Where is my Ebook that I just bought from Amazon Kindle to my PC? I am new to Amazon Kindle ebooks. I am using my computer to read Kindle ebooks. I am using Kindle-for-Pc software. I just downloaded an ebook, but I cannot find it anywhere. I need to find it so that I can backup in my flash drive, in case something happens to the computer. I can perfectly read the book from the Kindle-for-Pc program, but I need to find the actual ebook, since it was not free and I don't want to lose it.

I have Windows 10 and also use the PC software. Mine are stored in my "Documents" folder in subfolder "My Kindle Content". That would ordinarily be "%HOMEPATH%\Documents\My Kindle Content", but I have changed the location of my Documents folder to another drive.

On the Kindle app's toolbar go to "Tools|Options..." and click on the "Content" tab. Here you will see the location of your files along with a button giving you the option to change that location.


Are there studies on the optimal amount of rows/columns per page? Are there studies on the optimal amount of rows/columns per page as far as usability ease of reading of large ebooks (e.g. hundred+ pages)?

I can see at least three distinct factors playing into this (may be more):

The physical necessity of flipping a page as an answer being a cost
The raster action of the eye (e.g. moving the focus from end of last line to start of next line) being a cost both physically AND concentration wise.
Tnd the fact that you may lose concentration either from flipping a page, or having to recall what was on last page, if page flipping is too frequent.

The measurements can be (at least those I can think of) either reading speed, the content retention, eye tiredness, or mental tiredness.

The Studies reveal that personal choice is defined by each person and varies considerably.  72 characters is the old schools typewriter format. According to Wikipedia this is often maintained out of tradition.

The Effects of Line Length on Reading Online News(Wichita State University, 2005)

  Summary: This study examined the effects of line length on reading speed, comprehension, and user satisfaction of online news articles. Twenty college-age students read news articles displayed in 35, 55, 75, or 95 characters per line (cpl) from a computer monitor. Results showed that passages formatted with 95 cpl resulted in faster reading speed. No effects of line length were found for comprehension or satisfaction, however, users indicated a strong preference for either the short or long line lengths.

Besides orientation you must also consider font size in combination with screen size, to calculate characters per line.  But in the end yes there are studies, and they say everyone is different.


Is reading "What if?" by Randall Munroe on kindle satisfactory? I would like to buy the xkcd Book "What if?" for my kindle. But since graphical elements are important to get the complete dose of fun and nerdgasms, I would like to hear from someone who bought it whether the kindle version is good or not.

Amazon writes on the books page that the book is "optimized for larger screens" but doesn't specify how disadvantageous a kindle is in comparison to a 'real' book.

I think this depends on your requirement for font sizes.

Just download the free sample (can even be done from your Kindle device) and flip pages until you arrive at the first pictures. For me they are quite small, but large enough to read the text. You can also select the pictures to view them full screen.

Another way of reading this is not buying it at all, but converting the web pages. This can be done for example using the grabmybooks browser extension. Note that it relies on Calibre for the conversion from .epub to .mobi. The result looks similar to the book for me.

I may add that the latter way did not always work well. In the past I had problems with pictures missing or being black. Now it works, but I cannot say if this is due to bugfixes in grabmybooks or Calibre or if xkcd used another image format (or version) in the older articles.


Kindle Paperwhite Custom Fonts I am getting  really bored with the old kindle fonts, I'd really like to add some new ones. Is it possible? (I have a 6th generation Kindle Paperwhite)

I understand it is possible to add new fonts without jailbreaking as follows:

Remove DRM from Kindle files and make them convertible
Convert Kindle eBooks to AZW3 file with Calibre and embed the font in the Kindle file
Transfer the converted files to Kindle

There's additional details at this article.  The article states that the method works with the current Kindle eReaders and the older ones that support KF8 format eBooks.  I believe this includes your 6th generation Kindle (aka Paperwhite 2)

I have not tried this method myself, so "your mileage may vary."


Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 2 - Reading progress line has disappeared Recently I've updated my Amazon Kindle Paperwhite (2nd gen) to the 5.7.3 version.
And everything was fine.

But then suddenly while reading a book I'd noticed that a line with my current book reading progress and estimated time had disappeared from the bottom of the screen. I know that previously there was a setting "Read Progress" in a book menu, but now I can not find it either.

So now I can see my current position in a book only when I tap the screen and look for this info in the footer block.

Does anyone know, how to get back that useful line on the screen? Maybe the setting was moved somewhere else?

Have you tried tapping on the bottom left corner of the screen while reading a book? You can switch among various options:

%, Loc
%, time left in chapter
%, time left in book
blank (ie, your current state)


What should I consider when purchasing a solar charger for my Kindle? Inspired by a comment on Are there any solar-powered ebook reader? suggesting a stand alone solar charger.  I search and found several inexpensive charges ranging from 4000 mAh to 10,000 mAh.

I have a kindle paperwhite & keyboard when shopping for a solar charger with a mini USB what specifications should I look for?

I've worked quite a bit with solar chargers for Kindles. The main Kindle models I've powered are Kindle 4/5's and Kindle Keyboards (3rd edition). Let me try to answer your specific questions first, then I'll go into more background in case it's useful to you and others:

e-ink Kindles need somewhere between 500mA and 700mA to charge effectively @ 5v DC. They have a battery of roughly 2000mAh depending on the model, so charging can take several hours. Most integrated solar chargers include some or all of:

a solar panel :) These range from milli-watts fitted to the battery case, to several watts where the battery is often separate from the panel (but may be stored at the back of the panel).
voltage regulators and convertors between the panel and the battery and the battery and the device it's charging
a Li-Ion battery, similar to those fitted to mobile phones. Some with larger capacities include several batteries.

There are various options available, depending on your budget and what you need.

Solarmio provide integrated covers with an inbuilt solar panel on the front and light inside the cover. These are available for the Touch and the Kindle 4 http://www.solarmio.com/en/4712389290168.aspx (for the Kindle 4 model). I have 2 of these currently and they seem to work very well with no complaints from the end-users (schools in Kenya). Similarly, http://www.worldreader.org have used lots of these cases and they are reliable in use.

I also use 3 watt panels which I connect to a generic USB battery-backed recharger. The battery stores the charge from the solar panel. From my testing of using 3 watt panels to charge Kindles directly (without an intermediate battery) caused the Kindles to hang and need rebooting, the charging didn't deliver consistent voltage (5v DC needed by the Kindle). For more info here's a blog post I wrote about some of the challenges http://kusaidiamwalimu.org/musings-on-solar-power-and-usb-batteries/

Picking suitable panels and batteries can be a challenge to find ones that are reliable yet cost-effective:
- Many integrated small battery-based units with small built-in solar panels don't generate enough charge to be usable (I've tested them in various countries including Kenya near the equator in peak sunshine).
- Similarly, most of the models I've bought have failed with the Lithium-Ion batteries swelling sufficiently to explode the case. These tend to be delivered from China or Hong-Kong, via eBay. I deliberately bought various no-name units to test their viability for my e-reader projects where I provide Kindles to schools in Kenya, etc.

The 2 models of batteries I've found useful include a 5000mAh unit, I pay around £10 per unit on eBay.co.uk, and small 1800mAh batteries from Volt http://getvolt.dk/en/ (they don't currently sell them to end users, I happened to meet one of the founders and eventually obtained several to support my e-reader projects in Kenya). Here's a recent blog post about using the Volt batteries in Kenya http://kusaidiamwalimu.org/solar-powered-kindles-with-e-volt-batteries-at-nyabondo-school-oyugis-kenya/

I'd love to learn more about how other people fare with solar charging of their e-ink devices. FYI: I'm also going to be creating larger solar charging systems to charge tablet-based ereaders and devices e.g. such as Nexus 7 and iPads.


Is there a small easel or book butler for an ereader? Is there something like a small easel or book butler to be used with an ereader?
I don't like the way the device feels when I hold it.  I like holding a book, and I like hardcover books where the pages lie flat nicely.

There are mini easels (like these from Amazon), I have seen them in all kinds of different sizes in shops catering for artists (in Germany).

Given that your ebook is rigid (all that I know are), you can easily make such a book butler by using a 20mm thick block of wood, the size of your ebook reader, and routing a slot slightly wider than your readers thickness about 2/3 deep.
If you don't have a router, you can use three 6mm pieces of wood, and from two cut off a 15mm strip and from the rest the thickness of your reader + plus a bit, then glue the 4 pieces so created on top of the full size base

###   #######################
###   #######################
#############################

You put the ebook with the front to the left, and the ebook leaning like this: /.

Make sure the "groove" is not to deep to cover any buttons that might be at the bottom of your reader. While it might be OK to take it out when you want to switch it off, doing so for every page turn is probably not what you want.


Are there any ebook readers that do not have web browsers Every e-book reader I have seen includes some type of web browser.  Are there any that have no web browsing at all?

Yes, there are many, both software only and hardware ebook readers that don't include web browsing especially older models.
For many hardware ebook readers
it doesn't make sense to have a webbrowser because they have no touch screen and no virtual keyboard, making it impossible to specify a URL. Most of these devices have no way to connect to the internet that would be a requirement for webbrowsing. (E.g. the older (2007) sony devices).

For software ebook readers it often doesn't make much sense to try and compete with real webbrowsers, they are better of focussing on enhancing ebook related HTML display functionality.

Before the kindle formats and ePub there were other formats that were not HTML/XHTML based, such as PDF (but there were a few other with a more efficient format than either of those as well) and readers for those ebooks don't have a HTML rendering engine built in, and web browsing would not be a natural extension to that kind of renering engine at all.


