Sideloading to Android Kindle app?

[bfollowell]

I've been having more and more problems with my reader of choice of the past several years, Bookari. It's still a great reader overall, but it just has some quirks. I was able to recently download a new Amazon shorts series of short stories called the Forward collection, so I converted those to epub and was reading them in Bookari when one of the stories just ended. You could tell there was something wrong with the book, which I verified by opening it in the Kindle app. It was fine there. This was a short story, so it wasn't worth my time to troubleshoot and edit the book to figure out what was wrong with it, so I decided to just read it and the others in the series in my Kindle app. This is the first time in many years that I've even loaded the Kindle app, let alone read anything in it. I was really impressed with the spit and polish and the look of the app. It's really nice. I'm considering switching to it as my main reader. That being said, I have a large collection of epubs. I don't mind converting them to azw3, but I'm not 100% sure where to sideload them to.

I found three Kindle directories on my Android tablet.

/data/data/com.amazon.kindle
/sdcard/Android/data/com.amazon.kindle
/storage/6C85-080E/Android/data/com.amazon.kindle

The first obviously requires the tablet to be rooted to even see this directory, let alone access it, so I'm pretty sure this one wasn't meant to be used by most users. The second is the user accessible Kindle directory on the tablet itself, and the third is the Kindle directory on my SD card. They all have a Files subdirectory. I'd prefer to have my books on my SD card, so I tried putting some in the Files directory of that location, but they never showed up in the app. If I put them in the same directory under the location on my tablet they show up.

I have two questions. One, is there any way to force the app to use the Files location under the Kindle directory on my SD card? Second, wherever I wind up having to put them to get them to work, can I create subdirectories under the Files directory to organize my books? I realize this won't have anything to do with how they appear in the app. I'm just wanting to keep my the directory structure that I've had established from years of use, if possible, rather than just have a massive directory of randomly dumped books.

Thanks.

[stumped]

why not just switch from bookari to Moon reader and stay with epub. Moon will use whatever folder you point it at.

AFAIK, the kindle android app will also find .azw books in pretty much any folder. Try making a folder called Books, with subfolders if you like, and see if they show up.
Or put them in your top level downloads folder.

there may be issues with the kindle app only checking main storage, not an actual Sd card, though



the folders you listed are places where apps are stored.

[bfollowell]

Originally Posted by stumped

why not just switch from bookari to Moon reader and stay with epub. Moon will use whatever folder you point it at.

AFAIK, the kindle android app will also find .azw books in pretty much any folder. Try making a folder called Books, with subfolders if you like, and see if they show up.
Or put them in your top level downloads folder.

there may be issues with the kindle app only checking main storage, not an actual Sd card, though



the folders you listed are places where apps are stored.

Admittedly, I haven't tried Moon Reader in many years, but when I did, five or six years ago, to say that I was less than impressed would be a massive understatement. No support for embedded fonts. Couldn't read epubs the way the publisher's intended, etc. Frankly, I thought ebooks in Moon Reader looked horrible, little better than reading from a plain text file.

Granted, it's been many years and they may have improved...

You tell me, has it?

[stumped]

moon reader pro - is excellent- the free version may be rubbish, still.
you get what you pay for.
if popularity is a guide, it has more downloads than any other reader app on google play.

It is frequently on sale at half price, or you can trial it for up to 2 hours and still get a refund ( like with any google app )

I switched from bookari to moon as I was fed up with their updates breaking things, and with "improvements" being for the worse.

once all the relevant preferences have been set, it honors publisher formats just as well as Bookari does

[bfollowell]

I'll give the free version a try and see how it looks. If it still looks bad, I sure wouldn't pay to see if the paid version looks any better. I'll give it a try though. I certainly have nothing to lose.

[stumped]

that's an unfair comparison. bookari free is crap compared to paid, as many paid-for features are not there. e.g. themes.
I expect Moon is the same. no one's going to buy your pro version if you put every feature into the free one !

but meanwhile- put some azw books in various top leval folders and subfolderseon SD card and in internal storage and see if your kindle app finds them ok. costs nothing to experiment.
Pretty sure I had it working on a previous tablet, using calibre companion to put the Azw files in its default directory of choice

[bfollowell]

No, it's not unfair. It's accurate. Books that I read in the free version of Bookari look exactly like the books I read in Bookari paid. I paid more for features, but not basics like embedded fonts and using the publisher css. If I have to pay to try out basic functionality, then it isn't worth it for me to chance it. Bookari books look awesome in either version, regardless if all the extra features aren't there.

[stumped]

Originally Posted by bfollowell

No, it's not unfair. It's accurate. Books that I read in the free version of Bookari look exactly like the books I read in Bookari paid. .

for me they didn't. I wanted themes in order to consistently set my preferred line space, margins, justification , colours and free did not have that option ( long time ago though, maybe its changed)

in store. bookari pro rates 3.9 with 50K downloads, and recent reviews say developer has abandoned the app

moon pro rates 4.4 with 500k downloads
and far fewer 1 * star reviews than bookari, looking at teh ranking distribution & bars

I rest my case

PS one of the show stopper things bookari broke in one of their updates was colours , and any custom colour was rendered as white( not very readable on white background! )
because you cannot roll back versions in google play, I had to resort to making and keeping backup installers so that I remove and thus roll back out of their worst blunders and turn off auto -update until they fixed them. that was a real waste of time. . especially as removing the app would lose some settings , like colours, that were not in their .db file

[bfollowell]

Well, I was able to find out how to use embedded fonts, but I really don't care for the way the text is displayed. The book text all looks like bold, though the css/fonts aren't calling for it. I may play with it a little bit but, to be completely honest, the Kindle app looks freaking amazing. That doesn't mean Moon Reader looks bad, because it doesn't, assuming I could get the, all text is bold, issue figured out, but the Kindle renderer just appears to be head and shoulders about Moon Reader or Bookari.

