Kindle bug breaks NCX TOC

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[UPDATE: January 2016: Amazon now allow publishers to embed their book covers inside the file before upload to KDP; if you are using a jpeg title page, I would advise that you embed your cover. This way Amazon’s system will not mistake your title page for the cover. Note also that embedding your cover requires specific code. See the KDP guide for more information.] A client recently uploaded to Kindle Direct Publishing a new book that I designed for him that had a jpeg image for its title page — Read More …

The conumdrum that is Kindle font handling

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UPDATED 11 June 2014 (NOTE: where I include code, the quotation marks should be straight quotes, not curly quotes. When I updated my WordPress site it began automatically using curly quotes, and I cannot find a way to stop it.) If you are designing a book for Kindle where the book uses only a single font, you do NOT include font definitions anymore. Amazon, in fact, now strip out such font definitions. This is because font definitions can prevent the user from selecting their preferred font. This article is for Read More …

Significant changes to Kindle image requirements

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Updated 31 May 2014: Amazon have upped the maximum pixel limit again for ebook covers and are now asking for cover images to be “2820 pixels on the shortest side and 4500 pixels on the longest side” for best quality. Maximum file size is still 5MB. Minimum pixel dimensions for covers are 625 x 1000 pixels. This new size strikes me as overkill. The highest resolution device that Kindle produces is 2560 pixels; why would Amazon want 4500 pixels? Your guess is as good as mine. For internal images, the Read More …

Kindle expands into Australia

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Amazon is continuing their aggressive expansion of specified Kindle territories, opening kdp.Amazon.com.au. For Australian authors, this means Amazon can now convert your worldwide royalties to Australian dollars and pay into your local bank account (New Zealand authors can only be paid by cheque or wire transfer). For non-Australian authors, this means yet another territory and currency that Amazon will be keeping your royalties for until you meet the minimum threshold (the EFT threshold is, surprisingly, $0.00, but those authors paid by cheque must meet a AUS $100.00 or NZD $100.00 Read More …

Best fonts for Kindle?

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UPDATE: see my latest tests on fonts here. For those who read my blog post on the issue that has arisen with fonts embedded in ePubs, I make mention of using fonts for Kindle that are already licensed by them. The advantages to this are twofold: 1) You do not have to worry about procuring a font licence from the foundry that owns the font; and 2) not embedding fonts keeps your file size down, which is important as Amazon charge a delivery fee based on file size. However… The Read More …

Kindle expand into Canada – is CreateSpace next?

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Previously, Kindle customers in Canada were serviced by the U.S. site but now Amazon have opened a dedicated Kindle store on the Amazon.ca site. Indie authors whose books are available worldwide will automatically see their ebooks listed on the Canadian site at a price converted from your U.S. dollar price; if you want to set a separate Canadian dollar price, you need to visit your dashboard and update your book’s info. Those authors with a Canadian bank account can now elect to be paid for Canadian sales in Canadian dollars, Read More …

Amazon Kindle expands into Japan

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Amazon have added Japan to their ever-growing list of Amazon sites to carry Kindle books, bringing the total to seven sites: U.S. (also serves India and Canada), Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan. Royalties are paid at only 35% for all sales to Japan — perhaps this is why Amazon have launched the site with so little fanfare: not a word of it is mentioned in the 24 October KDP newsletter. KDP authors will now see the sales channel on their reports page, and can set a separate price in Read More …

How to read ePubs on your Kindle Fire — even DRMed ones!

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Today I learned a wonderful trick: a way to put onto a Kindle Fire an ePub ereader that will read PDFs and ePubs — even Adobe DRMed ebooks — purchased from major retailers such as Kobo, Sony, and B&N, and the myriad of smaller ebook retailers worldwide. Apple ebooks, which use a different DRM, are not transferrable. The principle is this: the Kindle Fire works on top of the Android system, and with a simple click in your settings you can tell the Fire to read Android apps purchased outside Read More …

Will there be professional writers in future?

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In a recent Globe and Mail article, British writer Ewan Morrison makes the bold proclamation that “There will be no more professional writers in the future.” Putting aside the hyperbole of that statement, or what defines “professional,” article writer John Barber does make a few salient points about the trajectory we writers have been on for some time now: From the heights of the literary pantheon to the lowest trenches of hackery, where contributors to digital “content farms” are paid as little as 10 cents for every 1,000 times readers Read More …

Should indie authors embrace Kindle Format 8? Not yet.

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UPDATE DECEMEBER 2013: Kindle Format 8, when properly coded into your CSS, is now more stable across the Kindle platform for those devices able to read it. However, authors using Word and exporting to HTML, then uploading to Amazon for automatic conversion, cannot take advantage of this stability. Why? Because Word unfortunately does not create the kind of CSS required for proper KF8. For example, the drop cap in Word is created using a form of table code that does not translate well across Kindle devices. To create a proper Read More …