Efficient way to colour code text? For the purposes of learning Chinese, I want to write every character in a short novel in a colour that corresponds to its tone (pronunciation thing). The book is an epub, and I've been doing the html inside it like this:

<span style="color:#64B4FF"> 今 </span>

This works to display the colours correctly, but the file is now so big and unwieldy that highlighting and dictionary lookup has become unacceptably slow. Is there a more efficient way to do this, or a better file format to use? I don't want to convert to pdf because then I would lose the ability to do dictionary lookups.

Possibly relevant info: the characters are in utf-8 right now, there are only five possible colours, and I'm using moon+ reader on Android with the goldendict dictionary.

If you want to stick with EPUB, you can save space by giving each tone a class with a short name and defining the class's color in the CSS. So the example you gave would look something like this:

<span class="a"> 今 </span>

The CSS file, named something like stylesheet.css, would define the class like this:

span.a {
    color: #64B4FF
}

You'd need to add a link to the stylesheet in the head element of each HTML file like this:

<link href="stylesheet.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"/>

The path in href is relative, and this example assumes stylesheet.css is in the same directory as the HTML file.

I don't know if this approach will save enough space to speed up highlighting and dictionary lookups, but it's something to try.


Paperwhite error on open book, how do I get the error log? I downloaded a .mobi file format book from Baen it opens fine on Calibre, and on my Kindle keyboard.  When I try to open it on my Kindle Paperwhite I get this message

 Error

 An error occurred.
 If you purchased this item from Amazon,
 delete the item and download it from the cloud.

OK

I have reloaded it to the Paperwhite twice, to validate it is not a one time error, I have not got a new download from Baen yet.

I would like to know if/how I can identify what the error is.  This is a DRM free work, and before reading it on another device or getting a new download from the publisher I would like to try and use Calibre to correct the error.  It would seem that identifying the error would be the first step.

Does the Paperwhite keep an error log, and if so how can I access it?

I don't think they make an app for the PaperWhite since it would appear it is Amazon content dedicated and not based of Android because I recall being able to install error logging apps from Android on my Kindle.

Since this is a DRM free book I would omit the usage of Calibre.  That said I would download Kindle Previewer and browse the book for any possibly display issues and see if you can duplicate the error.

If you have found no display issues or get any errors when viewing the book through Kindle Previewer I would install KindleGen and unpack the .mobi file back to .epub format.  Then run the .epub file through IDPF validation.  If you want you could edit the .epub file in Calibre but I would do it manually, that's just me, and then you can use KindleGen to convert back to .mobi format.

If you find any issues and have paid for the book I would contact the buyer and inform them you have an issue with the .mobi file and would like a refund if you cant correct the issue.


how to properly declare metadata in epub3 couple questions about metadata in epub3:

is the namespaced opf attribute (opf:file-as="", for example) deprecated?
if so, does anyone know why?
given that it this format is deprecated, what is the correct format for including attributes in the opf namespace?

Oreilly's epub3 best practices declares the following as the correct way to use the property attribute:

<meta refines="#creator" property="file-as">Murakami, Haruki</meta>

but, the namespace is not declared as they suggest in the following paragraph:

You can also use property values, which must include the proper prefix, from any of the reserved vocabularies or any vocabulary for which you’ve declared the prefix:
    <meta property="dcterms:dateCopyrighted">2012</meta>

wouldn't this mean that the following should be the correct implementation?:

<metadata
    xmlns:opf='http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf'
   ... >

<meta refines="#creator" property="opf:file-as">Murakami, Haruki</meta>

is there a comprehensive list of values allowed for the property attribute (role, meta-auth, etc)?

thanks in advance!

The difference between the suggestions from the source you pointed at is how you define the target element. You should be aware that a lot of the metadata options available in an EPUB 3 can have multiple occurrences.
E.g. 1
<metadata ...>
    ...
    <dc:creator id="author">John Doe</dc:creator>
    <dc:creator id="author1">Jane Doe</dc:creator>
    <meta property="dccreator:file-as">Something</meta>
    ...
</metadata>

The above example is problematic because the meta element is trying to work on the dc:creator element, except there are two of them. Which one does it go for?
E.g 1 - Solution
<metadata ...>
    ...
    <dc:creator id="author">John Doe</dc:creator>
    <dc:creator id="author1">Jane Doe</dc:creator>
    <meta refines="#author" property="file-as">Doe, John</meta>
    <meta refines="#author1" property="file-as">Doe, Jane</meta>
    ...
</metadata>

You should use the refines attribute and the simplified version of the property attribute (e.g. 'file-as') when there is more than one occurrence of the target metadata element. The refines attribute allows you to specify by the id attribute of the target element (which according to specs must be unique).
If you do not specify a refines attribute, and the property attribute doesn't refer specifically to a reserved list of EPUB 3 spec metadata (Dublin Core), then the meta element is deemed to be working on the publication as a whole.
Other Examples
// We only have a single dc:title in our metadata so we can use the extended property attribute in the meta element
<metadata ...>
    ...
    <dc:title id="title">My Book</dc:title>
    <meta property="dctitle:file-as">Book, My</meta>
    ...
</metadata>

// This is only hypothetical, as I'm not sure whether the publication itself would require a 'Metadata Authority' definition.
<metadata ...>
    ...
    <dc:title id="title">My Book</dc:title>
    <meta property="meta-auth">Awesome EPUB Organization</meta>
    ...
</metadata>

EDIT: In regard to what meta::property values are allowed have a look here: Archived from the original on epubzone.org here
Also, the latest official IDPF specifications for EPUB Open Container Format may be found here: https://www.w3.org/publishing/epub3/epub-spec.html#sec-core-media-types


Embed a CDF file into an EPUB 3 Can a Wolfram Computable Document Format (CDF) file be embedded in an EPUB 3 container? If not, is it possible to convert the CDF to HTML5 and then embed it?

In principle a CDF could be embedded in an EPUB3 file, but it would not bring you much. You would need a reader that knows how to extract it and play it and those are currently not available.

For viewing (playing?) a CDF you need to download and install software. This a problem for acceptance, a problem that Wolfram would have avoided if they could, e.g. by writing the viewer in JavaScript. Not reaching acceptable performance of a JavaScript based implementation of a CDF viewer is probably the most likely reason why this is not done, assuming there are no other technical difficulties.

In this table you see how CDF compares to HTML5 and JavaScript, so it seems only a subset of the CDF functionality could be achieved by conversion to HTML5.


How to self generate a Kindle ebook with Enhanced Typesetting so that I can left align the text? I generated an HTML page and would like to send it to my Kindle. I'm trying to have this HTML book left-justified in my kindle.
I used Calibre and Kindle Previewer to generate Mobi, KDP, and HTML files, but the option to left-align the text is disabled in all of them.
Is it possible to left-align a personal document? Is it possible to generate a book that will be left align?
If it is possible, which tools should I use and how should I send the book to my device?

I managed to have my left-aligned book inside my Kindle, but I warn you that was way harder than I thought.
You must convert your book to the Amazon proprietary and undocumented format, KFX. This format will allow you to have an ebook with Enhanced Typesetting. Just books with Enhanced Typesetting can be left-aligned.
Now here are the instructions to have your left-aligned book in a dozen complicated steps. Next year, Amazon will probably have changed its tools and this info will be outdated.

Install the wonderful Calibre
Install Amazon Kindle Previewer 3. It should be installed in the default location under the same user account as is being used to run calibre.
In Calibre go to Preferences (the icon may be outside the ribbon) -> Add plugins -> write KFX in the text box -> Select "KFX Output" plugin, right click on it, and install.
All the magic is made by the KFX Output plugin, here is KFX plugin documentation. Any problem you have in this process, the answer is probably in this thread.
Now I'm considering that your book is already added to your Calibre library. This is a good moment to check and fix the book metadata.
Right-click your book and select "convert individually"
Next dialog, top right, select KFX, run and wait for it to finish.
Now connect your Kindle to your computer using a USB Cable. No, you can't email your file. You can't use "send to kindle". You must transfer it using a cable.
Right-click your book, select send to device, send the specific format to device, select KFX and send it.
Eject the device.

Now you have your left-aligned book in your Kindle. I don't know if it is worth the trouble.
If you need to check if your book is correctly converted, rename its extension from kfx to awz8, open it with Kindle Previewer, got To View menu, Book Information and it must have "Enhanced Typesetting" supported:


How can I read notes alongside with text in Kindle readers? I was given a Kindle e-reader a couple of years ago and, after some hesitation, I've become addicted to it, so that now I have scores and scores of books on my device. Lately I've downloaded a few books which are accompanied by notes, either by the translator or critical notes to the text.

Normally in a paper book, such notes would be available as footnotes at the bottom of the page or else at the end of the chapter, and the situation is similar in the e-books I have, but the great difference is that I never know where a chapter ends and so I read the notes when I reach them, which may be dozens of pages later, when I have almost forgotten to what they refer.

Is there an easy way to get to read notes alongside with the text?

The short answer is no. The only way to make notes easier to read is to find a book that has been properly formatted to have hyperlinked inline notes. If a book doesn't have that, then you could either request it from the publisher or fix it yourself.


What is the easiest workflow to publish ePub files from highly structured database content? I have a large amount of highly structured data (Bible verse translations and commentary) in an SQL database that I would like to make available in as widely usable an ebook format (or formats) as possible. The formatting is going to require a little bit more that a flat text rendering to include section headings, verse numbering, clear delineation between types of content (translated text of Scripture formatted differently than commentary), linked cross references, and a Table of Contents.

I presume that I should be generating an in-between format of some sort such as an XML file based on my data set that can then be transformed using XSLT or a similar system to a finished ebook format, but I don't know what this should be. I don't want to re-invent the wheel any more than necessary.

Is this generally the right workflow or am I missing the boat somewhere?
What should the in-between format be? Are there standards for this that will make the secondary transformation easier than others?

I suppose I should note that this is not a one time project that I can hack together using some GUI tools or web services — the whole process must be scriptable from start to finish. I intend to make the ebook generation an option from an extant site as an export option with customizable data ranges, translations, etc.

