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I have had half a dozen iterations with Amazon, and am still not seeing a clue.

My Kindle collection, including C.J.S. Hayward: The Complete Works, is by physical construction converted from submitted, handcrafted, single-page HTML original documents. This and other works open with front matter, including a table of contents built in HTML, clearly intelligible but without any markup saying "This succession of p.table-of-contents containing one link each is a table of contents."

Recently I received a Kindle quality notice that my book should have an NCX table of contents. I've repeatedly asked that Amazon either explain how to do that with a plain old HTML original, or withdraw the request. I've repeatedly been pointed to https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201605710 and failed completely in my efforts to communicate that the instructions given are ePub-specific and not an option in a single HTML file:

2. Use your TOC as an HTML TOC (recommended)
For customers on older devices, this saves many clicks when they want to jump to a part of your book.
Activate a guide item in the Kindle Go To menu to make a link to the HTML TOC accessible from anywhere in the book. To do this, reference your TOC in the navigation document with a landmarks nav element (sample code below).
In the epub:type attribute, set "landmarks" as the value.
In the epub:type attribute, add a link with "toc" as the value.

Sample code: 
<nav epub:type="landmarks">

<ol><li><a epub:type="toc" href="table-of-contents.xhtml">Table of Contents</a></li></ol>  
</nav>

What, if any, options are there to make any appropriate changes that are feasible within an HTML source, and/or ask Amazon to stop asking for ePub-specific features on a single non-ePub HTML source?

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  • Good luck with that. My very limited experience is that they want you to convert the book to their own .mobi format so it can support their kind of TOC and they can render it unreadable at their whim,, and those with "older devices" can just go hang.
    – Zeiss Ikon
    May 21, 2018 at 17:25
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    What are the consequences if you ignore these requests? If there are no consequences, add a filter to your email and divert them to the spam folder.
    – Amadeus
    May 21, 2018 at 17:37
  • @Amadeus, your reply is far from ideal, but it's ten times more likely than getting what I asked for. Please restate it as an answer so I can accept it.
    – Christos Hayward
    May 22, 2018 at 19:18
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    Just me, but this question is probably a much better fit at the eBooks.SE beta, since it's about ebook format, rather than writing.
    – inkista
    May 23, 2018 at 18:49

2 Answers 2

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If you have or can get hold of a couple of pieces of software, one being Microsoft Word (any old version) and the other being Calibre (free to download here) then you can use the instructions on this website to create an NCX table of contents in your HTML file:

https://litworldinterviews.com/2015/07/02/how-to-create-a-ncx-table-of-contents-for-amazon-upload-using-calibre/

I've read the document through a couple of times and it looks straightforward enough (there are pictures!) but if you want anything clarifying then I'll be happy to try to do so in the comments.

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What are the consequences if you ignore these requests? If there are no consequences, add a filter to your email and divert them to the spam folder.

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