Create ePUB in Calibre without Document Outline? I have a book that's made up of a bunch of .tif images. I have all the individual .tif files, and a pdf with them all put together.

I'm trying to make a .epub file for the book. When I try to convert from the pdf in Calibre, it creates a "Document Outline" table of contents at the end of the book that just lists the names of each individual .tif.

I don't want the Document outline at all.
How can I remove it?

I found a way to remove the Document Outline from Calibre.

Select the book
Press edit book
At left under 'Text' section: find the file with the Document Outline (press doble click to check)
Remove it (right click - delete)
Save

Done


Can one use two Amazon accounts on one Kindle? For historical reasons I happen to have two accounts on Amazon,
and I would prefer to keep both, as they are in different countries.

I have ebooks in both accounts. Can I access both accounts with the
same kindle or kindle app and download the books from both?

How can I do it?

I asked the same question to an Amazon customer service. The answer I got was NO. I did recommended them to design a way to allow users to link their multiple accounts in whatever countries.

What I'm doing now is using an Android simulator on my desktop computer, where I can run a separate Kindle app and use a different Kindle account. The Android simulator I'm using is bluestack, and TBH it's not a bad experience.

But I'm still struggling to find a way doing so on my iPhone and iPad...  Hope someone else can update the answer.


When will the Sony PRS-T3 be available in the US? In the fall, I saw several reviews of the Sony PRS-T3. I've noticed the device is for sale in England and Australia, but the US Sony Store does not list it.

Will the PRS-T3 be sold in the US and when will it be available?

According to this article, never.

  "Sony will not be offering the Reader PRS-T3 in the United States. In response to the region’s market changes, Sony will be focusing instead on mobile and tablet devices, including the Xperia Tablet Z and Xperia Z smartphone. Digital reading and eBooks remain an important priority for Sony. Reader Store will still help book lovers find and read their next story, anytime and anywhere, and customers can continue to expect new and exciting features and discovery tools. Reader Store will continue to support previous Readers as well as other compatible devices via the free Reader apps for PC, Mac, Android and iOS."


Epub conversion for a book in Hebrew What is the best practice for converting an Indesign file in Hebrew to Epub format?
I have produced two epubs in  Ebglish in the past, but apparently in Hebrew it messes the whole layout up and some of the text is missing...

For the record I wanted to add that the free software KOReader is adding Hebrew and Arabic support. See https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/5359


How to debug GPB "This file cannot be processed." I tried uploading several books from Project Gutenberg and I'm getting errors on a few stating in red that "This file cannot be processed".

I click on the learn more link but it doesn't really connect me to anything debug worthy.

Anybody know how to get information about what exactly went awry?

So I solved this issue by converting epub file to mobi format (mobi is the format kindle uses) and then converting back to epub. After doing this, google books didn't have issues processing it. There are multiple online converters you can use.


Converting pdf with table of content to Kindle format To convert the pdf using Calbre I use :
Click 'Add Books' and add pdfs to library
Save To Disk -> Save Only MOBI format to disk
-Once saved the folder location of converted file should open.
Send converted file to kindle via email

When I convert the pdf file using Calibre this an .opf is generated, what is use of this file ?

The file I'm trying to convert is http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/2.4.2/AkkaScala.pdf and does contain a table of contents that are navigable.

I've also tried converting using :http://ebook.online-convert.com/convert-to-mobi

But in both cases the table of contents navigate is not functional, clicking an item in TOC redirects to beginning of TOC.

How to convert pdf file to kindle format and maintain shortcut links to each of the file sections ?

A few quick thoughts.

First, if you are using a Kindle Fire tablet, there is no need to do a conversion. just download a PDF Reader app from the app store and read the file that way.

If you are using an eink Kindle, I would suggest sending the PDF to the Kindle Personal Document Service which will do the conversion for you. (It's free and a cool feature in your kindle account):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_pdoc_main_short_us?nodeId=200767340

I haven't really looked at PDF conversions from the PDS; I'm guessing it will look really ugly. But I suspect the Kindle conversions to PDF are better than calibre's (although calibre might let you fine tune it). Using Kindle eink to read PDFs is usually a disappointing experience unless the document is short and very simple.

I glanced at the document. (I have made similar kinds of documents using Docbook XML). This document was optimized for PDF; you will lose a lot of formatting by trying to convert it -- though ironically it's pretty easy to convert it from Docbook XML to epub files.

To answer your question, the .opf is a file that stores epub metadata; apparently calibre needs to convert the PDF first to epub, and then reconvert it to the kindle .mobi format. That's why the end result is so horrifying.

Also: If you have access to an android tablet, you could upload the file to Google Play Books website and then read the PDF perfectly in the Google Play Books app on your device.


Is it possible to add a Table of Contents to a CBZ file? Like the title says, is it possible to add something like a Table of Contents to a .cbz file, maybe as an additional text file used to better navigate the content? And if it is, how should it be structured?

Since the CBZ format is not standardised, there are some pitfalls if you try to achieve this.

The best you can do is render the ToC as an image and add it at the front of list of image files contained in the CBZ.
Adding an extra file with the ToC information might break existing readers, if that ToC is not an image file.

An alternative is to load the data in the file comment of the CBZ file. This is limited in size (64K IIRC). There is an effort for metadata in CBZ this way (using JSON) that you could piggy-back on.

Disadvantage of a metadata solution is that there are no tools that currently display that information.

A bigger problem might be to get the information that you want to put into the ToC. Contrary to analysing the text of EPUB files after they are generated, the individual images of a CBZ have little to form the basis of a ToC.


Deliver Emailed or Converted Books to Amazon Cloud Reader and PC Reader I use the Amazon Cloud Reader and PC Reader, but I can only view books purchased through Amazon in them. In fact, it won't let me deliver other books - those I emailed to Amazon for conversion or created in some other way, like using the Chrome extension - to those readers, at all. See the image for what I run into when I try to deliver one of these books, which was converted using Send-By-Email, from the "Manage My Kindle" area of amazon.com.

I found a post on an Amazon forum thread stating that the Cloud Reader doesn't support personal documents, but it's over a year old. I can't help but think that I'm doing something wrong and missing some way to get these docs into the cloud and/or on my PC.

Is there a way to deliver these docs to Cloud Reader and PC Reader?

New (April 2014) Solution:

 Go to Amazon Cloud Drive (https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/).
 Select documents (one-at-a-time only) and click Download.

Old Solution that can work without Internet Access:

   Deliver the documents/books to your iPhone or iPad Kindle.
   Download & install an app such as iFunBox Classic (free). This app allows you to explore your iPhone files with no jailbreak required.
   Plug your iPhone/iPad into PC via USB and start iFunBox Classic.
   In iFunBox, navigate to "User Applications/Kindle/Library".
   Here, every "book" on your Kindle is listed with nonsensical filenames such as "UQCTNAXOJZDZPWDA7GY5GKF52NMNEIU6_PDOC.azw". However, since you just delivered your chosen books, you can sort by date and it will be easy to select the ones you want.
   Drag-and-drop, or select and click "Copy to PC", to get these files onto your PC.

Now you can open them in Kindle for PC, and also Kindle for Mac I believe. Cloud reader is probably a lost cause.

Background Info:

As you have discovered, Amazon frustratingly considers any book not purchased through them as a "personal document" with many limitations, including that they do not sync annotations nor highlights, and you cannot deliver them to PC or Cloud Kindle.

Extra Tip:

I also use iFunBox to back up my annotations/highlights, contained in the file "AnnotationStorage" located also at "User Applications/Kindle/Library". This is an SQL database and can be read with a free app such as SQLiteBrowser.


Malayalam epub to Kindle format There are some good Malayalam books in DCBooks for purchase. It's in epub format. Have to use DCBooks ebook reader application to read. I don't like to read in mobile ... I want this in Kindle.

I tried to convert to .mobi and to .Azw3 Cannot read... looks unsupported font...

Inside the folder along with .epub I noticed few html, jpg and some fonts (.otf in a folder).

Any one tried to read those in Kindle...?

You didn't mention what Kindle platform you are aiming for, Kindle E-ink, tablet or app.

I created a sample epub file using Pandoc. The source in markdown is as follows:

---
author: Khalid
title: Malayalam Test
---

# ‘ദൃഷ്ടിച്ചാവേര്’

മലയാളത്തിലെ ആദ്യ ചെറുകഥ ഏത് എന്ന ചോദ്യത്തിന്
ഒറ്റ ഉത്തരമേയുള്ളു. അത് വേങ്ങയില്
കുഞ്ഞിരാമന്‍നായനാരുടെ
‘വാസനാവികൃതി’യാണ്.
1891 ല് രചിച്ച ആ ചെറുകഥ
പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ചിട്ട് ഇപ്പോള്
125 വര്‍ഷങ്ങള് പിന്നിടുകയാണ്.
വാസനാവികൃതിയുടെ 125 -ാം പിറന്നാള് വിപുലമായി
ആഘോഷിക്കാന് തീരുമാനിച്ചിരിക്കുകയാണ്
പ്രതിമാസ പുസ്തക ചര്‍ച്ചാവേദിയായ ഡി
സി റീഡേഴ്‌സ് ഫോറം.

