With most books on Kindle the cover is displayed even when the device is shut off. I think this is called a “thumbnail” but I might be wrong. This “thumbnail” is not showing up on my kindle with the epub book I generated. I have an older kindle that appears to accept only mobi, so I first exported that from Kinder Previewer.
I have checked the option “add html cover page”, but it seems to have no effect. The cover is included in the book regardless of this option, and the “thumbnail” still doesn’t show up on my kindle.
I’d have a look at this thread, and see about making the conversion with Calibre instead of Kindle Previewer. The Mobi file the latter creates isn’t very good for just reading with, it was meant for uploading to KDP back when Mobi is what they accepted.
I don’t know if that will solve your thumbnail problem, but it might, and it should improve the overall formatting too. I’d also try Calibre’s AZW3 format too, only very old Kindles will be unable to read that, and it is overall a better format to use, as Mobi has been deprecated for a long time now, and Calibre’s converter probably no longer receives updates to it.
But if you really do need .mobi, check the “MOBI output” tab in the conversion dialogue, and delete the “[PDOC]” tag. As I recall having the book tagged as a personal document could cause the thumbnail to not appear, on older devices.
Converting via Calibre produces the “thumbnail”. I just want to make sure that the epub I produce will show up in Kindle (via Amazon) in good shape and that looks likely now. Many thanks for the great support!
It adds an actual section to the book, like the ToC is a section, or each chapter. Mainly it’s a legacy option for old book readers that did not read the cover image metadata, as the cover would otherwise not show up anywhere at all. With most modern book readers you want to leave it switched off, because it could even result in two cover images to page through.
I know it’s not exactly relevant to my original question, but I’m curious about something else. I’ve tried to find the answer, so far without success, so perhaps you would be kind enough to help.
When I open my epub file in Kindle Previewer, it says that it is “optimising” the book. To me, that sounds like it is making changes, but the epub file itself emerges unchanged. What exactly is going on? Is this “optimisation” something that occurs when the book is published at Amazon, behind the scenes, so to speak?
I wouldn’t have the foggiest notion, that is something Amazon would have to answer. I can say that it wouldn’t change the original that you opened, for sure, whatever it is doing is internally saved somewhere temporary and probably not in ePub format.
Amazon is changing the ePub3 standard e-book in Kindle Format 8, which is meant to make the e-book readable on all Kindle devices. You can find the rules for their conversion on Kindle Direct Publishing.
It can also ruin the interior design of your e-book when the layout is not standard chapters and scenes.