[bfollowell]

Originally Posted by stumped

for me they didn't. I wanted themes in order to consistently set my preferred line space, margins, justification , colours and free did not have that option ( long time ago though, maybe its changed)

Yes, it definitely sounds like you're using options that would mean nothing to me. Since I would never and have never used them, I can't really say how good any of the various readers work with them. It may very well be that Moon Reader is the best in respect to those options but, since I don't use them or care about them, it doesn't really matter to me which particular reader is best in regards to them.

The main thing I'm concerned with is the rendering engine and how good the text looks. To my eye, I'd have to say that the best looking text would have to be Kindle Reader, then Bookari, then Moon Reader. That being said, I haven't played with or tweaked Moon Reader much and "look" is a very subjective criteria.

[stumped]

Kindle app os ok but has limited features. E.g. you cannot customise where to tap for prev, next page, and you have limited control of margins and line space.

Moon will use any font sets that you store on device, so i actually use it with bookery and Cecelia, copied from kindle. With moon I can sync sideloaded books via drop box. Kindle can't do that.

They are different design principles. Moon is for tinkering, customising. You can change Anything! Kindle is about offering an ok experience out of the box but not much control you dont like what you get.

Actually my biggest criticism of Kindle for android is that you are forced to be always logged into amazon, and you have to allow one click purchases, so one careless tap on the unavoidable Would you like the matching audiobook pop up and you have bought it

[bfollowell]

Originally Posted by stumped

Kindle app os ok but has limited features. E.g. you cannot customise where to tap for prev, next page, and you have limited control of margins and line space.

Moon will use any font sets that you store on device, so i actually use it with bookery and Cecelia, copied from kindle. With moon I can sync sideloaded books via drop box. Kindle can't do that.

They are different design principles. Moon is for tinkering, customising. You can change Anything! Kindle is about offering an ok experience out of the box but not much control you dont like what you get.

Yeah, again, you're doing lots of stuff that I don't care about and would never want to do. In the end, it sounds like you like to tinker with your ebooks, where I just like to read them, at least in the reader.

If I have an ebook that isn't formed well or isn't formatted well, I edit the ebook and fix it, I don't want to play with it on the fly in my reader. So, when I install it in my reader, it's ready to go and doesn't need all that tweaking. Therefore, I just care about how good it looks and again, to me, neither Bookari nor Moon Reader can touch the look of the Kindle reader.

I think the main thing is the two different approaches you and I take to any tweaking that needs to be done to our books.

[stumped]

Couple of tests for ya:
Using my Huawei media pad with kindle for Android app. No sd card added.android 9 I think
Put a azw3 book from calibre into downloads folder. Tried open with.. kindle for Android. Got cannot open this file type.
So I looked to see where my Kindle unlimited books were.? . Something like...\Android\ data com.something.kindle\files. Not sure if it's \ or / in android. Can't check while typing
Copied the book to that location. Opened the k for a app. Book appeared and was readable.
So sideloads to there work. You would have to test subfolders. And test mobi if interested. But my existing books from Amazon are kfx in individual folders so I predict subfolders will work
I suspect the app only looks at that one location, which may change if the app itself is installed to a sd card

Ps I am not sure how you can see differences between renderers. I assert that if I matched fonts,margins, etc in all 3 apps, so that all 3 had same number of words, lines etc on a screen, in the same font, and then took screenshots, you could not distinguish kindle from a clone made in bookari or a clone made in moon
Surely the font dictates how each word is rendered, so if 2 apps use the same font then output is identical. I admit to not being a font expert but I am curious. This seems a bit like saying that a lossless wav file sounds different if played in different apps through the same speakers?
What differences would you look at , to determine which app made each wcreenshot

[bfollowell]

I tried the subdirectories with azw3 files, and it as a no go. Just dumping them in the /sdcard/Android/data/com.amazon.kindle/files folder worked though. I think I may have found a way to get the comparable directory on my SD card to work as well, but I haven't had a chance to play with it yet.

As far as how my eyes can tell a difference, I can't tell you how or what. All I can tell you is that I perceive a difference. It's sort of like the people arguing that vinyl sounds better than CD and others can't tell the difference, the same argument between lossless audio and 256kbps. It doesn't really matter if anyone can really perceive a difference. All that matters is that they think they can. Like I said, it's all subjective and not based on any facts; nothing you can measure. What looks unbelievably awesome to me, may look merely acceptable to you and vice versa. All I know is what my old eyes tell me, right or wrong.

[stumped]

If manually dumping files there is tedious, you can configure calibre companion to do it for you, for specific file types