I've done a bit of searching on this but as yet have not found an answer. Hoping someone here can help me.
I'm working on a textbook that I created in LibreOffice, and I want to publish it for Kindle. I originally tried LO's epub output but that created a mess.
I attempted to use Kindle Create but it choked when opening the file.
I then imported my book into calibre and I was able to manually fix the problems in the generated html. I generated an epub from calibre and uploaded it to KDP. In the online previewer, it looks great -- no problems at all. But then I downloaded the mobi from KDP and emailed it to my Kindle account so I could open it in the Kindle app on my iPhone. I found that it looked very different from the online preview -- fonts and tables were wrong.
For fun, I tried converting my epub to mobi using kindlegen, and got the same result as through kdp -- incorrect fonts and tables. Strangely, calibre did a better job generating a mobi than kindlegen; the fonts were correct but the tables were still wrong.
I could manually tweak the html so that the tables look a little better, but still not as good as the KDP online previewer.
I think what's happening is that KDP is converting my epub into a dual azw3/mobi. The online preview is showing the azw3 version but I can only download the mobi.
So I can either: a) upload my epub -- newer Kindle devices will get the azw3 and display correctly, while older devices will get the mobi version and will look horrible, or b) fix the mobi as best I can and upload that -- it will not look great on any device but not horrible either.
Am I correct about my options? Is there anything else I can do to tweak the mobi version without sacrificing the azw3 version?
I'm working on a textbook that I created in LibreOffice, and I want to publish it for Kindle. I originally tried LO's epub output but that created a mess.
I attempted to use Kindle Create but it choked when opening the file.
I then imported my book into calibre and I was able to manually fix the problems in the generated html. I generated an epub from calibre and uploaded it to KDP. In the online previewer, it looks great -- no problems at all. But then I downloaded the mobi from KDP and emailed it to my Kindle account so I could open it in the Kindle app on my iPhone. I found that it looked very different from the online preview -- fonts and tables were wrong.
For fun, I tried converting my epub to mobi using kindlegen, and got the same result as through kdp -- incorrect fonts and tables. Strangely, calibre did a better job generating a mobi than kindlegen; the fonts were correct but the tables were still wrong.
I could manually tweak the html so that the tables look a little better, but still not as good as the KDP online previewer.
I think what's happening is that KDP is converting my epub into a dual azw3/mobi. The online preview is showing the azw3 version but I can only download the mobi.
So I can either: a) upload my epub -- newer Kindle devices will get the azw3 and display correctly, while older devices will get the mobi version and will look horrible, or b) fix the mobi as best I can and upload that -- it will not look great on any device but not horrible either.
Am I correct about my options? Is there anything else I can do to tweak the mobi version without sacrificing the azw3 version?