OEBPS went through several revisions over the years, and in 2007 it became the official technical standard of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). Used by some of the very first dedicated electronic readers from the likes of Sony and Intel, it essentially consisted of a manifested ZIP archive that contained pages written in a form of XHTML, with CSS used for styling. The history of the EPUB format can be tracked back to 1999, with the version 1.0 release of the Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS). But given that it’s the reality when using one of Amazon’s readers, this seems a good a time as any for a brief rundown of the different ebook formats, and a look at how we got into this mess in the first place. Users shouldn’t have to wade through an alphabet soup of oddball file formats when there’s already an accepted industry standard in EPUB. If you think this is a lot of unnecessary confusion just to get plain-text files to display on the world’s most popular ereader, you aren’t alone. At the same time the Send to Kindle documentation noted that support for AZW and MOBI files would be removed later on this year, as the older formats weren’t compatible with all the features of the latest Kindle models. Granted this is still an improvement, as it represents a relatively low-effort way to get the open format files on your personal device but in sending the files through the service they would be converted to Amazon’s KF8/AZW3 format, the result of which may not always be what you expected. It wasn’t long before the original post was updated to clarify that Amazon had simply added support for EPUB to their Send to Kindle service. Native support for EPUB would make using the Kindle a lot less of a hassle for many folks, but alas, it was not to be. Accordingly, many users have turned to third party programs which can reliably convert their personal libraries over to whatever Amazon format their particular Kindle is most compatible with. But rather than supporting the open eBook format, Amazon had always insisted in coming up with their own proprietary formats to use on their readers. After all, it was a feature that owners have been asking for since the Kindle was first released in 2007. The story was picked up by all the major tech sites, and for a time, there was much rejoicing. In contrast, e-books might lose their readability in just about a decade or so, or maybe even earlier than that.Last last month, a post from the relatively obscure Good e-Reader claimed that Amazon would finally allow the Kindle to read EPUB files. Things are vastly different with the good old paper books as they continue to be perfectly readable even a century or more after they have been published provided such books have been preserved properly. So far so good though such forced upgrades also severely restrict the life span of e-books as the same will become junk a decade or two from now if companies continue to upgrade the e-book format and force users to adopt the latest formats. For users, they will have to source all of their e-books or other content requirements only from Amazon, something they have been doing anyway. The latest file format also includes a new image file format called JXR which boasts of a higher compression ratio as well as a new Bookerly font which is exclusive to Kindle devices.įor Amazon, upgrading to a new file format made sense as it will ensure their eco-system is protected and safe. ![]() Among the changes that the new KFX format comes with include better DRM protection so that it is harder for hackers to break through the security. The KFX applies to the seventh-gen and later Kindle models. Amazon is claiming the latest KFX file format marks a significant improvement over the AZW and AZW3 or Kindle File Format 8 that has been in use so far and applies to fourth-generation and later Kindle devices. The KFX format, meanwhile, refers to those e-books that have been created as per Kindle File Format 10. All of this comes on the back of an earlier development wherein Amazon implemented measures to prevent downloading of Kindle Unlimited titles via USB. In other words, the above is a way on part of Amazon to force users to shift to the new KFX format. As the e-Book Reader blog explained, the above has been done to make sure users are able to download e-books in Amazon’s new KFX formats. ![]() Amazon has issued a new Kindle update for PC and Mac that is mandatory for users to install if they wish to continue downloading any Kindle e-books published as of January 3, 2023.
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