In the latest update (2999), I had to re-establish a link to KindleGen to compile to .mobi, but instead linked to Kindle Previewer. Compile seemed to go well, the compile opened in Kindle Previewer, but then it disappeared and I received an error message from Scrivener saying “a problem occurred” in the mobi compile process.
Is there an issue compiling to mobi with Kindle Previewer? Is it just an issue for me? Finally, if necessary, how do I change back to KindleGen? I would prefer to not do so, but will if I must. I don’t see a way to change the default Kindle link for compiling to mobi.
I just learned of Amazon discontinuing Kindlegen so I downloaded Previewer, connected to it, and tried it, and yep, same problem. It launches Previewer, goes through the conversion, and opens the book in Previewer. I can see the pages. About ten seconds later, Previewer crashes and it takes me back to Scrivener where it says “The following error occurred while compiling the Kindle book:” but there is nothing after the colon. The file is not where I told it to save, either. No mobi is created.
When I then open Previewer directly and go to Open Book in the File menu, it shows me an epub file in the Local/Temp/Scrivener folder, with a long string of letters and numbers as the file name. I am able to use Export to create a .mobi file, which will open in the Kindle reader app. I sent it to my Kindle and it works fine. So this is a suitable workaround to this problem, but a total PITA so I hope Scrivener can get caught up to it soon.
Is there no solution for this yet? I just had the same problem. My workaround is to compile it, Previewer 3 shall open the file. Very quickly on Previewer, type ctrl+X to export the file. Change the file name to a .mobi and specify your desired save location. You gotta do this quickly before Scrivener sends the error message.
In another venue, I was advised to just use epub. Many claim it doesn’t matter because Amazon converts both epub and mobi when uploaded to KDP. So that’s what I did with my upcoming releases. The problem, of course, is if you want a .mobi file that isn’t going directly through Amazon, like for personal use. Thanks for sharing your solution!
