Where can I find Apple's iBooks formatting guide? I made a decision not to sign up for Apple's iBooks publishers' account (mainly because I don't own a Mac and use a Linux box most of the time -- also I don't want to buy ISBN numbers for my ebooks when selling them).  However, I would likely be uploading content to the Apple store via Smashwords.

How can I find out the latest formatting requirements and CSS support for Apple's iBooks?

Unlike Amazon, for some reason, Apple doesn't make this information available anywhere.  Can you recommend a good online resource for preparing your content for iBooks?

I can follow the Smashwords formatting requirements (and I have an iPad and iPhone to test things on), but some store/device specific information might make it easier to figure things out with.

Yes, you can get a PDF of the iBooks Asset Guide from their site: https://itunesconnect.apple.com/docs/iBooksAssetGuide5.1Revision2.pdf


Can I have "clickable" links/references/index entries in an ePub? In a technical book, it is common to have a reference to material in another part of the book. Can I use something like an <a href=""> tag in the HTML to provide a direct link? How would I do this when creating an ePub from scratch using raw, manually edited HTML?

I can see that this would also be useful for creating an index page.

You can certainly use standard  tags with matching ids to create hyperlinks within an epub file, yes. The structure of the text could look like:

Here is a bunch of text with a footnote [1]

With a matching note in a notes.xhtml file:

1: Here is the related endnote [link back]

There are a few best practices to consider:

Make sure to give a reciprocal link for endnotes--that is, once you can click on the number to go read the endnote, you'll need another link to bring you back to the text from the endnote
In the index, it's very handy to have a series of links at the top for each alphabetic subsection, so that a reader can select "G" and go to the "G" section of the index. The "G" subheader can then be a link back to the top of the index.
If you're using epub 3.0, you should definitely add epub:type semantic markup for indices and foot/end notes. The details of that can be found in the Structural Semantics Vocabulary. These semantics enable reading systems to associate behaviors with certain kinds of content. This is what iBooks uses to generate popup footnotes, and if you've properly marked up your content, you're giving it the chance to get additional features with no more effort as reading systems design more functionality for that markup.

Indices can be pretty painful to create if the production files weren't tagged correctly at the time of creation; one quick-and-dirty method to consider in that case is to insert  into the document at each page break, then have the index link to the print page. This isn't ideal, as a print page can span multiple screens (particularly on a cell phone!), but it can get you part way there if you're interested in cutting corners.


How to discover/work around a limited number of devices for Kindle ebooks? After reading Nathan's answer to this question, I was surprised that there was a limit on the number of devices you can download book to.  I'm assuming this is controlled by Amazon but I would like to find the details on this.

If you download to one device and then hit the limit is it possible to 'officially remove' the book from one device so you can read it on another, newer device?

Also, is there a way to see how many 'devices are remaining' for an ebook or when purchasing an ebook is there a way to see how many devices it supports?

As stated in Consumerist, as far as Amazon goes (the rules are usually similar [not identical] for B&N):

  You can download a book an unlimited number of times.
  In most cases, you can download the book to 6 devices. If you need to download it to more devices than that, you can request that Amazon
  release additional licenses for the book. According to Dan’s [their contact] recap of
  the conversation, Amazon promises nothing. But you can ask and they’ll
  probably oblige.
  Then there are the “other” cases, where a publisher sets the number of simultaneous devices to a lower limit. The following is from an
  email Dan received from Amazon’s customer support: “Publishers choose
  whether they apply DRM to their content and thus determine how many
  copies of each title can be downloaded to different Kindle devices at
  the same time.”
  There’s no way to find out this limit prior to buying the book.
  Releasing new licenses requires that all of your current device licenses be removed, so you’ll have to start over and re-download them
  to all devices again.

You should be able to remove a book from one device and download onto another after reaching your limit as long as both devices are connected to the internet, but there's no guarantee. There does not seem to be a way to see how many devices are left.


Adding Video links to an ebook I am new to ebooks and am not really sure of the capabilities of the system. I have written a number of technical books which I was considering turning into video lectures. Now I think it would be much better to convert them to ebooks.

My question is: can I successfully add links to video content? I understand that it might be necessary to link to a webpage to reduce the file size of the ebook but I am concerned that it would look unprofessional if it is not a completely smooth transition. Any advice would be welcome.

I'm in the process of writing a bi-lingual multi-column translation of an Adobe.pdf German book on some of the regional dialects in Germany.  I have successfully tested .pdf pages that have test links to German and English YouTube websites for video illustrations of my subject matter.

One English language YouTube website video I have successfully tested in a .pdf test file is a video demonstration of examples of German regional dialects.  Another video on the German YouTube is a longish (30 minutes) video about the post-WWII German "Kabineroller" small cars -- actually it is also a video 'travelogue' of sorts.

From my tests I can see that YouTube video links from within my text will work and will be highly useful -- when and if I can finish my Adobe .pdf eBook!

My tests were with external video sources, and for this reason my videos won't take up any space at all within my eBook.  Obviously though, with my method if you want to use explanatory videos in your eBook those videos will have to be posted and available separately on some sort of a support website, i.e., a public or private website.


More than one chapter div in one epub file? A self-publishing author started his book with two epigraphs and a prologue. I originally formatted this as one file, putting the epigraphs at the top of the page (separated by blank lines). The prologue followed.

He objected to this, saying that he wanted each epigraph to appear on its own page. I formatted the three elements in the file (two epigraphs and the prologue) as three chapters inside the one file. This passed the IDPF EPUB validator and displayed correctly in the Kindle app, ADE (Adobe Digital Editions), and on a Nook.

He then uploaded the .epub file I made for him to the Kobo Bookstore, and viewed the result in the Kobo app on his iPad. He complained that the epigraphs no longer appeared on separate pages, but were displayed above the prologue.

I don't know why a kludge that worked for the IDPF and for several other ereaders did not work here. I asked him to try the file on a real Kobo, not just on his iPad. I have not heard from him. It is possible that the problem lies with the app. Still, the file should work across all platforms.

I consulted a colleague, who told me that page-break-before:always did not always work. She did not know why. She suggested splitting the one file into three. I did that, but it was not an easy task. I had to change the toc.ncx, the content.opf, the contents page, and renumber the toc-anchors in most of the files. I am not happy with the result. The contents page now has entries for Epigraph the First and Epigraph the Second. That is lame.

Is there a way I can make the three chapters in one file work for the Kobo app?

Kobo ereader devices have two different internal reading software.

Ebooks downloaded from the Kobo bookstore are a modified epub format with the particular extension .kepub.epub, while if you sideload a standard epub from your PC it retains its original extension (.epub).

By checking the extension of the files, the software automatically select the relative reading software (you don't normally notice many differences, they have some different internal features though).

I had the same issue with page break html code and experimented a bit, and it seems that the .kepub.epub engine (the one used with books from the Kobo store) doesn't support it, so I think that there is not much you can do about it.

A possible solution, like you have been suggested, could be to split the html file in multiple ones, exactly where you would have put the page break code. If you use Sigil or the Calibre internal editor you won't have to manually edit toc.ncx, contents.opf and all other files/references, because they will do automatically; it's an easy task, really.

Please note that books bought from the Kobo bookstore are stored inside the device database and not as individual files.


Numbered paragraphs or lines in epub? In some books (namely, The Iliad, The Bible, Seneca's Letters) I've seen paragraphs, lines or sentences are numbered.

There is a couple of books I'd like to have properly formatted, and they have just that enumeration. Unfortunately, I don't know the term for this and can't find out what's the correct way to do that in epub.

Should these be just regular text or is there a tag for them?

You can download a free version of Dante's Divine Comedy from ReadBeyond (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), these are well formatted epubs that also have numbered lines. You may find useful to look inside them and check their structure, to see if you can replicate these CSS settings for your own needs.


Is there a good size comparison of which of different e-book formats is smaller? If I have an option of reading e-books in a range of formats (ebub, mobi, Sony LRF, .lit, rtf, MS Word's .docx, Rocket, Amazon's Kindle format, pdf), which one takes the least amount of space over the range of different book structures?

Assume that the book doesn't contain any advanced features that would take a lot of space in one format yet be incompatible with other formats. In other words, an edge case of "well, TXT file is smallest" isn't really applicable.

Please note that any answer should be based on either someone actually having compared identical ebook sizes in different formats and published the findings; not guesses or personal experience comparing 1-2 books.

This is something I find interesting. I'm going to post an answer with some findings. As I discover more, I'll expand on my answer.

Old, But Still Useful Comparisons

This document is fairly old (warning, link is a zip file containing a pdf) and the information may not accurately reflect how things are today. It also does not contain many of the popular formats of today (there is none of the epub formats listed and mobipocket (prc) I believe as a predecessor to .mobi). I'll list the details for historical purposes though.

Excerpt from the report (Copyright 2002 by ePMA -- ePublishing Marketing Associates -- www.epmaasoc.com):

  To make this comparison, we took the Project Gutenberg plain text file
  of the book The Metal Monster by Abraham Merritt, stripped it of the
  PG legal Disclaimer and such. Next we removed the linefeed/carriage
  returns from the end of each line, so paragraphs would flow for
  different formatting, and then added basic markup with HTML, to
  provide paragraph breaks and chapter headings. Except where noted,
  this HTML file was then used to create the eBook in other formats. no
  cover or other images were included.

NOTE: This was done for a non-illustrated volume. There was talk of doing another test in the future with an illustrated volume, but I was not able to find it.

