How do I modify the connection habits of my Kindle Keyboard 3G? I have Kindle Keyboard 3G, I use the text to speech for reading books while commuting.  If I leave the wireless turned on it uses up the battery pretty fast trying to keep and or find a 3G  or WiFi connection.
I would like to modify the behavior so it does not try and use the 3G and only checks for WiFi once an hour or so.  If it does not find WiFi it should wait an hour before trying again.
Per Kindle Help

Your Kindle automatically turns 3G coverage off when you connect using Wi-Fi. When you disconnect from a Wi-Fi network or if you move out of Wi-Fi range, your Kindle automatically switches back to 3G coverage.
For Kindle models that include free 3G, wireless connectivity is automatic (with no monthly fees or annual contracts). If you see one of the 3G network indicators (3G, EDGE, or GPRS) in the upper right corner of your Kindle screen, your Kindle is already connected wirelessly using 3G.

The general help does not seem to include any directions for modifying the wireless habits.  A solution that does NOT permanently disable the 3G would be preferable.

I've looked into this since you posted this and it's just not possible. Well, if you want to completely replace the existing OS and software, you could, but that doesn't really address your use case.


How to remove white space from the text layer in DjVu How to remove spaces and tabs from the text layer in DjVu document for better text search using the DjVuLibre library?

By removing unnecessary characters (and their xml tags), also the file size is reduced.

First, use the djvutoxml tool to extract a text layer in XML format from the DjVu document.

At the command prompt, type:

path\djvutoxml.exe path\book.djvu path\book.xml

Instead path parameter substitute your location on the disk.

Press Enter...

Then, using the regular expressions, remove the selected characters(placed between sharp brackets > <). You can use any text editor (that can do regex).

String to remove spaces:

<WORD><CHARACTER coords="\d*,\d*,\d*,\d*"> </CHARACTER></WORD>

String to remove tabs:

<WORD><CHARACTER coords="\d*,\d*,\d*,\d*">&#9;</CHARACTER></WORD>

Regular expression can also be written in this form. This deletes everything at once:

<WORD><CHARACTER coords="([0-9,]*?)">(&#9;| )</CHARACTER></WORD>

Original fragment:

<WORD coords="318,262,706,190">Hallo</WORD>
<WORD><CHARACTER coords="707,262,760,190"> </CHARACTER></WORD>
<WORD coords="761,262,813,190">World!</WORD>
<WORD><CHARACTER coords="814,262,860,190"> </CHARACTER></WORD>

Fixed fragment:

<WORD coords="318,262,706,190">Hallo</WORD>
[here was the code for the space]
<WORD coords="761,262,813,190">World!</WORD>
[here was the code for the space]

(You can see how large text strings have been removed. Here 62 characters to describe one space!)

Finally, use the djvuxmlparser tool to merge modified XML with DjVu document.

At the command prompt, type:

path\djvuxmlparser.exe -o path\final.djvu path\book.xml

Instead path parameter substitute your location on the disk.
Parameter -o defines the target file.

Press Enter...


Are there any games to Kindle Paperwhite 4? I have a Kindle Paperwhite 4 and I just wonder, besides reading books, are there any games to play on it?

Of course a Super Mario might be too demanding to the display. However, I suppose a crosswords or Sudoku should be technically feasible?

Games (and Apps) for Amazon Kindle Paperwhite are known as an Active Content and you can search Amazon Store for them here. Some of these games are for money, some are free.

However as stated here they are fully supported on Paperwhite 1 & 2 and partly version 3, version 4 is not discussed at all. You have to test each and one you wish to try. Please leave a comment to complete my question on this topic.

Regarding controls, I found an article describing basic kindle paperwhite game controls here. This can help you, if there are any games working on your device.


Can I share premium ebooks online for free? I want to make a website on which users can upload their ebooks and share them with other users of the website.

But I would like to know if it is possible for a user to buy an ebook online and then upload it on my website and share it with other users? (The other users can read and download the ebook for free.)

Is it illegal to share premium ebooks online?

Warning: I highly recommend consulting a lawyer for dealing with legal issues such as this one. The advice I provide should not take the place of proper legal counsel.

Unless you have permission from the copyright holder for the work that you are hosting on your website, yes - it most likely is illegal. There are a few possible ways one might deal with this problem and I'll briefly mention them:

Allow only verified users to upload content (this doesn't prevent verified users from abusing the system but it will add an extra roadblock for someone looking to dump a bunch of protected content)
Approve each item before publishing it (tedious and difficult to scale, but very effective)
Publish everything and wait for DMCA takedown requests (I mention this for completeness; I certainly don't recommend going this route)

If your userbase is small, approving each item (or even just the first submission by each user) is probably the way to go.


How to add a background image to each page of mobi or epub books? How we can add background image or fancy borders to each or any single page of mobi/epub book?
as I understand epub is in html format is it possible to add the background using the css files? but I am not sure if it will impact the book quality of re-flowable mobi/epub.

You could try with standard CSS rules and see if the results work for you.

Example for the background:

body {
    background-image: url(../Images/image.jpg);
}

You can also try other background rules (reference).

Same thing for borders, you can try standard CSS rules:

body {
    border: 1px solid black;
}

(Reference
 for borders, margins, padding).

You should play around a bit with these rules to find something that will work for you and adapt it to your needs; keep in mind that printed books and fixed layout file formats like PDF can be considered layout-based,  meaning that you can insert the content inside a predefined and customized page layout, while epub and other reflowable-text formats, viceversa, are mainly content-based, they don't have "pages" in the common meaning, their core is the text content to which you apply a style afterward.

My personal suggestion, if you need to apply these styles, is to not abuse of them.
An image background if used should be very light and subtle to prevent it to render the text less readable, and about borders, keep in mind that the most common ereaders have an average display size of about 6 inches, applying a border and its relative margins and padding will reduce the (already few) space used by the text, something that many users might find annoying.
The golden rule is to test all your custom styles on an actual ereader and balance the aesthetics with usability.


Is it possible to sync ebook app with desktop applications? Would it be possible to connect an ebook app directly to its PC application equivalent, so that it can synchronise its library without going across the Internet to the store?

e.g. A PC may have a hard-wired LAN connection to connect to an ebook store and download some ebooks.  If there is no 3G or wifi access in the same building, could the phone app then sync with the PC application to download the new ebooks?

This question is not related to a specific ebook publisher, and I'm most interested to do this whit a Kobo or Kindle ereader, or, if this is possible, with either.

Thanks,

You didn't mention if you wanted to do this over the network or over USB.

I've personally used the following approaches:

The Kobo app automatically syncs directly with the Kobo device when you attach the device to a computer using a USB cable.
I can copy ebooks files directly to my Kindle and/or Android phone when attached to my computer using normal drag-and-drop.
I can email ebook files to my Android phone and/or use Dropbox to access them, and when I click on them on the phone, they get copied to my local storage for reading.

None of these require accessing the ebook store from the mobile device.


Paragraph margins: CSS vs br tags I'm formating my fiction ebook using Sigil. For clarity between scenes/POV changes/scene breaks etc, I need to have certain margins between paragraphs. I decided I need three types of margins:

short-break: It's a single blank line between paragraphs. Example:

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

long-break: It's two blank lines between paragraphs. Example:

paragraph 1

paragraph 2

scene-break: It's a line of  3 asterisks preceded and followed by blank lines as follows:

scene 1

                             *       *       *

scene 2

(For some reason the asterisks show up in a grey row in this post, but it doesn't matter. Ignore the grey line.)

Accomplishing all of this in CSS is quite easy; works like a charm in Sigil, in an ebook extension for Firefox, in nearly all EPUB to Kindle conversions I tried, but not so well in epub readers for Android, for example. A lot (but not all) of them just blatantly ignore any margin set up in the CSS, no matter how high the priority of the CSS selector is or whether or not !important is present. I've also read that Kindle DX does not support CSS margins.

I tried using br tags instead of margins, and it does work better in that all Kindle, including DX, seem to read br tags correctly, and apparently more epub readers on Android interpret br tags correctly as well and thus show the margins I want.

However, I am not sure whether br tags or CSS margins are the recommended specification for ebooks, nor do I have any idea how will br tags (or margins, for that matter) behave in an epub reader like Nook or Tolino.

I'm using EPUB v3.0.1.

Suggestions on the best course of action? Thanks!

Semantically, the most appropriate element to use for section breaks is HR. (Whether it renders properly on reading systems is another matter).

According to HTML 5, HR is supposed to "indicate  a paragraph-level thematic break, e.g. a scene change in a story, or a transition to another topic within a section of a reference book". https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/grouping-content.html#the-hr-element

HR isn't necessarily a horizontal rule anymore! (this changed from HTML 4)

You can use CSS on the HR to change it from a horizontal line to extra space/longer margins/background image.

the HTML standard says that br elements must be used only for line breaks that are actually part of the content, as in poems or addresses. br elements must not be used for separating thematic groups in a paragraph.

https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html#the-br-element

In the past I have created classes for p to handle different kinds of section breaks. (I will start using HR instead to do that).

I would expect that BR rendering is not consistent among reading systems. I don't know if some of the older systems like K4 and below will render HR as a horizontal line or if you can override that.

Finally about testing on android readers. I have found that some of the minor reading systems apply their own CSS without regard to the ebook's own css. As a result, css rendering is hit-and-miss. Android-wise, I personally test only on Google Play Books, Kindle and Adobe DE. I'm pretty sure all 3 would render CSS for these section breaks (whether they be hr, p or whatever) properly.


Readers that support EPUB 3 page numbers We are adding page numbers to our epubs according to the spec defined here.
We would like to test this functionality though, are there any readers that support page numbers?

You can display page numbers in iBooks. Just be sure to select the "Tap to show printed page numbers" option in the toc.