I recommend you generate some mark up format supported as input for pandoc (i.e. markdown, reST, HTML) and generate the EPUB from that.

You should have no trouble scripting pandoc, but you would need some work automating the generation of the markup from your database (but not more than you would have generating XML).


How can I create internal links with Sigil? I would like to add some internal links to an ebook I have—namely, adding links from the Table of Contents to the beginning of each chapters, and links at the end of each chapter to the TOC.

If I had an HTML file I would had had no problem: a bunch of anchors, and that would have been all. But starting with the epub, I am not sure which is the simplest way to do it.

Well, it turned out that Insert->Link works even across files contained in the epub (and if it was really necessary I could use Insert->Anchor for inserting an anchor which I may use later). It is also possible to select some text, so that the link corresponds to the section selected.


What are the different file formats that eBooks are available in and which of these is most widely supported? I am a beginner to eBooks, and as somebody who has been "outside" of eBooks I've only ever heard of Amazon's Kindle and seen a variety of options for purchase on Google Play.

I have recently purchased an Android tablet. If I were to start buying my reading material as eBooks but after having a look at the various reader applications available, it seems they all support a different set of file formats.

What are the different file formats that eBooks are available in and which of these is most widely supported?

There is an extensive (though maybe not exhaustive) list of ebook formats on Wikipedia. The article does a comparison on the formats.

The most widely supported formats are epub and pdf (and mobi/prc / KF8 / AZW if you include Amazon Kindle). Of course, plain text is probably THE most supported format, but I'm assuming you meant something that supports special formatting etc.


How can I upload my 100+ ebook collection to kindle cloud? I would like to upload all the books I have stored in my calibre library to kindle's cloud so that I can synchronize my reading (whispersync "sync to last page read" function) across my android and kindle voyage. Is this possible?

I have seen the email to kindle function but have read that this can cost money and am unsure if I will have to do each book individually. I live in Australia and am confident with calibre use. None of my books have DRM.

This link provided by Woeitg: http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/02/07/upload-ebooks-documents-kindle-account/ Cleared up my confusion about emailing to kindle costing money. It seems this only applies only to kindle devices using 3G. appending the '.free' to the email ensures only wifi is used and no charges are applied.

If you use the Send to Kindle function, your books may end up stored as Documents. Kindle ownership gives 5 GB Cloud storage, so log into your Cloud Storage first and see how much you are already using (all your Documents back up here). If you want more storage, you have to buy it.

How to do it? I'd use Calibre's own download to disk function to put them on my computer, locate the files and right click to use the Send to Kindle. Yes, 100 books is a lot, but if you want to send big batches of data, I'd check with Amazon Customer service first to see if there is a way to do that. I suspect not unless you submit zip files, since they won't want their system flooded.


Can you use a Kindle without an Amazon account? I'd like to know if it is possible to use a Kindle reader without having an Amazon account, but rather only uploading the reader's own files into the device.

I just got a new paperwhite, and am reading my own books on it without registering. It nags you to register, but if you open Calibre, and then connect via USB, you can put books on, and it all works just as normal. The only thing you can't do if you don't register is to "buy" Amazon's drm books, or access the ones you've already "bought."

Although it is possible you may be able to transfer said books through your kindle desktop app, I haven't tried,don't really care.


How do I determine the latest firmware version for a Bookeen Odyssey? When I look at the page for downloading firmware it displays

  Cybook Odyssey Firmware Update - Version 5.2 (build 1780)

Is that the latest release, I red somewhere about version 5.2 build 1894 also.

If you sync via WiFi you should get version 5.2 build 1894. You can check if you have that version via the Settings → About ... menu.

The manual download page might be out of date with the actual version of CybUpdate.bin you download from there, or the download itself might be the 1780.

I have never tried to install that 1780 version as my Bookeen came with build 1894 and has not wanted to upgrade via WiFi (so I assume I have the latest version).


I can't find the mobi format ebooks I copied from my computer to my kindle via usb, what should I do? Transferring ebooks in mobi file to my kindle used to be hassle free. I just drag it to the "documents" folder and voilà! They're there.

What happened yesterday was different. I tried to move mobi ebooks to my kindle. The books were  transferred fine, I can see them on my kindle drive on the computer. The problem was when I opened my Kindle to arrange the books I transferred, they weren't there. I tried reconnecting my kindle to the computer and the books are still there. I don't know what's wrong.

File size can be an issue. I've found that if the book's file size is greater than 50MB, the file will transfer to the documents folder on disk, but not appear on the kindle. In my case, I used Calibre to convert mobi to azw3, which reduced the file size, and the book then appeared on my kindle.


Reading PDFs on Kindle device I have many interesting books and documents in PDF format. Can I read PDFs on Kindle in comfortable way?

My concern is, that PDFs are adapted to the print page size and Kindle screen is much smaller. Would the PDF be readable?

It is possible, but will need prior processing for optimal results.

You can use the free tool k2pdfopt to optimize PDFs for your reader's display size.

It can handle up to four columns, works with "normal" (using actual stings in the PDF) as well as scanned text and will turn your input PDF into a PDF with more pages optimized for your screen's size. Newer versions of the program can even text. Text reflow preserves images and even mathematical formulas -- which is something that Sony's built-in text reflow cannot do.

Download the program, set the options for your reader on a Windows/Mac/Linux machine and generate a new PDF with only one column, cropped margins and possibly larger letters. The conversion progress is largely automatic, just give it a try.

If you do not mind jailbreaking your reader, there are also PDF viewers that include k2pdfopt and so you can change font size and other parameters on the fly. These also have the advantage that you can use the PDF's table of contents (something the official PDF viewer does not support). The readers are all forked from the same project and only differ in how you input your data. They are KOReader (for Kobos and Kindles with a touch screens), KindlePDFViewer (for Kindles with keyboard) and Librerator (for Kindles with neither touch nor keyboard).

A clear disadvantage is that these programs seem to drain more battery than the official PDF viewer, but on the other hand reading is more convenient, because you can still read in portrait mode and your pages are preprocessed in the background (turning pages feels faster in large PDFs with many images). And battery life is still several weeks.

Other than this you can of course read in landscape mode. This can be quite annoying with multicolumn documents or if you want to go back just one page to look something up (may feel slow). It is fine for texts you read without going back and it's still the way to go e.g. if you have large tables in your document. I used it for text books as well for years, so it is not too annoying.

Another option is converting the PDF to Mobi using Calibre or Amazon's mailing service. This will usually fail completely in multicolumn documents, will remove images and destroy mathematical formulas. It will also often lead to page numbers or chapter names (if it is written on top of every page) in between the text.


What is the best way to scan paper books to digital ebooks? To make a long story short, me and my daughter have ALOT of paper books, and we would like to find a app that would let us "scan" the book in a digital format that can be used with my Kindle Fire, so we are not forced to haul around the actual book. Any suggestions?

It's probably not relevant to you at this point, but a service called Shelfie used to allow you to purchase heavily discounted digital versions of any physical book you already owned. You had to sign the title page and upload a photograph of it as evidence you owned it.

Very clever idea and addressed a need all of us have, but unfortunately the interface was cumbersome, some of the discounts were not that good and many publishers didn't jump on board to participate.

Unfortunately in January 2017 the company stopped offering this service and was sold to Kobo. (See this article: https://teleread.org/2017/01/31/shelfie-goes-out-of-business-tonight/ )  My guess is that at some point another company will offer this service, hopefully with more participation from publishers and more buy in from Amazon and other distributors. Even though this company did not exactly succeed, it acknowledged an urgent consumer need and I fully expect somebody to try it again.

As far as scanning the books manually and legally, that seems like a lot of wasted effort.

Even if you wanted to pirate ebooks (under the rationale that you already paid for the book once), it still isn't particularly easy to track down ebooks which aren't bestsellers (Harry Potter, etc).

The thing to keep in mind though is that often used copies of printed books are still much cheaper than digital versions, and that some books haven't even been digitalized yet.

Sometimes publishers can offer temporary price reductions for well-known ebooks (especially when they advertise on bookbub. Occasionally these titles can get as low as 99 cents or 1.99.  As a practical matter, it might be a good idea to set price alerts for books you want digital versions of. You can use a service like ereaderiq to do that.


Calibre ignoring font settings? I am using Calibre 2.49 on an Ubuntu machine and I noticed that in eBook viewer preferences, whatever font I set, calibre just displays the default font. I tried this on many ePub books. Here is a screenshot of my preferences dialog:

I tried reloading book, exiting calibre, but it didn't work.(The font size setting works fine, though).

If the ebook contains some definitions about the fonts to use, it takes the precedence over the default Calibre settings.

Maybe the ebook you are reading has some CSS rules that define the default font to use on the book itself (and probably the ebook even includes the said fonts).

You can try this yourself: this version of Treasure Island from MobileRead include font definitions for the text, and it keep using it even if you change the standard one on the Calibre settings.
This version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, always from MobileRead, doesn't contain any font definition in its CSS and it uses the default one as defined by Calibre.

It just works like that. You should look at the default settings in Calibre as a fall-back in case the book doesn't provide any information in this sense.

If you really want to change the font used during reading, you should edit the CSS file(s) inside the epub and remove all references to any defined font.

Calibre also has a plugin called Modify Epub that, amongst other things, let you remove internal font settings from an epub file. Once you have installed it, select the epub files you want to modify this way, click the Modify Epub icon on the toolbar, and select the corresponding option, as shown on the picture. It will remove both the custom fonts inside the book and the references to them on the CSS.

Please note that if you process many ebooks at once it may require some time to complete this task.