Here were the findings:

Format                               Kbytes% Txt
Rocket (fb)                        248K   52%
Mobipocket (prc)                285K   60%  MS Ebook (lit)                    292K   61%  Plain text (txt)                    477K   100%Web Document (HTML)     487K   102%Embiid (ubk)                       489K   103%MS Word 2002 (doc)         620K   130%hiebook (kml)                     654K   137%Adobe Acrobat (pdf)        691K   145%MS Wordpad (doc)            952K  200%eBook Pack Express (exe)2860K600%

UPDATE

This is a comparison of various ebooks I own in multiple formats. I did not create or convert the formats personally and I am unsure of the exact versions (e.g. epub2 vs epub3). I still thought this might be useful information since all books were generated by the same company (manning). These are all programming books, and as such, they have some images in them and embedded markup language. This should provide a decent comparison vs. something that is only text or mostly images.

The following list of books are compared in epub, mobi and pdf (sizes are in KiloBytes, smallest bolded).

Brownfield Application Development in .NET

epub - 3,447K
mobi - 4,115K
pdf - 8,573K

C# in Depth, Second Edition

epub - 5,429K
mobi - 6,330K
pdf - 8,573K

HTML5 for .NET Developers (results skewed by this book, see below)

epub - 24,533K
mobi - 13,945K
pdf - 13,177K

PowerShell and WMI

epub - 8,797K
mobi - 11,081K
pdf - 14,536K

Real-World Functional Programming With examples in F# and C#

epub - 8,483K
mobi - 9,446K
pdf - 14,536K

The Art of Unit Testing with Examples in .Net

epub - 4,280K
mobi - 4,754K
pdf - 9,535K

The Art of Unit Testing with examples in .Net, Second Edition

epub - 3,784K
mobi - 4,356K
pdf - 9,535K

Findings

Average Sizes

epub - 8,396K
mobi - 7,717K
pdf - 11,426K

In almost all cases, the epub was the smallest file. Mobi was slightly larger and pdf was the largest. However, the average size of the mobi files were actually smaller overall. This was due to one very large epub file for the HTML5 for .Net Developers book. This book skewed the results since the file was nearly twice the size of the other formats. My best guess is because this file contains many HTML code examples, which may cause problems for the epub format (basically XHTML). Perhaps this is an epub3 format, which supports HTML5 (the book title is a good hint). Again, I did not generate these files, so I am not certain of the reason.

To combat this single anomaly, I decided to remove that book from the averages. When removing the book, the averages of the remaining books looks like so:

Average Sizes (removing HTML5 for .Net Developers - i.e. the anomaly)

epub - 5,703K
mobi - 6,678K
pdf - 11,134K

Take it for what it is worth, but in these findings it suggests that the epub and mobi formats are quite close in size, while the pdf format is nearly double.

Answer to be continued with newer formats and more research.


Is it better to shut down my Kindle Fire or just put it to sleep? When is it better for me to shut down my Kindle Fire vs. putting it to sleep? Does putting it in sleep mode drain the battery?

In most cases, you will not need to shut down your Kindle Fire. The Fire uses a lithium-ion battery, which means you should be connecting it to your charger quite often. (Shallow discharges and frequent recharges are better for your battery in the long run than deep discharges.)

The only time you would gain anything from shutting down your Fire would be if you were sure you would not be using the device for an extended period of time (more than a couple days). In that case, the recommended charge for storing a lithium-ion battery is around 40%* - so you should discharge the device until it comes close to that amount and then shut it down.

* source


Choosing the right dimensions for ePub I am preparing book in Indesign for an eventual ePub export. My page dimensions are:

Width 768 px
Height 1024 px
Orientation portrait
Margins 0 px (since iBooks provides its own margins by default)

I added a cover image with the dimensions 800 px by 600 px. This shows perfectly as expected on my iPad. However, when viewing this ePub in iBooks on my Mac, the image splits across two pages. How can I make the image stay within a single page regardless of the device screen size? On my iPad, the image size remains constant no matter how many times I resize the font.

Also, is there any software one could use to emulate the various devices and their screen sizes for a finished ePub? I am far from able to afford every single reading device there is!

First, you are way behind the current standard.

Most (if not all)  ebook distributors are requiring high resolution graphics for cover images. (a Minimum of 1500 pix or 2000 pix for width). This has been true for at least the last 2 years.

It's true that some of the smaller devices will display only 600x800, but all distributors recognized early on that it's easier to require a high resolution cover graphic and then downconvert rather than accept smaller graphics which can't be converted to the newer screens.

Second, I'm assuming you are not using Indesign for a Fixed Layout. Fixed layout requires you to set dimensions etc, but this is NOT epub. Epub is more flexible for a variety of standards. That indeed is the point.

Amazon (which doesn't accept epub but lets you convert from epub to a Kindle format) has a tool called Kindle Previewer which also lets you emulate the various Amazon devices. http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_359603222_5?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765261

I found that on Chrome there is an extension called "Screen Resolution Tester" which lets you simulate various display sizes https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/screen-resolution-tester/bnbpeddmakpmblddofjnoghpjminhjph?hl=en

You can also check this reference guide for screen sizes. http://mydevice.io/devices/

This should get you started. I would start by testing dimensions for oldest Amazon Kindle Fire, ipad 1 or 2, ipad 3, the 7 inch ipad, iphone, Galaxy Tab 7 and 10.


How to convert jarirreader format to PDF/Mobi I do have a book extension is .jarirreader from https://jarirreader.com/

However I can't read / convert the book unless i open it with there app.
here is the book structure.

Images contains the cover / index has Json format / Text has chapters with HTML extension.

It's most likely a custom format with DRMed and/or obfuscated files. Try opening the files in the text folder with a web browser. If you can read them in a browser you can re-assemble them to a book with an epub editor.


How does the Kindle's reading rate algorithm work? One of the Kindle Touch updates included a "Time-to-Read" feature.  It seems to be based loosely on how fast I turn the page.  I usually turn back to the cover when I start reading a new book and flip back to the start of the introduction or first chapter.  So the status usually says 1 min left in chapter for a chapter or two.  I'm guessing the algorithm has determined that I have super-human reading speed.  Once I prove I don't, it becomes fairly accurate.

But other times I sit on a page for several minutes when distracted by other things.  I would have assumed the calculation would show me taking much longer to finish chapters after doing that.  However, the reading time seems to be stable and fairly accurate after the initial weirdness.

How does the algorithm work and why does each book have its own estimate?

Basically, they have no limit on how fast someone could actually read (supporting speed readers) but they do have a limit on how slow someone can read. That is, if someone takes 30 seconds to read a page, they will add that to their calculations, but if someone takes 5 minutes to read a page but only 20 seconds to read other pages then ignore the 5 minute exception.

This is not surprising since people will often put a book (electronic or paper) down while they do something else, then return to it. For this reason, they really need a maximum time per page.

As far as different books requiring different estimates, different books have different readability levels. If I read a book on leadership, I tend to read it quite quickly because I've already digested so much content on the topic. However, when I read a book on coding neural networks, I read much more slowly. My slowness on complex topics which I have little experience with does not mean that I am slower at reading other books/topics.


How do I export Wikipedia article collections to epub? I used to do that a year or two ago and it was pretty straightforward back than (there was Export to epub link or something like this on the left pane of a Wikipedia page). Not any more! Currently, there are two options for export in the book creator, namely, pdf and plain text (only pdf for single article).

What is worse I did not manage to find any clear info on why it is not there. The article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools#PDF.2C_EPub.2C_Odt_and_LaTeX mentions it is still possible to produce epubs and re-directs to some weird page.

Do I miss anything obvious or they really disabled this useful functionality for good?

This feature was removed as the result of changes of the mwlib that was used for export to ocg that has better support for non-latin scripts for PDF files.

In the process EPUB export was disabled, probably because the ocg library renders to images via LaTeX (that is a guess, I have not looked at the details).

The announcement for the change was made on the wikitech mailing list,

  As part of this change, we will disable ZIM and EPUB export for the
  time being. If you're interested in working on ZIM or EPUB support for
  the new offline content generator, or other export formats, please let
  us know via the above channels.

and it looks like it has not come back yet.

What that "weird" page does is take the source of the wikipedia page, which has the page description, and tries to render it to ePub. That should give  better results than e.g. starting with the HTML version or the rendered PDF.   I normally caution to not use such cloud based rendering services, but since the input you feed it is public anyway, you won't have to fear that the data you upload there gets stored for further use by the website owner.


JPG continues to appear in subsequent pages I have tables I converted to jpg inserted into the MS Word file of a book to be published. After converting to epub with Calibre, I noticed the jpgs continue to show in the background in pages after the one they were inserted when the epub is viewd in Aldiko. They shadow the next 3 to 5 subsequent pages making them unreadable.

I googled & read around but couldn't get a way to stop this. I need help

After much trial, I finally got round the problem by breaking paragraph after each image.


Can my Kindle paper white read a flash drive If I had a 30GB flash drive, can I load it with ebooks and then stick it to my kindle paper white? Will the kindle be able to read the books?

Nope, the only external storage you can use is Amazon's cloud storage.


Can I force Calibre flow mode to ignore page breaks and never skip pages like paginated mode? Is there a way to force Calibre to scroll content like a regular web page, instead of scroll normally till the bottom of a page comes up, then skip the whole screen to the next page, then skip to the next page, and so on? That mode is not flowy at all, it's unusable.

Kind of like the true opposite of "Line scrolling stops at page breaks".

Or suggest an alternative eReader on Windows (I don't organize my books with it).
Thanks!

Well I use linux and I'm not sure if that's what you're after but there is a yellow icon representing a scroll at the top right of the viewer's window next to the find next - find prev vertical arrows. When you mouse over it says "Switch to scroll mode… etc." You click this and it should switch to scroll mode.


Best platform and format for eBook on software/programming I am totally new to eBooks / digital publishing.

I want to publish a book on a software/programming topic. It makes zero sense for it to be paperback, because I want readers to be able to copy and paste code from the book to their software editors. I also would like to include animated GIFs in the eBook, so it's more interactive, etc.