If you purchased this item from Amazon, delete the item and download it from the Cloud I'll probably end up asking Amazon for a refund on:

  XQuery: Search Across a Variety of XML Data

  Product details

Paperback: 762 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 2 edition (Jan. 7 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781491915103
ISBN-13: 978-1491915103
ASIN: 1491915102

due to a persistent error:

  Error

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

Short of setting the Kindle to factory defaults I'm at a loss, but can speculate that perhaps the code in the book might be causing some problems.

see also:

Paperwhite error on open book, how do I get the error log?

Most likely you downloaded a partial file or it was corrupted somehow. Just delete it from your device and try again. (Alternatively, remove it by going  to Manage Your Content and Devices.

Don't delete the ebook from all devices, just the one device you are working on.

Failing that, you can also contact Oreilly or even the author and include a receipt. Oreilly is a great publisher, and they would probably be able to send you via email  the file to you if you asked nicely.

Quality control on Oreilly ebooks is  pretty high. I doubt there's a formatting issue. The file is 5mb, not too big. But it might be worthwhile trying to view it on a Kindle app on a tablet or on Kindle for PC Desktop.

Occasionally I have an issue downloading certain ebooks. Often it's a matter of just deleting the first version you downloading and retrying. Sometimes it gets stuck, but I'm generally able to download everything.
Hope this helps!


What symbols/text to use for index references? An index in a printed book would look like this:

  Concept A: 5, 17
  Concept B: 25, 41, 83
  ...

In an ebook the page numbers would be replaced by hyperlinks. The question is what text/symbols to use for the hyperlinks. One option I thought is to use some sequence of arbitrary symbols:

  Concept A: *, +
  Concept B: *, +, #
  ...

Another option would be to use alphabetic sequences or numbers:

  Concept A: a, b
  Concept B: a, b, c
  ...

I have two indexes: One is a concepts index, where most entries have only one reference and the maximum number of reference for an entry is three. The other is an authors index, where there are also many entries with only one reference, but there are some with up to thirteen.

For small numbers of references I think the first option looks better. For large numbers the second one. But I'd like to use the same style in both indexes.

Are there any other options that may look better? Is there any standard practice for this?

I have created an index for an nonfiction title before (a technical manual), and I think indices do serve a purpose -- and by the way, I created an author index too!

The key thing is making sure the links themselves are large enough that you can click each separate link and not get the wrong one. You should consider increasing the horizontal space between  entries. Separating things by commas also should help.

I don't think which character you use really matters -- though I prefer the symbols.  I have used as a label a name of a chapter or section or subsection.


pictures show twice in android app I received a 250MB epub file
and unzipped it (with 7z) and just recompress it's jpeg's to ~50% size (not dimensions), keeping the same files names (with IfranView).

I reziped to .epub and loaded it to my android tabs.
Two apps open it but will display each picture twice.
Once without adjacent text and the second time with text
I do not have any special epub authoring software.

Why it happened and can I correct it?

After so long I came back to this issue and found the solution.

I open the epub in 7z (but not unzip)
I drag the image folder out and recompress it with Ifranview to my liking.
Now I drag it back into the open 7z window to replace the old image folder
close 7z, and now the epub is half size and opens correctly in any epub app,


Developing a new file format for E-readers that supports special languages Is it possible to develop a new file format that supports special languages like Persian? (and other right to left formats).

I've read following content:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book

The epub3 standard offers a couple of new attributes specifically for RTL languages such as Persian and most free ePub3 apps, for example, ADE 4, Azardi, Gitden Reader and iBooks display epub3 RTL books fine.

(There's an Arabic test book at the official epub3 samples website that you can use for testing.)

BTW, if you happen to have a Kindle, you'll need to convert epubs to AZW3 files with Calibre, because the old MOBI format doesn't support RTL languages.


Many sites propose free or cheap ebooks? Which are legitimate? Looking on the web for some ebooks for sale in the right format (EPUB
for me), I have been amazed by the number of sites pretending to offer
them for free download, even though these are in copyright commercial
books. Some others offers books at a very low price.

I am aware that some authors (notoriously Cory Doctorow, for example)
allow that, but it seems still to be the exception rather than the
rule.

My last attempt was when searching for "The A.I. Chronicles" Peralta epub

What is hiding behind these sites?

How do I know which sites are actually conducting a legitimate business?

For example, I found on http://www.mobileread.com a pointer to a site
https://www.humblebundle.com/, selling book bundles at a low
price, for example a sci-fi bundle. Though old, they are all books under
copyright, AFAIK.

How do I know whether the site is conducting a legitimate business? What are signs that distinguish a scam from a legitimate low price seller?

The short answer is that any website offering permanent access to large numbers of copyrighted books, for very little money, from multiple publishers is unlikely to be legitimate.

HumbleBundle offers its bundles for limited time.

Book Barbarian, ManyBooks, BookBub, Luzme, and no doubt many others, search the web on your behalf and find books that are currently being offered from reputable sites, like Amazon and Kobo, for little or nothing.  Almost all of their free books are available only for a day or two, but in any case to get them you will have to click through to a recognizable merchant site.

Then, publishers like Baen Books offer a large number of their e-books for free as loss-leaders. You'll notice that it's highly unusual for them to give you more than the first one or two books in a series, and the rest will cost you retail.

Another clue to legitimacy is if the site offers payment in multiple currencies: there's almost no chance that any site accepting payment in US$, GBP and EUR is legitimate, because very few books are made available from a single distributor worldwide.

All that said, if a site seems too good to be true, google that site's name and the names of some of the authors. Odds are they already know somebody's pirating their work, and they frequently rant about those sites on their own blogs.


Epub 2.O: font in ul, ol lists is smaller than regular font I'm formatting an ebook that has taught me many things ... usually after a fair bit of angst, consultation of manuals, online sleuthing, and experimentation. (This is a complicated non-fiction book, with an appendix containing 102 entries, each with five paragraph styles and embedded images.) I have solved everything, it validates but ... the font displayed in ul and ol lists is smaller than the font in the rest of the book.

I do not have any list styles defined. I thought that the list took its style from the paragraph style unless otherwise specified.

I do not recall having run into this problem on other books, some of which had lists. Could the problem be that this is the first time that I have used an imbedded font, at the client's request?

The paragraph .css looks like this:

  font-family:"texgyreschola", serif;
  font-size:1.0em;
  text-indent:1.5em;
  text-align: left;
  margin-top:0;
  margin-bottom:0;
  margin-right:.5em;

Is the font-embedding somehow interfering with list display? If it is, how do I fix things? Create a list style and duplicate the paragraph specs?

I will be abjectly grateful for any help :)

<li> will not inherit from <p>, so what you are seeing is probably a different font in your lists than in your paragraphs. The easiest way I've found to test this is to add something impossible to mistake to the CSS for <p>. I like to use color: red, but your mileage may vary.

Note that the reason that the fonts could appear to be different sizes is that some fonts look bigger than others—compare Open Sans and Times New Roman, for example, and the Times will look substantially smaller, even though both are 1.0em.

Including

li {
  font-family:"texgyreschola", serif;
  font-size:1.0em;
}

in your CSS should do the trick.


Is a local page on my site or my Amazon author page better to redirect readers to? I have a simple books page at example.com/books and an Amazon author page at amazon.com/books/example.

Am I better keeping visitors who want ebooks on example.com/books, or do I want to redirect them right away to my Amazon author page?

(I can give exact URLs, but I thought my question would be less likely taken as spam if I gave generic URLs.)

This is an opinion/strategy question which is hard to answer. Generally though, even if you make an author page on a website, search engine placement for your Amazon page is going to be higher than your personal website.

That said, it's still good to have a presence outside the Amazon universe. Amazon is cluttered with promos to other products.  Book marketing guru David Gaughran wrote, “As I write these words, there are currently 248 different titles on the product page of the Kindle edition of “Let’s Get Digital.” Between the ads, Also Boughts, Also Vieweds, Amazon promotion, and other links, there are hundreds of things that could distract a reader before they purchase."

You have a lot more freedom to put multimedia, bios, blogposts on your personal page -- and obviously links to other bookstores. besides, The amazon author page doesn't really generate many leads. Even though it's owned by Amazon I would still establish a web presence on goodreads.


Delete all directly import/sent kindle books I have plenty of kindle books in my kindle 5, that were directly imported. Either by calibre, or just sending .mobi files to @kindle.com. How do I delete those? Honestly, I would like to erase all my kindle data and redownload all the books that are sync'ed with my amazon account. I tried doing factory reset, but once I connect kindle to my account, all the books are restored as archived items...and deleting them by hand is not an option. In other words I want my kindle device to have only the books that I bought. Any suggestions?

It might be easier to go to the Manage Content page, select Your Devices tab, put a check in the box for the device you want, then in the popup look for the option, View Device Content.

Doing that should let you do a mass deletion of items on a device without having to worry about deleting it on the cloud. By the way, for my account, it looks like View Device Content has two listings for each device: one for audio recordings, another for ebooks. You will see the View Device Content option only in one of those two listings. This should do it.


Cover image size by ebook format For my first ebook, I am designing a cover. I wonder what size the cover image should have.

I use pandoc to create the epub 2 file, but I want to try other formats eventually.

Is there a recommendation for cover image sizes by ebook format?

This depends on where you are publishing your e-book, and is subject to change. With Kindle Direct Publishing, they require a minimum of 625 pixels on the shortest side and a minimum of 1000 pixels on the longest side, but they recommend 2500 pixels on the longest side. With Nook, they require that the height and width be at least 1400 pixels, and the file size cannot be greater than 2MB. I highly recommend creating your cover as a PNG file so that you can resize and save copies as JPG files so that they will be smaller in size.


Any way to increase font size in Moon reader when reading pdf? The font size when reading pdf in MoonReader is really small. Is there any way to increase it?

No - pdf's are statically sized documents.  One of the benefits of different formats such as EPUB and amazon's MOBI files are that they are reflowable and built with html and css. This is what allows you to adjust font size in relation to the container.   The text then reflows throughout the container at the new font level.