What is the technology behind e-Ink and why is it mostly used in e-readers? I would like to know the technology behind e-Ink and why is it used mostly in e-readers? Why can't it be used in mobiles?

e-Ink is, generally, a synonym of electronic paper. The form used in most e-readers is E Ink (proprietary and trademarked), produced by the E Ink Corporation. The technology basically uses microcapsules filled with white and black charged particles. The charged particles are manipulated by electrodes at the top and bottom of the capsule. When the top contains only white particles, the pixel is white. As more black particles are added, the pixel becomes darker until it becomes completely black.

The main advantage of eInk displays are that they offer superb contrast even in bright light (try reading a cell phone on the beach while wearing sunglasses). The primary disadvantage is that these displays are very slow relative to LCD, which makes them unsuitable for high frame rate applications such as video and many games.

e-readers are one application where high contrast is useful and high frame rates are not necessary, and so they have become the primary use of electronic paper technologies.


Turning demo mode on and off on a Kobo Demo mode is currently on on my Kobo. I would like to turn it off. How can I turn on and off demo mode on a Kobo eReader?

You can turn demo mode on by typing: demo mode on into the search box.

You can turn demo mode off by typing: demo mode off into the search box.


The value following "version" in the XML declaration must be a quoted string The xml string is the same on all the pages (.xhtml files)
Here is an example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops">

I appreciate the help!

There doesn't appear to be an issue with the code after I tested it in a dummy ePub with ePubcheck 3.0.  Since you haven't mentioned how the ePub was created I would trouble shoot by:

Creating a new XHTML file and re-doing the contents of the old XHTML file in it to make sure there isn't any issues with the file or if the file is corrupted.
Check to make sure your closing tag is proper or the document ends with </html>.  This can be tested by opening the XHTML file in a browser such as Chrome and you might get a code error in red at the top.
Sometimes empty lines after </html> can cause a validation issue with ePubcheck so make sure to remove them.
If this was created in an application like Sublime or BBEdit you can always validate the XHTML.


Things to consider for choosing an e-ink pdf ereader for science books and papers I have taken a look at A4 size e-ink ebook readers for pdf files.

I have found five models:

SONY DPT RP1
Good e-reader 13.3"
Onyx Boox Max Carta
Dasung
Icarus A4

And there is Remarkable, but that is only 10" large.

They have quite the same price, around 700 $.

On what properties should I evaluate these models, if I want to read scientific books and research papers on them?

There are some advice at

Looking for recommendation on eBook reader for university textbooks

Dedicated ebook reader?

Reader for scientific papers - what should I look for?

What 's the best way to read a scientific PDF?

Reader for scientific papers - what should I look for?

What other properties should I look for in this ebook reader market niche?

In a personal conversation, somebody raised my attention to the following concerns:

many ebooks have colourful pictures and diagrams, so a black-and-white e-ink display might not be suitable for all documents and a tablet could come handy
one does not want multiple devices but one portable thing, that has a proper web browser

I'm still in favor of a large e-ink reader but these are valid concerns.


What are risks and disadvantages of publishing DRM-protected books for an author? What are risks and disadvantages of publishing DRM-protected books for an author?

Clearly some authors think that there are disadvantages of using DRM since they publish books without (e.g. Eric Flint).

Please note that I'm looking for hard data, not opinions.

"DRM reduces sales" is an opinion. "Switching from DRM to non-DRM raised sales by 30% for author XYZ" is a fact.

"People prefer to buy non-DRM books" is an opinion. "Sell-through, or buys-per-click from publishers with DRM for the same book is 20% less" is a fact. "A survey of XYZ large sample of users confirmed that 50% won't buy DRM-protected books" is a fact.

Self-published authors (who are going to be the only authors with the opportunity to decide on DRM vs DRM-free) will need a support mechanism for handling DRM-related problems. After all, any distraction from writing limits your income (see the famous clam sundae digression, p.25  in RA Heinlein's The Cat Who Walked Through Walls for an example.)


Is it possible to make a Kindle ebook look exactly like my InDesign / PDF file? I have a book that I designed using InDesign and it has a very specific layout where some pages refer to other pages (kind of like analogue hyperlinks).

I need to convert it now into a Kindle-readable format (including the older B&W touch devices), so what I wanted to ask is if it's possible to keep absolutely the same layout as in my printed book and what the possible solutions to achieve that would be?

Thank you!

PS I add some pages here so you see how it looks... In the best-case scenario I want those links within the book to be clickable on Kindle. Worst-case - the user can do it themselves, but at least I want to keep the same layout. It doesn't have to be spreads.

Given the restriction of the book being viewable on the older eInk Kindles—no, you will not be able to replicate this layout perfectly. Particularly with images spanning page spreads, but also with precisely formatted blocks of floating text, your only real option for replication is a fixed layout ebook.

Fixed layout books, as you might expect from the name, lock the layout so that it cannot be changed. This allows for absolute positioning of page elements and precise control of positioning. Reflowable ebooks, on the other hand, are designed to be completely flexible, so that they can be viewed on devices of any size and so that users can change font size, typeface, margin, and any number of other display options.

Fixed layout books are largely limited to tablets; certainly, the older eInk Kindles do not support them. Instructions for creating fixed layout books are available in section 4 of the Kindle Publishing Guidelines. You may be able to use Amazon's InDesign plugin to create your file if you end up deciding to make a fixed layout ebook.

EDIT: Note that while it is theoretically possible to replicate your print book exactly by composing it entirely of screenshots of the book, Amazon mandates against this in section 3.6.7 of their guidelines: "Do not render large chunks of text as images. If an image contains whole paragraphs of text, it should not be an image. Instead, it should be HTML."


Can Kindle books handle side-by-side texts? In the realm of bilingual print books, there are many "side-by-side" story books in which one page tells a story in one language, and the facing page tells the same story in another language.  This allows language students to quickly glance from one page to the other when they are struggling to understand the story.

I'm trying to work out the best way to replicate this in a Kindle book.  Ideally, I'd like a way to show both languages on the same "page" of the kindle reader, so that regardless of screen size, sentences that mean the same thing both appear on the screen at the same time.

Thus on a small screen, perhaps three sentences of English would appear, and then below them, three corresponding sentences of Spanish.  And on a bigger screen, five sentences of English followed by five sentences of Spanish.

I haven't been able to find a way to do this, however.  Thus I'm wondering if the best options available are:

Heavy footnote use, where secondary language sentence appears in a footnote following every sentence of the primary language,
Separate by chapters – primary language chapter followed by secondary language chapter.

Option #1 is cumbersome to build but potentially more useful to the language student than #2, because of the difficulty of navigating back and forth between chapters.

Perhaps there's some other option that I'm missing?

You might try using a two-column per page method for translation, where column A has your source text and column B has your target text.  With this method the source and target paragraphs can easily be spaced so that the first line of each of the source-target paragraphs are in perfect alignment with each other.

I've been using this method to do a bi-lingual translation of a German hardcover book.  I'm writing Adobe .PDF files, (which are non-reflowable) so I'm able to write 2- and 4-column glossaries, page indexes for each chapter, and a cumulative page index at the end of the book.  I'm also able to do this translation on a page-by-page basis that's in sync with my source book's pages.

Since my eBook will be a .pdf encoded eBook a reader will be able to read the eBook with virtually any of the available eBook readers.  However, that being said, I tested a couple of my two-column .pdf pages using Amazon's on-line Kindle reader and found that the Kindle reader was unable to render my two-column side by side page translation format, even though Kindle's are supposed to be able to read .pdf files.

The two-column aligned paragraph method I'm using has proven to my satisfaction that learning is much faster and easier when the eyes have only a very short distance to move to read the translation of a word, phrase, sentence, or even a complete paragraph.


How do I make Calibre convert CBZ to EPUB without images shrinking or conversion? I've got comics in CBZ format with pictures in 2k or 4k pixels tall and when I try converting them to EPUB, Calibre shrinks the pictures to 1k or under, making them very blurry to view on a mobile or tablet.  Is there a setting or type of script I can use to convert each picture to its own EPUB page and not have Calibre shrink the picture?

Try Kindle Comic Converter.  Despite its name, it works for all types of readers, and can output EPUB.  Be sure to select the generic reader output, enable Color Mode, and select EPUB as the output format.


Is it possible for a Book to have multiple ISSN? It is obvious that a serial may be published in multiple books. Thus a single ISSN could have multiple ISBN releases.

How about the otherway, Is it possible for a book, to be published under multiple Serial? Thus that single ISBN belongs to multiple ISSN.

Cross Reference: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/59872/is-it-possible-for-an-book-belongs-to-multiple-serial

A single book/journal/whatever will have a different ISBN for each edition and variation, except for reprints of such, where the reprint will have the same ISBN as the original.

A series of books can (and most probably, will) have separate ISSN for print (the p-ISSN)) version and electronic (the e-ISSN ) version. The series can also be assigned an unique L-ISSN, that is based on the ISSN of the first published version.

Thus, a book, when included as a part of different series (with different ISSN) will have a different ISBN, since it will be published as a separate edition of the book for each series, even if contents will be the same.
Only case I can think of, where the ISBN will be the same, is reprint of the whole series, but then again, most likely the ISSN of the reprint will be the same as original, too.

Sources:

ISBN Agency

Wikipedia entry on ISSN


How can I add a news website that does not have rss feed, to Calibre? Some of the news websites do not have an rss feed. Is there a way to add such websites to Calibre as a news source?

You can use a service like FetchRSS to create a feed from the news site. It'll give you a feed URL to add to Calibre.


Internet access on the 3G Amazon Kindles? I had a 3G Kindle back in the day (2 years ago), and one of my favourite features as a traveller was the whispernet experimental web browser.  It was slow as a dog, but hey, free internet in most countries - the only country I visited that year where it didn't work was Bosnia!

Then it died a sad death.

Now I'm looking at buying a new Kindle, and I'm finding it hard to establish which Kindles - of all the modern variants - still have a web browser with this free slow-as-a-dog internet available?  Fire? Touch? Others?