Given the above requirements, does anyone have a recommendation for which platform to publish to and which format to publish the eBook in? I here a lot of people use MS Word to write the eBook and export to PDF. But I don't think PDF supports GIFs, so I think I am looking for something else.

It's 2018, I want to publish an eBook with GIFs/animations!

If someone could add the following tags to this question:

gif, animation

that'd be great...

I suggest you of using LaTeX for such work. LaTeX handles multiple types of documents, text and media environments (complex equations as well as images, videos, plots, program source code (you can find packages to provide syntax highlight)), languages. You can also meaningfully use a Version Control System with its source code (like Git). And the end, you can export your book as PDF, PostScript, or other formats.

There are compilers and integrated editors for every major desktop operating system, for example, various Linux Distributions, Windows, or even macOS.


iBooks ERROR ITMS-9000 - problem with id I tried submitting my first epub to iBooks and got this error:

ERROR ITMS-9000: "Shankle.epub: OEBPS/Text/introduction.xhtml(11): value of attribute "id" is invalid; must be an XML name without colons

Here's the code from introduction.xhtml, line 11:

Page 13 It is the purpose of this book to record the facts about the various state names. nicknames, flowers, trees, flags, birds, songs, seals, mottoes, capitol buildings, and some of the outstanding state histories.

I'm confused; there are no colons in my code. It's just id="13". My epub shows no errors in Epub-Checker. Does anyone know what this error means?

An XML name must begin with a letter, underscore or colon (although in this case, the colon is prohibited).

See https://www.w3.org/TR/2000/REC-xml-20001006.html#sec-common-syn


Reader for scientific papers - what should I look for? I use a Hanvon ewise reader. While I'm mostly happy with using it for novels, I have several difficulties with reading scientific texts:

Some figures are not displayed
Reflowing (displaying 2 column text as one column) does not work where there's formulas or graphics
The display is too small to read many pdfs in fulltext, and the zoom function works erratically

The problem is that, before buying the reader, I could not have known of these problems. How do I translate "none of the quirks above" into specs to shop for a new reader?

I want to stick with an e-ink device.
Edit to add: Practically all papers and science textbooks I have are pdf.

It's hard to tell exactly what is going wrong without being able to at least poke around inside the files you're having problems with, unfortunately. Just as not all ebook readers are created equal, not all ebook files are created equal. Images not showing up could be conversion errors as much as they could be problems with your device. It might not be a bad idea to check out the files on other reading systems (there are a myriad of free desktop reading systems, like the Chrome extension Readium, the Firefox EPUBReader add-on, and good old Adobe Digital Editions). If the images don't show up in those systems either, it's probably a problem in the ebook file rather than with your device.

For scientific texts, I would advise that you check to be sure the reading system supports MathML, which will allow properly formatted equations to show up as readable, searchable text. Note that for MathML to work, the manuscript must have been formatted properly, and since not all reading systems support MathML, not all publishers necessarily bother with it. Since this is a chicken/egg problem, I'd advocate picking up a MathML reader and making sure to harass publishers that don't use MathML until they do. You can use the support grid at epubtest.org to find MathML-capable systems, but most of that information is geared toward tablets.

For reflowing not working where there are formulas or graphics—do you mean that the images (and formulas that aren't MathML are frequently just images, to preserve formatting) aren't expanding in size when the font is increased, for example? That's something that you'll see in any ebook reader, I'm afraid. The best you can do there is get something with a good zoom feature, which unfortunately argues against eInk devices.

Display size is probably the easiest single criteria to look into, though it's also fairly subjective—what's fine for you to read my be too cramped for me.  As mentioend above, zooming is going to be somewhat problematic on any eInk device, as the refresh rate for eInk is much slower than for a tablet screen. If tablets are absolutely not an option, you might want to look around for eInk readers with large displays; a quick search found me this article.

Best of luck with your search!

EDIT: Here's a good summary of which reading systems support MathML: http://www.mathjax.org/resources/epub-readers/


How Does Amazon Kindle Renting work on *buntu/Linux Systems? I'm interested in renting this textbook (https://www.amazon.com/Legal-Ethical-Issues-Nursing-Guido/dp/013335587X) from Amazon, but I am running a Linux system (Kubuntu 18.04.01).

How does renting from the Amazon store work if I'm running such a system? Do I need a special application to rent from the Amazon store, or will a program such a Calibre suffice?

Perhaps renting works differently from buying/lending/borrowing ebooks, but all you do is to download the Kindle reading app on your device. Then, the rented item will magically appear after you purchase it.  I know the android Kindle app works great on mobile devices.

I don't know if Calibre has the ability to strip DRM from ebooks.(NOTE: We don't discuss DRM on this Stack Exchange). But the Kindle cloud reader is browser-based, so I don't see why you can't just read ebooks in a web browser.


Kobo Libra images appear very small I have a new Kobo Libra and bought 2 online epub books.
I transferred them onto Kobo by using Calibre. When opening the eBook the layout is fine except that all images appear very small!? I've opened the the eBook in Calibre and there everything looks fine, the images are scaled to a readable/viewable size.
Is this an issue with Kobo, the .epub format or something else?

I found a hacky solution to the problem by editing the eBook's styling using Calibre.
Importing the ebook and then right click on Edit book which opens the actual contents of the book. Now the actual formatting is done via a stylesheet (in my case called stylesheet.css).
In this stylesheet there are the generated properties for the image sizes, e.g.
.calibre95 {
    height: 229px;
    width: 226px
}

Now the images can be adjusted by editing the height and width of every relevant entry. I've done this via a small Python script since Calibre generated a new entry for each image and there were a lot.
I know this is not a general solution but might help some to fix there books as well


Has Apple’s FairPlay DRM been cracked? I am not asking how. I am asking the binary Yes/No question of whether Apple’s FairPlay DRM copy-protection as used on their iBooks ebook content is known to have been cracked/broken/breached, citing evidence.

According to this CNET article in 2012, that version of FairPlay was breached. Rumors suggest Apple enhanced FairPlay. I am simply asking for a definitive answer as to the current situation of 2016.

I have not used it but this program claims to be able to remove DRM without affecting the book. http://www.remove-drm.com/ibook-drm-removal-mac.html

If this can be confirmed as working you have your answer (yes)


How can I download a TED transcript to a Kindle Paperwhite How can I download a TED transcript to a Kindle Paperwhite so I am able to read the entire presentation, not just the introduction or synopsis (as I am seeing now)?

There are some ease ways and some that might require programming skills.

I'm describing the easy way:

Install the Send to Kindle extension for Your browser (I'm using Chrome)
Configure it to Your needs
Visit the TED talk that has a transcription, e.g. this one, and click on the transcript link under the video, choose Your language.
Now click on the "Send to Kindle" button on Your browsers toolbar to send it to Your Kindle
Turn on the wifi and sync Your Kindle.


How can I send articles from iOS Safari browser to my Kindle I have extensions for Chrome and FireFox to "Send to Kindle" as listed on http://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle but there is no solution for iOS Safari browser.

Does anyone have a solution?

Here are just a few possibilities (which I have not tested):

An app that lets you push to Kindle from within Safari
A bookmarklet (JavaScript link) that lets you add a page to Kindle
Another bookmarklet

Let us know if any of these work for you!


Epub -> Mobi/Azw3 conversion (calibre) , Kindle App doesn't show cover no matter what I am trying to convert my ebooks from epub format to mobi/azw3, in order to put them onto my Kindle App and Paperwhite. Everything works fine except the book covers don't show up in kindle app. There's no description also, so it's impossible to recognise which book I'm opening.
I am using Calibre (osX) for the conversion.

All my epub ebooks come with covers as the first page.
I am not trying to convert from PDF, I know it can result in unpredictable outputs.
When I make the conversion in calibre, everything seems to work fine. The computation produces three output files, the azw3 file, a jpeg file for the cover and a metadata file.

What I tried:

I used the "Send to device" function in calibre after the conversion, (and I made sure I was sending the newly converted azw3 file, not the epub), and the cover doesn't show up un Kindle App.
I tried to use the "Save to disc" function, same result as before.
I tried to manually edit the book cover downloading it again from amazon.com through calibre, and then reconverting again azw3 to azw3 to make sure the cover bound to the file. It doesn't work.
I also tried to manually put the azw3 file into the kindle library folder.
I tried the same things as before with the mobi format. Same result.

I really don't know what to do anymore. Any help would be highly appreciated.

Everything works fine except the book covers don't show up in kindle app.

Unfortunately, that's the default behavior, because the Kindle for PC/OSX app will only display covers for "personal documents," i.e. ePubs converted with Kindle Previewer/KindleGen, or books bought from Amazon.

AFAIK, Calibre adds a fake ASIN and changes other metadata items so that books no longer appear in the Personal Documents folder. However, this change also causes the book to be displayed without a cover in the Kindle for PC/OSX apps.

  Everything works fine except the book covers don't show up in kindle app. There's no description also, so it's impossible to recognise which book I'm opening.

To display the book titles, click the hamburger icon (≡) in the Kindle app toolbar.


Are there any WYSIWYG editors for EPUB books? I am looking for an easy to use editor that provides a WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) interface. I know that you can import a Microsoft Word document into Calibre, but I would prefer to be able to edit an ePUB book using a robust editor. Does something like this exist?

When someone asks me what GUI to use I suggest Sigil. I find that Sigil, unlike it's alternatives, does not add unneeded code to your ePubs which cause bloating, errors, and slower viewing.

Its code is also on github.


Is there any tool I can use to examine the differences between two OCR pdfs? I have pdf's to two solutions manuals for a textbook, and I'm trying to determine how much they differ by analyzing both copies with some sort of tool. Does such a thing exist? Is there any other way of determining the differences between two OCR PDF documents?

