can possibly help devise new means of doing this, if need be.

(Yesterday I had to figure out how to get images to display in iBooks <aside> popovers...fun stuff, and actually not all that bad in the end.)

If this does end up happening, we may want to conduct any further collaboration over PM instead of in an open thread, so Amazon doesn't just drop over here and check it out. ...Then again, they see all the files we upload to them.

Btw, who is "Zon"?

EDIT: Also, curious, in the case of this book your client's client downloaded that had the fonts stripped, has it had "Enhanced Typesetting" applied to it?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by mattmc

Ehehehehehehehe...

Not only are you one of the most experienced people around here Hitch, you're also one of the most entertaining.

Oh, wow. Well, that's gonna go RIGHT to my head. I appreciate the comment, but...I'm the "most-experienced" in dealing with Amazon, B&N, and that sort of thing, I'd think, but when it comes to the nitty-gritty, I can't hold a candle to the Steely-Eyed Missile Men of ePUBs. Diap, Kevin, Dag...there are a boatload of dudes here (I think that they are all dudes, except for Granny Grump) that simply make me look like a total piker. Seriously. I can barely SPELL PHP, much less do anything around these guys!

So...let us know what happens with the fonts. There's several (including me) rather technical people around who can possibly help devise new means of doing this, if need be.

Well, I'm fortunate, in that remarkably, I do have a number of programmers, in everything from C to PHP to you-name-it, so we've inveigled a number of different mechanisms to work around it. Happily, they all think outside of the box. But I'm always happy to mooch brains from my friends.

(Yesterday I had to figure out how to get images to display in iBooks <aside> popovers...fun stuff, and actually not all that bad in the end.)

I'll bet.

If this does end up happening, we may want to conduct any further collaboration over PM instead of in an open thread, so Amazon doesn't just drop over here and check it out. ...Then again, they see all the files we upload to them.

Will do. And, yes, they have everyone's books, and inspected ours in painstaking detail. Luckily...not everything we do is completely visible, or obvious, even if they deconstruct the MOBI.

Btw, who is "Zon"?

amaZON. :-)

EDIT: Also, curious, in the case of this book your client's client downloaded that had the fonts stripped, has it had "Enhanced Typesetting" applied to it?

It's a question we pondered, as well, but in looking at the file, I think not.

So, thanks! I'll go soak my BigHead in some icewater.


Hitch

[dgatwood]

From what I'm reading, it seems very likely that Amazon uses a single ingest process for all content, whether it was translated from Word or not, and that it recognizes all the standard Windows fonts, and if it sees them in large swaths of CSS, it assumes that the CSS is junk that Word produced automatically and tosses the fonts out. If that's the case, then your best bet is to avoid any of the fonts that ship on systems by default. :-)

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by dgatwood

From what I'm reading, it seems very likely that Amazon uses a single ingest process for all content, whether it was translated from Word or not, and that it recognizes all the standard Windows fonts, and if it sees them in large swaths of CSS, it assumes that the CSS is junk that Word produced automatically and tosses the fonts out. If that's the case, then your best bet is to avoid any of the fonts that ship on systems by default. :-)

See? What'd I say? Steely-eyed missile man.

Dag, that is downright inspired. Never crossed my mind. I mean, crappity, they seem to never balk at TNR, so...<shrug>.

I agree that it's a single intake process, via KDP. No argument. I don't know if there's anything else, once it moves to the PW (Publishing Workflow), but...I wouldn't be completely surprised if they had different "checks" in place for all sorts of qualifiers, whether by genre (presumably, they check things like Cookbooks for "freely available on the web" and erotica for, well...stuff) or input format.

Never even thought of that.

Still no update, by the way, my brethren. We asked "Are you sure...?" and we've not heard a whisper since. Makes me suspect an ePUB was loaded, but... I can't prove that the dead silence is due to mens rea. (And, man, they RIPPED our client about how "dreadful" it looked, too!)

Hitch