Whose eBook would you rather upload, when you’re betting your commercial success on it? of the world and one designated and formatted and coded especially for Amazon/Kindle. In other words, even today, when most formatters are giving “One File to Rule them All” to their customers, ignoring all the special things that Kindles have and can do, we still make two (2) files-one meant for the B&N’s, IngramSparks, Kobos, etc. Huzzah!Įven here at, we don't "do" one-size-fits-all eBook-making when we've completed an ePUB for a client, and it's approved, we take that file, make some tweaks, and use the revised content (with slightly different commands and instructions inside it) to create or build the final optimized ePUB file for Kindle. In recent months, there have been strides in being able to directly email an ePUB to your Kindle (email address) and I'm told that it may soon be possible to side-load one, again, directly. So, you can, then, effectively send an ePUB to a Kindle. ePUB is one of the accepted file formats at the KDP. You upload an ePUB at the KDP, and the process will automatically create a MOBI file for you. If you've banged around some more, you've seen some folks, including people like me, who will tell you that you can use an ePUB to Kindle formatting process. If someone starts yammering away at you, talking about how you can convert your file to AZW or AZW3 format, for the purposes of publishing-that's not someone to whom you should be listening. Fine for personal use, but useless for publishing. Obviously, that format, then, lacks utility. You can certainly make a file in that format, and side-load it to your own Kindle device, but you can't publish it. However, just like AZW, you can't upload an AZW3 file format at the KDP. The latter, AZW3, is a file format, created to emulate what's called "KF8," (the more-advanced Kindle formatting) by a piece of free library software called Calibre. And, even if you could, you can't upload that format at the KDP, the Kindle Digital Publishing platform. That's not a format that you can make yourself. The former (was/is) the actual, final, encrypted Kindle format that is dispensed from the Amazon store, to your Kindle as a purchased book. Now, if you've run across various forums, you may have seen people refer to AZW format, or AZW3 format. If you try to upload a MOBI file for a reflowable ebook, you’ll be stopped dead in your tracks. MOBI is still accepted, by Amazon, in certain special cases-those being for what are called Print Replica files (for example, heavy photography books or illustrated children’s books) where the placement of text and images is absolutely crucial and cannot be altered or “reflowed” as text does in regular eBooks when you change font size or screen size or rotate the device. But the process that used to intake a MOBI file, perform nominal conversions or changes to it and spit out a file that was optimized for the myriad Kindle devices, no longer exists, at least, not for typical, everyday reflowable eBook files (your typical novel, memoir, self-help book, etc.) Today, if you want to upload a reflowable eBook, you need ePUB format, not MOBI. This does not mean that you can’t upload a Word file, still you can. The bottom line is, as of midsummer 2021, the files that Amazon sells to its readers are, by and large, derived from the last-man-standing eBook format, which is ePUB. If you've Googled, you've likely seen all sorts of claims, ranging from some folks telling you that you can put an ePUB (directly) on a Kindle device, to the idea that using Word is the best "Kindle eBook format." MOBI format, which was, but no longer is, the preferred Kindle file format.ePUB: which stands for ePUBlication (clever, eh?), which is used by B&N, iBooks, Sony, KoboBooks, and Google, and,.Is the person asking to find out what file format they should upload to Amazon? Are they asking what's the best way to make a book for the Amazon-Kindle ecosystem? In 2010, those answers were easy. One of the questions that we are still asked, here in 2022, is, "what is the best eBook format for Kindle?” I'm not always sure what question I'm being asked. Not sure when, mind you, but hey! Why not, right? UPDATED 2022 article this article supersedes and replaces the article that was published in 2015, titled “What is the Best eBook Format for Kindle,” which is still here on our site-seems to me that retaining historic information and data may be useful someday.
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