Kindle Previewer and Indesign

[irama57948095]

 I've been trying to preview a fixed layout epub on Kindle Previewer but it keeps failing. I am now running out of time.

I've validated it and it passed. I did Flightcheck and it told me there was a problem with ligatures so I got rid of them. I also changed fonts as they seemed to be clashing. I've changed the tables to png files and nothing seems to work. I've tried to DeBug it on Calibre but its been stuck on 47% for almost 2 hours. Nothing helps.

The message I'm getting is:

'Kindle conversion has encountered an internal error while enabling Enhanced Typesetting on this book.'

It has illustrator files and tables in it.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[Joely · Accepted solution]

»It has illustrator files and tables in it.«

……it looks like you did all the steps to fix the problem. Also checked back with Kindle support?

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G202087570

[Joe-New-to-ID]

Joely:  I may very well check in with Kindle Support. Thanks for the tip.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Kindle has support? 😛

Joe, note that the origin of this thread is some three years back. Not everyone is still participating. 

[Derek Cross · Accepted solution]

If you are on a Mac, have a look at CicularFLO: 

https://www.circularflo.com

[BookFeast]

After much trial and error, I found that for my titles, this came up when there were multiple languages listed in the content.opf metadata. Choosing a single language allowed Kindle Previewer to move forward.

[Khartu]

This is a great solution that worked for me. It would be great if this could be sorted from within InDesign rather than having to edit the code. But it works!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Are multiple languages actually used in the document, or is it an artifact of legacy styles? If the latter, the solution - to me - is to update those styles and remove the extraneous style info. 

With the real solution being, of course, not using the FXL format any more, except for graphical books where it's the only EPUB option. 🙂

[Joe-New-to-ID]

James:  Thank you. I was trying a Fixed Layout format as another option and a troubleshooting step. I have no hyperlinks or anything else in my book that would seem to warrant the Reflowable option that most users appear to recommend (based on my naive newbie experience). Unfortunately, I can't assess the results of the Fixed Layout option since I keep getting this error message from Kindle Previewer 3: "Kindle conversion has encountered an internal error while enabling Enhanced Typesetting on this book.". Do you have any ideas that would make the Fixed Layout option work? BTW, I'm only using English-US as a language preference.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

If you don't need fixed layout, as for graphic novels, children's books and other "art page" books, don't use it. It's a largely obsolete option and very difficult to work with. It either works perfectly, or is a nightmare to fix up. 

That said, there should not be multiple language entries in its structure unless they are in the InDesign document itself. This is a style-by-style setting. Go through your paragraph and character styles and make sure all are set to a default of US English.

This is how EPUB and Kindle problems are fixed in the modern scheme: at the creation level, not by fixing the output. 

[Joe-New-to-ID]

I'm new to InDesign. How did you edit "content.opf metadata"?

[Derek Cross]

If you're on a Mac try BBEdit.

[Joe-New-to-ID]

Derek:  Thank you, but I'm on an HP using Windows. I just performed a search of my entire computer and did not find a file called "content.opf". In addition, I checked all of my language preferences and they're all English-US. I'm getting the exact same error message as you did from Kindle Previewer 3.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

This is a file inside the EPUB itself (EPUBs are actually ZIP archives of files that resemble a web site). Opening them and editing content files is... complicated and should be avoided except as a final solution to problems that can't be solved any other way.

(It used to be standard practice but ID and other tools have made it largely unnecessary.)

[Joe-New-to-ID]

James:  Thank you. I will avoid it then.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Reflowable has its own issues but is in all ways the "correct" model for e-books. It's worth understanding and mastering.

Two guidelines: always make sure information you look up is current; the net is loaded with very outdated info that is not readily identifiable as such. If it's more than two to three years old, it may be wildly wrong or misleading. 

And if a process includes editing exported EPUBs, it stems from an older, largely outdated approach; you should probably move on. 

[Joe-New-to-ID]

James:  Got it. Thanks. I just went through all of my book's individual documents and checked for the language settings. All of the paragraph styles were set to "English: USA". This was not the case for the character styles; they were all unselected (no language set). I've since changed them all to "English: USA". The same error message from Kindle Previewer 3 resulted for the Fixed Layout option. I will stick to the Reflowable option as you suggested.

[Derek Cross]

Reflowable ePub is the format for text heavy books such as novels. The format is not intuitive to produce so anything more complex needs an understanding of HTML and CSS to fine tune the document.

[Joe-New-to-ID]

Derek:  Thank you. Unfortunately, I don't know the details of HTML or CSS.

[Joe-New-to-ID]

James:  Upon using the Reflowable option, I received EPUB error messages for some (not all) book chapters: "Page anchor is missing." Do you know what this means? I removed the Contents file from my eBook book file in case that matters. (I have a Contents file for my print book and everything seems to work fine there.)

[Derek Cross]

Have you anchored the images?

[Joe-New-to-ID]

Derek:  I'm finishing that up now. However, some more research on my part seems to indicate that page anchoring has to do with my book's index and indexing of page ranges. Additionally, the page anchoring doesn't appear to stop Kindle Previewer 3 from displaying the book. I think I just have to fix some things as you alluded to. Thanks.

[irama57948095]

I have actually learned a huge amount since my initial post and I think the page anchor is probably to do with hyperlinks or possibly your TOC. It's basically not finding the link to the page so you'll need to check they all work. 

[Joe-New-to-ID]

Irama:  Some more research on my part seems to indicate that page anchoring has to do with my nonfiction book's index and indexing of page ranges. Additionally, the page anchoring doesn't appear to stop Kindle Previewer 3 from displaying the book. I think I just have to fix some things. Thanks.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Export to EPUB requires absolutely meticulous document setup, especially in styles. Things you can get away with in print will fail, or worse, in EPUB export. Fixed layout will sometimes skip over structural and format issues, but reflowable, never. 

The three fundamentals are to have all content in one text flow, all images anchored within that flow, and to have absolutely meticulous application of styles, with no default or override styling. That is all essential to proper use of ID for any purpose, but it's required for e-book work.