# വാസനാവികൃതിയുടെ

ഡി സി ബുക്‌സ് കഥാഫെസ്റ്റ് പരമ്പരയില്
ഉള്‍പ്പെടുത്തി പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ച പി ജിംഷാറിന്റെ
പടച്ചോന്റെ ചിത്രപ്രദര്‍ശനം, ദേവദാസ് വി.എമ്മിന്റെ
അവനവന് തുരുത്ത്, വി എച്ച് നിഷാദിന്റെ ആതിരാ
സൈക്കിള്, കെ വി മണികണ്ഠന്റെ ബ്ലൂ ഈസ് ദ
വാമെസ്റ്റ് കളര്, അബിന് ജോസഫിന്റെ കല്യാശ്ശേരി
തീസിസ്, ലാസര് ഷൈന്റെ കൂ , ധന്യാരാജിന്റെ
പദപ്രശ്‌നം, കെ ഇ ഷീബയുടെ കനലെഴുത്ത് എന്നീ
പുസ്തകങ്ങളും എന് പ്രഭാകരന്റെ മനസ്സ് പോകുന്ന
വഴിയേ എന്ന കഥാസമാഹാരവുമാണ്
പരിചയപ്പെടുത്തുന്നത്.

I then converted the resultant epub file to mobi using Kindlegen. The Kindle Previewer has no problem rendering Malayalam:

On my Kindle Paperwhite 3, I get the following,


Could you advise an Open Source method for creating an online library? Could you advise an Open Source method (platform, software) for creating an online library? I want to create a rather simple online library that will provide an opportunity to download the file of book (pdf, djvu, doc, docx), not necessarily for reading the book on the Internet, but rather for downloading the file. I would also like to provide some simple opportunities to search for books (by title, author, theme). All books will be located in thematic sections, possibly just as lists with the books in alphabetical order.

I'll be doing this for the professional community, and the general topic of the library will be dedicated to the Nature Conservation work (all different aspects). Also, we will place these books in view of copyright protection (with the permission of the authors, and with books that have open access as well as older publications).

I am not a specialist in web-creating and programming, that's why I'm trying to find something rather simple, but acceptable to do this.

You should look at Calibre it does all that you want, and some more. It primarily manages your ebooks, but also allows for downloading over the internet, email dissemination of these books. As well as reading, converting and editing.


How to convert .epub to .pdb for testing I've seen some conversion sites that can convert .epub files to .pdb files but I was unaware of a source library or a way to convert a file locally for testing on the Nook.  So my question is: Do you know of a library or a way to convert an .epub file to a .pdb file to test on a Nook?  I would like to do this without using Calibre.

There is an old program called TL-PDB. The original authors site seems to be here according to this site, but I have some difficulty reading the original.

You can read about it here and here as well (download sites for free software seem to copy each others content).

Calibre can generate PDB output (not surprisingly as MOBI is a superset of PalmDoc).


What is this lock icon in the lower right corner of my iPhone kindle app? I’m on a commute shuttle right now reading a book and this lock icon keeps popping up. What’s it communicating exactly?

This icon allows you to lock or unlock the screen automatic rotation. The state shown on the screenshot is with the autorotation locked i.e. the screen will not rotate when you tilt the phone.

To unlock or lock the autorotation just tap the icon. It will show up when you tap the lower right corner of the screen.

See for example: How to enable or disable Kindle-app screen rotation


how to view the download queue for a Kindle How can I purge, edit, or, at least, view, the download queue for a device?

Probably I just have too many pending downloads and a slow connection.  But, perhaps the Kindle is stalled.  I was seeing a "downloading" note in the top left, but, not at present -- and yet there are books which should be queued for download.

It's possible to view pending deliveries through the web interface.

[Note: I know this thread is old, but I found it via a web search and have an answer for people in the future who find it that way as well.]

There does not appear to be a built-in app, menu item, or button that allows you to view the download queue. On my Kindle Fire HDX, however, I can swipe down from the top, and any in-progress downloads are shown in the notification/message area. Tapping one of those takes me to the download queue page.

To reset stalled downloads, you can try the following:

cancel the download, via the swipe-down area or the download page, then restart it
power the device on and off
restart the "Appstore" app from Settings > Applications


Cannot highlight text on my Kindle Paperwhite using a sample ebook I have a sample ebook from Amazon on my Kindle Paperwhite but I cannot highlight its text due to the option being grayed out. Is there a way to fix this?

I think that's by design. Samples are basically marketing material and Amazon doesn't want to provide full functionality of a Kindle eBook with them, in hopes to give users another plus factor to buy the eBook.


How do you remove a epub book margin for kobo? Sometimes when I download books in pdf and convert them to epub, the text for the book is very bunched. How would I remove the margin for my epub book? I use a kobo to read my books, and it’s annoying to read bunched-up letters!

Hi @Thomas a good program for converting pdf's to a reader is k2pdfopt it is it's purpose

it is available for all operating systems and free :)

see if you have better results with that. good luck


Fix spelling errors in epub file via rtf of same book? I am reading a book I got as ePub but it has a lot of OCR errors, for example: "is" becomes "!5" and so on. I tried to find another version of the book without the errors but the only one I could find is an RTF file, meaning it doesn't have the formatting I like from the ePub.

I am therefore wondering if it's possible to fix the errors in the ePub by comparing the text in the ePub and the RTF and then replacing the errors in the ePub with the correct words from the RTF.

Is this possible?

Yes, you can modify epub files with an epub editor.

Two free options are Sigil and Calibre.


Are books on Wikisource "by definition" fair game for creating ebooks? There are a few old Mark Twain books on wikisource available in both english and spanish that I would like to combine to create bilingual editions for sale via CreateSpace or Lulu.

CreateSpace, at least, always requires the name of the translator and year of translation, presumably to make sure that not just the original, but also the translation occurred long enough in the past to be in the public domain.

For these works, though, I have not been able to ascertain who the translator was or when they performed the translation. I have actually made a couple of changes to the translation myself (changed "MountBlanc" to "Mount Blanc" and a couple of things of that ilk).

So my question is: Is the fact that the translation is available in wikisource in and of itself evidence that the work is in the public domain?

Practically speaking, the answer is that wikisource's texts have terms similar (and possibly identical) to the public domain, although it is not always identical to  public domain.

Sourcetext on wikisource is creative commons attribution share alike (BY-SA), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.es )  which means you can use any of it for commercial use.  BY-SA is definitely one of the most lenient licenses -- aside from the public domain (where there is no obligation to give attribution).

For example, I publish a lot of my fiction under BY-SA, so people can make commercial use of my fiction (I don't care). The only condition is that it be labeled properly and that you identify the source of the text. If you take BY-SA content which is NOT public domain, then you are obligated to make clear that your product is also BY-SA.  This can raise an issue if you are selling something which consists of BY-SA stuff and maybe copyrighted images.

I have solved this incompatible license issue by mentioning in the credits that the text is BY-SA but the images are copyrighted (or some stricter version of the CC license).

From an editorial standpoint, it makes sense to disclose that you have made some small changes (or big ones, if that is the case).

Glancing quickly over the material so far, it looks like a LOT of the works there are not just BY-SA but are actual public domain. Generally the designation is on the bottom of a wiki page. Although you shouldn't trust the copyright labeling all the time (occasionally someone mislabels something), but stuff from Wikipedia is usually accurately-labeled -- they police themselves well.


How to avoid image distortion when convert my .epub to .mobi I have Indesing book for printing.
I optimized all styles for epub conversion.
I exported my book to epub from Indesing.
I unzip my epub and work on it html code. Then I zip it again.
I need to convert .epub to .mobi, but only in .mobi version the images are distortionate. Why?

I tested from .epub to .azw, azw to mobi and .epup to mobi. In all cases, .epub looks good, but .azw and .mobi distort images. (I use Calibre to convertions)

In CSS styles I have:

.image {
    height:25%;
    width:25%;
}

My client need upload her .epub to her ebook distributor, she upload .epub, and distributor convert it to .mobi, and its the same problem with images. They say that I have to fixed the issue; but I dont know what it is.

Here is the css I use for my kindle images:

div.image-container  {
width: 95%;
margin-left:  auto;
 margin-right:  auto;
  }

div.image-container img {
 width: 100%;
 display: inline;
 }

The goal I wanted here was to have an image cover 95% of the screen, with the image in the center. You could change the 95% to 25% if that is what you want. I do not think the height property has any function in your code.

The idea behind responsive web design (and responsive ebook design)  is that the images will adapt to the different screen sizes.  You can use css media queries to change the css for your images and div depending on screen size. (I describe it here: https://kdp.amazon.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=1005910 )

Kindle definitely supports the css width property and min-width on KF8 devices and apps. But it does NOT support the max-width property. Hope this helps.


Is there any way to remove DRM from DAISY ebooks? DAISY is a digital ebook format designed for blind and disabled people.  There are two kinds of DAISY books, "open" books which can be freely read by anyone, and "protected" books which have DRM and can only be read if you have a device equipped with a key.

My question is, is there any way to remove/decrypt DRM from DAISY ebooks, if you don't have the key?  There are methods for removing/decrypting DRM from PDF and EPUB files, so there may be similar methods here.

EDiT: If it helps, here is the DAISY ebook I'm interested in downloading.  I'd like to read this book on a computer if possible.

EDIT 2: I found the same book as a PDF with DRM, and managed to decrypt the DRM on that.  So now my question is moot.  But let me leave it up so other people who encounter DAISY ebooks can get help.

I have no idea on how to solve the general problem of DRM
removal. Depending on where you live, it may actually be very much
against the law.