I have various Kindles including:
My Kindle Fire first model, second edition, WiFi - it can access any web site over wifi
My Kindle 4 WiFi and Kindle 5 WiFi can also access any site over wifi

My Kindle Paperwhite 3G can access Wikipedia.com over 3G. It asks for a WiFi connection to visit sites such as google.com This concurs with Nathan Osman's comment on your question.

So in answer to your question, all the kindle models I have include a web browser. They can access most sites using WiFi, however the newer 3G models are restricted to wikipedia and amazon by Amazon.

PS: Even on the older Kindle Keyboard 3G models I found they sometimes asked for WiFi when I tried to visit sites after a while. However if I first visited the Amazon store then the 3G connection worked correctly for other web sites. I tried this approach on the Paperwhite 3G however I was still asked for a WiFi connection when visiting sites such as Google so there seems to be a policy-based restriction on newer models (possibly to save Amazon from data charges?)


Are there any rugged ebook readers out there? The ebook readers that I have used are all somewhat flimsy. I am looking for a device I can take along when camping this summer, without having to fear too much for breaking it along the way. Not talking about dropping my backpack in a crevasse, but something that at least withstands the  pressure in my crowded backpack. I can of course pack it at the side, but then it is more like to get busted when I bump the backpack into a tree.

Something like the a Panasonic Tough-pad, without the price and shortened battery life of a non e-ink display.

I have read What are my options for reading an ebook in the bathtub?, and waterproofing is one nice thing, but putting things in a zip-loc bag doesn't make the reader more robust.
If I cannot find nothing I probably take an old Kindle, packed with the face against a matching piece of aluminum sheet and hope that suffices.

Take a look at the earl, it is an android device with a 6” Flexible, sunlight viewable, E-ink screen (1024x758) with front light. It also comes with a solar panel, so you might want to put it on the outside of your pack (as long as you don't go hiking in the UK).

It has not been released yet, but it should be available this summer (I certainly hope I have mine by then). Price starts at $299 if you pre-order (the crowd funding campaign is over).

Being Android based you should be able to install an ePub reader like the one from Graphilos Studio on it. At the bottom of the meetearl.com page it says ePub, MOBI and PDF are supported, but to me it is not clear if that software is pre-installed or isn't.


SVG covers: which size must be used? I'm planning to convert some books I wrote to the ebook format.

The covers were made by me in SVG using Inkscape, without any embedded raster image, and the text is converted to paths, so I don't even have the need to embed fonts.

Since SVG don't have "dimensions", but rather "proportions", which width/height ratio must I use to have the better result?

Since you can only specify one size, and not have the selected image depend on the devices resolution, you best take something that is as large as the largest expected screen format. I would at least go for 758 × 1024, but you can consult this table and decide for yourself.

Scaling down is normally OK, whereas scaling up always introduces artefacts.


Can I increase the volume of *Read out Loud* in my Adobe Reader? I have Adobe Reader V 10.1.8 on my laptop and it has a Read Out Loud feature that reads the text in the e-book. The problem is that the volume is too low to hear what the reader is reading. Even with my laptop volume at 100% this is a problem.

Is there an application I can use or another way I can manually increase the volume of the Read out Loud feature?

Check Adobe Reader's internal volume:

Go to the Edit menu, then Preferences....
On the left, 2/3 of the way down, is the category Reading. Click on that.
You should see a box labeled Read Out Loud Options.
There is a Volume selector ranging from 1 to 10; make sure that is high enough.


Tracking time spent reading on a kindle? Is there a way to track and export time spent reading on a Kindle?

I'm setting a goal around reading books several hours a week, and I would love to automate the tracking.

Amazon seems to track furthest page read and your bookmarks and highlights, but I can't find any way to track time spent. Ideally, I'd like to export this data as JSON or CSV.

I discovered an answer to this in this quora thread:

The only way I've found to do this is to get the latest firmware for the Kindle Paperwhite and enroll yourself in "Kindle FreeTime". This is a program intended to restrict the content that children can read while tracking their progress. It provides reading time, books read, pages read, etc. Why this is hidden behind a feature that is 100% directed at children is unclear to me. But if you don't mind occasionally entering a parental control password (I just set mine to a single letter) and jumping through a few hoops, I'd checkout FreeTime.

I verified the solution, and wrote up a guide. Using Freetime, you can definitely track these metrics.


Using the same javascript library several times in an ebook I would like to develop responsive ebooks, and lucky me I found that iBook Author allows to include javascript in the books. This works through inserting the HTML widget in a small box to the text.

What is the best practice when one uses the same javascript code again and again inside the book? What if I would like to use e.g. d3.js several times to create figures? Do I need to insert it every single time to the given page, inside the given widget? Can I reuse parts of the code, store d3.js in some place, so all the widgets can use that piece of code several times on different pages?

The best practice is to store your .js script in a folder labelled JavaScript inside the .oebps folder, then have your HTML point to that script / directory whenever you need to employ it. I have to confess though that I did not understand most if your question with the 'tiny boxes' and such.


does using DC superhero images in a fan/trivia ebook consitute infringement? The ebook will be a compilation of Fan facts and trivia. some part of the book i will be using images from DC characters. Would i need to ask permission to dc in order to use the images or do i just need to state that in the copyright section of the book? thanks.

There is no simple yes or no answer, but there are some online tests to help determine whether it is fair use.

https://copyright.columbia.edu/basics/fair-use/fair-use-checklist.html

http://fairuse.stanford.edu/charts-and-tools/#digital_images
http://librarycopyright.net/resources/fairuse/

Also, you should check the law stack exchange which discuss fair use issues like this: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/fair-use

I would check the DC site to see if they have any official statement about granting of such use.

I am not a lawyer, but my guess is that limited use of reduced-size or reduced quality images is acceptable as fair use as long as it doesn't detract from the property's economic value.

I think it would help to mention on the copyright page that the images were copyrighted and (often) trademarked by DC Comics.

Often with fair use, even though a publisher may feel that the use of the images constitutes fair use, they may seek permission anyway just to avoid the possibility of lawsuit. I'm guessing that DC comics might refuse permission as a blanket rule though....


Kindle doesn't show cover I just got a kindle as Christmas present. I got myself calibre and loaded 4 E-Books on my kindle. I can open and read every book, but unfortunately I just can see the covers of 2 of these 4 E-Books although I set them explicitly with calibre. Does anyone of you know the cause for this failure?

Edit I figured out that I couldn't see any covers because they had pdf format. I converted them to mobi and then it worked. But is it still possible to see a cover for pdf books? Because when I convert my pdf's to mobi the formatting is completely messed up. Or do you have any suggestions for proper formatting tools?

The PDF file format does not support cover images.

PDF was designed to show a faithful representation of printed pages.
Reflowing text to other page sizes typically is not possible; you should use PDF on an ebook reader only when the page layout is important.


How do I delete an undeletable book from my Kindle? I had made an ebook with Calibre and copied it to my Kindle through the USB cable. Then I tried deleting the book from the Kindle. The cover changed to the default cover, but it did not disappear. When I tried opening it, it said
"Item not available. The item you were reading has been removed..."

I tried rebooting the Kindle, but the deleted ebook is still there.

Try deregistering and reregistering your Kindle:

Have the Kindle online through Wifi.
Press Menu (three lines stacked).
Press Settings.
Press Registration.
Press Deregister Device and confirm it.
Wait a few seconds for it to take effect.

Repeat the above steps, but pick to register instead of deregister.

My collections had to be added back to the Device from the Cloud, and I had to set the parental control password again.


Setting up margins in ePUB and Kindle ebooks and @page rule I am currently creating an ePUB3 file for converting it to Kindle format, and for it be compatible to other ereading devices that support epub.

I noticed a directive in the css file of one of the DRM-free epub books that I am using to help me practice. It goes like this

@page { margin: 5px !important; }

After testing this it seems like this is used to add top, bottom, left and right margin spaces on the page. But it seems like (from the message I got while converting on KindleGen) that Kindle doesn't support this. Should I leave it as it is in my ePUB css file while converting to kindle hoping KindleGen to ignore it ? Also, do kindle page margins have to be specified separately or kindle devices work that out on their own with built-in settings. In addition to this, what do you think are the most optimum margins (top, bottom, left and right) values to set, in the @page directive and in the other devices.

Quite a few rendering engines are actually taking @page into account. Others like iBooks or Kindle are ignoring it and overriding the margins' values set for body with default values.

I can confirm @page works well in Adobe Digital Editions -- and some but not all apps + devices using Adobe's RMSDK.

To sum things up, you can use it to set a margin for each page/window/screen while top and bottom margins set for body are just applied to the first (top) and the last (bottom) page of every new (x)HTML file.

As regarding values, don't set them in em in this reflowable world of ours. The more you will increase the font-size, the more those margins will increase as well.

Px and pt will remain the same, whatever you do.

% will remain the same and be interpreted as % of screen, which is the most "reflowable-compliant" choice in theory. 3% of a phone screen < 3% of a tablet screen < 3% of a computer screen.


How to synchronize Kindle collections across all devices, including older Kindles? I have just started organizing collections on my bottom-of-the-line Kindle (the Kindle 4?). Despite selecting "annotations sync and backup" I'm not seeing these collections appear on my iPad and iPhone. I've spent 20 minutes reading through Amazon documentation and forum posts and I still can't figure out how to get my Kindle's collections in sync with my iPad.

Is it possible to keep Kindle collections in sync across all devices that can access Kindle content?

If yes, how?

If only in limited ways or among some types of devices, what are the limitations and which devices?

I am guessing you have already found Amazon's Organizing Your Kindle Content.  If every book on your devices is from Amazon, then you can do some organizing at 'Your Account' > 'Manage Your Device' > 'Your Kindle Library' or by using the cloud.  If you have works from anyplace else, then the prospects get worse.

