Kindle Trouble

Kindle is not sending ebooks that I've uploaded via Gmail to my Kindle device for some reason. I get an E999 or Send to Kindle Internal Error meaning that the document(s) could not be delivered due to an internal error. Please try sending your document(s) again in some time. The documents were in epub format and in the past there has been no problem with that. Gemini suggested that my device, a 6th Generation Kindle Paperwhite, was too old but other sources say that shouldn't be a problem.

I sideloaded the epub books from my laptop to the Kindle but they failed to register. However, I used Calibre to convert the books to AZW3 format and all was well. Lesson learned. Clearly Amazon makes this conversion online before sending the files to your Kindle. Once again, Calibre proves its usefulness and reminds me that I really should back up my library that resides on an SD card external to my laptop.

The End of Mobi

I received this interesting email from Amazon the other day after I'd sent an ebook, in mobi format, to my Kindle via email. Here was the content:

Dear Kindle Customer,

Thank you for using the Send to Kindle service to send personal documents to your Kindle library. We noticed that the following document(s), sent by you at 07:50 AM on Monday, October 10, 2022 GMT are in MOBI (.mobi, .azw) formats: froudes-history.mobi.

We wanted to let you know that starting August 2022, you’ll no longer be able to send MOBI (.mobi, .azw) files to your Kindle library. Any MOBI files already in your library will not be affected by this change. MOBI is an older file format and won’t support the newest Kindle features for documents. Any existing MOBI files you want to read with our most up-to-date features for documents will need to be re-sent in a compatible format.

Compatible formats now include EPUB (.epub), which you can send to your library using your Send to Kindle email address. We’ll also be adding EPUB support to the free Kindle app for iOS and Android devices and the Send to Kindle desktop app for PC and Mac.      

 If you have any questions, please visit our help page or contact our Customer Service team.      

 Regards,

Amazon Kindle Support

This is the 6th generation Paperwhite Kindle that I'm using

Well it's long past August 2022 but I seemed to succeed nonetheless. Mind you the mobi version I sent proved virtually unreadable with all sorts of bizarre artefacts and so I had to resend it in PDF format.  This Wikipedia article explains what's going on:

Kindle File Format is a proprietary e-book file format created by Amazon.com that can be downloaded and read on devices like smartphones, tablets, computers, or e-readers that have Amazon's Kindle app. E-book files in the Kindle File Format originally had the filename extension .azw; version 8 (KF8) introduced HTML5 & CSS3 features and have the .azw3 extension, and version 10 introduced a new typesetting and layout engine featuring hyphens, kerning, & ligatures and have the .kfx extension.

History

Kindle devices and apps are designed to use Amazon's e-book formats: AZW that is based on Mobipocket; in fourth generation and later Kindles, AZW3, also called KF8; and in seventh generation and later Kindles, KFX. Kindles now support the EPUB file format used by many other e-book readers. Similar to EPUB, Amazon's file formats are intended for reflowable, richly formatted e-book content and support DRM restrictions, but unlike EPUB, they are proprietary formats. AZW files debuted with the first Amazon Kindle in 2007.

Software such as the free and open source Calibre, Amazon's KindleGen, and the email based Send-to-Kindle service are available to convert e-books into supported Kindle file formats. Kindle devices can also display some generic document formats such as plain text (TXT) and Portable Document Format (PDF) files; however, reflowing is not supported for these file types.

In late 2011, the Kindle Fire introduced "Kindle Format 8" (KF8), also known as AZW3 file format. AZW3 supports a subset of HTML5 and CSS3 features,while acting as a container for a backwards-compatible MOBI content document.

In August 2015, all the Kindle e-readers released within the previous two years were updated with a new typesetting and layout engine that adds hyphens, kerning and ligatures to the text; e-books that support this engine require the use of the "Kindle Format 10" (KFX) file format.[8] E-books that support the enhanced typesetting format are indicated in the e-book's description on its product page.

In 2017, Amazon released Kindle Create, a tool that can convert Microsoft Word files to Kindle file format.