Furthermore, as I said in a comment, DAISY books come in different
formats, independently of DRM, depending on whether they contain
speech, text to be speech synthesized or both. I think the most common
standard is DAISY 2.02, which (from what I understand) contains only
speech, but I am no expert on DAISY which I never heard of before.

I would expect that the type of DRM used is dependent on the standard,
and may also depend on the publisher, or on the brand of the
reader. Thus there may be no universal answer to your question.

For a specific book, it may be useful to know the standard used, and
probably the kind of reader, or the kind of DRM.

Now, you tell in a comment, which you should (probably) integrate to
your question to better focus it, that you are interested in the book
at
https://archive.org/download/asdrivenleaf00stei/asdrivenleaf00stei_daisy.zip

I still do not know how to remove the DRM technically, and, if I knew,
answering you could get me into significant trouble. The archive.org
site is a wonderful site (I mean that), which by its very purpose is probably not too friendly to
DRM, but there is nothing they can do when a book is still under
copyright custody.

To know more , I unzipped the file, which I hope you did too. This
gives you a bunch of files, including a file README_encrypted.txt
which says it uses a key from the National Library Service, and point
to the files http://openlibrary.org/help/faq/accessing#what-is-daisy
and https://nlsbard.loc.gov/ for more explanation.

They explain that the program (for modern books, hence under
copyright) is reserved to residents of the USA and
American citizens living overseas. I am not quite sure how they do
that legally, though they clearly enforce that with the DRM key.

Some countries do have laws that make a copyright exception to the
benefit of disabled people within the country. I am not sure whether
that is the case in the USA, but it would be the simplest
explanation. However it does not explain giving access to American
citizens in other countries, since international treaties give the USA
jurisdiction on copyright only within the USA.

Now if your country of residence has a similar law (free access for
disabled people) then it is possible that the National Library Service
would accept to give you a key to be used from your country, since
that would not raise any copyright infringement issue (though they might want to have an official agreement between countries). Maybe you
can try to discuss that with the people at info@archive.org, or the people
at NLS. And you shold check the copyright law in your own country
regarding exceptions for disabled people.

This is just my best understanding, and all the suggestions I can give to solve your problem, and I am not a lawyer.


Do e-ink devices suffer from burn-in? Back in the bad old days of CRT computer monitors, computer users were confronted with the problem of burn-in, in which a monitor that displayed the same image for too long would eventually have the image "burnt-in" - that is, the image would persist on the screen even after the display was changed to something else.

Do any e-ink displays suffer from a similar issue?

No they don't. Otherwise Kindle screen pictures/ and similar picture on other e-ink devices would have been discouraged and the screen would had been blank on shutdown.


What rights do I have to eBooks I purchase in the U.S.A. as a U.S. citizen? Is there a government or industry site or document that specifies eBook rights? Examples of what I'd like to know include:

Can I duplicate the book onto multiple devices I own?
Can I duplicate the book onto devices of other members of my
household?
Can I copy the book from one format into another format on devices I own?
If I die, are my inheritors legally entitled to receive my
eBooks?

If each publisher sets its own rules, is there a resource that describes typical rights?

Ebooks are protected by the Digital Milenium Copyright Act (DMCA), so you are only legally able to do what the DRM allows. Most of it depends upon the company who sells the ebook, and the publisher.

If you are allowed to sign on to multiple readers with the same account.
As long as the terms of whoever the account is with allow you to share accounts.
Generally, no, because it would require stripping DRM.
It depends on the company -- Amazon, for example, only allows nontransferable accounts.

There is one exception: if you are legally unable to read books (blind), you can remove the DRM if it prevents screen reader use.

NOTICE: I am not a DMCA expert, nor a legal consultant. I found this information through internet research, so make sure to confirm it.


Can you create flashcards in the Kindle device? I know there are some ways to import flashcards to your kindle, but does the kindle paperwhite allow you to create them right in the device?

Just like the kindle app for android does.

Well I bought my Kindle Paperwhite so now I can answer my own question: No, you can't create flashcards with it.
Still it's a great device and a great investment to your reading hobby.


What kinds of DRM are used in eBooks? Is it possible to purchase DRM free eBooks? I am a beginner to eBooks, and as somebody who has been "outside" of eBooks I've only ever heard of Amazon's Kindle and seen a variety of options for purchase on Google Play.

I have recently purchased an Android tablet and I want to buy some eBooks, I know from experience with downloading music that different stores will have their own differing, and often, incompatible digital rights management systems.

What kinds of DRM are used in eBooks? Is it possible to purchase DRM free eBooks?

According to Wikipedia, there are four main ebook DRM schemes in common use today, one each from Amazon, Adobe, Apple, and the Marlin Trust Management Organization (MTMO).

Amazon's DRM is an adaption of the original Mobipocket encryption, and is applied to Amazon's Mobipocket, KF8 and Topaz format ebooks.
Adobe's Adept DRM is applied to ePubs and PDFs, and can be read by several third-party ebook readers, as well as Adobe Digital Editions software. Barnes & Noble uses a DRM technology provided by Adobe, and is applied to ePubs and the older Palm format ebooks.
Apple's Fairplay DRM is applied to ePubs, and can currently only be read by Apple's iBooks app on iOS devices.
The Marlin DRM was developed and is maintained in an open industry group known as the Marlin Developer Community (MDC) and is licensed by MTMO. (Marlin was founded by five companies, Intertrust, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony.) The Kno online textbook publisher uses Marlin to protect ebooks it sells in the ePub format. These books can be read on the Kno App for iOS and Android tablets.

To answer your second question. Yes, you can purchase DRM free ebooks (Wikipedia lists a few places here.). Whether or not a book is DRM free will depend on the publisher/seller. It is also possible to remove DRM from some books, as there is opposition to DRM.


Is the file size limit for Nook epub files still 600MB? Is the maximum file size for epubs sold through Barnes&Noble (via a publisher account) still 600MB?

I appears that the limit is now 20MB

  Your manuscript file must be less than 20MB in size and in one of the
  following formats: .doc, .docx, .txt, .rtf, .htm, .html, or .epub.
  Many manuscript files that are larger than 20 megabytes don't need to
  be.  If your manuscript file is larger than 20MB, try reducing the
  image size, decreasing the dots per inch (dpi), and/or increasing the
  JPEG compression on the images in your eBook.  After applying JPEG
  compression to the images, you should be able to get the individual
  image files under 100 kilobytes each.

See also The Nook Press Publishing FAQ


Epub Software that Supports Folders/Subfolders Does anyone know of any epub software programs that allow to organize your text files and images into folders and subfolders (other than Calibre)?

I started out with InDesign, which, unbelievably, doesn't let you work with HTML. I then tried Sigil, which is ten times easier to use but doesn't allow subfolders. I was told that Calibre supports subfolders, but it isn't working for me.

So I just wondered if you know of any other epub programs that do support subfolders. Ideally, I'd like to find something as user-friendly as Sigil and not too expensive.

In html it should not matter at all what the directory structure for your unzipped epub files should be. With HTML, as long as you get the paths correct on the hyperlink, everything is great.

As a practical matter though, it is easier to work with flat directories. Maybe one subdir for media files, one subdir for scripts, one subdir for css. This can be unwieldy for ebooks with a lot of chapters though.

Many tools that produce epub files try to follow this convention, if only to prevent path problems later on. I would assume that an HTML-based tool like Calibre would offer more flexibility, while Adobe ID offers less.

There is a separate issue about how reading systems process an epub consisting of a lot of subdirs. But in the 5 or 6 years I have been creating ebooks, I haven't heard of any performance or rendering problems related to that -- but I could be wrong.

It's important to remember that all files in an epub file must be used or the epub won't validate.  So you can't have conditional directories (or else you must manually add/remove them for each output).


How can I left justify text on my Kindle? I can't stand reading full-justified text, yet none of my Kindles seem to give me anything else! They all attempt to justify text even when the font size is too large and causes huge gaps between words and other kerning issues. Worse yet  are languages like Turkish which I read in—the prevalence of very long words that it has no idea how to break into syllables makes the reading experience even more jarring.

Is there any way to read my books using left-aligned non-justified typesetting?

The justification is normally specified in the CSS included in your ebook.
Commercial ebooks often come 'justified', just like most traditional books (which generate less of a problem of large white space, through the combination of hyphenation and wider lines).

It might be that the Kindle overrides the ebooks default, but I doubt it. What you should try is change the CSS in an ebook, e.g. by convert the ebook with Calibre, while specifying Text Justification: Left Alignin the Look & Feel tab of the book conversion page.


Is there any way to read an technical ebook quickly? I am reading a technical computing science ebook. I want to know if is there any software or way so that I read only the relevant content only( which is important) ?

Yes there is a bunch of techniques.
short time ago i found a new one, called spritz.
http://youtu.be/slYKEKtYW-I

Other techniques are: speedreading, photoreading etc.


How to create markup template in word document? Currently I working in publishing projects. I need to create a automated template in word document. For instance: italic word should have  tag surround the text. Please advise how to proceed?

MS Word lets you create HTML output, but it is very messy. There are several online tools for converting this "messy output" and some commercial tools as well.

I have used the free tool wordoff with some success
https://wordhtml.com/

As an alternative, you can cut/paste the formatted text into an HTML editor online (wordpress, etc). Maybe you can paste it into a desktop HTML editor and see if the source view has the tags you need. Often that can clean up your code and leave the italic and bold tags. But you still have to do some extra cleaning after.