I personally have some OCD issues that require my books be in some kind of order that is not primary based on who I bought it from and when.  I was trying to keep track organized with an Excel book.  I searched for solutions and read many articles & blogs, I strongly desired an Amazon/Kindle solution, the majority pointed to a single solution which I eventually adopted.  Calibre is that solution.

The only disadvantage the Calibre has it is a bit more difficult to connect wirelessly to your collection. I won't go into all it's advantages but, essentially it is your own personal library, that you can organize and store you books on, regardless of where it comes from.  My 1263 (current count) works are stored on Calibre, I download from Amazon, Smashword, Baen, Project Gutenberg, etc. directly to Calibre (on my pc).  Once a week or so, I sit down at the PC, remove some books from my Kindles, mark them as read on Calibre (tag 'read'), add some new books to the appropriate kindle ('paperwhite' for reading in bed, 'keyboard' for text to speech while commuting) and tag the books I am currently reading in Calibre by the device they are on.

I believe there is at least one wireless solution for connecting your Kindle to your Calibre, but in the end I stuck with using the USB connection, as by the time I need to move some books around, I need a recharge, so i get a two for one deal (load and charge).


How to run EpubCheck on Windows? How to run EpubCheck on Windows and verify ePub erros without uploading to validator.idpf.org?

First go to https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/releases and download the last version of EpubCheck as zip file. Unzip the folder.

Be sure that you have Java Runtime (1.5 or above) installed, if not go to http://www.java.com to donwload.

Check if the Path variable is set to the folder where java.exe was installed. If not, go to  Control Panel -> System -> Advanced System Settings, tab 'Advanced'. Click on 'Environment Variables...'. Then look for 'Path' on System Variables, click on 'Edit'. To the end of 'Variable Value', add a semicolon and the path to the folder where java.exe was installed.

Put the ePub file in the folder of EpubCheck.

In your console (can be the command prompt cmd), enter cd [path to the folder unziped of epubcheck]. Then run java -jar epubcheck-x.x.x.jar file.epub, where x.x.x is the version of the EpubCheck and file.epub is the ePub file.

The console should print the errors and warnings related to your ePub file.


How is an epub structured internally? I know from sources I do not remember anymore, that an epub file is a valid zip file containing (among other files) chapters as *.xhtml files, a manifest file content.opf and a table of contents file toc.ncx.

What is the file and directory structure of an unpacked epub?
Which files must be there (with fixed names?) and are there optional files?
What information is stored in the single files?

I am asking for a very basic epub file, so the version should not matter, but assume epub2 in case it makes a difference for you.

PS: I will probably ask for the content and structure of those files later, but for now I only want to know about which files are mandatory or optional and an overview what they contain, to keep the question more specific and answers short.

EPUB is an open format so you can find the standard specifications online. Wikipedia has a good article on the EPUB format.

If you want a brief description of the characteristics you just mentioned you can find in this article here.

Directory structure:

EpubFolderYouWant
   META-INF
      container.xml
   mimetype
   content.opf
   toc.ncx

Needed files:

mimetype
container.xml
content.opf
toc.ncx

And which information is contained in each file is described in the above mentioned article.


Creating an eBook with GIF animations I run a technical blog and publish articles regularly that have GIF animations. Examples: one two three.

I plan to aggregate a bunch of these articles into an eBook of sorts. I know I could break out the animations into individual, still images, but I think the fact that they are animated make them much more conducive to learning and involving for the reader.

As far as I know, a typical PDF does not allow for a GIF animation. If not for a PDF, what options do I have for a published eBook that also allow for these animations?

We can integrate the gif format in epub3 packages say as a background to div container or another option would be convert gif to mp4 format.


How to avoid sporadic page breaks in epub when using page markers? I'm inserting page markers to an epub file to then create a page list to reflect page numbers that mimic the print version of the book, i.e.:

Oddly, sometimes the epub breaks to a new page to start the paragraph following the paragraph which contains the page marker. This is the code for the attached screenshot:

Hostility of suffocation: Cea que nimpero eliqui dit as dendita tesenempos alignatiis evelit quas nos etur? Ehenti omnis rehent, occullo remolla num ea dus eum facit es sit facessed eos sernam dolupta ssequis sam es et qui commod quibust iostiis sus quiant aliquiam, sedi velis exped que ad evelignim laborrum et, quam et et pror apicipitata id que simus, si aborat ut am, sed ea quidige ndesed quas alibus et doloribus evenihit evendam ilictate quatatur?

Religion: Ehenti omnis rehent, occullo remollanum ea dus eum facit es sit facessed eos sernam dolupta ssequis sam es et qui commod quibust iostiis sus quiant aliquiam, sedi velis exped que ad evelignim laborrum et, quam et et pror apicipitata id que simus, si aborat ut am, sed ea quidige ndesed quas alibus et doloribus evenihit evendam ilictate quatatur?

Obviously, there's plenty of room for the "Religion" paragraph to flow directly under the "Hostility" paragraph, but it keeps getting kicked to the next page. I can't find anything in the code that would do that, and the odd thing is this only happens sometimes. Other places where I have inserted the page marker code, the pages flow normally as expected.

I cleaned up the code by deleting the excess id tags (these were added by inDesign when exporting to epub and were unnecessary), and that fixed it. Still no idea why this specific paragraph had issues and not others, which also contained excess id tags. Turns out, inDesign had added some nice little code to the CSS for the class "_idGenParaOverride-1" to ALWAYS page break after. So I guess the only lesson here is beware of the inDesign-created stylesheet...


How well do ereaders typeset? There are many aspects to good typesetting, such as

picking a good font,
kerning,
use of ligatures,
justification (flushed vs ragged) and
hyphenation.

Many interesting details can be found in e.g. Hans Peter Willberg's books.

Now, some of these aspects can be controlled by user (e.g. choice of font) and/or ebook author (ligatures). Others are controlled by the rendering software inside the reader at hand (kerning, justification, hyphenation). Arguably, these aspects are crucial for readability so reading devices should not be too dumb about them.

Compare, for instance, the same text (thanks, Mr Wells), typeset with the same line width and a similar font (URW Bookman L resp. Bookman) by Libreoffice and LaTeX, respectively:

Neither is absolutely impossible to read, but you get my drift.

My question is now: how well to different ebook readers typeset? Which algorithms do they use and can ebook authors help them along?

Long story short: Poorly.

The user control that you mention is one of the great strengths of ebooks, but the problem that it brings with it is that really precise control of the look of the page gets thrown out the window. Many (myself included) would argue that this is a worthwhile sacrifice. As I mentioned in an answer to a question about embedding fonts in ebooks, many devices will automatically override publisher styles. Even without that, though, the simple ability of users to change fonts on the fly means throwing kerning out the window--text that looks too tightly spaced in Times New Roman may be a little spread out in Bulmer.

Ligatures are another tricky area--one ebook I prepared recently had a font that used ligatures, and while it showed up fine on most of Amazon's devices, on Kindle for PC there were empty rectangles in place of the "fl" and "fi" ligatures.

Without getting into the justification vs. ragged right argument, Kindle at least will automatically justify your text, and further will take down your book if it receives word that you have forced the body text to display left-aligned.

Hyphenation rules are by and large terrible as well. Most reading systems will at least honor some of the various ways to turn off auto-hyphenation for things like headers, but not all of them do. Discretionary hyphens will usually produce a line break where you put them, but will not always leave a hyphen at the line break, which is decidedly suboptimal.

My business partner and I covered a number of these issues at Tools of Change 2013 a year ago. The slides are available at SlideShare. The bits on hyphenation in particular start on slide 38.

The best solution at the moment is to keep styling as simple as possible. Reading systems are in a state very similar to the Browser Wars of the late 90's, so we're in a lowest-common-denominator situation--complex formatting is almost guaranteed to look bad somewhere.


Full text feed content to Epub I know calibre can grab the RSS feed content to ePub content. But sometimes (most of the time actually) the RSS feed doesn't contain a full text. I also know that there some online service which could convert them to full text feed, but they don't work quite steadily. I wonder if there some Calibre plug-in for grabbing full text from a  feed?

In my impression, the main problem is that RSS is usually valid RSS, and the external full text isn't usually valid XHTML, so only browsers with complex parsing engines are able to make sense out of the latter. As most of web documents (websites, HTML) are seriously broken, it's quite hard to read them with a simple implementation. If you have a specific example, one might look into what the problem actually is.


How do I build multiple ebooks using common blocks of content and styling, such as title pages and CSS? I work in a university program with around 30 units, each of which produces a learning guide of 80 to 120 pages. Currently we supply them as pdf files, but I want to move to an epub (HTML/CSS) based solution so that I can set the styles once and have more semantically structured, reflowing text.

Each guide has a lot of commonality, such as the styling, title page header, introduction pages, etc. I am looking for a workflow and tools that allow me to reuse this content in every guide without too much manual effort.

Assuming you're familiar with HTML and CSS, and given that your content has a lot of commonality to it, it would be fairly straightforward to set up a template file with all the parts you need for an ebook. You could, for example, have a template made of files like this:

cover.xhtml
title.xhtml
toc.xhtml
prologue.xhtml
intro.xhtml
chapter.xhtml
appendix.xhtml
index.xhtml
about_the_author.xhtml
style.css
content.opf
(toc.ncx)
images/cover.jpg

The toc.ncx is optional but suggested (as noted elsewhere on this site) to ensure usability on older reading systems. The content.opf and both toc files have specific requirements for the content, as they're epub-required navigational files. The other XHTML files must be valid, but otherwise are more flexible in terms of content. The content of those template files could look like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:epub="http://www.idpf.org/2007/ops">
<head>
<title></title>
<link href="style.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>
 <body>

 </body>
</html>

The navigational files would have to have the information about the other files added to them each time, but that is fairly automateable with a minimum amount of scripting in a language like Ruby or Python.