However, you can zoom on pdf's and as long as the document isn't one big image the fonts should stay highly readable.


Is it possible to disable screen zoom on a Sony PRS-T1 reader? Periodically, I get my ereader stuck in some sort of screen zoom thing. I know I can usually escape it by hitting the back button or going to the home screen, but that tends to be a pain especially if it happens more than once while I am reading. Is this something I can turn off somehow? (I've looked through the settings, but I am not sure if I am just looking at this wrong.)

Unfortunately, it's impossible to disable the "zoom" function. Typically it's not something requested in user experience, and a disabling function would cause more harm than good.
What you can see are alternative options to avoid and get out of a zoomed screen, laid out in this guide.
While the back button is a way of reverting back to default, you can also pinch (by placing two fingers on the screen), moving inward or outward to either zoom in or back out of display.


SVG in azw3 for kindle paperwhite always going to new page I made svg file in illustrator and I am trying to put it inline in azw3 book with calibre. svg is 680x100. But everything I do put this svg on new page on kindle. Or this picture is deformed.

Is there a way to properly put svg?

Book I trying to make is https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B895oXL9F_s6ME9faWhvVnRaR0U/view?usp=sharing

I am trying to make book about presocratic philosopher from https://archive.org/details/presocraticphilo033229mbp more readable on kindle.

This is not strictly an answer to your question, but...

I can't read your file but I have had a look at the epub and the pdf from archive.org. It seems to me that it would be a simply immense amount of work to format that book satisfactorily as xhtml for use on an ereader. It looks to me to be a case where the pdf has a definite advantage.

If you are going to do that work (or have already done it). Wouldn't it make sense to make it available to an many other interested people as possible by producing the ebook as epub (an open and documented format) and then converting that to basic mobi. With your illustration as a PNG bitmap.

There's a place for experimenting with exotic ebook and image formats, but I don't think this project is it.


Is it posible to compact calibre library? Haven't found any archiving functionality in Calibre by myself, so assuming it doesn't exist. I am right? How can I shrink the library size using Calibre without changing a books format?

Calibre does not provide any compression tools, but indeed one could use third party tools to compress files in the directory structure. The predominant files to target would be DJVU and PDF files. Using ImageMagick's convert utility, it is not difficult to do programmatic compression (write a script that recursively goes through the library directory structure and compresses all PDF files). Testing is important to ensure no loss of visual quality.

Note that the same thing can be done for video files using the ffmpeg utility. Works a dream.


Preserving Layout of Original File fairly new to Ebooks and publishing in general. I am attempting to publish a poetry collection. Unfortunately, I've been wracking my brain over how to preserve the formatting of my source file (.odt) for the .epub version. None of the built in converters (on amazon/kobo) convert it nicely - either they butcher the pagination, rearrange the lines of my poems, or some combination of both. I found a solution in amazon's textbook creator, but that doesn't work for other sites. The layout and formatting is highly important in poetry, so I'm wondering how to accomplish a fixed layout (or at least maintain some form of pagination/formatting) for the other sites? Thanks in advance for the help.

First, I've formatted lots of poetry for epubs, so I can offer insights.

I don't know about what kind of visual demands you have for poems. But I'm assuming that you have the usual ones -- keeping lines of a stanza together, having the proper indents and line widths and forcing page break.

Poetry is easier to format by creating HTML and css style sheets.

The html source looks something like this:

 "Look not thou on beauty's charming, –

 Sit thou still when kings are arming,  –

 Taste not when the wine cup glistens,  –

 Speak not when the people listens,  –

 Stop thine ear against the singer,  –

 From the red gold keep thy finger,  –

 Vacant heart and hand, and eye,  –

 Easy live and quiet die."

Admittedly, this is a plain vanilla example. Depending on the formatting, you may want to use two different classes for individual  lines with different styles. Look at this css

p.line-verse {
    text-indent: -2em;
    padding-left: 3em;
    padding-right: 3em;
    line-height: 80%;
}

You get the point. Once you have the css right, it is trivial to create html pages for poems. More examples are here: http://epubsecrets.com/formatting-poetry-in-epub-part-1.php and http://epubsecrets.com/formatting-poetry-in-epub-part-2.php

The two issues you have are: 1)would the advantage of being able to style poetry in html and css outweigh the convenience of using a word processor and 2)are you testing the poetry book adequately on different devices? Poetry can look bad on mobile devices, so you need to make sure they render reasonably well on all devices.

It may simply be easier to pay someone to format an ebook for you and then keep the template for later ebooks. Or you can crack open any epub file of a poetry ebook (.epub is just a zipped file with the file extension renamed).

Or you can unzip any of the Project Gutenberg poetry ebooks (which are formatted pretty well: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Poetry_%28Bookshelf%29 ).

To summarize my answer: It is actually not hard to format poetry for html; it actually can be easier than doing it from a converted word processed file. My feeling is that using word processed documents as your source creates more problem than it solves when you're trying to format something like poetry. Fixed layout books would definitely provide more pixel accuracy, but the ebook's appearance would be unpredictable on smaller devices.


How to search for audiobooks narrated by the author? How should I search for audiobooks narrated by their author? Are they ‘auto-narrated’, ‘self-narrated’, ‘author-narrated’, or something else?

I think the best approach is to find audiobook sharing websites that have an advanced feature for narrowing the search result to "narrated by Author". Seems like simplyaudiobook provide this feature
Also you can simply search in google "audio book narrated by author" and find many personalized lists such as:
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/37378.Audio_Books_Narrated_By_Their_Authors
http://modernmrsdarcy.com/authors-reading-their-own-work/


Kindle Cloud Reader can't open this book Opening a book on read.amazon.com gives this error:

  we're sorry.  Kindle Cloud Reader can't open this book, but you can
  read it with our free Kindle app.

Is there a work-around?  Perhaps to send to Kindle?

Also, what is the business rationale, from Amazon's perspective, with this incompatibility?  This consumer paid $ to not read on a tablet but Kindle e-reader.

The Kindle Cloud Reader is a Kindle Web App which anables us read Kindle books online.

As my own guess, Amazon use this web app to allow us to read kindle books online, and most of those contents are Kindle manga or comic.

For those long-text kindle eBooks(such as novels), we are limited to use Kindle desktop app or Kindle devices.


How do I transfer my kindle collection to my new computer I have just bought a new computer all the books I have bought since using it are on my kindle and new computer My problemis I want the books that are on my old computer transferred to my new computer  I assumed I could use my cloud but it does not seem to work

After adding your new PC to your Amazon account as a Kindle device, and after downloading Kindle software onto your new PC, then open the Kindle program, and choose Collections, click the plus sign, and choose Import Collections.


Which is the best way to use ancient Greek fonts in an epub? I would like to write short (ancient) Greek words in an ebook. I could just use the Greek letters, and they would appear in nearly all devices, but I would also add accents and spirits.

As per this question, I understand that if I embed a font in my text, most readers will use it: is it the best way to accomplish my goal, or there is something simpler?

I think that embedding the font you want to use is your best option.

Many fonts have a set of greek (and/or non latin) letters, so you should be safe by just typing the letters, and they should be correctly displayed regardless of the chosen font.
But if, like you said, you want to include other special characters, embedding the full font could be the best solution (just be sure that the license of that font allows you to do it); the only drawback that I can think about is a slightly larger final file-size, but realistically speaking, a handful of kilobytes more should not be a problem for anyone.

Another thing that you should consider is that many ereaders have some degree of font customization settings; i.e. with my Kobo Glo, I can select from a list of installed fonts and this setting will override what you would have specified inside your ebook; then I could have some problems to visualize correctly your text, if the font I select doesn't support the characters you have used.
For this reason, whenever you are including a font that is required to correctly display some characters (and not just for aesthetic reasons, maybe to render a fancy title), you could add to your ebook something like a disclaimer page where you inform your readers that if they want to be sure to correctly visualize it, they should not use font customization with it.


Are there any free open-source custom firmwares for e-ink devices? I'm curious if there are custom firmwares for e-ink devices similar to what Rockbox (website, wikipedia) is for digital audio players.

It depends on specific device and its architecture.

Those that are built on top of Android, typically tend to get AOSP ports, e.g. Nook (here's Simple Touch instructions), or Kindles - the latter even has CyanogenMod ROM.

Sony PRST 1 was hacked to expose full underlying rooted Android but I'm not sure if AOSP based ROM is available for it - this might be it.

I'm not sure if there are any non-Android-based mainstream eInk readers - most of the ones I heard of (which is not a lot) seem to be Android under the covers and thus can be opened up (e.g. see Kobe Glo).


Desktop publishing programs that are capable of including videos in an ebook I know InDesign and QuarkExpress can do this. But does anyone know something else? Some open source tool would be nice. But any hint is appreciated.

Anthon is correct but he doesn't really explain why he is correct which is what the real question is about:

EPUB 3 supports video in ebooks.  Quark and InDesign are two commercial top notch desktop publishing software that have both (finally) integrated EPUB exporting into their software because of the rise of popularity in ebooks.  However, this is an extension of their original application which is simply meant for static layouts.  A good way of thinking about an ebook is to think of it as a simple locally stored website.  It can do most of the things that a website can do, just like you see websites with videos in them, so can an ebook have them.  And like a website, ebooks are written in HTML (XHTML if you want to be specific) CSS, Java, with support for images, videos, etc.  All HTML CSS and JS are at the end of the day is plain text with tags.  You can learn more about these languages at places like codeacademy.  Thus, all Indesign and Quark do is automate the writing of this code by trying to assume what you meant from the static layout of your earlier design before export.

If you get notepad+ (free) and have the ability to unzip and zip an epub into its constituent  parts then you can literally write all the code out by following the EPUB 3 specifications.  Your best bet however, is probably something like pressbooks http://pressbooks.com/, which allow you to lay out the design of your ebook much like you would in Indesign and Quark and which you can export into an epub for very little money - esp. when compared with Adobe products.