You need to be more clear about why you need your source to be HTML. Is it going to be an epub file? Or some other format?

Generally, I avoid trying to use HTML output from MS Word. It is very messy. It sometimes is just easier to just copy the text into a decent  html editor and insert the tags yourself.


How to effectively manage ebooks using Calibre? I started using Calibre and I'm unable to decide how to effectively use it to manage my ebooks.
I've a huge collection of ebooks organized by subject into folders like Political Science, History - World, History - US etc. Till using Calibre, these folders were synced across all of my devices (Android phone, tablet, desktop) using Cloud storage. In this way I could browse any subject anywhere using either browser or file explorer or in android phone.

But when I have added the collection to Calibre, it has destroyed this folder structure and made it one folder per author. If I'm syncing this library using cloud storage, I've no way to know which are History books and which are political science books.

What is the effective way to manage books using calibre?

As written in the Calibre manual you should use tags:

  But suppose you want to find all unread science fiction books. There’s no easy way to do this with this folder scheme, [...] In calibre, you would instead use tags to mark genre and read status and then just use a simple search query like tag:scifi and not tag:read.

It might take a while to get everything properly tagged, but after that it will be easy to find what you want.


How do I read a .sbrz ebook? I'm trying to read an eBook that is in .sbrz format.  The only way I've found to open .sbrz files is a program called Sky eBook Reader (apparently the creator of this format), but when I use that, all the pages in the eBook appear blank.  Now it could be that the book is genuinely blank, but the file size is large enough that that's unlikely.

Are there any alternative programs to open .sbrz files, or at least to convert it to a more common file format, like PDF or djvu?  The Skybook eReader program doesn't even have print functionality, or else I would simply print as a PDF.

If it helps, I have a computer running Windows XP.

Note: I was able to get another version of the ebook in .djvu format, so I don't really have to worry about .sbrz format anymore, but let me leave the question up so that other people who run into this file extension can get help.

I researched this issue in order to answer this related question.

What I found is that there is pretty much no way to read the file short of the software supplied by the Sky Ebook Reader Company. If you have a legitimate .sbrz file and are unable to read it on your Windows machine with their software, your best bet is to seek support from that company.


How do I delete a book off of my Kindle account? I've noticed that once you buy a book on a kindle account, it's there forever!  You can't shake it.  How do I get rid of a book on a kindle account?

Go to 'Manage Your Content and Devices' on Amazon.
In the 'Your Content' section on that page, locate the row for the book you wish to delete.
In that the row, locate and click on the Actions button.
Select the 'Delete' option.

NOTE: Though your Kindle Library will list Audible audiobooks, as well as Kindle ebooks, you cannot use this method to delete Audible audiobooks from your Library. Audible currently does not provide users this option. If you insist, you can contact Audible customer support and they will do it for you, or if the book is eligible for refund, you can initiate a so-called 'book return' (and receive a refund) on the Account Details page of Audible.com, where you will see an 'eligible' link in the 'Return' column of the row corresponding to the audiobook you wish to return to Audible.


Can I use bold and italics tags? I'm new to epubs; I'm wading through the InDesign tutorials and will then have to learn how to work with iBooks Author (and perhaps Sigil as well).

Anyway, I ran into an unexpected snag in InDesign: It doesn't like bold and italics tags. As I understand it, they prefer to replace these tags with classes that select a particular font (e.g. Arial Bold or Arial Italic).

Given that 1) ebooks are based on html, and 2) there must be 10 million websites that use bold and italics tags, this seems like a really stupid move to me.

So here's my question: What would happen if I snubbed the new rules and published an epub with bold and italics tags? Would it create some technical problems that would come back to haunt me? Will Amazon or other publishers reject epubs that have traditional bold/italic tags?

On a related note, I wonder if there's a way to instruct an epub to disallow fonts that don't "recognize" bold/italics tags. Fonts like Arial and Times New Roman would be allowed, while really funky fonts would be essentially banned (except perhaps in headings or art work).

I have never used Adobe Indesign, but I'm guessing that when they spit out html they use the italic and bold html tags. My guess is that in Adobe Indesign you are not seeing a separate font at all but a compound statement about font-style and font-family.

You can easily test this by outputting it epub/html and viewing the source.


Share book uploaded to my Google Play Books account with other account I uploaded a book to my Google Play Books account and I want to share it with another account, is that possible?
I know that I can give it the .epub file but I deleted it.

As long as you uploaded that specific book to google play books (in contrast to buying it on that platform) you can simply download it as a epub/pdf file using Adobe Digital Editions.
A detailed tutorial on this procedure can be found at Google Play Help.


Kobo Aura One or the new 7 inch Kindle Oasis for PDF files? I have an old 2009 Kindle 4 with its low resolution screen. I work in academia so I read books, articles and technical documents in PDF format on a daily basis. I once tried to use my old Kindle for that but it caused more pain than it helped because the screen is too small, the resolution is too low and it is rather slow for zooming in and out.

I literally waited years for Amazon to release a bigger screen version (8" or more) of a Kindle but it seems that I could just die waiting for that to happen. Therefore I am in the hunt for something better than my 6" Kindle mainly for PDF purposes and the occasional MOBI/EPUB book. I considered the following options:

The Sony DPT-RP1 would of course be anyone's first choice for such a purpose but I work under Linux and an old version of Mac OS X and the device is incompatible with these two systems. I also find the price to be a little exaggerated for what it really does (exclusively for PDF files).
The reMarkable 10" tablet seems promising but then there is that price tag on par with the Sony. What is more, I am really just interested in being able to read my books; I really do not need to be able to download and install new apps or take fancy handwritten notes.
The Kobo Aura One with its 7.8" screen has very good resolution. I want to believe that it might just be enough for my purposes on landscape mode. But I read reviews on how poorly it handles PDF files. Then I read about koReader OS which apparently handles PDF files much better than its original OS.
I also just read about the new 7 inch version of the Kindle Oasis. The screen is a little smaller than the Kobo Aura One's. But then I would tend to trust Kindle's OS a lot more because it has proven to be reliable.

Is the Kobo Aura One a good ebook reader for PDF files (under koReader)? Does the new 7" Kindle outperforms it? Or is there a better option on that price range (250 ± 50 USD)?

Ever since the time I originally asked this question, I have bought both a Sony DPT-RP1 and an old Kindle DX.

The DPT-RP1 is really excellent. Thanks to its screen size, almost any conventional PDF book or article are perfectly readable.  But this has little to do with the answer. In fact I more recently bought an old Kindle DX because it was cheap and I wanted to try it. I am still amazed by how capable this old thing is. Its display quality is surprisingly good considering its age, and having a lower resolution than the DPT-RP1 has rarely been an issue.

The Kindle DX has a 9.7 inch-screen so it is much smaller than that of the DPT-RP1. However, aside from some rare exceptions, almost all of my PDF books are perfectly readable on it. Issues arise when reading two-column formatted scientific papers where the font size is small and the original paper size is A4. These are the bane of the DX because you have to either read in landscape mode and constantly scroll using physical buttons; or zoom in and again, scroll up-down and right-left. So when most PDF files are formatted this way, indeed, as stated in a comment, the DX is "barely tolerable".

I do not own a Kobo Aura One nor a Kindle Oasis, however, my experience with the DPT-RP1 and DX drive me to the conclusion that neither of those devices are good enough to deal with common PDF files because of their screen size.


Legality of read-it-later services, most specifically Send to Kindle I just got a Kindle, and the send-to-kindle applications look very appealing. I'm wondering about the legality of these read-it-later services. I know that some websites have terms saying that the content on their websites cannot be accessed by any other means than those provided by the website—is the fact that Amazon and other companies download content from third-party websites to serve to us illegal?

If you use the "Send to Kindle" program/browser extension, you have already accessed the content from the remote website. You are simply sending the (already downloaded to your PC) data to Amazon, to have it available on your Kindle devices.

The Terms of Service are here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_bc_nav?ie=UTF8&nodeId=201238330

A different legal scenario is when a site owner incorporates the "Send to Kindle" button in her or his Web site. In that case, they accept these ToS: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?&nodeId=201139380?ref_=stk_wdg

Other similar services like Pocket have similar ToS.


What is the most efficient and safest way to remove fingerprints from my Sony PRS-650 Touchscreen Reader? I prefer to use a dry microfiber cloth to clean my touchscreen, but sometimes you have to scrub pretty hard to remove fingerprints. Is it safe to use a cleaner on the screen or should I use only water (or perhaps stick to dry cloth)?

The first thing you should always do is look in your devices manual if there is a recommended way of cleaning (or doing anything else). It is probably the best way to avoid problems with your warranty (in case something goes wrong).
If you don't have your PRS-650 manual any more you can find it (googling sony prs 650 support)  on-line on the Manual, Specs and Warranty tab.
There you find the PDF version of the user manual. On page 114 it says:

On cleaning

Clean the Reader with a soft cloth, such as a cleaning cloth for eyeglasses.
If the Reader becomes very dirty, clean it with a soft cloth slightly moistened with
water or a mild detergent solution.
Do not use any type of abrasive pad, scouring powder, or solvent, such as alcohol
or benzene, as it may mar the finish of the case.
Clean the headphone plug periodically.
Tapping or dragging on the touch screen using a dirty stylus may damage the surface. Wipe the stylus with a dry cloth when it gets dirty.


