InDesign to EPUB reflowable looks great on Kindle Previewer 3 but awful when viewed on Kindle App

[Mirenadi]

I have been trying to format a reflowable epub from InDesign. I set styles, anchored images and did everything required to produce a good quality epub. When I preview it on Kindle Previewer it looks immaculate. When I shared the file (and exported it to azw3 and mobi as per my client request) with my client, the response was that the file looked scrambled, the text had no formatting (indents and italics) and some of the links were not working. Some of the images were also not the original size (though I set a size and they look fine in Kindle Previewer). 

Is there anything I am missing? My client previews the files using his Kindle on his tablet and PC. He seeks to publish the book on various platforms - from KDP to Ingramspark and else... 

Do I need to "clean the CSS" when trying to export an epub to a azw3 or other format (I am doing this using Sigil or Calibre). 

My main confusion stems from the fact that I am seeing a perfectly formatted file and my client has a totally different experience, so my asumption is either I am doing something wrong or they are not supposed to preview the raw epub on their Kindle app. 

Thanks in advance!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

That's pretty unusual... from long experience, the fidelity of Kindle Previewer to the final version has been one of the good/high points of the whole Kindle system. But that's not the problem here.

Conversions to other formats and viewing on other devices, including side-loading on Kindle, are not the same thing. The conversion process is different (and Kindle does not "read EPUB" as was ballyhooed a few years back — it does a stealth conversion).

Despite years of accumulated techniques and conversions and workflows and 'tricks,' there are only two professional/reliable workflows to e-book publication (not counting PDF): Optimize for Kindle and a perfect Kindle Previewer/Kindle result, and optimize for a standardized, vanilla EPUB result, using readers like Calibre or Thorium to check the result. (A third common need is to tweak the EPUB for optimal results under Apple's slightly different viewer, but that can be skipped unless you're going to sell through Apple's portal.) And quite often, these will be wholly different "tweaks" of the EPUB file.

And then you stop. Don't convert, don't proof on other EPUB readers unless they're an integral part of your market/workforce readership, and never convert and sideload to readers that don't do native EPUB. You will never get reliable, acceptable results with any of those methods, processes or workflows, no matter how much it might have been "the way to do things" ten years ago.

And as for "seeing differnt things" — welcome to the reality of EPUB. Only the same file, viewed using the same reader, will produce matching results (and then you have to contend with reader versions, platform variations, etc.) There's no "C" for consistency in E-P-U-B. And under Kindle, the only way to have identical proofs is to view the same file on Kindle Previewer at each end... not via a chain of conversions, sideloads, etc.

[Mirenadi]

Thank you so much for your quick reply! Your website is full of fantastic information which I have relied on a lot - I appreciate all that you do to support the ebook community.

I suggested that the client uses Kindle Previewer to see the final epub. He insists on sending it to his Kindle app (not Kindle reader, the app on PC and mobile) and because epub can't be directly imported into the Kindle app, I created an alternative mobi and azw3 files so the client can see the "final result". This is where it all goes wrong and the file looks all over the place. He doesn't believe Kindle Previewer is accurate in the way the file is seen and worried that the epub file will not look the same as what Kindle Previewer is showing once uploaded onto other platforms.

My next step would be to troubleshoot using Calibre. This is where my knowledge of how to format it to correctly falls short since I have so far only done epubs for Kindle - all of a sudden in Calibre my text loses all formatting and images shrink... Is there a best practice for this or should I trial and error using Id?

Would epub then be all he would need to publish his book on various platforms? Should I advise to stop "testing" the file using the Kindle app?

Thank you!!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I can only repeat what's above, maybe a little clearer: the path to a for-purchase Kindle edition is one workflow. The path to an EPUB on sale through the various portals like D2D and Ingram is another. (And the path for EPUB to Apple is slightly different from the main one.)

Absolutely nothing else, from the past or today, is relevant. Converting between various formats, side-loading books into Kindle, using nonstandard readers... these are all artifacts of a past as obsolete as pasting books up on blueline board, if not setting lead type. Dump them and all the relevant tools.

If your client wants to see how the book will look on Kindle, s/he needs to install Kindle Previewer and open the submission EPUB file you send. No emailing, no side-loading, no using some tool s/he downloaded or was given years ago. If they want to see how the book will look in EPUB, they need to DL either Calibre and use its reader, or DL Thorium Reader (which,  last I looked, still had a serious bug with font resizing but is otherwise the closest to a 100% standards-based reader).

Absolutely nothing else is current, reliable or useful, especially in trying to remote-proof an e-book.

[Mirenadi]

Thank you so much! Yes, client finally agreed on using Kindle Previewer but then also decided to use Calibre. Because the file has been formatted for KDP it looks entirely different when opened with Calibre. Would the best practice to keep the font styles and paragraph styles be to adjust everything in Calibre or ID? 

[Laura Brady]

I would suggest that you share the EPUB with the client and let them open it in Kindle Previewer themselves. Amazon doesn't take MOBI files any more so there is not point dealing with that dead format at all. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

That Amazon built the whole model on MOBI and then deprecated/abandoned it is one of the reasons I recommend against all workflows that muck around at the file/conversion level. It all may have worked, or had advantages, at one time, but not any more.

That Amazon has absolutely no way to obtain an actual release Kindle title, other than buying one, even for author/publishers... well, that's a problem for another day. And KP's fidelity is a mark in the overall system's favor.

[Mirenadi]

Thank you for your quick reply, Laura! I did suggest that he uses Kindle Previewer but he is worried the end result on platforms other than Amazon KDP would render the book differently. He wanted to do the test of the final file on the Kindle app, and since that doesn't support epub, I relied on other options that allow for the file to be opened in Kindle. Would the conversion of the epub lead to various issues that were originally not in the epub? 

[Laura Brady]

No. Amazon ingests EPUB and it works fine. The issues you refer to are not something I've experienced at all. And I have considerable experience with this very thing. 

I am happy to take a quick look at your EPUB if that will help everyone feel better. (laura@bradytypesetting.com).

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

KDP handles EPUB just fine through KP and the publication process. But that's not at all the same thing.

The client is side-loading the various formats, which is at best a problematic practice, including with EPUB.

[Laura Brady]

I am well aware of how this works.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I'll just say, then, politely, that you might do a better job explaining it to an audience that is neither the Keeper of the Standards Faith nor the Carve Your Own Ebook on Your Kitchen Table coalition. Your answers tend to be things like short code-editing suggestions, which is Sanskrit to most ID users.

[Laura Brady]

Thanks, James. I do not need your advice in any context. I teach this stuff every day and also have a lot more respect for people's intelligence and their time. Ain't no one got time to read your patronizing screeds that are generally wrong and full of bad advice anyway. So there's that. 

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

No one here's ever questioned your expertise, including me. And you said long ago you couldn't be bothered to read anything I wrote; so noted, Yer Highness.

By all means, keep posting your brief, cryptic expert-to-expert advice that completely ignores the level and approach of audience here, which is InDesign users exporting to EPUB and looking to resolve problems in that workflow, not standards-memorizers or code hackers. Glad you had five minutes to stop by today.

[Mirenadi]

That will be so kind of you, thank you! I will be in touch.