I've done it by converting each PDF to Word, for which there are a bunch of free converters online. Then I use Word's file comparison feature to see the differences: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306484


Calibre convertion: text goes out of the screen I just used Calibre to convert this html document into an epub. To do that, I first downloaded the chapter using:

wget -r --no-parent -k https://www.supinfo.com/cours/1CPA/

and then I rename the file to add .html extension:

cd www.supinfo.com/cours/1CPA/chapitres
cp 08-microprocesseur-son-environnement 08-microprocesseur-son-environnement.html

and convert:

ebook-convert 08-microprocesseur-son-environnement.html 08-microprocesseur-son-environnement.epub

However, the produced .epub displays horribly in my Nolim ereader: the lines goes out of the screen:

Any idea how to fix that?

I found the answer: the original .html file had table inside with fixed width, and that's why the text was running out of the screen. The solution: just use the option --linearize-tables !

ebook-convert 08-microprocesseur-son-environnement.html 08-microprocesseur-son-environnement.epub  --linearize-tables


Bulk conversion of PDF books to DJVU/MOBI/EPUB I have an extensive library of heavily formatted PDFs which I'd like to convert. I've tried Calibre on Windows and GNU/Linux, but it throws a few errors and bails.

Can someone recommend software for Win/Linux that yields good conversions in batch mode?
I have over 10,000 volumes, so converting each by hand is impossible.

Thanks :)

I'm not sure why you wouldn't want to stick with PDF but I recently just converted over 1T of EPUBS & MOBIs to PDF as I use Adobe Acrobat X Pro on a daily basis both personally, academically and professionally.

AniceSoft worked beautifully keeping everything as they should be and as it allowed me to set the margin size output for the final PDF. It will convert your files to EPUBS or whatever files you want. It is also capable of 100 files per batch and converts quite rapidly, especially when compared to Calibre which I had initially tried and found I could single convert quicker using Online-Convert (which is my go-to single converter for both work and pleasure). I was able to complete all of the conversions before the trial ran out.

As for DJVU, I found Online-Convert to do the best work and I use a 2cm border when I convert anything to PDF.


How does Kindle know my login at first boot? I have just received my Kindle Paperwhite, which I ordered through my Amazon account (it was not a gift).

I've connected the usb cable, it started up. Connected to my wireless, and then I am presented with a screen saying "Hello <my_name>"! I was pretty amazed (and a bit creeped out at the same time)

Do any of you know how this auto-logged in to my account? Is it factory set to the buyers account? I guess this could not happen for gifts. Did it found that out by my wireless AP somehow?

From the manual, it tells you that if you purchased the device through Amazon then they use your Amazon account information and register the product to you before they ship the device.  Definitely not mining your wireless AP :)

  Registering your Kindle
  If you bought your Kindle online using your Amazon account, it is already registered to you.
  To verify, tap the Home button and look for your Amazon user name in the upper left corner
  of the Home screen. If it says My Kindle or shows the name of a previous owner instead of
  your own Amazon account name, you'll need to register it. See Setting up your Kindle
  Paperwhite in this chapter for instructions on setting up and registering your Kindle.

Here is a link to the userguide:
http://kindle.s3.amazonaws.com/UserGuide/Paperwhite_V2/Kindle_Paperwhite_V2_UserGuide_US.pdf
:)


Which ereaders support the EPUB3 format? The EPUB3 format is the "next generation" for the widely-used EPUB format. (the differences between this and EPUB2 are described in this question).

Which devices today support EPUB3? Where can I find out information about EPUB3 support?

Some supported EPUB3 Readers are

Helicon Books EPUB3 reader (for Andriod)
Math jax
Online ePub3 reader
Gitden EPUB3 Book Reader (for Andriod and iOS)
Kobo Aura HD (source)

EPUB3 Support Websites

EPUB3 Overview
EPUB3 Support Grid


File types and readers - maximum coverage Assume that an author is about to launch an ebook. In order of priority, what are the most widely-readable file types, in terms of actual users? In other words, to make the book available immediately to as many human beings on ereaders as possible, which files must the author produce?

My working assumption has been that .azw and .epub would cover the overwhelming majority of people using an ereader, but I am wondering if that is incorrect.

Please note:

My question is not, "How many ereaders/platforms/software packages can read .xyz files?" It is, "How many people can read my book if I publish .xyz, .abc, and .whatever formats?"
My question is specific to making the book widely available in ereader-friendly formats. Obviously, with a couple of ereader formats plus .pdf, .html, and .txt versions, one can get universal readability. I'm asking, what does one have to do to get near-universal readability in ereader-friendly forms that offer at least some formatting capabilities?

Edit: Answers should include statistics whenever possible. The goal is to go beyond the conventional wisdom and get into whether that wisdom is correct.

I think that if you provide .epub, .azw and .pdf versions of your book you can be pretty sure that you have covered the largest share of your potential readers.
For those that need another format, they can easily use Calibre to convert it, especially if they have access to the .epub version.

Edit: I don't have any statistics, but if you consider

the formats offered by the majority of the online stores;
the formats supported by the ereaders available on the market, and by the various PC or handheld devices ereading software;
that it is possible to convert easily from one of the said common formats in to another less common one with Calibre, simply by using its easy and user-friendly interface;

you will have that the stores mainly offer .azw (or the rather equivalent .mobi), .epub and .pdf ebooks; that if you pick any random ereader or ereading software, it will be capable to read at least one of these formats, and often all of them; and that if for some reason someone needs another format, he can start from one of the said formats to get what he needs.
So even without any "official" study (assuming that any study in this respect can be considered meaningful of the entire market) that supports this empirical evaluation, you can be pretty sure that if you provide these three formats your book will be almost universally available; if I have understood your question correctly, you are asking how to reach the 99,99% of readers, and you should be able to do so with these three formats.


which readers honor -webkit-transform CSS property? I have got an ebook (in epub format) of a popular Italian series for children. However, I cannot browse it with my usual Android ebook reader (Moon+ Reader Pro) because formatting is quite wrong: for example the text is so big that a screen shows ten words or so. Sigil however displays the text fine in the preview. I checked the source code, and I noticed that for each page there are specific CSS styles. Here there is a sample:

.t18 {
    -webkit-transform-origin: bottom left;
    -ms-transform-origin: bottom left;
    transform-origin: bottom left;
    -webkit-transform: scale(0.25);
    -ms-transform: scale(0.25);
    transform: scale(0.25);
    z-index: 2;
    position: absolute;
    white-space: pre;
    overflow: visible;
}
#t1_18{left:315px;bottom:32px;letter-spacing:3.1px;}
#t2_18{left:108px;bottom:663px;}
#t3_18{left:108px;bottom:631px;}
#t4_18{left:108px;bottom:599px;}
#t5_18{left:254px;bottom:599px;}
#t6_18{left:108px;bottom:567px;}
#t7_18{left:125px;bottom:563px;letter-spacing:3.3px;}

Here there is the text for a snippet of the page, and its rendering:

14

– Senza dimenticare la scaletta per la presen-

tazione – annotò Colette. – Oh, ci sono ancora

tantissimissimi

dettagli da sistemare!

–

Per mille bielle sbiellate

,

per riuscire a orga-

nizzare tutte queste cose avremo bisogno di

My guess is that I need a reader which supports -webkit-transform-origin , -ms-transform-origin, -webkit-transform and -ms-transform. Do you know of any?

I guess the problem is either:

in the specific software (Moon + Reader Pro): maybe it has some bugs
in parsing .css
or in the screen size of your tablet: the scale 0.25
is too big for it

The css you provided looks reasonable:

-webkit- tags are added for compatibility with iOS readers, because those readers won't display an epub properly without this tag

-ms- tags are added for compatibility with Windows readers

As your platform is Android, the first 2 tags in the following CSS should be ignored:

-webkit-transform: scale(0.25);
-ms-transform: scale(0.25);
transform: scale(0.25);

So your reader should parse the simple transform tag.

I'd advice you to:

Try to change the scale(0.25) to scale(0.15) or so and see if the
result is better.
Write to the support of Moon + Reader Pro app and ask if there can
be a problem in the app when rendering your specific epub.


What software is used by the publishing companies to create diagrams in the introductory physics textbooks? What software is used to create free body diagrams, inclines, springs and so on in the introductory physics textbooks ?

I know Adobe, Luxology, and many others could, but I am more interested in software with ready made objects, that could still create good looking diagrams with less effort. Most of the textbooks have 100s of such diagrams that are kind of good looking.

Similar to http://lpsa.swarthmore.edu/Systems/MechTranslating/TransMechSysLeversPulleys.html

They are almost certainly done in TeX/LaTeX. TeX/LaTeX is not about "less effort", but exactness. It is a programming language for typesetting with a special emphasis on math and equations. TeX has a long history with the academic community in publishing. Explaining TeX and LaTeX is outside the scope of this forum (There is a TeX.stackexchange.com site). You can find some examples of how those types of diagrams are done here:

http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/tag/diagrams/


What information does B&N collect about my Nook Usage? My wife and I both have nooks attached to the same account.  I have noticed that the when I open up a book that I have been reading on her Nook(usually because I let my battery go dead) that it knows what page I was on, with in a few minutes.

This got me thinking that if they are tracking where I am at in the book what other usage information are they collecting?

The Barnes & Noble Mobile Privacy Supplement addresses the following questions as they relate to Devices and Retail Apps:

  What personal information do we collect?
  How do we collect personal information?
  How do we use personal information?
  With whom do we share personal information?
  What else about Barnes & Noble’s Mobile Privacy Supplement would I want to know?

In section 2b, the information automatically collected is detailed:

  (b) Information automatically collected

  When you use a Device or Retail App, we may automatically collect
  information from your Device or Retail App when it is connected to the
  Internet. For example, we may receive and collect information
  concerning your Device or Retail App registration, settings, usage,
  firmware version, signal strength, search queries, network
  interaction, the name of the network from which you access the
  Internet, the Internet Protocol address of the device you are using,
  downloads, sideloaded content, configuration, service, or information
  related to any malfunction of the Device or Retail App. In addition,
  when your Device or Retail App connects to wireless networks operated
  by Barnes & Noble (e.g., within Barnes & Noble locations) we may
  collect information concerning your location when it makes such a
  connection.