How do I prevent Calibre from modifying EPUB files when I read them? Whenever I have an EPUB file and open/read it using Calibre, Calibre silently edits the EPUB file. I know that Calibre edited my EPUBs because I calculated the checksums (SHA-256, MD5, etc.) before and after reading. This is surprising, improper, and undesirable behavior. I didn't ask Calibre to modify my books without my permission. An EPUB reader is supposed to read EPUB files, and not edit them. How do I stop Calibre from silently editing my EPUB files when I read them? The checksums before and after reading must remain the same.

I hadn't looked before so I did a little investigating. With Calibre 4.23 on Linux, I found that it's not exactly Calibre, it's the Reader.
I don't know why this Reader (it's a newly re-written reader, but I don't know if the old one did this) is modifying the epub meta-data. There is no reason to do so that I'm aware of as bookmarks and other reading information is kept in the database.
With that in mind, I changed the EPUB file permission to remove write permission. As a Read-Only file, everything seems to continue working normally and the Reader is no longer capable of changing it.
So at this point I can only suggest:

Change all the epubs to read-only
Substitute a different reader
Send feedback to Calibre

additional info
I did a little more investigation and found that "ebook-viewer" is writing meta-data under "Miscellaneous" "calibre_bookmarks.txt" even though bookmarks are controlled via the database. Deleting this entire entry via "edit book" has no effect and the book marks are still present because they are in the DB.
The content written also includes: access time stamps, Book Title, and my User ID. It's written as JSON Base64.
This should not be happening!
I posted Bug #1894442
Calibre Response
Calibre says it's not a bug because most users prefer it this way. Nevertheless, it can be turned off by:

LTrun {sic} it off under the miscellaneous section of the viewer
preferences.

Open the Calibre viewer
Right-click the body of the book to bring up the controls
Select Preferences
Select Miscellaneous
Uncheck "Keep a copy of annotations/bookmarks in the e-book file, for easy sharing"

I verified that it worked (at least for one in a row).


ePubs, PDFs and security I get eBooks and literature from a variety of places. Mostly legal places, like Amazon - but sometimes from other random places.

PDFs are more popular and come with advanced capabilities, like JScript, that should be disabled in the name of security.

Are there any known security issues for other e-Formats - like ePubs - or are there steps that should be taken to protect ones self? Mainly for when getting books from different sources and being used on Windows/Android/Kindle/etc?

Most reading systems for epubs do not include JavaScript support at this time, so you're fairly safe. For those that do, the IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum; they're the folks who make the epub standard) has a section on security in the epub 3.0 spec. It pretty much lays the onus on the reading system developers to disable various avenues of attack. One thing of note is that all their points are phrased as "reading systems should" where "should" means:

  that there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to
  ignore a particular item, but the full implications must be
  understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different
  course.

So their security concerns may or may not be addressed by individual reading systems. It's a good bet that the major ones will play ball, though--particularly as most of them have someone in the IDPF.

As far as downloading stuff from random places on the web--well, run a virus scan on anything you get and you'll probably be okay, but that's always riskier than going through "official" channels.


Kindle paperwhite ver.5.7.2.1 - how to bring back one-click book open? I've recently upgraded (automatically) my PW2 to the specified software version and I just hate some of the new "features" of it. For example(the worst thing I found and could not fix yet), the book library. In my library (95% received via email feature) I have a lot of books that are read, multiple started and a gigantic amount of unread books, that are listed after every other mentioned type. Now, previously I just needed to scroll down to the right one, click on it and it opened. Now, I need to find it (on, for example, page 15), click on it, scroll back to the first page of the list and click again. Why? As it seems, the book gets "downloaded" again, for some reason, then since it's the last downloaded it appears the first one in the list and only after that I may open it. Why the hell did Amazon implement this - I can't even imagine, but maybe anyone knows how to always have them downloaded automatically now?

GO back to previous home screen menu following these steps:

Go to home screen and press menu button (It is on top right of screen)
Select settings
Select device options
Select personalize your kindle
Select advanced options
Turn off home screen view

and hopefully now you are back to your old screen view.

Let me know if it worked.


Kindle (classic) power consumption when reading PDF vs. MOBI I'm reading mostly PDFs on my Kindle Classic (e-ink) device. Most of my e-books are PDFs, and after converting them, I've find out it's easier for me to read original PDF than converted version.

However, how does the energy consumption look like? Consider the number of page changes is the same for both format, for which format the energy used to load/parse/process the energy consumption would be lower?

MOBI is designed to be easier to read on e-book readers, but are those readers designed to process that format more energy-efficient than the alternatives?

If the PDF file is not formatted to the size of your Classic Kindle screen (roughly A6 format or 6"x4") you will consume a lot more power because you will need to zoom in and out and navigate on the page in order to read it. A MOBI file does not have this kind of problem because it dynamically resize the text so you can read without interaction.

Your e-ink device (any Kindle generation) will be off while you read and will power on when you click on any button or on the screen. So as well as it is on sleep mode it will consume less power. The device only needs power to refresh the screen and redraw anything or change pages, thus any interaction that redraws anything consumes more power.


Are there any ebook search engines? Are there any websites that work like ebook search engines, where you can perform a search over multiple stores and have the results sortable and/or filterable for file format, price, presence of DRM, and so on?

The one I use is Luzme It queries several stores including Kobo, Amazon, B&N and in several countries.

It then for each book shows the price that it last saw for each source and country.

It is searchable by book name and author and series, although the series data is not complete as it comes from the stores.

You can set up a wishlist of books and emails can be sent when they change price.

This site does provide DRM status if the store makes that data available.

The format is not shown however Amazon sites provide Kindle format and others at least ePub - I would be interested in any exceptions


Are there ways to automatically detect what book an e-text is? I know that these days, there are services (I think Google provides one) that can take a "digital fingerprint" of a song, and help you catalogue that song, e.g. composer/band/genre/year.

Is there a similar service for books, where it would, based on text snippets, automatically tell you the author/title/year/ISBN?

Don't care if the service is packaged as a "book cataloging" app or merely a per-single-book API that I can use in my own software.

I am not aware if it is such a tool/service/API, and generally publishers don't offer APIs IMHO mainly because copyright infringement sites or concurrent businesses might use them.

So you need to take a custom approach, using URL because most of the sites use GET method to do their queries and do some data-mining using scripts (wget/selenium etc).

You could do like this:

Search for exact text in google

ex search:

"Numerical boundaries take many forms but are always applied in finite games. Persons are selected for finite play."
Look for ISBN in resulted pages or for title and author using regular expressions or CSS selectors, XPATH etc.
Search using advanced query on amazon or other site:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_adv_b/?search-alias=stripbooks&unfiltered=1&field-isbn=1476731713

notice &field-isbn=1476731713 same could be used for &field-author= or &field-title=

Use regular expressions to extract all the book data.

This would be my approach.


Screen protection for eReader Is it useful or advisable to get screen protection for eReader?
Also does anti-reflective layer makes any good or bad difference with the eInk screen?

Eink devices usually don't have screens with a smooth surface, they have a slight roughness, in order to simulate the look and feel of printed paper and to prevent unwanted light reflections on the surface during reading.

Applying a protective film over it will remove this feature; I don't know if such films with a non-smooth surface are in existance, but even in this case I suppose it won't adhere well to the ereader surface, causing unwanted blurriness.

The best option to protect an eink device, in my opinion, would be to use something like a sleeve or a full cover.


Some Kindle books on my pc do not appear on my Android I started with Kindle for PC - recently I have added an Android tablet.
Most books have synced OK between the two devices.
But 3 books on my PC - Pride and Prejudice, Aesop's Fables, and Treasure Island - appear ONLY on the PC.  I have tries syncing, but it doesn't work.

Is there a way to copy the books over using a USB cable?

OK, I've solved my own question!

It seems that all three books were free downloads.
So I've downloaded them again to my tablet, at zero cost.

I still think they should have appeared in the library automatically  ......


How can I change color of my e-book? How can I change the font or background color of my PDF e-book. I use Adobe reader v10 and it has no default option to change this.

Is there a way to edit the e-book to change the font or background color?

Taken from here:

Open Adobe Reader. Go to Edit - Preferences - Accessibility.
Make sure the "Replace Document Colors" is checked and click on Custom Color.
Click "Page Background" color and then select "other color."

I don't know if the version of Adobe Reader matters or not (or if it matches what you have).

You could also consider using a different PDF view. I personally perfer SumatraPDF. It has a settings.txt file that you can edit to customize the text, background etc., which can be accessed via Settings > Advanced Options (options your default text editor for txt files).

NOTE: I am using SumatraPDF v2.4


PRS-T2 very slow with some PDFs I have a PRS-T2 and use it a lot. Sometimes I convert documents to PDF in LibreOffice, then upload them to the ereader (using Calibre on a Mac). It works, but quite often turning a page can take longer than a minute. Going back a page is more often problematic. Yesterday I got a black screen and I had to restart the reader.

Most of these documents only have text, some have pictures or tables, which turns out to be more problematic. What is the best way to get these documents working properly on the reader?

You should consider converting these to EPUB files instead of PDF. My experience with Sony is that the EPUB files are handled much better (and faster).

You can use Calibre to convert DOCX, ODT and RTF formats directly, if you have the files in some other format you can use LibreOffice to convert them first to DOCX (make sure you have an up-to-date version of Calibre, older versions only supported RTF).

