ENHANCEMENT: FRONT TOC FOR MOBI

[Stef Mcdaid]

In view of KDP's new rules about the ToC at the back of the book (they now want it at the front) is there a way to place it at the front AFTER the title and copyright page - currently, the front ToC is before the title page, which is not recommended by KDP who state it should follow the copyright page.

Perhaps a simple bookmark in the Word doc/html file could be a target for the ToC placement. Or some kind of option in Calibre to place it after the 2nd page break etc.

references:

https://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2016/03/11/amazon-takes-aim-at-scammers-but-hits-authors/

https://kdp.amazon.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=288445&start=0&tstart=30

Calibre version used: 2.53

OS: Windows 7

[Kovid Goyal (kovid)]

conversion has no way of specifying a location for the toc, but you can
use the option "Do not add Table of Contents to book", and insert the
ToC yourself in the source file. Then the resulting MOBI file will have
the ToC wherever you inserted it.

There is a slight wrinkle if you are starting with a DOCX file -- namely
that although the ToC will indeed be where you placed it with the Word
Table of Contents tool, the ToC button on the Kindle will not work. In
order to workaround that, you will need to convert the book to epub, open
it in the calibre editor, and add a guide element in the epub pointing
to the location of the toc, then convert the epub to mobi. The toc
button will then work.

I will look into fixing docx input so that this workaround becomes
unneccessary in the next release of calibre.

[Stef Mcdaid (stef4mail)]

Thanks for th quick response, Kovid!

Yes, it's the dead Go To button that is the real issue (I convert Word html to mobi with the same problem - Word html is far more faithful than .docx conversion, and also line breaks made by paragraph symbols are not read by .docx conversion, which means one has to use a 'space after' attribute if converting from .docx to avoid cramping of text lines).

In the past I have made a front ToC autogenerated in Word and also had the back ToC so that the Go To button works, but it seems that KDP have moved the goalposts.

I look forward to the new .docx input (and hopefully the Word html file input.

I would like to say a HUGE thanks for the work you and your team do...

[Stef Mcdaid (stef4mail)]

"add a guide element in the epub pointing to the location of the toc, "

I have been unable to figure out how to do this, Kovid - would it be possible to expand on what a guide element is, and where to place it?

[Kovid Goyal (kovid)]

Just google epub guide toc, for instance:
http://epubsecrets.com/where-do-you-start-an-epub-and-what-is-the-guide-section-of-the-opf-file.php

[Kovid Goyal (kovid)]

Fixed in branch master. The fix will be in the next release. calibre is usually released every Friday.

 status fixreleased

[Stef Mcdaid (stef4mail)]

Thanks yet again!

You rock!