Kindle reading epub different than Apple Books

[Man Myth Legend]

As you can see from screenshots, when it comes to my indentations Apple Books is reading them pretty well, but Kindle not so much. What's weird is that Kindle does register the change, it just only does about 20% of what I apply. So I can get the indents to move 1/16th of an inch in Kindle by moving them 3/4 of an inch in indesign. The massive indent then reflects in Appl Books, with a very small movement made in Kindle. Why? I would think Kindle would work or not work, but to just decided it's only going to interpret SOME of my direction doesn't make sense to me. Apple is also reading my margins on the epigraph, while kindle does not.

[Steve Werner]

I just read yesterday that this support in Kindle for EPUB is NEW. It was only announced May 2022, and only released in a usable fornm in December 2022.

So don't expect perfection. One would hope that it would improve over time, but who knows?

Apple has been supporting EPUB much longer, so it's no surprise it supports it better.

[Parny]

Hello. I have a similar issue but haven't found a solution. Compared to Kindle, in Apple Books auto-bulleted and auto-numbered text is smaller, and in a different section of the book, italicized titles are larger within surrounding regular body text. No character style for italics is applied. Is there anything I can do to keep this from happening in Books?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

There is no way to have a single submission EPUB for every e-book platform. If you want to place your book on KDP, you need to optimize a version for it. If you want to place your book with Apple, you'll need a differently optimized EPUB for that. And quite often, if you want a generic EPUB for other sales portals, the Apple version will have to be tweaked (removing 'fixes' for Apple's quirks and "improvements") for that.

This can be done by adjusting the ID layout, but it's simpler to manage with an optimized CSS style file for each destination.

[Parny]

James, thanks so much for your response. I suppose instructions are available at Apple and Amazon for an "optimized CSS style file," right? (By the way, since I posted, I uploaded an EPUB to Books on my old iPad, and it rendered much better than Books on my fairly new Mac Mini Books app. Aack!) ~ Lisa

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Ha ha ha ha ha... uh, no. There isn't a one of the EPUBlication portals I know of that has anything like specific formatting instructions; most aren't even complete, accurate or up to date on the technical fiile issues and processes. The whole e-book publishing industry is a sad mix of extreme potential and power and abysmal knowledge and support. Couple that with the low skill and less knowledge of most author/publishers — no diss on most of them, it's just that they've been told it's all super easy to do — and it's a frustrating cesspool.

Pro quality publishing to EPUB and Kindle is a specialized endeavor. It requires fair mastery of InDesign, especially a commitment to doing meticulous document structuring and 100% consistent style use. It needs at least journeyman level grasp of HTML (the lesser part) and CSS (the most important part). You can find some good starting resources on my site, here. And all of that rests on a foundation of the technical guide in my sig line, which is the only comprehensive reference to pro EPUB/Kindle I know of. (Backs slowly away from the sales pitch, here.)

And I'm always here, happy to answer questions. A new topic once you have any first questions might be better than dragging this one along any further.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This is a bit like saying Japanese and Nigerian Elvis impersonators aren't equally convincing. 🙂

EPUB is a standard, and there are standard readers for it (Thorium and Calibre recommended.) Then there are legions of increasingly different readers, either because the developer cut corners (for speed, for compactness or just from sloppy work) or because the developer "had a better idea" and implemented nonstandard features. The result is that no two EPUB readers present a doc the same way, and it can vary from minor font and spacing anomalies to an unreadable mess.

And then there's Apple and Kindle. While Apple mostly does a good job with EPUB, it has (like all big-A products) "improvements" in its function that often create glitches in an otherwise fine standard EPUB. You have to decide whether developing a tweaked or modified version is worth the Apple reader market.

And Kindle... as Steve notes, EPUB support is a new and grudging thing, and it's not really EPUB support. While Amazon made a big deal out of finally allowing EPUB to be sideloaded and read on Kindle, it actually goes through an undocumented and nonstandard conversion process, and it's nearly impossible to predict if any document will come through in tidy, readable format. But it's not EPUB's fault in this case... it's Amazon's, both for choosing this technical path and then basically failing to admit it so that problems are understandable. (They really don't like EPUB and never have; the accommodation was a sop to the vocal Kindle user base.)

The only way to see how EPUB should/will appear on Kindle is to use Kindle Previewer. With some attention to detail, most docs that read well on a vanilla EPUB reader will translate well to Kindle format.

But comparing an EPUB as such on these two nonstandard readers... well. It's heartbreak hotel. 🙂

ETA: one of the most variable areas between readers is how they interpret spacing. You can make the best of it by not using spaces, tabs and returns for text spacing (tabs in particular, as they are stripped from the export, as are nearly all multiples of spaces and returns), and using standard fixed values for all spacing dimensions (which applies more to CSS than to ID itself).

[Man Myth Legend]

Thanks guys this is helpful! So I guess my question is what's the industry standard way to create a Kindle book if it isn't EPUB? I assumed that building my own doc in ID would give me the most quality product. I started futzing around with the KDP builder- Kindle Create- and it seemed very clunky. I decided if I was going to spend weeks learning something it would be more useful to make that something ID rather than Kindle's niche builder. I also don't know if I build it with Kindle's builder what deal I've made with the Devil in terms of uploading that file to other platforms. Is Kindle Create the industry standard for creating Kindle books with more design control?

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

EPUB is very much the standard way to create a quality Kindle book. But it has to be proofed using Kindle Previewer to see how the format will convert, and uploaded through the KDP portal for final conversion etc.

Side-loading an EPUB onto Kindle is the new and somewhat wonky option; I suppose you could optimize the export etc., but it's largely for individual and small-group use, probably not worth the effort. It is a completely different path and result from "creating a Kindle book." Use an EPUB reader to read EPUBs instead.

As for the other Kindle options, uploading Word files is... okay but not great for many reasons; uploading HTML is an acceptable alternative to EPUB if you're familiar with HTML/CSS and don't have a decent EPUB creation tool; PDF is a very poor choice in general; and Kindle's tools are simple, clumsy, limited, poorly documented and can change or go away without notice.

InDesign to EPUB to Kindle is, IMHO, the presently optimal process for a number of reasons.

[Man Myth Legend]

Thank you for clarifying that. 🙏