I don’t know if it’s related to Kindle EPUB issues - FiveFilters.org or not, but recently your generated files use covers instead of text…and Kindle displays just the covers.
Problems are:
I don’t want to judge an article by its cover…I like to see the actual title/author.
If they’re broken, all you see is a list of broken covers.
Those covers are too small to use anyway even though originally they’re quite big (try this article with Use browser-retrieved content):
P.S.
In case you wonder, the other articles look fine only because I:
Opened Calibre
Edited the metadata and manually fixed a title
Removed the cover
Added the “Polish” feature to Calibre’s toolbar
Used the “Polish” feature to apply the new metadata/removed cover
Saved the result to my PC
Copied from my PC into Kindle by USB (yes, I could have used Calibre for that, but it saves the files in the root folder instead of alongside the other articles. Whether it works or not, I don’t agree with their approach).
We haven’t changed the way we produce our EPUBs, but Amazon has recently been changing the way it processes EPUBs sent to its service.
We don’t actually mark any images in the EPUBs we produce as the cover, so Amazon shouldn’t be treating any as the cover. This appears to be an issue with the recent changes they have made and the latest Kindle software update (5.15.1). There was no issue with the previous Kindle software version displaying covers like this.
We are experimenting to see if we can find a good solution. But ideally Amazon should fix this behaviour, as it seems like they’re simply picking out regular images in the EPUB and treating them as cover images.
One workaround to get the title and source is:
Click ‘Library’ from your home screen to get into the library view
Click the menu sort/view icon
Choose ‘List’ under ‘View options’
You should now see the article title and source for each article.
Are you saying Amazon basically edits every EPUB to make changes such as adding a cover?
If so, it sounds ridicules they have the right to edit your files behind your backs.
As far as we know, there are no Kindle devices that natively support EPUB files at the moment. When EPUBs are sent to Amazon’s Personal Documents service - which is what we do in Push to Kindle - their service converts the file to a format compatible with Kindle devices. It’s likely somewhere in that conversion where they are marking images as covers. Something they were not doing before.
You didn’t mention it here, but looks like you fixed it last week (“To address this change, we are now generating cover images in Push to Kindle using the article title and site name”), thanks!
It’s really crazy, because when sending it through Amazon’s official by Send by E-mail (right side) service it shows up as pure blank! But when sending it through your service (left side) it looks perfect!
I can’t think of a bigger irony than asking what if I have a Word file, etc., is there no longer any way to mail it properly other that using your service (in this case PastePad)?
