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(2013/10/30 21:27), Virgil Arrington wrote:
Thomas Blasejewicz wrote:
Good evening from Japan
Maybe I did ask a similar question before ...

I wrote a book using Writer which I am now trying to upload to Kindle.

The instructions say, I must save the file as html and then create a zip
file from the html file + the images.
"Save as ... html" creates a content file and a whole long list of files
for the images.
Thomas,

I've been playing with different tools to create e-books for the Kindle. I can find no clean way of going straight from LO to Kindle (MOBI) format. You may need to combine several tools. Here's what I've found.

1. If you haven't already done so, install Calibre, a free open source e-book manager and converter. It can convert a wide variety of file formats into MOBI for the Kindle. It has a depth of features that I have only begun to scratch. In my experience, it seems to work best converting HTML and EPUB files, but it can also convert LO's ODT files directly, if not elegantly. When using Calibre, I first save my LO document as an HTML file. Make sure to use the "Save as" command rather than the "Export" command. For some reason, in my experience, "Save as" has created cleaner HTML files than "Export". I have no idea why. Once saved as an HTML file, I then load it into Calibre and convert it to MOBI. It works fairly well. For my work, I've found some quirks with the way numbered lists are formatted, but otherwise, things go relatively well. My work, however, has been all text, with no images.

2. There are (at least) two extensions for LO that convert ODT files to EPUB formats; Writer2Epub and Elaix. They work well with fairly simple documents. I've only played with them a little, but I sense they are both deeper and more fully featured than I have yet discovered.

3. There is another neat free program out there called Sigil. You can load your HTML file into it and then edit the HTML code in either a WYSIWYM screen or text-based code screen. It will then save the file as a well-compiled EPUB file, which you can then convert to MOBI using Calibre.

4. The best solution I've found for this task, however, is a shareware product called Atlantis (free download, $35.00 registration). It's a lightweight Word clone that has a built-in converter to EPUB format. It is *very* well behaved and does the best job in preserving my formatted documents. It also produces very well structured EPUB files (that you can see by loading it into Sigil and examining the code). It can also convert directly to MOBI if you have the free Kindlegen utility (available from Amazon) installed. Atlantis reads ODT files very well, although it's default file format is RTF. The main downside to Atlantis is that it doesn't support tables.

The obvious frustration about all this is that, using free or inexpensive solutions will mean an involved learning curve along with a lot of trial and error experimentation. I know of no "quick and easy press F7 and get a fully formatted Kindle e-book" solution.

Virgil

Thank you everybody!
I tried out each and every advice given here, the softwares indicated above and other things. To the best of my understanding (which does not mean much!) none of it worked. Neither could I make most of the software work. For example that "Sigil" thing tells me, that EVERY line of my file contains errors, but does not tell me what to do.
And at a screen covered with those html codes is way beyond my capabilities.

HOWEVER ... I succeeded in uploading the book!
As far as I know, I did everything the same way I did it the first time, except I changed the setting for "html compatibility" under Tools -> Options -> Load/Save. There are 3 different settings. I tried them all. The last one I tried was "IE Explorer".
MAYBE that did the trick.
If it is (I am currently waiting for an answer from Amazon support) ... then all that is required to upload something to Kindle is save a file as html and make a zip file.
Would that not be refreshing?

Thomas

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