Hope this makes sense, I tried to unpack a bunch in a little bit of space based on what I assumed was your knowledge level.


How do I start over and create a new Calibre library? I don't know what to do to get my Calibre library back.

I have tried restoring my Calibre library from backups, and either get a message that no valid library is present when I try to switch libraries in the Calibre app, or, it seems to import my backup library, then shows zero books.

I have attempted this restoring while Calibre is closed, per earlier instructions. I end up with multiple Calibre directories that I didn't create.

I don't know what exactly I did to create this mess, but the more I try to fix it, the worse it seems to get. I have the ebook files on my computer, it's just trying to get them into a Calibre library that I am having problems with. Have spent more time than I want to admit trying to fix this.

I just want to restore or create a working library in Calibre. Is there not any way just to start from scratch?

Select Calibre Library > Switch/Create Library > Create an empty library... > Choose location for new Calibre library and re-import all your books.


kindle paperwhite 2 check email over 3g I am still unable to get an answer to this question: Can I check email and do other web-browsing activities with the kindle paperwhite 2 (of course with poor quality viewing experience) over 3g? I read 3g enables access only to wikipedia and amazon sites or that at least the access to other sites is limited to some data amount.

There is a similar question (Internet access on the 3G Amazon Kindles?) but I would like to know an exact information on how it is with Kindle paperwhite 2 (I will buy it probably in Germany).

If you have a Kindle Paperwhite 3G, free web browsing in 3G mode is limited. You can access only the Amazon website and Wikipedia via 3G wireless. For accessing other websites, you need to use a Wi-Fi connection. source
For a very update-to-date answer, I suggest to ask amazon support for further info.


Amazon Kindle app and Personal Documents on Android emulator How can I make the Kindle app in an emulator work just like on a physical device?

Background: I tend to buy ebooks directly from publishers and then send them to Amazon Cloud Drive to be converted into what Amazon calls "Personal Documents." Doing this allows me to synchronize annotations and bookmarks between my phone and tablet, just like with ebooks purchased from Amazon.

However, I'd like to get those annotations and bookmarks on my computer screen -- it's more convenient for me to type code while the ebook is up on the same screen, rather than having to keep shifting between computer and tablet. As others have noticed, the Kindle Cloud Reader and PC/Mac-based readers don't support Personal Documents fully (I believe the Cloud Reader doesn't support them at all; the native apps, last I knew, allowed you to sideload documents but don't synchronize them, but it's been a while since I tried); so I thought that since I have some Android virtual machines (using Genymotion) I might as well install the Android Kindle app there.

I was able to do that, and when I go to Amazon's Manage My Content and Devices page I can see the new device, but I can't seem to find a way to assign that device an Amazon email like my other, physical, devices. I also never see the Personal Documents in its list of books the way I do on my phone and tablet.

It used to be the case (around October 2014) that when I ran the Kindle app in the emulator, it displayed a progress spinner and "Checking for new items & syncing…" for an indefinite amount of time (I remember leaving it spinning for over an hour); now that doesn't happen, but still my Personal Documents didn't show up. In addition, if I reboot the virtual machine, the app asks me for my login information as if I had never run it on the device before.

So my main question is: how can I make the Kindle app in an emulator work just like on a physical device? Secondarily, I'm wondering whether the Kindle app somehow detect it's running in an emulator, and refuses to allow full access for that reason -- and if so, how; or is this some sort of subtle bug in the interaction between emulation and app?

I've been using kindle inside an android emulator on my windows 8 tablet for a while now in order to read personal documents and get the full syncing capabilities.  Like you, I've seen that even though the registered emulator app shows on your device list at amazon, you can't send documents to it directly.  The workaround is to send documents to one of your other physical devices using send to kindle, and check the box to "save to Amazon Cloud Drive".  Once the document resides on the cloud you can download to any of your devices, including the app running in the emulator.


How to export (or share) a highlighted PDF from Kindle Reader? I can email a PDF to my Kindle Fire Device. I can highlight and take notes in that PDF. I can export the notes and the highlighting.

BUT I see no way to share/export the PDF with the highlights.

Use Case:

Send PDF to my Kindle Reader.
Read, highlight, take notes.
Share the highlighted PDF with another of my Kindles, or ideally, my online Kindle Reader.
Is there any way to do that?

Kindles' have USB Drive Mode. which allows you to export all of your notes (except pictures):

Plug the Kindle to your computer.
Open the Kindle folder.
Go to the documents.
Get the My Clippings.txt file, which has all of your notes & highlights.
Eject the Kindle.

  Note: My Clippings is a txt file, which is quite hard to read. I would highly recommend you to use a third party service like Clippings or Readwise to make it easier.


Is there a standard file format for distributing digital comic books? The standard for pirated comic books seems to be a .cbz/.cbr format, as well as a less frequent epub. .pdf is being a discouraged (some would say unforgivable) option but not unheard of in the pirate-web-o-sphere.

The question is, is there an industry standard used by official publishers for digital comic books?

First of all, the .CB* file format isn't a own file format at all, as it simply represents a standard archive file. That's also where the different endings come from:

.cbr for Rar files
.cbz for Zip files
.cbt for Tar files
.cb7 for 7z files

and so on...

Those are also the most widely used file formats for comics. But serveral publishers use PDF files along with their security features to sell comic books (as far as I observed, those PDFs are largely disliked by many comic fans)

So to speak for reaching the audience, .cb* should be the best option currently available although it unfortunately isn't a standard fully applied by the industry.


Create an e-book with Devanagari characters I'm trying to create an e-book (in English) with Devanagari characters.
I've transformed these particular characters into their unicode, so I do not have to use a Sanskrit font.
The book was edited with InDesign and from this I created a first e-book draft.
I have some questions:

the font "Times New Roman" has been incorporated; since the book will be sold, will I break any copyright by using it? I've tried with other fonts, but I've always had problems displaying them
I've sent the ebook to a number of friends and they do not seem to have any big problems viewing it. Since I wanted to try it on most devices as possible, I have included beneath the links to a small draft (more than the words in Devanagari): if anyone can try to open and visualize it, it would make me a favor.
I'm also including a PDF file to see how the text should be displayed.

Ps.:
Here you can download the ebook (epub format)
And here the PDF to see how the text should be displayed.

EDIT:

Here are the new versions of the files with the fonts that were suggested:

Version with Charis SIL: PDF and ePub
Version with Noto Sans: PDF and ePub

Like Nemo XXX said, Times New Roman is a commercial font, so you are not allowed to freely include it in your ebook and distribute it without acquiring a proper license.

However, I think that you can still freely reference it in your CSS stylesheet without physically incorporating it(1).
Anyway, this presupposes that the font will be installed on the end user's PC or device, which you can't be 100% sure. Granted, Times New Roman is a fairly common font, at least if you don't look beyond Windows machines, but, in example, it is NOT installed by default in many Linux distributions and many e-reader devices.

I think that your best option is to look for an open source font with a free license and directly incorporate it. You really have a lot of alternatives, I'm listing here juts some of the most common ones.

My personal suggestion is to check out the Noto font family, from Google; they are designed to cover all the scripts encoded in the Unicode standard. It is easily one of the most complete and compatible font sets out there, and they are generally good looking and pleasant (this is of course subjective). An alternative, always from Google, is the Droid family, from which Noto is partly derived.
The Liberation and Linux Libertine/Biolinum families are specifically designed to be a free and open substitute to Windows standard fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial and Courier New.
DejaVu, similarly, is a fairly complete set of fonts that is installed by default on many of the main Linux distributions.
As Nemo XXX suggested, Charis SIL is a good and fairly complete font (and, if you ask me, also more distinctive and better looking that the old plain and kinda boring Times New Roman). Another option, always from SIL International, is Gentium.
(2017-06-22 EDIT) Martel and Martel Sans fonts are specifically designed to cover Latin and Devangari characters.

I'm not really familiar with Devangari (or any other non-latin) script, so you should check these alternatives yourself and see if they suit your needs. I can't guarantee that all the fonts that I've listed include the characters that you need to display, I've just pointed out some of the major open source font projects, I leave it to you to make your tests.

About the samples: I've tried to open both the ePub and PDF that you have provided, they are BOTH displayed with latin characters, even the non-english text.

1) Please note that I'm not a lawyer and I'm just saying this out of common sense, do your research accordingly.


Linking to the same reference many times (instead of writing it over and over), while inserting each time a page number to it: possible? I am writing an ebook and I'm referring to several books many times. I could use the regular notes section and citing the book 20 times per chapter, but it's cumbersome.

What's the smartest way to deal with those repetitive references on ebook?
(I dont know which format I'll choose: it could be the Kindle format or the epub)

One (theoretical) way would be to write a single time the ref of one of my book (ex: James, H. (1937). Ambassadors. New York, NY: Scribner.), store it in a variable. When the reader clicks on the reference, the footnote link will retrieve the variable and the page number (of the specific reference). But it creates a bigger problem: it doesn't seems to be compatible with the note section (after each chapter). (This kind of ref will probably link to a tool-tip. And in any case I'm not sure it will work with the main ebook reader).

Since most epub3 readers and current Kindle models and apps support popup footnotes, the easiest solution would be to use footnotes for all book references.

What app(s) are you using to write your book?


How to prevent Calibre replacing my cover image I am trying to add an image as a cover of my ebook in "edit book" mode, so I choose "Add cover" from "Tools" menu, add my image and for a moment it seems to work, however very quickly the image is replaced by an image generated from title and author metadata (it seems), which is not what I want.

Calibre has had an option to insert a cover long before it offered editing some ebook formats. That option comes with additional utilities of finding a fitting cover using some internet services.
If such a cover is not selected, calibre generates its own and inserts that in the epub file.

With the relatively new editing possibilities in Calibre, the cover still comes from this explicit selection (via the metadata editor). And any hand-crafted cover page gets overwritten by the "insert cover from metadata" functionality.

That cover is actually stored along with the ebook and the metadata in the directory where the ebook is stored. You can probably just replace that there, or select the cover you want via the metadata change functionality.


