Align text in Kindle export not working in V3

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Hi -

Am trying to export my manuscript in the .mobi format (am using a New Format export to preserve some some font choices). When I open in the kindle app the text only appears justified and the option to align left is greyed out.

Any idea why?

Thanks!

2

Amazon has not often allowed much by way of options here for the reader. I recall one device a number of years ago that had the choice between ragged-right and justified (with the latter being the option), but in general they tend not to supply that as a setting. Odd they would have an option but grey it out though. Could be based on which font you have selected for display on the device?

3

There is the option for center justify or align left n the kindle (using an iPad). I’m using kindle fonts, when I change it doesn’t make a difference …

4

I’ll have to download that to check it out, but while that is doing so, if I had to guess I would say it is down to the difference between how it loads the .mobi files KindleGen creates, and how it treats book. The former it treats as “Documents” rather than “Books” for some reason.

If you try running the .mobi through a converter like Calibre, switching it to AZW format say, and try with that, does it work differently?

5

I tried that, the export option was for .azw3 which the kindle app said wasn’t a compatible format …

6

I’ve done some digging ant it seems for the “Alignment” option to be enabled in the Kindle app, the ebook needs to have “Enhanced Typesetting” turned on. Unfortunately, there is no way to turn this on in an ebook created outside of Apple’s system at the moment. Amazon automatically turns this feature on when you upload and publish a book through them, at which point the book gets converted to KFX format. So you won’t be able to test this feature until you have uploaded the book for publishing. Hopefully Amazon make this available to other books soon. In the case of Scrivener Mobi/KF8 books, there is no good reason the options shouldn’t get turned on because Scrivener doesn’t add any alignment information for the main body text, as per Amazon’s specifications.

All the best,
Keith

7

The inability to toggle between Justified (or Auto) and Left-Aligned could be due to the version of Kindle you’re using.

According to Amazon, Enhanced Typesetting features only work on newer versions of Kindle e-Readers, Fire tablets, iOS devices and Android devices. Note that neither Mac OS nor Windows versions of Kindle are included.
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G202087570

There may be other issues going on as well, but if you’re viewing the book on Windows or Mac, that may be why the Alignment option is greyed out within Kindle’s Display Options.

Indeed, on Windows 10, my Kindle reader application shows the Alignment option, but it is greyed out / unavailable. I can only read books in Justified display mode.

So, it could be that the book file itself (mobi,epub) does feature Enhanced Typesetting, but the Kindle software version displaying the book does not.