Another alternative is to use pandoc for conversion from DOCX or ODT, but you would have to try to make sure if images are correctly converted.


Kindlegen Convert EPUB 2 and 3 Equally? After creating a valid EPUB 2 or EPUB 3 file, I am often able to run the file through Amazon's kindlegen convertor, and assuming neither file was overly complicated in terms of page layout, have the resulting mobi file look pretty decent in the kindle viewer.

That being said, does kindlegen do better with converting EPUB 2 specifications or EPUB 3 specifications to its proprietary format?

Well kindlegen basically just strips all code that isn't on Amazon documentation from HTML and CSS. So if your ePub is not too complicated the results should be satisfactory. This can change when you will try convert fixed layout where hierarchy of DOM isn't logic.

To give you straight answer: It not make any difference unless your DOM is in logic order.

DOM (Document Object Model) define structure of an document. Ideally structure (or hierarchy ) should be logic in terms of rendering. For example:

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum 2

here you have two divs with two paragraphs one after the other. If you will not manipulate with them, they will also render one after the other. But you could use CSS or JS to manipulate them and render
Lorem ipsum 2
 before
Lorem ipsum
 without change your actual HTML. This situation happens very often when you designing fixed-layout ePub which are parto of ePub3 spec.


footnote as popup in epub In an ebook I bought, if you click on the number of a footnote the text of the note appears as a popup, and you may choose to close the popup or go to the chapter with footnotes. I noticed this behavior both on Moon+Reader and in Calibre reader, so I am confident it depends from the raw text of the epub.

However, I looked at the source code and I did not find anything hinting at this. The source for a footnote is

[15]

The text for the note starts with

[15] blah blah ...

and the relevant CSS is

p.Note {
  font-size : 0.75em;
  line-height : 1.2;
  text-align : left;
  color : #000000;
  text-indent : 0px;
  margin : 0px 0px 7px 0px;
}
span.apice {
  font-weight : normal;
  font-style : normal;
  font-size : 0.70em;
  vertical-align : super;
  color : #000000;
}
span.apice-note {
  font-weight : normal;
  font-style : normal;
  font-size : 0.80em;
  vertical-align : super;
  color : #000000;
}

Where is the trick?

Addendum: It seems indeed that I casually picked two of the very few reader applications which support footnotes - see this announcement on Facebook for Moon+ Reader and this thread for Calibre.

There are two possibilities here, and without seeing more of the book's code, it's not really possible to tell. The first is that this is extra functionality offered by the reading system rather than something built into the epub file itself. As noted by Liz Castro in the spec, this is similar to Apple's example of

  supporting symantically marked footnotes, and then "associating specialized behaviors" as the spec directs.

If that's the case, Moon+ and Calibre don't seem to be supporting the epub 3 spec as directly as Apple does, though—according to the Structural Semantics Vocabulary for epub 3, footnotes should be contained in  tags marked with epub:type=footnote" and then corresponding epub:type="noteref"s for the superscripted symbols in the body.

The other possibility is that there is some JavaScript in the ebook file that is somehow accessing content in a different file. Since JavaScript is generally constrained by the DOM, though, this doesn't seem likely.

if you'd like to replicate the behavior yourself in an epub 3 file, the relevant code (heavily cribbed from the spec) to try out would be:

This is some body text with a footnote reference. 1

...

1: This is a corresponding note

Note that this behavior is purely optional—epub 3 has the ability for publishers to tell the reading system what kind of content a particular section is, and it is up to the reading systems to decide what they want to do with that information.

EDIT: Based on your comment, it sounds like since there is no JavaScript and the book is epub 2.0, there is either something hack-y going on or the reading systems you're using are looking for particular classes and associating special behavior with them. Based on this blog post, I'm guessing the former—it sounds like you can include the correct namespacing in an epub 2 file to allow epub:type to work, and change the  tag to a
 with display: none on its CSS to get this to work in iBooks, which Moon+ and Calibre might be copying.

Note that according to that blog post, this gives you a working ebook that fails epubCheck, which means that many retailers will reject it. Making an epub 3 file might be the way to go for you.


Can I create my own ebook cloud with Calibre? I have heard that I can use calibre to create a cloud with all my books, not just ones from a specific vendor.  How would I do it?

Yes, it is possible and rather easy to do so.

You start it with the connect/share button on the main toolbar, then selecting start content server; it can be configured from preferences > sharing. It should be a simple task, if you need more help just ask. With this method calibre must be running because basically what you are doing is setting up a web interface to connect to it. This way it will be accessible from any web browser. See also calibre manual on this topic.

I also suggest you to read this guide from mobileread.

Be sure to protect your content server with a password, so you must be required to login to be able to access it. You don't want to let everyone access your copyrighted ebooks and have to do with piracy.


What is the most popular font style for ebooks? I can't even guess at how many font styles might exist, but it is a lot.  What are the most communally used fonts in ebooks? Does it vary by language or region?

Besides a preference on the broad family of serif fonts over sans-serif ones (see my answer to your other font related question), I don't think that there is any set preference for a particular font type.
Often books from the same publisher tend to have a set of shared fonts (once they have bought licenses for some font types, it is reasonable to broadly use them, both to maximise the investment and to create a unique look and feel for the products of the same company).
Then, one must also consider that there are also many publishers that don't include any font at all in their ebooks; in this situation every ereader uses its standard fonts, unless the users apply their own personal preferences. Even now, serif fonts seem to be the most commonly used (my Kobo defaults to Georgia, and judging from online screenshots, also Kindle and other ereaders default to some kind of serif font).


how to create hypertext local to an EPUB document? Trying to explain the title: I am creating an EPUB document which is a programming course. In the document I want to refer to texts describing labs: these are not in the main flow of the main document: you can click if you want to read the labs (or not) and then get back to the main document.

In the lab documents there are also links to solutions (you need to click and later come back)

this means I want to have an hypertext tree in my epub with a main text with a normal flow and additions which are not part of the normal flow.
How do I do that?
thanks

(note: EPUB is created using ASCIIDOC but I can write unix scripts massaging the files in the zip)

I don't really understand the question, but it is possible for an epub file to contain html files which do not appear in the main navigation document. They can be accessed indirectly through hyperlinks within the HTML document.

See the answer I gave for a different but related question here: https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/a/7211/417

By the way, if that is your question,  I recommend ignoring the epub2 way to do it and just do it the epub3 way. A lot of reading systems (including the Kindle ones) are ignoring the toc.ncx document if you have a <nav epub:type="toc"> element.


How to change Kindle Windows 8 into a 'normal app' I read a lot of books on my netbook using Kindle for Windows 8. However, I am often very frustrated that is uses the 'metro' interface which consumes the full screen. I would like to use my Kindle app on Windows 8 like other normal apps so I can share the screen with other apps at the same time.

I had a similar complains about Chrome (Google's browser) and learned that Chrome had a simple setting to change to get the normal interface.

I don't see such a feature in Kindle. Is there an option (or different version) so users can accomplish this goal?

I have found 2 solutions to this.  The first is to download the Windows 7 version of the Reader from here.  When I installed that particular version on W8.1, the popup said it was going to "expire soon" (which likely speaks to the fact that the company will be dropping XP support from the next version, not that they'll be discontinuing the non-Metro version completely).

The second is to use the Kindle Cloud Reader.  While it is designed to be used "in the cloud" you can download your books to have local copies.  Using this method, you can open the app in a dedicated browser window and resize it as needed.


How to automatically hyphenate before sending to a device? Is there a way an ebook gets converted to azw3 and hyphenated when I press "Upload to device" button in Calibre?

Hyphenating a text that is not in a fixed presentation (page shape, or
ratio page size/ font size) makes little sense as the words may change
position on a line.  Hence, I am assuming that what you are asking is how
to automatically do soft hyphenation, so that the reader of the file can
modify the font size and still get proper hyphenation where needed.

Soft hyphenation consist in marking with a special character
(e.g. SHY) all the places in the text where a word can be hyphenated.
Then the displaying device does not have to know hyphenation rules,
which vary from language to language, and can simply use the markers to
cut words when needed, which may vary depending the fonts chosen by
the reader.

Can this be done by Calibre. I never had to do it myself, but Calibre
does have a plugin that will do it. It is called Hyphenate This!
and works for AZW3 and for EPUB. It is described in some details in
this article of the-ebook-reader.com(with a download address), and is also discussed on mobileread.com. It can also be downloaded from Softpedia.

From what I have seen in the files, the whole code is in Python, so it
is likely to be platform independent (Mac, Linux, Windows).

Now, if the question was whether soft hyphenation can be done without pushing an extra button, I cannot answer. But the OP does not seem very willing to add more details to his question.


How to perfectly convert and read malayalam ebooks on kindle? I've heard that people read malayalam (മലയാളം) ebooks on kindle. Not the images placed in a PDF file. The file which we can read like normal ebook format (controlling the fontsize mainly).

I tried installing a few fonts. They failed too. Is there a good way that can easily get my kindle the ability to make reading malayalam ebooks possible on my kindle?

Is there a good way that can easily get my kindle the ability to make
  reading malayalam ebooks possible on my kindle?

Create an ePub file with Calibre and/or find an existing ePub file. Make
sure that the source epub file is properly encoded. (I.e., if you open it with Calibre, it must show Malayalam characters.)
If it does, simply convert it to an AZW3 file (not a MOBI file) with Calibre, copy it to the documents folder of the Kindle and you're done.