Software to create bilingual ebooks? Suppose that I own an ebook in two languages. Is there a software that combines them to one bilingual ebook?

I suppose this shouldn't be hard, as a basic translator can figure out which paragraphs/sentences are translations of each other, and can then put them (in some sense) next to each other. That's all I want from my output.

I suppose this shouldn't be hard, as a basic translator can figure out which paragraphs/sentences are translations of each other, and can then put them (in some sense) next to each other.

Actually, it's not that easy, because original and translated documents often have different paragraph/sentence counts.

Even sophisticated CAT tools don't perfectly align translated documents.

AFAIK, the only Open Source alignment tool is LF Aligner, which is based on Hunalign.


How can I update an existing side-loaded MOBI file on a Kindle? I'm considering using Kindle devices to provide employees with easy access to corporate documents in MOBI format using "Send to Kindle" side-load service.

However, once we side-load a MOBI file, how can we update that file to a new version and sync it the Kindle devices again? I wouldn't want multiple versions of the same document on the devices, I would ideally want the books to update automatically when we push a new version. We won't change them often, but having to go to each device and delete old versions individually would be a pain.

Two questions which I need to ask:
a)who owns the devices?
b)what kinds of files are you sharing? You say, .mobi, but are you just repackaging .doc files or .pdfs into .mobi?

First, let's not use the word "side-load" because that usually refers to moving a file through USB. If you're "sending to Kindle", that obviously is not using USB.

I think what you're using is "Kindle Personal Documents service" to send it to a specific device.

The key question is whether your company owns the devices in question. If yes, then it also is controlled through a single Amazon account, in which case it would be fairly easy to delete and swap  old Kindle files remotely.

To  log in to the Kindle Personal Documents service via computer, go to the Amazon account options, choose "Manage your content and devices" , for  show, select Docs . Under Actions choose Delete  and that should do it.

I'm guessing that everyone owns their own device and use their personal Amazon login for it. I'm also assuming that each device  has listed a specified employee's email as authorized to receive  Kindle files from via  the Personal Documents service. (Remember, the person may have several devices they are managing content on; they only need to authorize the device email which you want to send company docs to).

To add the file to devices for each employee, you would need to send a single email to all the relevant device emails and then attach the kindle file. Obviously if you can email one version of a file, you can email an updated version. If I send different versions of a file to a device, I usually rename the ebook's title (which is not the same as the name of the file).

If you don't have a single login for all devices (but are simply sending things from an authorized email to the devices), you do not have access to the user's Manage Your Content and Devices screen; therefore, you could not swap files.

To give a different perspective here, I prefer the Google Play Books solution for syncing ebooks to the Kindle solution. (For one thing, Google accepts epubs instead of a proprietary file). Google Play Books doesn't let different emails share files. But Google Docs/Drive is really good about allowing files to be synced and shared.

One solution might involve keeping the most recent epub/doc/pdf on a Google drive and let people manually transfer it to Google Play Books. (You could use a plugin like this: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/drive-epub-pdf-book-to-go/fabbklgdcbijclhlffpmllpgnkalmbfd?hl=en-US ). But this still requires that each user make the manual step of connecting files from Google drive to Google Play Books.

If you can sync the file as a PDF or Word or ODT file, then you can stick the file onto your own G-drive (preferable in a separate EMPLOYEE DOCS shared folder), then each user could install the Google Docs/Drive app and then you could do a read only share with every user; that would let you always have a shared and synced copy of the file.

The only caveat about the Google solution is that might need employees to have offline access to these docs. I just checked and the Google Docs app has an option for each document which allows you to view the document offline. You would probably need to verify that Google would update a doc if an employee has chosen to make it viewable online.

(I suspect that MS Office might have a syncing method as well).

To summarize: Kindle doesn't seem to let you sync files among devices; it just lets you add new files. If the files you need to share can be PDFs/DOC files, then it would be easier to put them on the Google Drive and then share the files with users.


Calibre: Difference between "Date" and "Published" When editing the metadata of a book on Calibre, there are two fields that seem to have the same meaning: "Date" and "Published". What's the difference between the two?

"The lookup names are pubdate (publication date) and date (calibre's "Date" column, usually the date you added the book to calibre)."

http://faq.calibrecompanion.co/index.php?action=artikel&cat=6&id=22&artlang=en


Is EPUB ready for most phones? Would a person who doesn't know anything about technology be able to read an EPUB file without having to install any app? The phone might be in Android or iOS.

I suspect the answer is no, because I even have to install an app to read on my laptop. But I heard that iBook on iOS supports EPUB.

The file is converted from LaTeX, and will be sent via Facebook Messenger, if that's matter.

To read an ePub book, you need some kind of software that can open it and display it to you in the proper way, exactly like any other kind of file types.

I don't know about all phones, especially for Android ones, the set of preinstalled apps depends largely on the manufacturer choices.

Often, Google Play Books is preinstalled, but there are a lot of other ePub reader apps.

Anyway, I don't really understand what the real problem is. If you are going to send an ePub to another person that had no problem in finding and installing the Facebook Messenger app, you should not be concerned that he would not be equally able to find and install an app used for another purpose.


Universal Identification metadata for e-books I would like to add to my ebooks some reference metadata so as to be
able to easily find information on the web, without using a search
that is often tedious, possibly difficult since each search engines
has its own (weird?) way of using the search information.

I noticed that many site have each their own identification system,
not to mention the ISBN standard numbers, which many do not use.
It also seems that none of these system covers all books.

Ideally, I would like to use only one identification for each book,
though possibly not the same for all. My idea was to identify a book
with a pair [ <ID system> , <book ID> ], so that I would not be
constrained to any specific identification system, which is necessary
to deal with the limited coverage of each identification system.

I can give as example the book "Dead and Buryd" by Chele Cooke (I have
not read it). I could identify it as:

   [ ISBN , 1230000171483 ]
   [ SMSH , 358812 ]           for Smashwords
   [ ASIN , B00FLVRWYU ]       for Amazon
   [ KOBO , "dead-and-buryd" ] for Kobo
   [ GDRD , 21895867 ]         for Goodreads

In each case, this is all the information I need to retrieve the book page
on the corresponding site, and access whatever information is
available there. One can easily build a usable URL from each pair (except, may-be, for ISBN).

My question is whether this idea has been previously developed for
whatever purpose (probably with other names than the ones I chose),
and whether one can find on the web correspondance tables,
so that, given one identification pair, I can find an identification
pair for the same book in another ientification system.

For example, given [ SMSH , 358812 ], I could ask for the GDRD
identification and get [ GDRD , 21895867 ].

Is there anything in Calibre to help building such tables?

Note: I am aware that the use of ISBN may be a bit more complex, but I
did not want to add that complexity to the question. I also know that the definition of "book" may or may not include a variety of things, such as edition. But I want to start simply.

Note: I corrected an unfortunate metalinguistic error, which caused part of the text to be taken as a HTML tag. Still, though I would expect that many users do not have information to contribute, I am surprised that no one showed the lest interest in what I consider a rather important issue about e-books identification.

This is a great question, and I don't have any inside knowledge about how search engines interpret metadata for books.

I checked the source of several book distributors and found that there's an open graph generator for books. http://webcodetools.com/open-graph-generator/book

Librarything, Smashwords and Harper Row publishers embed ebook info in these tags, and possibly more (but not Amazon).

I don't know if putting things in the meta tag really counts as giving it semantic meaning though.

Also, it's interesting that I don't see anything human readable on Amazon that might resemble this.

Dublin core metadata is popular for library cataloguing, but I don't think it really offers useful information for search engines http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Dublin_Core
http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/

Actually when you input metadata for an ebook in Calibre, it generates dublin core data in the metadata.opf file (and you can edit this metadata by right-clicking the epub in Calibre). DB metadata is required and it typically appears in package.opf. Of course, this  standard doesn't seem to be geared to ebooks, and things like ISBN don't translate well for ebooks.

While logically it makes sense to have metadata for all the ebook distributors, it's unlikely that ebook distributors would carry metadata on its competitors. Publishers and authors are more likely to benefit from embedding this metadata, but what I've seen so far looks very simple (and gives only one URL).

I am guessing that while you might be able to do ISBN searches across platforms (even for ebooks), this is not especially useful for ebooks. It sounds like  other than fuzzy searches, there is no direct way for a database to be linked to the same ebook on different ebook distributors.

These are superficial thoughts, but  I would not be surprised if some kind of solution emerges over the next few years.


Locating or Copying Epubs in iBooks I made a mistake on an epub I'm working on. I discovered that I left my backup on an external hard drive at work.

No problem, I have a "good" version in iBooks.

But how do I access this copy? I was working in Sigil, and there's a particular xhtml file I want to retrieve from the working copy on iBooks. If I can't locate this book, is there a way to view the HTML or use a SAVE AS command to put a copy on my desktop, or something like that?

I'm using a Mac running El Capitan, by the way.

Wouldn't you just be able to use iTunes to copy the file from your tablet/phone onto your desktop?

It's been a while since I've done it, but after you connect your device and it appears in itunes, you just have to sync it. (I don't think it's going to the cloud, but maybe I'm wrong).

See: https://www.wondershare.com/ios/how-to-export-ibooks-from-iphone-ipad-to-computer.html

Check out this too: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/163131/what-is-the-best-way-to-backup-epub-and-pdf-books-in-ibooks


How can I fix this kindle? I tried to turn on my kindle DX and I found it in this state:

The screen was normal prior to that with no anomalies.The external screen is fine with no cracks or scratches.
What I remember one day before is that I dropped my keyboard on the kindle's screen; however, since the screen showed no external damage I never gave it much thought.