Identify if a PDF document is digital native Is it possible to know if a given PDF is digital native or has gone through some kind OCR or digitization process.

If yes, is it possible to do so programmatically?

PDF documents embed all its fonts within the document. You can get these embedded fonts information programmatically with most PDF libraries.

If there are no embedded fonts then the PDF at hand is a scanned one.
If there are only one or two fonts, then the document is OCRized.
If there are three or more fonts, then the document is a digital native.

Potentially, there can be digital native PDF with one or two fonts only but luckily for me this is an acceptable error rate.


what fonts to use for Adobe DE app on mobile devices? I am testing an epub file which I rolled up on my own. (I.e., I didn't use InDesign).

I deliberately did not specify a font for my ebook because the major ebook readers include their own fonts (or use system fonts). (Also, btw, it is very difficult to keep up with what readers use what fonts).

As it happens, I did include an embedded font for a special bit of content (it was a handwritten font), but that was only one part of the epub file.

I have tested the epub file on ibooks and Google Play. Everything renders perfectly. I can choose from about 8-10 different fonts on every epub reading software I have.

I tested the epub file on Adobe DE app  on Android. Everything looks good, except that there are no ways to choose font! ADE doesn't give you any information about what fonts are being used here (although you can change size).

What's going on here? Does DE want to force publishers to use embedded fonts? Does DE secretly have a few dozen fonts inside the mobile app? Or is DE deliberately stripped down to allow ebook  distributors to provide their own fonts on their reading apps?

Are there any DE fonts which are on every platform? i.e. , common fonts like Georgia, Helvetica, Verdana, etc

I would hate to be forced to dump an .otf font into my ebook file just because the reader just doesn't support any natively. Do you have any recommendations?

UPDATE: Can I assume that ADE just applies serif and sans-serif to all content inside an epub file? Does DE have an algorithm for determining which html elements to apply a sans-serif font to?

I use ADE for basic testing for years and must say it is not the best tool on the market. The problem is its development is rather hectic and releases are often a bit unstable, full of tiny but annoying bugs. As for fonts, you are right with the default serif/sans-serif fonts. It depends on the rendering engine―try to display the same file from the ePub in IE, Safari and Firefox or Chrome and compare the results to the ADE defaults. It is always a good practice to choose what font to use in general, if not in particular, e.g. font-family: serif, Hoefler Text;.

UPDATE

If you are asking whether ADE has its own built in font, no, it hasn’t. ADE is installable for Mac and Win only, which means it uses default Win and Mac fonts according to default settings for its renderer. If you wish to know which font is used for which tag, the only one way is to test it or check the source code for the renderer.


Are there any ebook readers which are NOT backlit, but for which you can upload pdfs? I love my iPad Mini Retina, but reading on it for hours bugs my eyes! :(

My mom has the basic Kobo reader, and I envy her in that it possesses no backlight, and is ergo, easier on the eyes!

However, she is limited to what books she must find on the Kobo library.

And so I'm just wondering if there are any e-readers out there, which are not 'locked' to any platform, and for which I might view/upload my own PDFs?

Or if there is any way to 'hack'/'jailbreak' a Kobo reader?

There is no need to 'hack' or 'jailbreak' a Kobo reader—they can read PDFs natively. The following comes from their site:

  You'll find some differences when you're reading PDF books compared to
  regular books, including the option to read in landscape orientation,
  and to zoom in on the page.

  Here are some things you can't do with a PDF book: Select text Add
  highlights Look up words in the dictionary Change the text size or
  style

This applies to Kobo Mini, Kobo Original / Kobo Wifi, Kobo Touch, Kobo Glo, Kobo Aura HD, Kobo Aura, and Kobo Aura H20.

Also on their site, there are instructions for how to load a PDF onto a Kobo Original:

  The Kobo Wireless and Kobo Original eReaders support documents in PDF
  format.

  You can transfer them to your eReader:

  By drag-and-drop On an SD card If your PDFs are protected by Adobe
  DRM, you must use Adobe Digital Editions to transfer them to your
  eReader.

For use with the SD card:

  If your PDFs are not protected by Adobe DRM, you can transfer them to
  your eReader using a SD card.

  Insert the SD card with the PDF files on it into your eReader's SD
  card slot. Turn on your eReader. Wait for your eReader to process the
  content. Find the documents under Documents.

while for drag and drop:

  Connect your eReader to your computer using the USB cable.

  On your eReader select Manage Library.

  Press the centre of the Navigation pad.

  Open Finder (on a Macintosh computer) or Explorer (on a Windows
  computer), and look for KOBOeReader. This may be listed as a hard
  drive or as a removable storage device.

  In another Finder or Explorer window, locate the files you want
  to transfer. Drag these files to KOBOeReader. You can now eject
  your eReader and read your documents.

Since PDF is now a standard, most e-readers support it, so Kobo is not unique in this regard—Kindle and Nook both read PDFs as well. Also, you might check out the sidelighing of the Kobo Glo—it's not at all bright or glaring, but offers comfortable reading in any light level. Looks really nice—my mom loves hers.


How to know if this book (The Hero With A Thousand Face) is free of rights? I want to translate and publish this ebook: The Hero With A Thousand Face into my native language (French) and am wondering if this is free of rights. The first edition was published in 1949 which is more than 70 years ago and make it free of right theoretically. However there was a second edition published in 1968? Does that impact the copyright? How to know if The Hero With A Thousand Face is free of rights?

as @rgchris pointed out, copyright laws in Europe state that an opus goes in the public domain 70 years after the death of its author... and Campbell died in 1987. I think you should contact the Campbell Foundation.


Accessible voice controlled e-reader? I am looking for an e-reader or Ipad app for someone with mobility issues. A voice activated system would be ideal. For example, a verbal "Turn page" command instead of a physical swipe.

While the Kindle fire advertises voice control accessibility it's unclear to me if this is just a text-to-speech feature or if the system can be controlled with speech.

If your person lives in the US, check into the NLS

  National Library Service (NLS) is a free braille and talking book library service for people with temporary or permanent low vision, blindness, or a physical disability that prevents them from reading or holding the printed page.

https://www.loc.gov/nls/

They have ereaders and booksthat specially built for both blind and most levels of disability.

The reader and the books are free and delivered by mail to the home of the individual.


Keeping a subheading with its first line of text in an epub I'm converting an InDesign document to Epub.  I'm using Microsoft Edge as the epub reader (that might be a mistake...).  Edge is open in an approximately 1280x1024 window and is showing two "pages" of text at a time.  Rolling the mouse button "turns pages."

My problem occurs with this turn-page context that Edge is using.  Rather than simply scrolling through an entire chapter, it's imposing the context of a book.  Consequently, a subheader may appear on the last line of the right-hand "page" with its associated text block on the next page.

My Subheader
Lorem ipsum...

becomes

My Subheader

And then you turn the "page" to find

Lorem ipsum...

From this question I learned about page-break-inside: avoid; and page-break-before: always;, but those appear to be block-level CSS attributes, forcing me to decide with how much of the following text the subheader must be grouped.  E.G.,

My Subheader

Lorem ipsum
...

Now, I know I'm wishing for world peace, but is there a CSS attribute I would assign to the subheader block that affectively means, "keep this block with the first line of the next block"?  Something along the lines of:

My Subheader

Lorem ipsum...

page-break-after: avoid should work, if the reading system supports it.


What are the actual on/off/sleep states for and how do you hard reset a Kindle WiFi? I recently purchased a Kindle device (the current non Touch WiFi model) for an AP. I don't live locally but that doesn't get me off the hook for supporting it. Unfortunately, as my device is the Paperwhite, I am unable to compare with how my device behaves. I recently received this communique:

  The Kindle will no longer  boot up - if that is the correct term. All I get is a gray screen. If one holds the on button for a few sec it will momentarily go dark but nothing else happens

I suspect that the device has never really been turned off and on and is at this juncture just locked up. On my device there is a sleep mode that is the normal way to turn it on or off and when it does lock up it can be very difficult to get it unstuck. However I have never seen a mode that responds with a screen clear (I assume that in the "momentary go dark") but then does nothing.

What mode could this device be stuck in and how do you give in a hard-reset so that the firmware actually does a "cold boot"?

As already commented,  plug in the Kindle 4 to the wall or your Mac/PC.  Let it charge for a bit -- even 15 minutes will help.  Leave it plugged in,  and press and hold the power button till the screen flashes. Wait a minute to see if it is doing a reboot. When that probably isn't enough,  do it again.  I've heard the number "5 times"  and I've experienced needing at least 4 times (actually, I wasn't counting).  The screen will flash, and after a few times of this,  it will finally continue past the flash and will begin a full reboot.

After 4 or 5 of these freeze ups, I decided my battery might be aging, and started recharging it every night.  It can't hurt.  I also kept my eye open for a cheap spare K4, just in case.


While producing an audiobook, how to mark the begining of an unnamed and unnumbered section or chapter? While producing a fiction audiobook that is composed of several unnamed and unnumbered sections, what is the best way to mark the begining of each section? In the paper edition of the book in question, those sections are just separated by blank lines and a couple of asterisks. It is a somewhat unconventional narrative style, as each section is like a flashback, that is not directly related with the previous and the following section. Also, some of those sections can be pretty short, like one or two paragraphs.

Would you just include a few seconds of silence between them, or would the reader benefit more from some kind of audible indicator?

It really depends on the type of content you are producing and how many sections there are (and what they are about).

I've heard lots of readers just give a longer pause between sections, and that worked well.

On the other hand, flashbacks are already a unique beast and we are already accustomed to hearing or seeing some kind of cue. The standard I'd use is that if  listeners might be confused about when a flashback scene takes place, perhaps an additional cue should be inserted.

But some flashbacks flow so naturally into the text that this is never a problem (especially if you're using 1st person or 3rd person limited with a strong narrative voice). On the other hand, more omniscient narratives might require more cues.


