How to Use Calibre to Convert eBooks to KFX Format (for the Enhanced Kindle Typesetting)
When Amazon announced the KFX format last year, they teased ebookophiles with features like hyphenation, improved kerning, and dropcaps, features which one could find in ebooks bought in the Kindle Store but you couldn’t make for yourself.
Now you can.
Early last month Amazon released a beta version of the Kindle Previewer tool which lets ebook makers convert and preview their ebooks to see how they will look in the new format, and now there’s an even easier at-home option.
A new plugin for Calibre called KFX Output lets you convert ebooks into KFX format to make use of Amazon’s enhanced typesetting. It calls on that beta release of the Kindle Previewer tool to make the ebooks, and then add them to your calibre library.
If you would like to try it yourself, here’s what you need to do:
- Install Kindle Previewer 3,
- Install calibre, and
- Install the KFX plugin (from inside calibre).
The plugin will only work with Epub files, so any ebook you want to convert to KFX will first have to be converted to Epub.
Or at least that is the way it is supposed to work; it won’t work for me (one of my competitors is having better luck, however). I’ve tried to convert a dozen ebooks over the weekend, and all attempts threw errors. (The plugin was just released, and it calls on a beta app, so this is not unexpected.)
If you would like to try it yourself, I’d love to hear about your success and failures. And if you have trouble with the plugin, or want to offer feedback and contribute to its development, please join the ongoing discussion over at MobileRead Forums.
I’m especially looking forward to Kindle screenshots showing your controverted ebook; it is going to be nifty to see that readers finally have access to the proprietary features Amazon launched last year.
image by M. Martin Vicente