What has exactly happened to my Kindle? and what are my options for repair?
I'm out of the warantee.

To be honest there are high probabilities that your screen died when you dropped the keyboard on the kindle's screen.
My suggestion if you wanna keep it would be to remplace the entire screen by buying a brand new and following a tutorial like this one.

Otherwise taking into account that the release date of the kindle DX was on July 1, 2010. You may consider buying a newer model from Amazon Kindle or Rakuten Kobo.


How to change the font(s) used on a pdf, or improve how they are rendered? I have an eBook (received from a university where I studied a couple of years back) that has a rather thin font. The text looks as shown in below image.

This eBook was not published by the university but it seems to be fully editable, meaning that there is no security restrictions on this book and the pages are not images.

The question I wanted to ask:

Is there a way for me to change the fonts to something else, or to improve how they are rendered, in this particular PDF, using either the full version of Adobe Acrobat or some other tool?

(Please note that this font issue is only with this particular PDF and for that reason I am looking for a solution that would not require making a global setting change in Adobe Acrobat.)

Based on the sample you provided, you will not be able to change the font on that particular document.  Here is why:

As one commenter already suggested, it is very clear from the sample you provided that the text you are reading is a scanned image of the page and not text being rendered in realtime from a font. I work with scanned documents and OCR tools on a daily basis, so I can say this with confidence.

Look carefully at different occurrences of each letter glyph, and you will notice that they are not identical. Computer fonts do not have inconsistencies between multiple instances of the same glyph, but printed books do.
The letters in the sample image have the appearance of ink-bleed (which indicates that they were printed on paper) and the typical washed-out look of text which has been run through an image processor to remove the paper grain (this is what causes the "thinness" which is bothering you).
Some lines of text have visual distortion from the scanning and dewarping process (look at the text "PAY_TYPE field" for a good example).

All of these things are clear visual indicators of a scanned image.

You are able to select text in the document because there is a hidden OCR text layer "behind" the image which contains the plain text of the book and a mapping file which tells your PDF viewer where each letter is located in the image. There are a few different ways this can be accomplished, but as an example here is a tutorial that shows how to OCR images with Adobe Acrobat (the full software, not Reader).


How to make a basic ebook with chapters Basically, what I want to do is download one of the online textbooks I use for school (already dealt with) with each page as a .txt file so I can read my textbook on my e-reader instead of my computer. Anyway, so I couldn't find any good tutorials/I didn't know what to look for on how to make a basic ebook which consists of plain text and chapters so that's why I'm here!

TL;DR: I want to make a basic ebook with each page as simple text and with chapters.

Pandoc can convert from and to a large number of formats:

It can read plain text, Markdown, CommonMark, PHP Markdown Extra, GitHub-Flavored Markdown, MultiMarkdown, and (subsets of) Textile, reStructuredText, HTML, LaTeX, MediaWiki markup, TWiki markup, Haddock markup, OPML, Emacs Org mode, DocBook, txt2tags, EPUB, ODT and Word docx
it can write plain text, Markdown, CommonMark, PHP Markdown Extra, GitHub-Flavored Markdown, MultiMarkdown, reStructuredText, XHTML, HTML5, LaTeX (including beamer slide shows), ConTeXt, RTF, OPML, DocBook, OpenDocument, ODT, Word docx, GNU Texinfo, MediaWiki markup, DokuWiki markup, ZimWiki markup, Haddock markup, EPUB (v2 or v3), FictionBook2, Textile, groff man pages, Emacs Org mode, AsciiDoc, InDesign ICML, TEI Simple, and Slidy, Slideous, DZSlides, reveal.js or S5 HTML slide shows. It can also produce PDF output on systems where LaTeX, ConTeXt, or wkhtmltopdf is installed.
It can create epub files with chapters see here for instructions.
It runs on Linux, Windows & OS-X
It is free, gratis & open source
You can even point it at a URL and it will do a reasonable job of converting the online resource into an epub.

If are ready to take a little more time on preparation then the python Sphinx document generator can produce EPUB format, organised into chapters, from a number of input formats, including plain text.

Also free, gratis & open source


bulk conversion of EPUB for Kindle (mobi) While I've never had success with converting epub to azw or azw3, converting to mobi works fine for me.  For a large number of epub files what's a good workflow or tool for converting to a Kindle friendly format?

Every file is epub, which "send to Kindle" won't accept.  None of the files are PDF, nor is PDF desired as an output.

In Calibre You can select several books at once, and hit convert. It is an old feature, described on the official blog:

  Bulk convert: Calibre allows you to convert books in bulk. You can
  select a set of books, all of which may or may not be in the same
  format, and convert them all in bulk to a different format. So say you
  have a kindle and you have a number of books in EPUB, RTF and PDF
  formats. You can select them all. Then click the "Convert books" icon
  or click the little arrow next to the "Convert books" icon and choose
  the option "Bulk convert". A new window  opens. At the top right
  corner of the window you can set the output format, which in this case
  would be MOBI.

If You are on Linux, You can also write a script to utilize Calibre's command line capabilities.


Convert a Spanish pdf into kindle format To convert my .PDFs into Kindle format I just email my Kindle account. I tried one that was in Spanish and words like matemática appear as mate´matica, which is uncomfortable to read.

Is there some way to get the words with correct punctuation? Is it also possible for characters like partial derivatives and integrals?

Converting from PDFs is very difficult task and depends on vary of factors.
The short answer is that sending it over Amazon with different parameters (subjects) wont help.

Every PDF file can be saved in different ways. As Images(then you need OCR) or as text layers. If text layers it can be with different coding and sometimes that coding is not same as text in reality is. That makes a lot of troubles. Your problem can be caused by not perfect Amazon OCR system.

You can try to convert it manually by PDFtoEPUB software and then from ePub to kindle by kindlegen software but this will take a long time to do it properly.


Can't find Kindle book after download from amazon I have just purchased a Kindle book from Amazon and told it to download it to my PC. I can open it and read it offline so it must have it stored somewhere but I can't find it. I'm using Win7 and looked in C:\Users\Bill\AppData\Local\Amazon\Kindle and according to what I read there should be a folder content under the Kindle folder. But there is not one.
I opened Kindle for PC and can read the book OK even with the internet connection turned off. All my books are epubs but I could not find this one as an epub or else that is what I would have done. This appears to be very cumbersome.

found the location of the files in the tools menu.


How to set a cover image on a PDF on Kindle PW2? How do I set a custom cover image on a PDF downloaded on Kindle PaperWhite 2?

PS1: I use Calibre to convert books and set covers, but it does not help with PDFs. The reason might be that PDF's are considered documents (rather than books) by Kindle PW2.

PS2: A possible answer would be to convert the PDF to mobi/azw3 format and then set the cover, which I believe will work fine if it wasn't for the bad quality and unreadability of the produced files. Calibre doesn't handle conversion from and to PDF format very well, which is absolutely normal.

I've found a similar question to mine, but titled more generally:

Kindle doesn't show cover


Updating EPUB book author and title metadata I own many EPUB books (Spanish, English). Some have the name of the author wrong, such as "Esquivel, Laura" instead of "Laura Esquivel". And have the name of series in book title, where it does not belong.

I can change this in Calibre so things are right. But when I open the book and look at the metadata it is still wrong in the book. After I convert these from epub to epub, and  author name are OK in metadata. But this is slow, and sometime change the layout of the book.

Is there a better way (I read here about editing the EPUB books myself, but this seems too cumbersome for the many books I have)?

You can "polish" your ebooks with calibre since version 1.0. But you have to add the capability to the calibre interface:

  To use this tool, go to Preferences->Toolbar and add the Polish books tool to the main toolbar. Then simply select the books you want to be polished and click the Polish books button. Polishing, unlike conversion, does not change the internal structure/markup of your book, it performs only the minimal set of actions needed to achieve its goals. Note that book polishing only works in ebooks in the EPUB and AZW3 formats.

Once you have added the button to the toolbar, you select EPUB books and then the "Polish books" button:

If you only select "update metadata..." you should get what you want in the EPUB files.

If you are running on Linux with Gnome, the polishing of many (50+) books can overflow your notification application. This is because polishing is done faster than the time a notification is displayed.

To resolve that problem you can use the find based solution by Simon, but that always updates all epub files. The method described in this answer only updates those .epub files for which the metadata has been updated by Calibre.


What's the correct way for developers to edit PDF? Recently I got a task to manually add a Table of Contents to a PDF ebook generated by someone who left it out. I didn't know how to do it at first so I googled a lot and found some small tools but none works really well. Finally I have to head to a commercial software called PDFpenPro, and it eventually fulfilled my needs.

My question is, since PDF is a open standard, why the excellent open-source editing tools are so scarce? I'm not an expert on ebooks and standards, but I still wonder what blocked programmers from building up great open-source tools?

Anyway, adding a TOC (and many other basic but useful editing) seems not a very difficult task, can we developer do it by ourselves, by making use of and contributing to some open-source libraries? Can anyone lists some handy resources I can count on?

The "problem" is that PDF does not know anything about its contents and the structure of the document (unless structure has been added — maybe in order to make it accessible). That means that you will have to find other ways to recognize (in the case of a TOC) titles etc.

One possibility (and I think PDFpen is doing it that way) is enumerating all text elements, comparing them with the properties you defined to be "Title", stitching them together (note that a word in PDF may not correspond to what we see as "word"), making a list of titles, creating another page, and create the TOC, and finally establish links between the TOC and the corresponding targets.

Another thing to know is that it is way more complex to read a PDF than to write one. This is the reason why there are more libraries (and applications) to just write PDF than being able to read and write (and even fewer to understand PDF…).