Your Kindle is unable to connect at this time Dealing with a new used K3 keyboard Kindle, it connects wirelessly and will even connect to Google for search results.

However, whenever I try to login it gives an error that the wireless network isn't available.  Might this be indicative of a hardware failure?

Can login to the cloud interface fine from a PC.

The error:

  Your Kindle is unable to connect at this time. Please make sure you
  are within wireless range and try again. If the problem persists,
  please restart your Kindle from the Menu in Settings and try again.

the OS is version 3.4, less than the 3.4.2 which is required.

Amazon Device Support  › Fire & Kindle Software Updates› Kindle
  Keyboard Software Updates

  The latest software version for Kindle Keyboard is 3.4.2. This update
  automatically downloads and installs on your Kindle Keyboard when
  connected wirelessly; however, you can also manually download the
  software and transfer the update to your device via USB cable.

  The software update includes general bug fixes. Download Kindle
  Keyboard Software Updates

  Determine the current software version on your Kindle Keyboard before
  downloading and installing a software update. For more information, go
  to Determine Your Software Version.

  Depending on your current software update version, you may have to
  install a previous software update before installing the latest
  version. Select one of the links below to download the software update
  file directly to your computer.

  Important: If you copy multiple software update files to your device
  at the same time, the software update will not be successful. Please
  fully install one file, and then download and install the next file,
  as appropriate. If you have...    Do this...

  Kindle Keyboard Wi-Fi

  ...

If you have software version 3.4.1, download Software Update 3.4.2.
If you have software version 3.4, download Software Update 3.4.2.

source:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200529700


Royalties on self-published ebooks on Amazon Do you get your royalties as a one-off payment, or you are paid per sale of each publication on an ongoing basis?

Royalties from books purchased build up in your account until you meet Amazon's payment threshold.

Amazon's payment thresholds are here - but seem to be about $100 USD or similar equivalent.
https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A3E24YJK5O82TD

Also, you get paid 60 days after the month where you exceed the threshold.

And you must meet the threshold for each country.
(so if someone buys your book in another country like United Kingdom or New Zealand, you would have to pass their threshold before you received a royalty payment).

Having only sold a few books in other countries, I do not expect to ever be paid for those royalties.


How to change text alignment with Calibre book editor I have a book in .epub format (I will be converting it into .mobi after), and I need to change the text alignment to left everywhere.
I am aware of the text alignment feature in the book editor but from what I understand it only can change individual selected html elements, where I need to change the text alignment of around 200 full pages of text (not single lines/elements).

Preview:

Does anyone knows a quick way to change the text alignment of all the text? Maybe I can do it during the conversion to .mobi but I don't know how.

You can use a CSS style to apply this formatting to all your text:

body {
    text-align: left;
}

This rule will be applied to all your text, so it will affect both regular paragraphs (<p> and <div>) and headings (<h1>, <h2> and so on).

If you just want to format "regular" text you could try to apply this styling just to <p>'s and see if it is sufficient:

p {
    text-align: left;
}

Of course, if some custom style is already present for these elements, you can just add the CSS properties to the existing selectors.

You must place this code inside the CSS stylesheet. Usually it is named stylesheet.css (but it can be different) and you can find it on the left "File Browser" panel under the "Styles" voice


Wireless sync third-party ebooks from a cloud storage to iPad I have some third-party ebooks and I want to wirelessly sync them to my grandmother's iPad and minimize the effort on her part. The best possible scenario would be for me to upload the files in some cloud storage and for her to open an app on her iPad, wait for it to automatically sync the files and start reading them. I don't want to go through the effort of explaining her stuff like "Open this app, tap this and this button so that the book can be saved wherever and then open another app so taht you can read the damn thing". As I already mentioned, I want to minimize the effort as much as I can on her part.

I have tried with the Kindle and iBooks apps, but their cloud storages don't seem to like syncing ebook files. I have also heard of Calibre and I am trying it now. Any suggestions on what should I use instead of these?

Here's my two cents.

First, this may not be what you want, but it's fairly easy to stock an ipad/ibooks with epub files. You can either email them to the account owner's email account or put links to it on a web page and just access the files from a browser on the ipad.

An alternative to upload the kindle files to your Personal Documents feature so it appears in the Kindle app on the ipad. After you activate the app, the tablet will have an amazon.com email associated with it where you can email files. (Check the help on it on Amazon).

There's a very important caveat. In late 2013 when I dropped files to my Personal Documents so they can be synced on my ipad's kindle app, all the ebooks would render terribly. (I had an ipad 1). After I did some checking, I learned that there was a bug in the ipad Kindle app which caused this to happen---and the only way to resolve it was to sync via itunes to your laptop via usb. Yuck!

1 1/2 years have gone by and with later ipads and itunes, these issues may have been resolved. But the fact is that the Kindle app's native environment is in android, so you would expect there to be some translation problems for another operating system.

On the Kindle app for Android, when you sync to Amazon's Personal Documents, everything looks fine.

Also in Android, using the native "Play Books" app to sync ebook files works very well (I was impressed). You upload it into play books from your desktop (most of the time), and then it magically shows up on all devices sharing the same google account. Note that Play Books also renders PDFs well too.

So to summarize, in my experience, the two best syncing solutions are in Android, not ipad/ios, and I have a slight preference for Play Books.

Update: I just see that Google Play Books is available from the Apple app store. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-play-books/id400989007?mt=8 Because it's porting from android, I wouldn't expect its rendering on ios to be as flawless as it is on android, but it's updated often, and it's very easy to upload files to Google from any web browser on a desktop so that it renders on your ipad. That is probably what you want. I just downloaded the app and checked how it rendered ebooks. Looks great to me!


Looking for recommendation on eBook reader for university textbooks I'm looking for a eBook reader to carry around with me for studying and reading science textbooks and papers. I was interested in kindle because of the e-ink technology. Briefly what I'm looking is :

I don't want a bright, eye-soaring tablets however I read that kindle does not fully support MathML.My priority is to read textbooks without getting my eyes tired.

I'd like to take notes but that is not very important.

Same goes for wifi connection.
I'm open for recommendations.

Kindle is not the only ereader to have an eink screen, in fact every device that is marketed as ereader (and not i.e. a more generic tablet) uses this technology.

Said that, basically every ereader available today can do the things that you need; I think that the real choice when speaking about scientific books that contain math and formulas is about the ebook format, not about the ereader: reflowable text formats like Amazon's .azw and everyone else's .epub can get the job done, but maybe for some more complex layouts, a fixed page format like .pdf could be a better choice. It really depends on the specific book and how well is formatted.

Choosing an ereader and a brand is more a choice of an ecosystem rather than about differences in the hardware (all of them, more or less, are equivalent and have the same features); Amazon Kindle is maybe the more closed platform, meaning that it uses its own file formats, while the rest of the world uses the de facto standard .epub.

You can also try to have a look at these questions:

Dedicated ebook reader?
Reader for scientific papers - what should I look for?
What 's the best way to read a scientific PDF?


Does erasing data before selling a Kindle remove updates I've downloaded? I've updated my Kindle but am now selling it.  If I reset to factory default, will the updates need to be downloaded again?

Haven't reset my Kindle (Paperwhite 2) for a while, but as far as I remember the updates stayed there, so there was no need to update from scratch.

I guess when you update a Kindle, you just update operating system of the Kindle. And when hard-resetting, you're just wiping all the data and restoring the default settings etc. for that version of a system.


Why does EPUBCheck report warnings and errors for ISO8601 date-time string? While working on a PHP script that builds EPUB 3.0.1 content from external data, I encountered a situation where EPUBCheck complains about a valid ISO8601 date-time string in two places in the container file. The string comes from the following PHP code.
$isoDate=date(DateTime::ISO8601);

The same date string appears in both places of the container. One yields a warning and the other an error. I am positive that the string is valid per the ISO8601 standard quoted in the warning message. So why does this happen?
Below is the top portion of my container.opf file and the errors I got from the online validator at http://validator.idpf.org. The validator used EPUBCheck version 4.1.1.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<package xmlns="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" xmlns:opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" version="3.0" unique-identifier="uuid_id">
<metadata xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf">
    <dc:identifier id="uuid_id" opf:scheme="uuid">508c6b12-b888-4d7b-9c58-c25d8fba7846</dc:identifier>
    <dc:title>Franklin's Palindromedary</dc:title>
    <dc:language>en</dc:language>
    <dc:creator>Ray N. Franklin</dc:creator>
    <dc:date>2020-12-09T14:06:40-0700</dc:date>
    <meta property="dcterms:modified">2020-12-09T14:06:40-0700</meta>
</metadata>

The first offending line is #8, declaring the dc:date value. Here's the warning.
WARNING:  content.opf, line 8, position 45:  Date value '2020-12-09T14:06:40-0700' does not follow recommended syntax as per http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime:Missing minute field.

The next line declares the required meta property dcterms:modified using the same date string. It garners an error.
ERROR:  content.opf, line 9, position 36:  Error while parsing file: dcterms:modified illegal syntax (expecting: 'CCYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ')

Please note that I am posting this question so I can answer it, because I did eventually find a solution. I want to give the full answer here because everywhere else I found only pieces of the puzzle.