In your CSS file, you could have default styles already built for the things you use all the time. You could even have default boilerplate styles at the top of the CSS file for all the basic element type (<p>, <li>, and so on) and then just add other CSS rules at the bottom of the file as needed—since the styles cascade, the ones at the bottom would overwrite the ones at the top if there were any conflicts.

All that's left from there is getting your document from whatever format the editors are using into HTML so that you can apply all the tags and then pass it along to the designers (unless you're doing ebook-last, in which case the issue is getting the file from whatever the designers use to HTML).

Hope that helps!


Calibre: Author with the word "and" in the name? Sometimes a book doesn't really have an explicit "author", but is rather authored by some group.  So for example maybe there's a book about Croatian politics that's by "The Croatian Studies Institute".  In Calibre, I'll put the group's name in the author field.

But if instead of Croatian politics, maybe it's about the politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and it's by "The Bosnian and Herzegovinian Studies Institute".  If I enter this in as the author, Calibre will convert it to "The Bosnian & Herzegovinian Studies Institute", and consider it to have two distinct authors, "The Bosnian" and "Herzegovinian Studies Institute".

Is there a way to tell Calibre, no, really, the one single author is named "The Bosnian and Herzegovinian Studies Institute"?

You can change default behaviour in Preferences/Tweaks:
# Splitting multiple author names

The default setting is:
authors_split_regex = ',?\s+(and|with)\s+'

When you clear that, Calibre won't split author names.


Convert two similar formatted files to two column epub I have two similar formatted ASCII files and want to convert the two into one *.epub ebook such that file1 is printed only in the left and file2 only in the right column.

In this case: The Italian version + the english translation of Divine Comedy / La Divina Commedia by Dante Alighieri.

Glad if someone can help out.

In general, you will probably not get good results on most devices when trying to do a two column layout in epub. There is no way of correlating one paragraph to another, which means you will probably run into situations where the page breaks do not work well if at all. In addition, many epub reading systems do not work well with floating text (which is how you would create columns).

If you'd still like to try experimenting  with it, I would suggest breaking the text of each book into paragraphs, interleaving them, and having the text of one book float left while the other floats right. Look out for paragraphs that run off the edge of the page and do not continue on the next page, though, as well as overlapping text at the top of pages.

A quick and dirty example of some code you could get started with:

This is the first paragraph

This is the first paragraph

and the corresponding CSS:

p.english {
width: 45%;
margin: 1.25%;
float: left;
}
p.italian {
width: 45%;
margin: 1.25%;
float: right;
}

As for the initial conversion, you might check out this question.


Is it necessary/possible to specifically target foreign-language "editions" of amazon? In addition to the original English, there are language-specific Amazon sites, such as, for Spanish, https://www.amazon.es/

I have created some bilingual books of works in the public domain, such as Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" ("La Isla del Tesoro"), and am working on others.

These are intended for those who know one of the languages (English or Spanish) well, and who want to improve their skills in the other language. These books would possibly find more appeal among Spanish speakers looking to improve their English than vice versa.

Yet, my "Treasure Island" book does not seem to be available on https://www.amazon.es/ (the Spanish-language site).

Do I need to do something "special" when publishing these books via CreateSpace to ensure that they appear in the Spanish-language amazon site in addition to the English site?

UPDATE

I was wrong; it is there after all (here), but I still question its availability for all the Spanish speakers in Latin America (everything south of the U.S. all the way through Chile) because the currency displayed is Euros.

Why are the books on the https://www.amazon.es/ not also sold in Pesos and Bolivars and whatever other currencies are used in those countries?

Amazon.es is amazon's website for Spain and not the Spanish language. Amazon has different websites based on a country (due to taxes, copyright, etc.) and not based on a language.

And I know that I cannot get access to ebooks in Spanish that are not in the US Amazon website if the author or the published didn't make it available here. So even though you can look at those other amazon.com  websites, you'll not be able to make any purchases.

So when searching a book in Spanish, I simply type the name of the book (either in Spanish or English) and add

  Spanish edition


Safari Books Online on Kindle Paperwhite experimental Browser This questions if for someone with a subscription in https://www.safaribooksonline.com and a Kindle Paperwhite, Does is it possible to read a book from safari books online on the browser of the Kindle Paperwhite?

Yes, I have tried and it works.

The login process is the same as in any web browser. Navigation within the site is a little difficult but book reading is quite good. However, I couldn't increase font size, but symbols and text were rendered perfectly.

They need to launch some optimized site for Kindle at least.


Publishing in serveral formats: what CSS code to use? There's the site "Can I use" to show which CSS keyword is compatible with which browser.

But is there the equivalent for books format?

For instance, I'm trying to make several book formats for different readers,

and I'd like to use the CSS selector :before or ::before,

but it's hard to find with which reader it's compatible, and the safer keywords, or the safer alternative in term of compatibility.

(Disclaimer: as many people here like downvoting every questions that is not 100% perfect. If you want to downvote me, refrain from it, and first tell me how to improve my question, constructive criticism is more productive and useful than hate downvote.)

First, it's important to keep in mind that css support on ebooks significantly lags behind css support on the major browsers. EPUB only supports a subset of css.
Among the many challenges of producing ebooks is that if you test the html first in browsers (as I do), the ebook reading system won't necessarily render it the same.

There used to be a matrix of CSS support for epub 3 reading systems, but it quickly became out of date and wasn't maintained properly. Indeed, I can't even find the URL for it anymore (maybe it's gone offline?) There's a mobileread wiki (I actually helped to create it a while back), but it's not well-organized or maintained.

Also, as Kindle became more dominant in the market, many people cared more about what is supported on Kindle. The Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines (PDF) is pretty much the main source of information for everybody, and it is updated several times a year. In the back is a table of supported css.  For example, on page 97 of this document, it clearly says that ::before is NOT supported on Kindle devices.

I think Apple publishes a similar guideline, but far less frequently and it's far less detailed.

You can always check the epub spec to see if this css must be supported, but whether it's supposed to be supported and whether it's actually supported on reading systems is another story. So it's still the wild wild west for ebooks...

For this reason, you probably have to do more testing than usual. Besides Kindle,  I usually test on one or two IOS devices, Google Play Books and Adobe Digital Editions (Windows edition).

Another thing is that css media queries were quickly supported by all the major platforms. So you could write queries to target different screen resolutions, and could have fallbacks in case the original css wasn't supported.

Postscript: It would be nice if  a wiki or a site like Can I use it were to have a section devoted to  ebook support. Unfortunately, the ebook world is significantly smaller than the web browser world and unusually dependent on the ability of  proprietary reading system's ability to support features.


Maintain font color when changing background color in ebook The chapter headings and some specific lines in the book are red font, which shows up fine in normal (white background) reading mode. But when toggling the kindle/e-reader to black or sepia background, the red font changes to white/brown along with the rest of the text. Any way to avoid this and maintain the red font regardless of the background? I'm using a very simple css for it:

p.red {color:#f00;}

Amazon may have resolved this for us, or it's just one of those things that worked itself out. I haven't changed the CSS at all after posting the question, but I DID convert the book to KFX format using the plugin for Calibre, and the renamed the KFX file with a .mobi extension, opened it in Kindle for Mac, and viola the colors are sticking:

What you're seeing here is red font displayed in "night mode" - so I don't know if it's a factor of the "basic" mobi format (which would have changed this to white text) versus the KFX format (which is what Amazon delivers to a buyer through the Kindle store), but I would presume that this would be preserved through the KDP publishing process. Never a guarantee though.

PS sorry, I don't have time tonight to post how I went through the above process, but I can if someone needs it and leaves a comment.


Why is Hard copy book black and white, but Ebook is color? I have two textbooks I was required to purchase for Web Design classes. I noticed that the hard-copy paper book version is entirely black and white, but the ebook is all color. Aside from saving on printing costs, why would this color inconsistency exist? Is this common in ebook publishing? One publisher is O'Reilly (well-known) and the other is PACKT (less-well-known).

Further, is it common that an author or book designer would take the time to get color images just right, only to have them be printed in black and white? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Obviously cost is the major concern, but often the importance of having color graphics in a printed book is overrated. For example, I have published a few print technical books with lots of screenshots, none of which would be better if the graphics were in color.

For example, a book specifically about css or layout or typography might not need color at all.

Yes, you're right that Packt and Oreilly typically use BW/grayscale graphics in their printed books, but I've also seen print examples from both publishers that are colorful. (Indeed, a lot of printed books about design are pretty awesome to look at).

When you're printing, you're trying to maximize royalties while keeping retail price low. When plugging in numbers via an online calculator for b/w and color versions of the same book, the cost differences can be substantial. One calculator shows it as costing 2x as much.

By the way, you have just described an easily overlooked advantage of ebooks -- the ability to include color graphics at no extra charge. I recently published a literary graphics with multiple interior graphics. I'm selling it at the minimum price (2.99) but if I sold it as print book, I'd have to increase the price so much that it wouldn't sell well.

(If you're buying a large number of print copies and  selling it  at workshops and conferences, the numbers  improve somewhat though).


Google Play Books unable to save margin note I just bought a new eBook a few moments ago and I went to mark a note for when I began reading it, something I've been in the habit of for many years.

I go to save it and there's a problem without any description for what went wrong. It reads...
"Oops! There was a problem saving your margin note."

Anyone have any ideas how to go about debugging this?

Looks like my Ghostery browser extension was messing with the site. I was able to pause it and reattempt and found the notes made their way through. I drilled down into the trackers that were blocked, one was "Site Analytics: Google Analytics" another was "Advertising: Technorati". It was the Technorati tracker that was required for the GPB notes features to operate.

It's a little disconcerting to see advertisements in the mix of GPB. Anyone know what the deal with that is?