Now, because creating a TOC is something which does not happen that frequently, and requires a visual check anyway, it would be reasonable instead of trying to create an application to do it, to seriously consider a plug-in for Acrobat. Acrobat's API for plug-ins is rather extensive, and reasonably well documented, and there is a community which provides support. AFAIK, this API is free to use, unless you want the plug-in work with Reader (in that case, you will need a license from Adobe). The advantage of this approach is that you can rely on Acrobat's capabilities to write a proper, good quality PDF.

To answer your (rather rhetoric) question why editing tools are so rare… Well, PDF is much more than a simple text file…


How to confirm if ePub is DRM'ed ? Kobo Aura HD possibly refusing to read DRM-free ePub I've got an ePub file that I'm quite certain has no DRM on it. It's a DRM-free book bought from O'Reilly. However, my Kobo Aura HD is refusing to use it, saying that it's Adobe DRM'ed and I have to log in.

So, first thing I tried to confirm is that it is DRM-free. Unzipping the ePub, it has no rights.xml file, no encryption.xml file, and all the content is available through plain html files. epubcheck does't say anything about it having DRM. Is this sufficient to confirm that an ePub is DRM-free?

Second, if it is indeed DRM-free as it should, then the Kobo Aura HD is incorrectly indicating that it has DRM. It is refusing the display the file even though it displays fine in every other reader I've tried, including iBooks and Calibre, neither of which I've logged into any accounts.

Any remedies that I can use to fix this? Perhaps somehow repackage the ePub?

I have a different type of Kobo (Glo HD), and no knowledge of DRM
implementation for ePub, though I would expect that a variety of
distinct DRM techniques can be used on ePub files.

I would however expect that an eBook from O'Reilly does not carry DRM. So your problem should have another cause. Which you apparently confirmed by testing on different devices or application software.

What I noticed by experimenting with my Kobo is that, when an eBook
has been loaded and made visible to the Kobo, it may interpret reading
problems as caused by the presence of DRM, though that may not be the
case. And you get an error message that pretends that the book is DRM
protected.

Typically that can happen if some mishap destroys the file or
moves it to another directory in the Kobo memory. That is easily done
by accessing the memory directly, as done by tools such as Calibre,
though this should in no way be construed as suggesting that Calibre
makes such mistakes.

From what I understood experimentally (so I may be wrong) The Kobo
believes it has a DRM problem with that eBook until it does a scan of
its memory, and refreshes its tables, which will then no longer point to a
missing ePub file. I am not sure what is the best way to force that scan.
The way I did it was by using the Kobo browser to download in the Kobo a DRM-free
book (I usually go to http://gutenberg.org for that).

So it could be that your Kobo has some problem reading the file, for
whatever reason, and interprets it as a DRM problem, exactly as it did
for my missing/displaced files.

My idea is not to give you a definite answer on what is wrong, as only
you can do that. It is more to suggest that the Kobo may interpret as
a DRM problem a problem unrelated to DRM.


How do I easily convert and send PDFs to a Nook GlowLight or SimpleTouch's native format Amazon makes it easy to convert PDFs and send to Kindle in the Kindle's native format. How to do this (simply!) on a Nook?

I do know conversion is possible with tools such as Calibre but I was wondering if there is a way that is comparably simple to the Kindle's method of emailing the PDF to a conversion service.

The goal: In 3 steps or less, with an existing PDF from a computer, convert to the Nook native ePub format and appear on my e-Ink Nook device.

You could just plug it in with USB and move the PDF file, which is compatible with NOOK readers.


No .indd files to convert for Kindle publishing I have been asked to create a Kindle ebook from a PDF document. This ebook will be published on Amazon website officially. I checked on the Kindle website and they had a plugin to convert the file directly into Kindle-compatible format. The issue is that I do not have the original IDD (Adobe Indesign document) which was used for creating it. All I have is the PDF from it.

Is there any way I can create a Kindle ebook from PDF with the proper formatting retained? There will be a table of contents as well. I have tried converting the PDF somehow to RTF and importing in Adobe InDesign, but I still have issues with formatting.

This is going to be a challenge. There are some programs out there that do a decent job extracting text cleanly from PDF files, such as OmniPage. You might also check out pandoc, but you will have to convert the document from PDF to something else before it can help you much. You will almost certainly have to recreate a lot of the formatting, no matter what you do.

It would help us give better answers if you told us what issues you have after converting from PDF to RTF and importing the RTF into InDesign.


Which does have the least glaring minimum-brightness backlight: backlit e-ink readers or tablets? I have the habit of reading a lot in pitch black darkness (before falling asleep), and after a few minutes even the lowest brightness of my tablet (iPad 1) or phone (Samsung Galaxy Pocket) starts to be too much.

I wonder if backlit e-ink devices have a lower minimum brightness, or if it is similar to that of tablets and phones.

I ask mostly because it would be impossible to test this realistically in a shop.

I don't know every single ereader on the market, but my Kobo Glo has a lighting that when set at its lowest level don't hurt my eyes at all.

Furthermore its screen is not backlit. Eink screens are different from LCDs, they are an entirely different technology and are not lighted from behind. Usually their lighting is provided by LEDs positioned on the side of the screen, so that the screen receive their light perpendicularly and not directly emits it. In fact, there are also ereaders without any lighting at all, it is a feature separated from the screen itself.

This way the light is pointing towards the screen and not directly into your eyes, resulting in a comfortable reading.


Extracting notes and highlighting from Kindle books Is there a way to extract/export my notes and highlighted passages from books on a Kindle or in one of the Kindle reader apps? I primarily use the iOS apps and tend to mark up books heavily as I go, particularly for passages I might later quote in a blog post or tweet. It would be great if I could export all of those highlighted or annotated passages at once.

Yes, this can be done through the Kindle website:

Go to https://kindle.amazon.com.
At the top of the page click "Your Highlights."
You may be asked to login, fill in the login information to the account your kindle is linked.
Your highlights and notes should show, you may copy them anywhere you want.


Should a title have two ISBNs if one is fixed ePub and one is free flowing ePub Just curious to know if a fixed layout ePub and a free flowing ePub, of the same title and contents, would have to have their own ISBNs based on the different structure type or can a single ISBN be used for both file types?  Some retailers do not want fixed layout ePubs so a free flowing ePub was created.

Yes, you should. The point of ISBNs is to identify distinct formats--in the world of print, a paperback and a hardcover would have different ISBNs. As Bowker (the US ISBN authority) says on their site:

  The ISBN identifies a specific title, edition, and format being made
  available for sale. You will need an ISBN for each unique version of
  your book. For example, if you plan to release a hardback edition,
  softbound edition, EPUB edition, MOBI edition, and PDF edition, then
  you will have 5 unique versions of your book.

One of the most important things that an ISBN will do for an ebook is ensure that the right version gets sold to people with the right devices, so that nobody ends up with a format that they can't use. Because fixed layout is not something that all reading systems support, you'll want a different ISBN for fixed layout than for reflowable.


Are Baen eARC editions generally very different from final published books? eARC ebooks are Baen's business approach to releasing advanced book copy to the readers prior to publishing.

  An eARC is an electronic Advance Reader Copy. This is an unproofed manuscript and is guaranteed to be full of typos and error. It is pretty much raw from the authors word processor. But you get the entire eARC well in advance of even the Monthly Baen Bundle release.

Is there any information about how different the eARC versions are, on average, from final published Baen books? If possible, I'm seeking a study across many different eARCs that did detailed analysis, as opposed to personal impressions.

Reason for asking: sometimes I have a chance to read an eARC of a book I eagerly anticipate, but worry that I will not be able to afford the time to re-read the published one later on - so if eARC is materially worse, it's better to be patient and wait till the final version is sold.

The eARC (electronic Advance Reader Copy) editions vary widely in quality because the editor, proofreader and copy editor haven't got their hands dirty. Some are great, some are OK. In every case the final book is better. If you are thinking about self publishing I recommend reading both versions of at least one book. You will come to appreciate Eric Flint's philosophy about delaying publication until his favorite editor has time.

On the other hand if you have to know what happens in the Peoples Republic of Haven, you will not see any plot changes, just grammar, formatting and spelling.


custom bullets html ebook kindle I am creating an ebook for Amazon's Kindle in HTML, and then later use KindleGen to convert it into the Kindle's MOBI version.

The problem I am currently having is with custom bullets for nested unordered lists that I am using for the ebook's Table of Contents. Initially I was using an image in the list-style-image property to create a custom bullet. This was the CSS I was using:

ul.customBullet
{
    list-style-image: url('images/bulletPointImage.png');
    margin:1.3em;
}

And this was the html:

Text 1

2:
 <1-- 2nd tier -->

Text 3

 Text

3:

4:

5:

6:

7:

I was having problems with aligning the bullets with the text. The text appeared one line below the bullet and a little to the left and not alongside as it should (in Firefox). When I previewed the MOBI created with KindleGen in KindlePreviewer, the image of the bullet was coming out tiny (and not proportional to the image file) and the same problem of the bullet not positioned in the same line as the text.

Also, the bullets appear differently in each of the different kindle models (Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Fire, etc.), the size of the image varied and with different sort of spacing between the bullet and the text.

I then read somewhere online that Kindle does not support the list-style-image tag. Kindle's official supported CSS tags also do not include it. So I created a simple bulleted list without the CSS but with the same html code above. The problem is the same with the spacing. And different shaped bullets appear on each tier. For example a hollow circular one on the first, a squarish one on the second and so on.

So, my question is , is there a way (any lines of code) to make streamlined bullets in html for kindle's ebook without all these variations in different versions, and also without all these unneeded space insertions, and a proper sort of positioning. Bullets that stay the same no matter which version of kindle is being used. Hope I have explained myself properly.