Kindle (2nd gen) battery can't hold power I bought a Kindle some years ago. At first I used it a lot, then I left it unused. I would like to use it again: only trouble is that the battery can't mantain the charge. This is not surprising, it's an 8 year old device, but using it plugged to the wall is not practical.

Is there something that I can do? I searched the Amazon help page but I was unable to find a solution.

You can try to change the battery.

A simple Google search returns a lot of results, I summarize here the steps from this page:

  Turn off your Kindle. Slide and hold the power switch for four
  seconds, then release. The screen blanks.
  Place the Kindle screen down on a flat, clean surface.
  Remove the plastic back panel. Two tabs keep the back panel in
  place. Use a thin spudger to slide the panel away from the larger
  metal back panel. This step is a little scary while you do it. You will think you’re breaking the Kindle, but as long as you apply only
  gentle force, you won’t actually break anything.
  Remove the metal back panel. With a Phillips #0 screwdriver, remove the two screws which attach the metal back panel to the
  Kindle’s plastic body, then slide the panel away. Until you replace
  the back panels, keep a close eye on the volume rocker. Without the
  back panels to hold it into position, it may fall out.
  Remove the old battery. With a Phillips #0 screwdriver, remove the two screws holding the battery in place, then lift the battery out by
  its black tabs.
  Install the new battery. Drop it in connector first, then replace the two retaining screws.
  Replace the metal back panel. Place it such that the panel lies flat and the volume rocker is held in place, then replace the two
  retaining screws.
  Replace the plastic back panel. Place it such that the panel lies flat and the volume rocker is held in place, then slide it toward the
  bottom of the Kindle.
  Recharge the Kindle with a micro USB cable. After a few seconds, the amber light will illuminate and the screen will refresh.

You can also try this and this.


Is there a compelling reason to distribute both '.azw' and '.mobi' files? I am currently researching what ebook formats I should be targeting. I would like maximum distribution potential with minimum fuss (for both myself and users, with the latter taking priority). I have noticed that some sites provide both .azw and .mobi files while others opt for one or the other. According to Wikipedia, Amazon's file format offering is just a lightly modified version of the Mobipocket format. I also know from my own Kindle usage that I have never had a problem using Mobipocket files on it. I also believe there are other readers that can handle this format but not Amazon's native one.

Is there is any advantage to providing .azw or .kf8 formatted content if I am making .mobi files available anyway? Would this just me added clutter to my interface and product offerings or would is there something to be gained from the extra format? I will be making .epub and perhaps other formats as well so this question is just about the best way to support Kindle readership.

.azw is basically .mobi with the possibility to add DRM. According to the wikipedia article you cited it even has less instead of more features. Since using DRM is kind of pointless if you also offer a DRM free .mobi version, there is no advantage.

.kf8 supports some HTML5 and CSS3 features which the other formats don't. This allows creating more advanced layouts which may be an advantage if you have more than just plain text with chapter marks and headings.


Synch Kindle's bookmarks and notes A few weeks ago I bought a book in Amazon and was using KindleForPC to read it. I was making notes and highlights and it was synching.

After reading some pages I downloaded Kindle for Android, and continued reading it from there. When I first opened in Android, my notes and highlights were available. As I read it I made new ones.

Now, weeks later, I opened it again in PC... old ones were still there, but the ones I made in Android aren't. I synched both softwares and they say they have latestfurthest read location. But notes and highlights aren't yet merged.

Aren't they shared at all? It would be a shame.

Kindle forum gave me the solution! Synch only works when in the softwares's "home screen". Now they are properly synched :D sad I must always do it manually, they should automatically synch with Kindle server whenever there's internet available.


Authoring Kindle ebook from MS Word document - how to prevent pictures from stretching? I am in the process of authoring a Kindle book. I am using MS Word for the authoring.  I am following these steps for converting the .DOCX to .MOBI.

MS Word --> Kindle Previewer --> Export to MOBI

I am hoping somebody in this community would be able to guide with me as to how to correctly embed pictures in MS Word so that Kindle does not stretch the images.
Example:

Expected image layout

Actual rendition on Kindle Reader for Windows

Steps followed for embedding images

Insert tab --> Pictures --> Select file from disk

Using Kindle Create gives different results

I tried the tool Kindle Create. When I preview the book by clicking the Preview button everything looks fine.  I am confused now. Should I publish using Kindle Create or Kindle Previewer

I would like to answer my own question.

What did not work

If you convert the DOCX to MOBI using the Export option of Amazon's Kindle Previewer tool then you are going to face the problem with images stretching horizontally

What worked

Convert the DOCX to filtered HTML (Save As dialog)
Use Calibre to generate a MOBI file by pointing it to the HTML file that was exported out of MS Word
I had to fine tune some settings in Calibre (e.g. show ToC at the beginning). But, the result is very close to what I had expected.


Without ebook creation software, can I fix formatting issues on an epub? I have an epub copy of a book where all the lines are broken up wrong, and it ends up looking like really bad free form poetry. This makes the book really hard to read. Is there a way for me to fix this sort of problem on my own, without having some sort of software to make ebooks, or am I stuck just trying to find a version of this particular book without this problem?

Depending on what you mean by ebook creation software. You can always:

Rename the epub to a zip (change the epub suffix of the filename to zip)
Extract the zip file.
Manually edit the extracted HTML files with your favorite text editor - this assumes that you have an understanding of formatting with HTML
Repackage the files/folder to zip again
Rename the zip to epub again. (As user3019828 pointed out in a comment: you need to use a zipper that won't compress the mimetype file. For Windows, ePubPack is an option; for Mac, you can use ePub Zip.)

The above steps does not involve any specific ebook creation software... But you should give a try to Calibre's heuristics fixing capabilities too. And Calibre also has a GUI to refine ebook contents...


What is the best tool for Smashwords submission? I am planning to write couple of free ebooks for the benefit of the community. Can anyone please suggest me a good tool for smashwords compatibility?

The short answer is to use any tool which produces a valid epub file.

There are 2 options.

Create it in MS word and use Smashword's  meatgrinder tool to convert it to epub.

Or create the epub file yourself and submit it directly.

If you are more comfortable with MS Word and don't mind troubleshooting its strangeness, go ahead with that. But MS Word is a complex beast.

I would recommend trying to learn to create the epub file yourself. But the process is not that easy.

One option is to rent Adobe Indesign and pay for one month. That should be enough to create your book and export it into epub. This is overkill.

Sigil is a somewhat user-friendly tool for creating epub files. It requires knowing html.

One thing you can look into is the online pressbooks for generating ebooks. It's free and works moderately well.

There are now more commercial tools for producing ebooks. All have their limits or might cost money. But they might be fine for generating ebooks.

All the solutions are somewhat bad. They are useful for producing simple ebooks -- without much formatting.

Before you submit it, you should validate the epub file with the online validator. Smashwords won't accept a file which doesn't validate.

Two other things to keep in mind:
1)try not to use creation tools offered by the book distributor. They tend to be specific to their devices.
2)you may have to format something entirely different to make it work in kindle. However, if your epub file generally passes the epub validator, then you can use Amazon's kindle converter to make it.


Epub3 run js function on page turn event I have a large chunk of content that is too big to break into small individual chapters. The problem however, is that animations on page X have already run by the time I get there. Obviously body onload="foo()" won't solve my problem. I need to be able to call foo() once I am on the page containing the canvas. Is there a way to do this? Perhaps fire an event on page turn?

This is solvable thing but I wonder whether the animation and this effect are so much important for the book. The problem is these things are typical for relatively highly tuned web pages and implementing them into a book could bring more problems than it would solve.

At the moment, eBook readers are often extremely memory-limited and it is suggested one chapter should have less than 300 KB!

If you were still interested in the solution, check this post.

I have tried adding of jQuery into ebooks and it worked pretty well but it is still very experimental practice (just for fun at the moment!).


Can I use a TV or Monitor for a larger screen with my Kindle? I have a Kindle Keyboard and a Paperwhite, they both have WiFi and mini USB.  Is there anyway to connect with a TV or computer monitor so I can get a larger screen size, while reading with my Kindle?

Although you cannot stream from any Kindle directly (except for the Kindle Fire HD), you can download any of your Kindle books to a PC or laptop and read them using the PC Kindle App, and you would be able to stream that.


How can I determine the translator of a wikisource work? I am considering putting together English/Spanish versions of a few Mark Twain books, such as "The Prince and the Pauper" which can be found here.

However, I need to know who translated it into Spanish from English. How can that be determined? If it is given in the link above, I couldn't find it...

First, the work on wikisource is labeled BY-SA. So essentially you are not required to list the translator if republishing.

It is surprising not to have a translator listed. One method may be to try to locate the actual translation to an actual edition. On Google Books, for example, you can browse here. https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwisyYXSwuTNAhWI4yYKHd2kCs8QPAgD#q=El+pr%C3%ADncipe+y+el+mendigo+mark+twain+book&hl=en&tbm=bks

Another possibility is to search on WorldCat for a physical copy of the book. Even if you don't try to obtain the book, WorldCat might give you metadata about the translator's name.

Some books simply aren't published with the translator's name. (I seem to recall that 1001 Arabian Nights has a public domain version without a translator's name).