Is it possible to add extra "Beta Features" to the Kobo Glo? In the settings of the Kobo Glo, one of them says "Beta Features" which has, Chess, Sketch Pad, Sukoku, Web Browser, Unblock It, and Word Scramble. My question is, can you add any more "Beta Features" to the device? Would it be possible to program them yourself?

I think that you need to do some advanced hacking, there is no official way to add more features to the default firmwares AFAIK.

Anyway it is possible to apply external patches and customized versions of the firmware; it is not something that I have done myself, but at MobileReads they have a complete section dedicated to Kobo devices' hacking.
In particular, you might want to start from the thread named "List of Tweaks / Hacks / Mods" that is an index of everything is being posted on the forum. There are many different new features/hacks/patches, each one of them has its own way to be added, so I fear that there is not a generic way to perform these modifications. You should look specifically for what you want to change and follow the instructions for that particular hack.


Where is the best place to get Calibre? If you search for Calibre you find multiple places to get this free ebook management tool from.  I know some people have downloaded it and got lots of junk at the same time. from others, I keep hearing that this is wonderful product.

Where are the safe/reliable places to download Calibre?

The calibre home page is at https://calibre-ebook.com As this is open source you can see what is included in the download. The source is on Github
In general for all downloads never download from a place that lists downloads always look for the author's home page. Or you can trust places you know about by other means than a simple search.


How can I extract some chapters or sections from an ebook into a new one? How can I easily extract some sections from an ebook and create a new one that will contain just those parts? It would be especially useful with omnibus ebooks when I want to read just some of the included novels.

Besides using a real ebook editor like Sigil, there is an easier way to do it.

Calibre has a very useful additional plugin called EpubSplit, that with a simple interface let's you select the single .html files inside the .epub and create a new ebook just from them; after the process is also possible to edit the metadata of the newly created ebook.

These tools only work with .epub files, to perform this kind of editing on other formats a conversion with Calibre should be made.


Any way to center whatever content appears on the screen? I've been writing an ebook in html and css. I have an image-heavy section in my ebook, and occasionally in the Kindle previewer, images will be pushed to the next "page". That's fine. What I'm wondering is if there is a way to vertically center the content on the current "page" - instead of having all of the content at the top, and a huge blank space below. Is there a css class or pseudo-class that applies to the content currently displayed or something like that?

I've yet to see an ebook reading system that handles vertical centering. The best you could do is insert mandatory page breaks before such images and give them some margin-top—but you'd have to guess at how much.


is there any way to convert/import microsoft word documnet to Adobe InDesign book Hi can we convert microsoft word document to Adobe InDesign book?
When I tried to open microsoft word document into Adobe InDesign, the software gave error as unsupported document.

If you know any workaround that will help a lot.

Follow these steps:

Create an .indd document
Set the page margins and document properties to mirror what you have on Microsoft word, or — better still — set these properties based on how you want your book to be.
Select File -> Place or Ctrl+D
From the dialog box, select the Microsoft Word file
Go through the Microsoft Word Import Options making sure you select what pertains to preserving the formatting of your work.
Import and apply character styles to your taste.


Can books be transferred from Nooks to Kindles and back? I'm currently using a Nook, but considering switching to Kindle hardware. Is there a simple way to keep books synced across devices, or at least to move purchased ebooks from one to the other?

You may want to try using the Calibre Ebook Manager with the deDRM plugin to get the ebook files, sans-DRM, and then move them onto the Kindle. It works, but it won't sync them or automatically move newly purchased books; each book must be done individually.
The Digital Reader has some helpful tutorials on how to do this:

To strip DRM from Kindle ebooks

To strip DRM from Nook ebooks

Note that DRM removal is illegal in some countries. Please read and follow your local copyright laws.


Is there any way to get a discounted ebook if I already have the book? I have a bunch of physical books, and I would like to have ebook versions of some of them. It doesn't seem like I should have to pay the full ebook price. I know about Matchbook, but these aren't books I bought from Amazon. Do any publishers give deals on their ebooks if you've previously bought the real book from them (don't know how you would prove it though)?

This would depend on the publisher, and as you mention, it's difficult to prove that you bought the book unless you bought it directly from the publisher and they have a record of it. Many publishers will offer discounts if you're buying both the ebook version and the print version, so it doesn't hurt to ask if you've bought directly from a publisher, but if it's from a retailer it's less likely.


What CSS can I use to change the background color of an epub on a Nook HD? I'm having a really hard time changing the background color of my epub on the Nook HD.

I've tried doing:

body {
    background-color: red;
}

(Not that I would actually use red, I just want to see a difference.)

Nothing.

I've tried putting a div around the whole thing, and doing something like:

#myDiv {
    width: 100%;
    height: 100%;
    background-color: red;
}

And, that almost works, but it doesn't expand the whole way. There is still white areas at the top and bottom that just stay a white background. Also, once a page ends, it only covers up until there's no text.

I've tried a bunch of other things too, but I just can't seem to figure it out.

Anyone have any ideas?

(And, yes, publisher's defaults is on.)

well this looks like a html/css question the height percentage in the css also needs that its parent has height as well

so you can try this.

html, body {
   height:100%;
}

and use your #myDiv coloring.


how to get books from computer to kindle how can I convert my kindle books (located on my computer) from pdf form to mobi so I can send them to my kindle?

It is rather easy with the software Calibre.
https://calibre-ebook.com/download

Check it out, just download the tool to your PC, go into it and load the eBooks you want to put onto your Kindle in Mobi.

Here is a helpful link for you:
http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/convert-your-pdf-ebook-to-epubmobi-for-easier-reading-on-e-readers-and-kindle-0129397#07r2Z3vQBThqivuW.97


Does a basic CSS file to produce acceptable documents exist anywhere? I am currently writing a processor to convert a specific website to EPUB and everything works fine except that the result I get, when read in Calibre does not look very nice I think.

I was looking for a CSS file to beautify the result but so far I have not been ale to is this thread Any opensource or free css stylesheets for books? but it dates back to 2016 and I was wondering if there was something more generic / up-to-date that could be used.

You can also try the Blitz general purpose stylesheet.


Is there a way to sync reading progress across multiple devices and platforms? I know you can already do this for the Kindle and between Android devices with say Moon+ reader installed. What I meant is for EPUBs and between platforms. I would like to read on my Android phone for example and then pick up where I left off on my desktop. Is this possible?

I'm looking for a solution that does not involve using Kobo or Amazon's apps.

As a general principle, no.  But most software vendors provide compatible apps for PC/Mac/Android. So if you will be happy using their reader app, you just install their apps and get synchronization across all platforms.

For instance, I don't own a Kindle, but I buy ebooks from Amazon and read them on both Kindle for PC and Kindle for Android

The same is true of Kobo.

What this doesn't do is let you sync sideloaded books, or any book not purchased from that particular vendor.


Why publish technical books only in hardback form and not in ebook form? Why would a publisher delay publishing a new book in ebook form? E.g.:

http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/physics/electronics-physicists/art-electronics-3rd-edition?format=HB

It is 2015.  Is the thinking that they are to make more money from the hardback sales, or is there some other technical reason?

One reason is that formatting a technical book for printing is 10x easier than formatting it for ebook. Often, people are using Adobe Indesign to handle the difficult formatting issues and while there is an epub export function, I'm guessing that it can't handle technical issues across platforms easily. When you print, you need only to worry about how the printed book looks.

Another issue to think about is that some technical books just work better as printed books. Stuff with lots of diagrams, indices, oversized pages. Sometimes programming books are hard to view as ebooks because the lines of code are hard to look at one page at a time while in printed books there is the possibility of having them on back to back pages. I have the wonderful Docbook XSL book by Bob Staynton, and even though the full book is online http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/  I eventually bought a hard copy because I felt more comfortable putting paperclips on key pages and keeping it near my side as a reference. Some references work better in print form for that reason.

One final thought is that because Amazon decided not to sell PDFs and ibooks doesn't do so either, the publisher can't just sell PDFs except from their own stores. It involves setting up an Adobe content server which manages the DRM. That's a lot of unnecessary work. I suspect if Amazon sold PDFs directly or if a company like Scribd became more popular selling PDF, then this argument would disappear because publishers could just reuse the PDF they used for the print copy.

By the way, I used to say only a few years ago that PDF sucked because it wasn't reflowable and the tablet screens were not large enough. Now, fortunately, 10 inch screens and higher are much more common. so that is no longer a minus for using PDFs for reading it as an ebook.


How does the 3G carrier designation limit a Kindle's use? I am looking into buying a used Kindle DX, and I've noticed that people describe their Kindles either as unlocked, or as belonging to a certain carrier (for example, AT&T). I don't live in the United States, and want to use the Kindle to read academic PDF's.

Does whether it is unlocked or not matter for this purpose? (I don't intend to use the 3G myself)

If you want to use the Kindle to read PDFs then the connectivity to the mobile network is not relevant once you have the PDF documents installed on the Kindle.

There are various ways documents reach a kindle, these include downloading them over WiFi and/or 3G connections. They can also be copied directly from a computer using a USB connection (using a USB cable to connect the kindle to the computer).

Here's more info, in case you are interested in knowing more about the 3G aspects...

3G is the main mobile network protocol available in many countries. Some kindles include 3G support, others may WiFi only, and some support both WiFi and 3G. A 3G connection uses a SIM card within the device, in this case a Kindle DX. Amazon use various SIM cards in their kindles. The main difference is which mobile / cell company they obtain the SIM card from.

AFAIK Kindles with 3G connectivity & sold in the USA have an AT+T SIM card installed. In some countries Amazon includes a SIM card from another company, Vodafone. The choice of SIM card can affect which countries the 3G Kindle works in. There is an interesting article on that topic, which compares the 2 configuration of Kindle 3 Keyboard devices.

Like you, I'm not quite sure why some sellers in the UK describe their Kindles as unlocked? Possibly it's to indicate that kindle might have a working connection abroad?