This happens because at least two parts of EPUBCheck dislike the ISO8601 timezone format in different ways. In the dc:date context, EPUBCheck is OK with "2020-12-09T14:06:40-07:00" but not with "2020-12-09T14:06:40-0700". The only difference is a colon in the timezone offset of 0700 hours. I learned about this oddity from a PHP manual page comment. The author pointed out that the format method of the DateTime class yields different results for the format specifiers 'c' and ISO8601. The former includes the colon in the offset and the latter does not.
When I applied that correction to my code, the dc:date warning went away because EPUBCheck accepted "2020-12-09T14:06:40-07:00" as a valid date-time. However, the error persisted.
Reading the W3 specs for date-time and the IDPF specs for dcterms:modified, I eventually figured it out. Where I went wrong was in reading the error message. It said it was expecting a date-time of the form "CCYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ". I already knew that the "T" in the middle was a literal character to separate the date from the time. My mistake was in thinking that the "Z" at the end was a symbolic character like all the others. I figured it was a placeholder for the timezone offset.
I was wrong. The "Z" is another literal character that means the time is in UTC, or Coordinated Universal Time, or Greenwich Mean Time, or Zulu Time or whatever other moniker you give to the time zone surrounding zero longitude.
If you read the W3 standard carefully you'll find a slightly ambiguous statement about the meaning of the letter "Z" at the end of the date-time string. Then look up the IDPF standard and search the page for both dc:time and dcterms:modified. All the examples show a literal "Z" in the date-time strings. Nowhere does this standard say it will accept local times with a timezone offset at the end.
Thus, we have two takeaways. 1) Always terminate a date-time value with "Z" in EPUB XML, and 2) Always use UTC time for any date-time values. While EPUBCheck will accept a local time for the dc:time item, that is not a guarantee that an e-reader will interpret the offset correctly.
In the end, I changed the PHP code to use the following. The resulting date-time string validates in EPUBCheck and it looks like all the examples in the IDPF standard. It also generates UTC time.
$isoDate=gmdate('Y-m-d\TH:i:s').'Z';

DO NOT move the "Z" inside the gmdate() format specifier. That will really munge up the string and probably give you more errors.


Is there a way to have a fallback format for images? I understand that devices supporting ePub 3.0 accept SVG as image format. I however wonder is there is a way to add a fallback image (say, in JPG or PNG) so that an older device may choose to display the latter if it does not support SVG.

Great question. I checked the  Kindle Publishing Guidelines and there's no instruction about that. (CSS Media queries can assist in some cases though).

Here's a page about SVG fallbacks for the web browser. I suspect that at least one of these tricks would work on Google Play Books, unsure.

The third option is to use java script to test and swap out images. Kindle doesn't really support that though.

Frankly, I would spend more time testing to see if an SVG is supported on a representative number of reading systems within one platform. Ever since we have had KF8, some of the platforms have improved the way they render something on different reading systems within that platform.

Your approach is wise, and I suspect that documenting fallbacks will be an important first step to implementing svg. But we don't seem to be there yet on Kindle. Maybe not even on iBooks as well.


Zoom problem in Kindle with .MOBI converted from PDF I have a Kindle Touch (Kindle (7th Generation)). I have converted a PDF into .MOBI format using PDF converter tools, such as kdpdfopt with all these options set: -mode fp -n- -c -ocr t -h 6.7in -w 4.7in. And then, for smooth rendering, I converted this PDF into .MOBI using Calibre.

Now when I transferred this converted .MOBI file onto my Kindle, the font size remained the same. Even if I try to zoom in, the font size remains constant.

P.S. The font size is set very small which makes reading very poor.

It's likely that the CSS created by one of your conversion programs is generating a font-size attribute that is set absolutely (ie in pixels or points) rather than relatively (ie in ems or percents). Without knowing the details of the tools that you're using, it's unlikely we can give much concrete advice. However, if you can get it into Calibre you can probably produce an epub file, and once you have an epub file you should be able to change the CSS, either through Calibre or manually. Once the epub file is formatted to your liking you can use KindleGen (or Calibre, though I would advise KindleGen instead) to create a mobi file for use on your Kindle Touch.


How do I embed my own font (i.e designed by me) in an epub file? How can I embed a font in an epub file? I'm using indesign to make my file for my book and need to know if my font will display properly or if it will display at all?

When you export yours book int ePub format with inDesign CC your fonts will be automatically added to ePub. Only thing you must ensure is your document in inDesign have provided fonts (font must be installed in your system). Also  you can check what font is declared in inDesign paragraph style window.


Where should font licenses be embedded? I am using a font that is licensed under the Open Font License which states:

  2) Original or Modified Versions of the Font Software may be bundled,
  redistributed and/or sold with any software, provided that each copy
  contains the above copyright notice and this license. These can be
  included either as stand-alone text files, human-readable headers or
  in the appropriate machine-readable metadata fields within text or
  binary files as long as those fields can be easily viewed by the user.

Where can I place this license file in my EPUB where it complies with the license requirements?

I don't disagree with the above answer.

I just wanted to say that on the Title/Credits HTML page (which contains copyright, date, etc) I included this line:

The HomemadeApple Font embedded in this ebook is copyrighted 2010 by Font Diner, Inc. under a Apache 2.0 license.  (and I linked to the license).


Is there a way to read kindle books on Windows which do not support Windows? I read on multiple devices: Windows, Mac, iPad, Android Phone, even an old Kindle DX all from Amazon.

One problem I have is some books seem to be designed to work only on some devices. I suspect the reason for this is to avoid screen capture which is clearly easier on Windows than on a smartphone.

Lending evidence to my suspicion is the fact that when I try to open some books on Windows, I get this message:

  The item is not compatible with this device.

I do not get this error trying to open on either the iPad or Android phone.

I do find it frustrating that I am unable to read some of my books on some of my devices (especially when my Windows computer has a much larger screen).

So, is there a way to work-around this limitation so I can read all these books on Windows?

As we discussed in the comments, you can use the Kindle Cloud Reader to read your books in your browser, instead of in the Windows desktop application.


I cannot display ebook content on the Kobo ebook app I have purchased an ebook from Rakuten Kobo, downloaded ebook app on my computer, I see my book on the ebook, but cannot seem to display the book. I have tried clicking on the book, I clicked on different icons, but to no avail. How do get to see the see the ebook, so I can read it?

Have you tried using Calibre as an ebook reading app. It works well in many different environments and accepts many ebook formats. I buy lots of books in epub, from Kobo and others, and I never had any problem reading them with Calibre (though I prefer my small Kobo ebook reader).

Trying it would at least check whether there is a problem with the ebook.

Another point is that you did not tell whether your ebook has DRM (usually Adobe DRM in the case of Kobo). I am not sure whether that would require special steps to get the book displayed, but I suspect it would, at least for the first book.  I cannot say more on that because I simply refuse to buy books with DRM, and have thus no experience with it.


What are the consequences of changing my Kindle's region? I used to live in the US, but now I live in Germany.  I own a lot of books on the US Amazon site.
I'd like to switch my Kindle to Germany so I can purchase books in German...but if I do, what happens to my US books?
The US site says this: About Transferring Your Amazon Account to Another Website

Transferring your account to your local Amazon website will transfer the digital content from the list below to the new account and allow you to purchase content from the Kindle Store in your local currency.
May Transfer
The following content will transfer to your new Amazon account, as long as the content is available for purchase from the new Amazon website.
Kindle books
[and some other things are listed]

But suppose I own a book on the US account that is not available for purchase on Amazon.de.  What happens to that book?
I gather it'll be unavailable on my account after the region switch.  But will it still be there if I switch back to the US?

It may not show up in your library based on what they are saying. This is a publisher distribution licensing issue. But, you should still be able to log in to Amazon.com (ie US) and read it in the web reader, or on a different device.


How to get number of locations of a Kindle ebook programatically? I've been googling around for some time but couldn't find absolutely any clue. I have an ebook file in mobi format and would like get the number of locations of this ebook. I want to do it programatically so I could open a bunch of files and get that information in a second.

I was looking for some information about mobi file format, opened the file in a hex editor but I can't see anything useful. Has anyone done that?

Number of locations isn't in the metadata of a book file, it's the Kindle's calculation based off the book length. That thread mentioned give's some guesses about what the calculation is, but they still appear to be guesses. Theoretically, if you know the formula you can just create a simple program in Excel, enter the variables for each book, and get your answers.


Genres/ Subjects/ Categories in epub's metadata What is the proper way to define genre in epub's metadata? (in OEBPS/content.opf file.)
I can't google the definition, just some obviousness mentions like "It may also include many other things such as ... the genre" (link)
And, by the way, where can I find the current list of literary genres? (I found one in the wiki, but I'm not sure, is it applicable here or not.)
UPD 28.12.2019
I found in some downloaded epubs that genres are listed in several tags called subject from DDI-Codebook namespace, e.g.:
    <package xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" ...>
    ...
    <dc:title>A Journey to the Centre of the Earth</dc:title>
    ...
    <dc:subject>Science fiction</dc:subject>
    <dc:subject>Adventure stories</dc:subject>
    <dc:subject>Earth (Planet) -- Core -- Fiction</dc:subject>
    <dc:subject>Voyages, Imaginary -- Fiction</dc:subject>

On the ddialliance.org I found a corresponding page with this obscure description:

Namespace: http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/
Type: SimpleLiteral, inherited from any
Content: mixed (allows character data), 1 attribute
Subst.Gr: may substitute for element any
Defined: globally in dc.xsd; see XML source
Used: never

Is it really correct to define genres in this tags? Or is it "de facto" standard without strict rule?

This field comes from the Dublin Core (DC) metadata standard, which is useful for interoperability between software and databases. I don't think there has emerged an accepted way to use DC metadata for ebook reading systems.

One idea might be to go with BISAC categories (as listed here). My memory could be mistaken, but I don't think the reading systems process these values in any meaningful way, (wouldn't that be nice if they did!) BTW, I seem to recall that Google Play required that you use BISAC codes when selling through them. For the DC metadata, don't use the alphanumeric value of the BISAC,  just use a simple phrase based on BISAC values.

Here's a book marketing guy explaining BISAC vs. Amazon's categories. Here's  more by this same book marketing guy.


How do you create and add a .apnx file to a Kindle book to display real page numbers? I have a decent amount of experience creating epub files and converting them to .mobi using Kindlegen or Amazon Kindle Previewer 3 for self publishing on KDP. I'm looking to add the "real page numbers" feature to a book (this is useful in textbooks because people still tend to like to reference page numbers when citing). Amazon rolled out this feature in 2011, but I can find no current or relevant information for how to do this, other than general guidance that Kindle references an embedded ".apnx" file to identify the page numbers. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

KindleGen supports both NCX pagelists and ADE page-maps. I.e., you'll have to add a pagelist/page-map and you'll also have to add page target markers in the (X)HTML files.

