If you don't already know, the Amazon Kindle format is HTML. If you want to submit books for sale through Amazon's "Digital Platform" (DP), it basically tells you to convert to HTML no matter what source your book is in:
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Digital Text Platform lets you upload and convert your content from several formats. However, for best results, we suggest that you upload your content in HTML format, as Amazon DTP converts all uploaded content into HTML first. You can export or save many documents as HTML, e.g. from inside Microsoft Word.
HTML (.html, .htm)
We recommend uploading content in HTML format, usually as a single .html file. Please note that DTP supports a number of select HTML tags, but that most complex formatting options do not translate well to the reader. By default, we suggest that you use only the supported tags for your content and avoid CSS and other formatting inside your HTML.
Zipped HTML (.zip)
If your HTML content contains images or multiple files you'll need to compress all files into a .zip file before uploading. Important: All the files in the .zip archive must be in a single folder, without any files (like images) in sub-folders. If your content is viewable in a web browser, we recommend that you save it in the web browser using the "Save As Web Page (Complete)" option or similar, which will include any images on the page. The resulting files can be then put inside a .zip file.
MobiPocket (.mobi and .prc)
Amazon DTP will handle .mobi file formatting and images very well. Please note that only unencrypted mobi files are supported.
Microsoft Word (.doc)
Digital Text Platform converts all text formatting to HTML tags and processes images automatically. We recommend that you convert Microsoft Word files to HTML inside Word and make sure the formatting looks right before uploading the already-converted HTML for best results. Please check the entry on Word conversion for further information.
Adobe PDF (.pdf)
Although PDF is supported, due to the complex nature of the format and its suitability for print or display, DTP conversion may not be ideal. See the entry on PDF conversion for more details.
Plain Text (.txt)
Digital Text Platform converts all text to HTML.
Tip: If your content exists in a format not listed above, check the program in which you created it for a "Save As…" or "Export" feature, and export into .html format for best results.
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Amazon DTP Support : Supported Formats
Even if you don't convert, it says Amazon will convert to HTML anyway. As a book publisher, it is in your best interests to ensure your product is of good quality in that the layout is clean and there are no errors, and so it's a bit scary to just leave this up to some automated process by just submitting files to Amazon and having the DP do it. What I'm talking about is taking a digital book list in PDF format and making it available on Amazon's DP...without it going all awry through the conversion process. The best scenario would be to submit clean HTML books to the DP.
I've tried everything I know of: Using Adobe Acrobat, options in Quark, and a few other things. It all goes wonky. There is always something that goes wrong in the HTML code. For example, as soon as you get to italics, for some reason there is no closing HTML tag and so the rest of the book is in italics. Page breaks get all bunged up. Text sometimes overlap. WTF?
Am I missing something. Why is it so hard to go from one popular format to another?
I've heard Mobipocket's publishing utility (Mobipocket Creator, publisher edition) does a good job, but I haven't tried it yet because it's only available in Windows...our office is Mac. Anyone try this?
(The obvious question is: Why in hell does Amazon think HTML is the best format for digital books? But this won't help any of us....)
Any advice I can get it great, but what would also help me is if I can get this confirmed: Is it possible to convert from PDF (or Quark, whatever) to HTML without having to re-edit or reformat the entire document (i.e. book)?