There are a few things going on here. The spacing issue is likely being caused by the presence of block elements inside list elements—the headers are probably getting bumped onto their own line, apart from the start of the list item. If you're starting with the toc.xhtml of an epub file, you'll need to lose any elements inside the Table of Contents list (which must be in a ) other than , , or
. You've got a couple other minor problems that are probably from typing stuff in here, but to hit them quickly:

The closing  tags don't have a "/", making them opening tags
The first list item ends before the list inside it begins
The first  ends before the
 containing it ends

Try out the following:

Item

Sub-item

Sub-sub-item

Sub-sub-sub-item

Item

Item

Item

Item

Item

You could as easily give the class definition to each
, and then have the CSS point to ol.tier3 li { color: blue; } or whatever styling you want— might be easier to read the code that way.

Hope that's useful!


Create a DRM Compatible reader? If I were to create an ePub reader application for mobile devices, how could I receive authorization to allow DRM protected books purchased from other eBook stores to run on my app (legal only, no workaround)?
For instance, how could I allow an Adobe DRM protected book purchased from Kobo to be read on my app?

Thanks for any insight

Amazon and Apple have their own DRM schemes and you won't be able to create an ereader that opens books from their stores. But most others use Adobe DRM, and you can license Adobe's Reader Mobile SDK to do this. ARMSDK is very expensive (when I was involved with a related project many years ago, it was many thousands of dollars a year for a license), and it is difficult to work with.

You may find these links helpful:

An overview of related tech on the Bluefire blog
A decent sales page for ARMSDK


Does the MOBI file format for Kindle use the same CSS standards as browsers? I am working with a designer who is helping me format a .MOBI file for Kindle devices.

We're having a little trouble with a table of contents, where the indentation of lines is not being placed correctly. He claims that the problem can not be solved.

I work with CSS and web design for my job, so I know that in a browser based CSS environment, the issue he is talking about can absolutely be fixed. But what I don't know if there are any differences between how a MOBI file interprets CSS and how CSS is interpreted by browsers.

Are there differences or limitations in how MOBI renders or interprets CSS?

Are there differences or limitations in how MOBI renders or interprets
  CSS?

In a word - yes.  The CSS support for modern browsers is much much more extensive than the CSS support for e-readers.  There simply has not been the same level (or expectation) of standardization for the epub format, in general.  It used to be because of hardware limitations but now that mostly every e-reader has enough power it can really only be attributed to the negligence of the e-reader manufacturers.

This site provides metrics for specification support by e-reader including the Kindles
http://epubtest.org/rs/14/ and you can go specifically this page to see the stlyling support for the Kindle Fire http://epubtest.org/rs/14/.

Also, in reference to your specific issue, the TOC is more difficult to style than the regular body matter because it is automatically generated and adds one more layer of obfuscation when trying to find out the code that is generating the style.


Changing my eBook reader. Any way to take my kindle books with me? I am changing from Kindle for reading eBooks onto a different eReader platform. I've purchased a couple of eBooks for Kindle on the Amazon platform but those books I didn't start reading yet. Additionally there are some Amazon/Kindle books I've purchased that I would like to read again and therefor be on my new eReader as well.
I had a hard time finding relevant information, I guess because it's not possible or damn hard (for obvious reasons I understand why Amazon doesn't want that to be easy).
So is this a hopeless endeavour?

It depends if the books have DRM (Digital Rights Management) or not.
If they do then you can only read them on Amazon devices or with a Kindle app on PCs Macs Android or ios.
If not DRM then download them to a computer using the transfer by USB option on the "manage your contents and devices" page on Amazon on the Web.
Then you need to convert your books to a different format usually. .epub  The usual way is to use the program calibre. https://calibre-ebook.com. Some calibre plugins might be able to import the books from where the kindle app stores the books on a computer, look at kfx importer


How do I override the power cycling when the battery gets below 5%? I know that I probably shouldn't let the battery run so low on my Kindle Fire, but occasionally I have let it dip below 5%.  Once this happens, the device no longer let's me trickle charge, and it powers itself down, even while plugged in.

Is there a way to override this setting?  Sometimes I want to finish something up before letting it rest and charge up completely.  To what extent does it damage the battery to run it so low?

Unfortunately this is not possible. The exact explanation for this actually comes from Android. Buried deep within the Android source code is this little gem:

BatteryService.java:239

private void shutdownIfNoPowerLocked() {
    if (mBatteryLevel == 0 && !isPoweredLocked(BatteryManager.BATTERY_PLUGGED_ANY)) {
        [...]

This basically forces the system to shutdown if the battery level reaches 0%. The isPoweredLocked function determines whether any of the following are true:

The battery status is unknown
The device is connected to AC
The device is connected via a USB cable
The device is within range of a wireless charger

It should also be noted (as Jason mentioned in his comment) that lithium-ion batteries typically power off when they reach a predetermined low voltage to prevent further discharge and consequent damage.


Start Calibre, update feeds, transfer files and close I want to use Calibre for subscribing to RSS feeds, download new articles and bundle them in .mobi files. These files should be send to my Kindle via mail.

Both these processes work without problems, but I do not want to have Calibre running all the time.

Are there command line parameters that allow me to let Calibre only fetch the feeds and send them to my Kindle and then close?

I know I could just let start Calibre after booting and then close it manually, but an automatized version would be nicer.

You can do it easily from cron (if you are on *nix) and most probably it can be done on Windows too. Calubre includes several command line tools, but for you the most important is ebook-convert(.exe).

With that you can create a mobi ebook from the RSS recipe like:

ebook-convert WHATEVER.recipe WHATEVER.mobi

Mailing can then be done like:

calibre-smtp -a WHATEVER.mobi -u SENDERNAME@PROVIDER.com -p PASSWORD -r smtp.PROVIDER.com --port 587 SENDERNAME@PROVIDER.com USERNAME@free.kindle.com ''

And set up a cron/scheduler job to automail it to you.

I'd recommend to read the fine manual.

(Note: this wont add the created mobi to your library! But you can do it with the calibredb command as documented here)


How do you access the benefits from Amazon Prime to get free Kindle books? I have downloaded the Kindle app to an IPad, and I just about get locked in having to try and get Kindle Unlimited, which I do not want.  I am an Amazon Prime customer.  And, I understand such customers have access to millions of free book titles.  But, when I look up books I never see any info suggesting a book is free using Kindle with Amazon Prime.  I only see that certain books are free with Kindle Unlimited.  Can anyone clarify this situation?

Amazon has two types of eBook subscription services
1.  Kindle Unlimited
2.  Kindle Owner's Lending Library

Differences:

The books available to each service are both around 1.4 million titles.

Amazon Prime members can borrow ONE book each calendar month from the Kindle Owner's Lending Library.  This link has a good video of how to search the Kindle Owner's Lending Library... https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=help_search_1-1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200757120&qid=1360282925&sr=1-1&tag=bom-tomsguideca-20

Also, Amazon Prime members have access to the Amazon Kindle First Picks Program for free. Meaning, you have the option to download one of six editor's picks made available before their publication date each month, for free.  This option does not carry over each month. https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/?nodeId=201376210&tag=bom-tomsguideca-20

For an additional fee of $99 a year or $10.99 a month, you can have full access to the Kindle Owner's Lending Library.  Alternatively, for an additional $2.99 you can get FreeTime Unlimited which gives you access to ~ 13,000 kid friendly books, tv shows and games.

Here is a quick overview of your Amazon Prime Benefits:
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/what-is-amazon-prime,news-18041.html


backing up books from iBooks I have a phone with iBooks installed, and I have read a lot of non-DRM epubs on this device. I wonder if it is possible to back those books up? I couldn't find any relevant menu neither in the software nor in iTunes.

If you sync your phone to your computer, you should be able to see all your files in this location:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.BKAgentService/Data/Documents/iBooks/Books
Use a terminal to go there, or press CMD+Shift+G in Finder and paste in the path.

Note that your books will not be named as titles but rather the hash of the file. With some basic plist hacking and bash scripting you can rename them so something useful, or just throw them into Calibre and let it do it's thing.


How can I read an PDF purchased from Kobo on an Amazon Kindle? I own both a Kobo Mini and a larger Kindle. I recently bought a PDF from the Kobo store. I was able to import it into Kobo Desktop, but what I'd really like to do is copy it to my Kindle and read it there, because the Kindle has a larger screen than the Kobo. Is this possible? I couldn't figure out where Kobo Desktop is storing my ebooks.

The PDF is an Adobe Digital Editions PDF, if that matters (I'm sure it does).

EDIT:
The problem is definitely with Adobe. They have this thing called DRM (Digital Rights Management), that's essentially a layer of protection that's supposed to minimize the amount of book piracy. Essentially, when you buy a book with DRM (as opposed to DRM-free), you are not downloading a .PDF or .EPUB file, you are getting a .ACSM, which is Adobe's file format for license + book. So if you open that .ACSM file with an Adobe-supported app (such as ADE), it can figure out whether the license is valid or not - in other words whether you've purchased the book yourself or if you've just downloaded it from the Internet - and if it is, let you read it.

The downside is, obviously, a situation like yours, where you simply want to read the book on a device that doesn't know how to handle .ACSM files. Unfortunately, there is no "proper" way to do this, you need to get rid of this license Adobe attached to your book and work with an actual real DRM-free PDF. If you google something like ".acsm to pdf" or "remove DRM from .acsm file" you should be able to find plenty of tools online. I'll link to just one of them - but keep in mind, I haven't tested it myself. http://www.epubor.com/how-to-convert-acsm-to-pdf-free.html

Take a look around either My Documents or your AppData. You can find the latter by pressing {Windows Key}+R to bring up the Run window, and then typing %AppData%. This will probably send you to C:\Users{username}\AppData\Roaming, but if you can't find a folder called Kobo Desktop or something similar, you may need to step up from Roaming and take a look at Local.

This being said, from what I could gather online, it may be damn near impossible to do what you want to do without stripping the books off their DRM.