KINDLE PREVIEWER 3 RECENTLY UPDATED
Amazon KDP’s most recent update to the downloadable Kindle Previewer 3 (version 3.20) includes some nice improvements.
- Auto-Advance View with adjustable speed allows click-free previewing.
- Thumbnail Pane with adjustable size shows you several pages at once.
If you haven’t used the downloadable Kindle Previewer recently, a few other features are worth noting.
In particular, just above the Thumbnail Pane, if your Kindle eBook supports Enhanced Typesetting, you can adjust View All to one of the following:
- Pages
- Images
- Links
- Tables
- Drop Caps
The View All option provides a convenient way to quickly check all of your hyperlinks, inspect all of your images, or find your drop caps.
Some other helpful features have been around for a long time now.
- Change the background from white to black, sepia, or green (though green isn’t available for iOS). What is relatively new is the green background.
- Try out different fonts that customers can select, such as Bookerly or Caecilia, along with different font sizes. The new type faces were introduced with Kindle’s new Enhanced Typesetting feature (which has been out for a while now).
- Switch between portrait and landscape mode (this has always been available).
- Though one thing that may seem backwards at first is that the device type is limited to tablet, phone, and Kindle ereader. Even the online previewer has limited the device types. If you own a few devices (or can borrow them), nothing beats testing your MOBI or AZK file out on an actual device. For those devices that you don’t have, the tablet, phone, and ereader options are designed to mimic the general experience. (If you upload your converted MOBI file to a Kindle Fire, look for your book under Documents instead of Books.)
- To preview on IOS, as in the past you need to download the AZK file. Click File > Export and adjust Save as Type from MOBI to AZK. You will need to use iTunes on the iOS device.
The two newest features, Auto-Advance View and the Thumbnail Pane have me especially excited.
In the picture above, you can see a preview of my newest book, Kindle Formatting Magic, which will be published in just a few days. Since the print version has 500 pages, I was very grateful for the Auto-Advance View. It is saving me from a tremendous amount of manual clicking. (I still do some manual clicking, of course, but this is a huge time-saver for me.) It’s also nice to see several pages at once in the Thumbnail Pane.
The prior versions of the Kindle Previewer wasted most of the space on my monitor. The Thumbnail Pane finally utilizes my screen space much more effectively.
I also appreciate the options to quickly find all of my hyperlinks, images, and drop caps using the View All option. I go from one hyperlink to the next, click on it, and check if it works. That is really handy.
My preview isn’t complete until I test my book out on several devices, but I always spend the most amount of time with the downloadable Kindle Previewer (considered to be more reliable than the convenient online previewer), so these updates are wonderful for me. Thank you, Amazon.
Write happy, be happy. 🙂
Chris McMullen
Copyright © 2018
Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
- Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
- Volume 2 on marketability and marketing
- 4-in-1 Boxed set includes both volumes and more
- Kindle Formatting Magic (coming soon)
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chrismcmullen 
Just an FYI, if you email your mobi file to you @kindle.com address, it loads up just like any kindle download, rather than landing in DOCs.
That’s a good point about email. My advice was for side loading. I side load out of habit from discussions a few years back (perhaps no longer relevant) that the email option had possible problems with not displaying reliably.
Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog.
Thank you for sharing. 🙂
Thank YOU for the update, Chris 😃
Reblogged this on Author Don Massenzio and commented:
Check out this post from Chris McMullen’s blog on the topic of Amazon’s update to their Kindle previewer.
Thank you. 🙂
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Being on a social security budget, I usually buy ebooks when there is a special – to keep my costs down. But when I try to review it, as they always ask at the end of each book, they do not publish my review because they say I haven’t spent enough money. Amazon isn’t TOO greedy are they!!
I’m sorry to hear that. Once you have spent a total of $50 lifetime at Amazon, you should be able to post reviews. In the past, there hadn’t been a minimum purchase needed to be eligible to review products, but unfortunately there were people who were taking advantage of the system (especially with seller central products), and the current review minimum has helped Amazon to combat abuse of the system, which has helped to restore trust in the review system.
It’s unfortunate that customers on a fixed income may take a long while to reach that $50 minimum to be eligible to post their reviews. Fixed income customers weren’t targeted with this policy. You could type your reviews on your computer in the meantime to save them, and once your total Amazon purchases reach $50, then you can use copy/paste to post your reviews.