In 2022, while the Send-to-Kindle service only supported the original .mobi/.azw ebook formats (along with some other non-ebook file formats),[10] Amazon announced removing this support in favor of .epub which will be converted to Amazon's KF8 (.azw3) from late-2022.

In light of this news, I've just sent a epub file to my Kindle via Amazon's email service. I grabbed the book off the Internet Archive. It's titled "English Biography" by Waldo Hilary Dunn, 1882-1969, and was published in 1916. It might be interesting but the point is to check that Amazon will convert the epub format into a Kindle readable format. The result was disappointing:

Dear Kindle Customer,

The following document, sent by you at 11:56 AM on Tuesday, October 11, 2022 GMT, could not be delivered to the address you specified: englishbiography.epub

Send to Kindle supports the following document formats:

Adobe PDF (.pdf)

Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)

Rich Text Format (.rtf)

HTML (.htm, .html)

Text (.txt) documents

Archived documents (zip , x-zip) and compressed archived documents

MOBI (.azw, .mobi) (will not support the most up-to-date Kindle features for documents)

JPEG (.jpg), GIF (.gif), Bitmap (.bmp), and PNG (.png) images .

Additionally, Send to Kindle emails now supports EPUB (.epub). Later this year, we’ll also be adding EPUB support to the free Kindle app for iOS and Android devices and the Send to Kindle desktop app for PC and Mac.

If the format of the document that failed is supported (listed above), please ensure the document is not password protected or encrypted, and try sending it again.

You can learn more about sending personal documents to your Kindle in our product info pages: https://www.amazon.com/sendtokindle

If you would like immediate assistance, please contact customer support at +1-866-321-8851 (US customers) or +1-206-266-0927 (International customers).

Yours sincerely,

Amazon Kindle Support

The letter doesn't make much sense. The mobi format is still supported whereas, in practice, the epub format is not. Hmmm. Things seem to be in a state of transition at the moment and maybe there will some sort of resolution later in the year.

Reviving My Kindle

Read this 2013 review of the device

I'm trying to renew my relationship with my venerable Kindle Paperwhite 6th Generation that I purchased in China back in 2014 or thereabouts. It still works fine but I've been neglecting it. I tend to watch alternative news videos on the Internet and read short articles but my actual digestion of books has slowed considerably over the past six months. I also spend perhaps too much time watching movies and various television series. 

This is an unhappy situation that I am trying to address. This evening I came across a short video by one of my favourite historians, David Irving, in which he was talking about 1956 Hungarian uprising. In researching for a book about this topic, he become aware via CIA files that he had access to, that in its initial days at least it was an anti-Jewish uprising. The book he wrote is titled "Uprising" and I have a copy of it in my Calibre library. I used my Kindle email address to mail it to myself so it was in the Amazon Cloud and then downloaded it to my Kindle. It is now ready for reading.

I wasn't sure whether David Irving was still alive but he is, now aged 84. I'm interested in the Hungarian Uprising because it was the first time that I was made aware of world events. I was aged seven in 1956 and I remember the nuns at the school I attended being very grim-faced about what was happening. Like most historical events, it has been simplified to the point where I seven-year old could understand it. The brave people of Hungary rose up against their Russian Communist oppressors but were ruthlessly subdued. That's it.

As David Irving explains however, 1945 marked the return of the Jews who had fled Hungary during the war and they were put into positions of power in the newly established Hungarian government, especially in the secret police. This marked the beginning of a period of unprecedented suffering for the Hungarian people. Anyway I'm looking forward to reading his book and I must aim to read at least one book a month. I've been making my way slowly through Robert Kennedy's "The Real Anthony Fauci" on my iPhone but I need to set aside regular sessions for reading to make reasonable progress.

I've now have Robert Kennedy's book on my Kindle so I'll continue reading it from there. The problem with reading on my iPad is that it's now quite old (bought in 2015) and the battery is quite weak. My iPhone is new and the battery is still strong but continuing to read on this device will unnecessarily drain the battery, The strength of the Kindle is that one can read for hours on end without recharging and my Kindle battery remains quite strong even after eight years. 

So this can be considered my birthday resolution: READ MORE BOOKS!