Note that the official Amazon tools won't generate APNX files. However, KindleUnpack can generate them from a mobi file generated by KindleGen.

You could also generate KFX files with the unofficial KFX plugin. When transferred to an eInk device, the firmware will automatically generate the APNX files.


Kindle does not show epub book correctly I am trying to read the .epub version of this book, but when I open it in the kindle, the page numbers and the header of each page (which as you can see from that website correspond alternatively to the title of the book and the title of the section) appear usually around the middle of the text.

For example, I get something like:

  ...
  nothing like it or approaching it has ever
  been done or is now xi
  THE SERVILE STATE
  being done. I say further, what is of
  capital importance, that with every step
  ...

where xi corresponds to the number of the page and THE SERVILE STATE corresponds to the header of the page. You can see that they appear in the middle of the text. Quite annoying.

Is there something wrong with the file? Is it a problem of my kindle? Can this be fixed?

I have a Kindle 4.1.1.

Unfortunately the epub conversions for scans on archive.org tend to be uniformly terrible. (Perhaps they use Abby Finereader's epub conversion tools?) The error you're pointing out is simply the result of scanned text that was never proofed.

You may already know that Project Gutenberg already has an ebook download page for Hillaire Belloc (but not for the title you mentioned).  The PG ebooks are pretty much the gold standard for epub files.  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/2437

If you want a free download and have a large tablet, then I would recommend you use the PDF available from archive.org (No bigger than 6 MB).

Also, I noticed that Amazon has several proofed copies of the Servile State  (Kindle edition) for 99 cents. Judging from reader comments, there aren't complaint about typos, so someone actually proofed the text. https://www.amazon.com/Servile-State-Hilaire-Belloc-ebook/dp/B003IWZZPW/


How can I merge multiple ebooks in a single file? Is there a way to easily combine multiple ebooks into a single file, that will collect all of them?

Is it possible to use a full fledged editor like Sigil. It works with .epub files, but if needed, before the editing, it's possible to use Calibre to convert the source ebook into .epub, then reconvert it after the job.

Anyway, for a faster and easier solution, Calibre has a very useful additional plugin called EpubMerge, that, as the name imply, can merge multiple epubs into a single one, also letting create a new table of contents and edit all relevant metadata of the new output file, while leaving unaltered the source ones. Also in this case, if another ebook format is needed, a conversion is required after the editing since the plugin only works with .epub files.


Sub-chapters based on h2 tags in ePub file I have an ePub file that I generate in which I have chapters and sub-chapters.

I found here an example of how to create sub-chapters in the ncx file.

I quote here the answer of @macjohn

<meta content="2" name="dtb:depth"/>
<navPoint class="chapter" id="chapter1" playOrder="1">
  <navLabel><text>Chapter 1</text></navLabel>
  <content src="file1.xhtml"/>

  <navPoint class="subchapter" id="sub1" playOrder="2">
      <navLabel><text>Subchapter 1</text></navLabel>
      <content src="file2.xhtml"/>
  </navPoint>
</navPoint>

The thing is that in my case the chapters are in xhtml files, but the sub-chapters are just within <h2> </h2> tags in the xhtml files of the chapters.

So my question is, how can I add sub-chapters in the ncx file based on the h2 tags and not on an external file ?

Calibre editor has a graphical interface that lets you edit the ToC of a given ebook file (the ToC editor itself is accesible also from the default window, without the need to open the full editor).

You can select different ways to create the ToC, I think that in your case you should experiment by selecting "major headings" or "all headings".


Epub OPF 'spine' element: how to exclude an html file from linear reading order, while allowing it to be accessed from a link I converted an html source to epub with Calibre. Original 'html' source has got an individual html file for each footnote. Footnotes' files are reported in <spine> element of my content.opf, so they show up and can be navigated at the end of the book, which is an undesiderable behaviour. If I erase from the <spine> element the references to footnotes' files, footnotes are displayed in external browser instead of Calibre ebook viewer; therefore this behaviour is less desiderable than the previous one.

How can I take such footnotes out of reading order, while keeping them displayed inside ebook viewer when the reader click on their link?

Here is the typical itemref element:

<itemref idref="html88"/>

P.S. I tried linear="no" attribute in itemref elements, but actually it did not exclude the affected files from reading, it just changed the reading order, putting affected elements at the end of reading order.

<itemref> has linear="no" attribute exactly for this purpose.

Edit:

From the epub 2 specification

  All OPS Content Documents that are part of the publication (i.e. are
  listed in the manifest) which are potentially reachable by any
  reference mechanism allowed in this specification must be included in
  the spine. Such reference mechanisms include, as a partial list,
  hypertext links within OPS Content Documents, and references by the
  NCX, Tours and Guide.

and

  For each itemref, the publication author may specify the optional
  linear attribute to designate whether the associated OPS Content
  Document is primary (linear="yes", which is the default when linear is
  not present) or auxiliary (linear="no".) It is important that the
  publication author include some kind of internal reference, such as a
  hypertext link, to any OPS Content Document that is declared to be
  auxiliary; it is recommended that references be added to NCX for all
  auxiliary content. At least one itemref in spine must be declared
  primary.

  Specifying whether an OPS Content Document is primary or
  auxiliary is useful for Reading Systems which opt to present auxiliary
  content differently than primary content. For example, a Reading
  System might opt to render auxiliary content in a popup window apart
  from the main window which presents the primary content. (For an
  example of the types of content that may be considered auxiliary,
  refer to the example below and the subsequent discussion.)

  Reading Systems are not required to differentiate between primary and
  auxiliary content, and for the requirements and recommendations given
  in this section may consider all OPS Content Documents in spine to be
  primary, regardless of the value of the linear attribute.

This means, all items which are referenced, as footnotes in your case, must be included
in the spine. They can be declared as auxilary, with linear=no, but it is up to reading
system, how it deals with that.

More advanced readers, like Azardi or Readium, works correctly and display auxilary items only on request (link click). Others, like ADE, or Calibre in your case, work in the other way.

As I think you use tex4ht for conversion from LaTeX to html, you may try to generate inline footnotes, which doesn't make new file for each footnote, but are collected at the end the html file with:

htlatex filename "xhtml, fn-in"


Are there any ebook libraries in Germany Are there any programs that allow library books to be checked out, as ebooks, specifically in Germany?

NOTE: Based on this meta post and this question, I have created this German version of the question.

Most libraries in Germany are in my opinion joined with Onleihe. They have a website where you can see which library is connected by clicking on a map to select your Bundesland (Hessen, Bayern, etc.)

http://www.onleihe.net/ihre-onleihe-finden/onleihen-in-deutschland.html


What does the extremely fragile glass do in Kindle3's pearl e-ink display? I've recently seen two great tutorials that disassemble the Kindle 3 for repairing. One is this great Fix your broken Kindle Keyboard Screen tutorial by ghwhitcher, and the other is the Amazon Kindle 3 Take-apart Guide by Powerbook Medic.

Both warn that on the display's back there is an extremely fragile layer of glass. ghwhitcher says that it is only kept unbroken for normal operation because the kindle3's case is strong enough to protect it to some degree. He actually broke it first, even with being careful I suppose, when disassembling—he warns.

My question is, what does this glass do? I mean, why does it screw the entire display part if it gets broken? What is this glass' function as part of the screen module?

illustration taken from the tutorial:

E-ink displays have to be mounted on a surface. In this case I assume that was done on the glass. This keeps the E-ink nice and flat (good for equal visibility of all pixels) and for extra reflectiveness of ambient light, if the glass is part of a mirror (as it seems to be).

The display is actually a thin film transistor array and my guess is that if the supporting glass breaks, some of the circuitry of the thin film get ripped. A single rip across the width or height would make addressing the film as an array impossible.


Is it time to do away with (e)book return policies? I am developing a retail service platform for ebook authors and am at the point of asking myself whether or not to allow returns.

Back when all books were print, returns were relatively simple.  A store clerk could examine the product to determine whether or not the intended use of the book (to entertain or educate the reader) had been accomplished.  Though meticulous people could fool the clerks (or a clerk might simply be lazy), it's fairly straightforward to determine that the physical object had been used for its expected intent.

Ebooks don't have that convenience.  There is no physical object to be damaged during the reading process.  There is, in fact, nothing at all to tell the retailer that the book has or has not been read.  I'm sure the issue has been discussed many times by many people.

But this begs the question, is it time to do away with returns?  If a reasonable sample of an ebook is available on a website, along with the traditional marketing collateral, what justification is there to permit a return?  (I am assuming that even in the case of a gift purchase, the reader can evaluate the book before using the gift code, and therefore choose to redeem the code for credit rather than an unwanted book.)

Should I permit returns, or should I not permit returns?

This is probably not the best kind of question for SE because it asks for an opinion, and your needs may vary.

Also, there are technical issues and business issues involved.

Also, I'm guessing that you are talking about non-DRM files. If you had DRM in your reading system, it would probably be trivial to revoke the license for a piece of content.

I start with the assumption that most people are honest and that returns happen rarely in ebook sales. I also start with the assumption that piracy is not a significant problem for most ebooks.

It would be good customer service to allow returns. It defies expectations when you say that all sales are final -- especially if the customer made a mistake.

A more common issue is that the user purchases something and then discovers that the ebook has significant formatting issues or doesn't render well on the device he or she is using.

My approach would be to allow the return, but set limits on how often a customer can do it. Also, I would limit the window of time which customers can return things.

Purely from a business perspective, book purchasers are a rare enough species that I wouldn't do anything to alienate them. Also, aside from time and inconvenience, the ebook seller doesn't really lose the good because it is not a physical object. (That's why when I publish things, I am liberal about sending out review copies -- it costs me literally nothing).