# How to convert to kindle-mobi the fast way?



## Jesuslatschen (Mar 23, 2011)

Hello there!

I am looking for a way to convert my ebooks in pdf and chm format to kindle's mobi. I tried calibre, which works quite well in 50% of the time. The other time it either bails after some time with an error or takes eternities to process. 

I just stopped the conversion of two book wich had taken more than 150 minutes already! 

So is there some command line tool for win or linux, whatever, to convert those files to mobi?

Before you ask: pdf looks ugly on the kindle imho and chm doesn't work at all, so...


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## Mike D. aka jmiked (Oct 28, 2008)

I've found that Calibre is one of the better ways to convert PDF to mobi. There isn’t any good way to convert anything other than very simple text files. You might try sending the PDF to your Kindle through Amazon and letting them convert it. Details are in the User's Guide (as I recall).

Mike


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## Alan Ryker (Feb 18, 2011)

pdf is a pain!

When I sent pdfs to amazon, they still came back as pdfs. just, I guess, optimized for the kindle.


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## pidgeon92 (Oct 27, 2008)

Alan Ryker said:


> pdf is a pain!
> 
> When I sent pdfs to amazon, they still came back as pdfs. just, I guess, optimized for the kindle.


You have to put the word _convert_ in the subject line. That is the _only_ word you put in the subject line. Only then will Amazon convert it to mobi.


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## Alan Ryker (Feb 18, 2011)

pidgeon92 said:


> You have to put the word _convert_ in the subject line. That is the _only_ word you put in the subject line. Only then will Amazon convert it to mobi.


Thanks much! I've got some tech books I'm going to try this with. and apparently I could use some practice at reading manuals.


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## TheSeagull (Oct 25, 2009)

PDF isn't viable for converting. To get a good PDF "conversion" you'll need to OCR the PDF and then convert the text.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

TheSeagull said:


> PDF isn't viable for converting. To get a good PDF "conversion" you'll need to OCR the PDF and then convert the text.


I'd say it depends mostly on the PDF in question. If it's all text anyway, you can probably do fine. There are also programs that convert PDF to something like a Word file. If you're having trouble with formatting, try doing that first, formatting the word doc the way you want (or make it a text doc) and then convert to Mobi. You might get a better result.

A PDF with lots of embedded images, charts, etc. or odd formatting like columns and things that cross them will NOT convert well.


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## Alan Ryker (Feb 18, 2011)

I think OCRing is only an issue with a pdf made from images. The text is imbedded in one built from text, and so there's no need for the computer to perform Optical Character Recognition since it can get the text directly.


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## Bjorn2Read (Mar 24, 2011)

First, you need to convert PDF to a word-processing format - there is no getting around that. I use a commercial software program - Nitro PDF Professional (google it). Once your "book" is in Word, WordPerfect or any other normal wordprocessor, do a "Save As..." and choose HTML.  Calibre will easily convert it to a MOBI ebook.


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## TheSeagull (Oct 25, 2009)

There are two different types of PDF - those with text and those that are entirely images of text. Obviously the latter is going to cause a lot more problems. I've found converting PDFs that there will be quite a lot of spelling errors so you may want to convert it to HTML and edit it with Sigil (or convert to MOBI and edit it with Mobipocket Creator) if that bothers you.


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