For the record, Project Gutenberg doesn't list spanish translations of the book: https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/t#a53


difference between Calibre's metadata.opf and content.opf I created an ebook with Sigil, then I converted it to mobi using Calibre. While I was at it, I edited (Calibre's) metadata and set Italian as language. A friend of mine warned me that hyphenation was English and not Italian: indeed I reopened the file with Sigil and found that in content.opf the language was en, not it.

Is this a known issue / a feature?

Calibre's metadata.opf is only used for Calibre purposes. If you change metadata entries with Calibre, the epub isn't immediately updated. IMHO, this is a major bug, but Kovid Goyal apparently considers it a feature.

If you want to apply the changes to the book, you'll have to select Save to Disk and save the book to a new folder.
Alternatively, install the Modify Epub Calibre plugin and select Metadata > Update Metadata.


Converting an sbrz file on a Mac? Does anyone know how I can convert/open an sbrz file on my Mac? Hoping to turn it into a PDF.

According to the FileSuffix.com website, this suffix is for the "Sky Ebook Reader Encrypted Ebook". Because the file is encrypted, it is not (generally) legal under DMCA to remove the encryption (in the US). And of course, as you certainly have already found, the Sky eBook Reader company only offers their software on Window.

The format is not used by any of the major ebook companies, as far as I've been able to determine. There is a message on the MobileRead forum from the developer of the Calibre program that he has no plans to support that format. While a solution might be available eventually, it does not appear that one exists at this time.


Fonts malformed when extracted from epub files I have an .epub from which I want to extract its embedded fonts.
I've tried to unzip the .epub, and found the fonts in .otf and .ttf format in the OEBPS/Fonts directory; when I try to open some of them I get an error that says that they are malformed.

This happens to me with all the epubs, however in the epub viewer the fonts look good.

There is a feature, font obfuscation, which prevents you from viewing/using any embedded font after  unzipping the epub. Whether this has happened in your case is unclear. However, if the epub was created in Indesign, that is likely to be the issue because Adobe Indesign obfuscates fonts when it creates epubs.

http://www.idpf.org/epub/20/spec/FontManglingSpec.html


Auto-adding to a Collection when using a Send-to-Kindle email When sending an ebook to the @kindle.com email ID to add to your Amazon "personal documents", is it possible to specify a Collection-name somewhere in the email such that the book automatically goes into the collection when it reaches the device?

I vaguely remember reading some degree of control using the email subject/body, but am not sure what exactly customized using that - book's title? Author? Collections? If there's an Amazon help page about this that I've missed, a link would be highly appreciated too.

No.

It will show in amazon.com/myk under "docs".  You can select multiple items to organize into collections.

Perhaps there was such an option in the past.


What is the expected content of a child of a page-list in epub3? In the epub2 spec for page numbers, the pageList element is supposed to contain some pageTarget elements that have, among other attributes, a value that is supposed to be a positive integer.

The epub3 equivalent seems to be the page-list element (example, spec). But I don't see any guidelines as to what to expect in the page-list. The example lists something like this:

752

Should the content of the a element in the li be expected to be numeric? If so, where is this documented? If not, are there any constraints? Should it be expected to correspond to what one would see in the corner of a print page, i.e. either a number or a roman numeral in preface content? If so, where is this documented?

I am looking at the excellent book EPUB 3 BEST PRACTICES by Matt Garrish and Markus Grylling in the section "Page Numbering."

First, we need to describe what the function of the <nav epub:type="page-list" ..> element is supposed to do. Some reading systems  (specifically Readium) have the ability to search specifically by page number (presumably printed page number). IN Garrish's book this feature is called  "page jump functionality."

Only if a reading system provides this functionality, then it would be helpful to include an ordered list within the nav "page-list" type. So nav epub.page-list is an optional method for providing an alternate navigation/search method.

Important: the only constraint on page-list type is that it must contain an ordered list. For this reason, the semantics for LI are interchangeable; there's no special requirements or constraints on the value. If the writers of the standard wanted to constrain the values of the ordered list items, they would have created an additional unique element with the nav page-list element.

So yes, these references are arbitrary -- you could use letters of the alphabet, Roman numerals; it does not matter.

Later the book mentions providing anchors for page numbering.

<span
         epub:type="pagebreak"
         id="page24"
         title="24"/>
   …

Presumably for the example you used, you would switch id=page752 on the georgia.xhtml page.

(The book also describes the pros and cons of using css to show/hide these page indicators throughout the text).

A few things worth noting: First, I don't even know which reading systems support this feature of search by page number. Second, I am skeptical about whether this is implemented on Kindles (I could be wrong...) Third, I suspect the ideal way  to implement references to printed pages is by letting a tool like Adobe Indesign auto-generate these things.


Are sound effects acceptable or desirable in a fiction audiobook? I am an author of short stories and poetry. I have been publishing ebooks and now I am also considering turning some of them into audiobook format. I confess I have only listened to one or two audiobooks, so I am not sure about what is the current "audiobook etiquette".

Is it a good idea to add other sound besides the narrator voice in a fiction audiobook, like the ambient noise in a children playground or a rainy day. Or should the narrador be always speaking in a simple, silent, neutral sound environment?

I don't think they are any rules, but the important thing is that the effects sound professional and not too distracting. The problem is that if you commit to one sound effect, you are implicitly agreeing to produce other sound effects as well -- which may or may not be easy.

Not that I'm into sci fi but when teaching overseas I happened to hear a Star Trek novel narrated by one of the actors who was in the series. One thing that really made the audio novel was that it included all kinds of sound effects from the original series. (They were great!). I actually think I heard a Louis L'Amour book which included limited sound effects. Also nice.

I think sound effects (or music) work particularly well as intros or outros to a scene. Also, I can imagine certain sound effects can enhance the mood (drops of water, a heart beat, etc).

Sound effects definitely add to the story, and if you have the chops to self-produce, all the better. But don't get caught in the trap into thinking that because your audiobook has sound effects that it must be better (and sell better)  than non-enhanced titles. The story is the most important thing.

I have heard so many examples of well-produced enhanced audio books (especially sci fi books like Philip K Dick); practically, the reason it isn't done more often is simply because of lack of money or technical skill.


Can you advice reader (APP) for ebooks? Can you advise a e-reader for e-books? For synchronization between PC (Windows) and smartphone (Android).

Now I use FBreader for my phone and Microsoft Edge for PC. But it's not convenient, because I need to download the book to my phone and PC, and when I finished reading from my phone/PC, switching to another device - I have to look for the place where I stopped by keywords.

It must be something like Google Books. Upload book to cloud/share and I can read the book from the application on android and from the web/app version for PC. It synchronizes all the notes and synchronizes the place where I finished reading.
But, Google Books web version is fucked up. The book search doesn't work (it's critical for me) and the customization is very limited (which is not critical but uncomfortable), and it doesn't save customization when I quit a book.

Sorry, but Microsoft declared EDGE will no longer be able to show EPUB files, so when they get a patch into your system to kill that ability, it's gone forever.

As Microsoft stated, other EPUB reader apps are available, including the Open Source fbReader for Windows, as well as 12 others in the Microsoft Store.  fbReader offers bookmark and other sync across platforms as per https://books.fbreader.org/faq.html#synchronised-data so it would seem to do exactly what you want.


How to convert PDFs to readable Kindle format I have several class notes (more like books summarizing the material) that my college professors have provided in PDF form. As reading on a computer screen isn't exactly easy on the eyes (and gobbles unnecessary power compared to my Kindle) I'm looking for a way to convert these well. It would also be nice to be able to read/study in places where having a laptop would be impractical (e.g. weekend trips to places with no electricity provided, train travel).

I have already tried multiple file converters, including zamzar and Calibre, and the quality of both is no improvement on reading on a computer screen. I either receive gibberish (particularly when it comes to mathematical formulas) or else strange line breaks that make it difficult to follow the flow of the text, or both.
This doesn't help the fact that I have to concentrate more anyways as the texts are not in my native language (I'm studying abroad in Germany).
Reading pdfs on my Kindle is also not a viable option, as the constant moving back and forth over the page breaks my concentration as well.

I remember reading somewhere that converting to HTML, cleaning the code, and then converting to epub/mobi was suggested, but I can't find the article again and I wasn't sure what to do after converting the pdf to html (which seemed to work decently, and the HTML version looks good enough in my browser, besides small, rare garbled parts where certain mathematical symbols or special characters were, which I could live with and aren't of importance for non-math courses anyways).
I would also be open to other roundabout ways of conversion (over an Open Office/Word text document, for instance) as long as the quality is good and easily readable.

As a student my budget doesn't really include commercial optical character recognition software. Can anyone help with this issue?

Simplest way is to send kindle team an email with the PDF attached along. They'll send you back the converted .mobi format.

  Send to Kindle by E-mail Send documents to your Kindle as an email
  attachment You and your approved contacts can send documents to your
  registered Kindle devices, free Kindle reading applications, and your
  Kindle Library in the Amazon Cloud by e-mailing them to your
  Send-to-Kindle e-mail address ([name]@kindle.com). Your Send-to-Kindle
  e-mail address is a unique e-mail address assigned to each of your
  Kindle devices and free Kindle reading applications upon registration.

  How to send a document to your Kindle: To find your Send-to-Kindle
  e-mail address, visit the Manage your Devices page at Manage Your
  Kindle. Documents can only be sent to your Kindle devices or apps from
  e-mail accounts that you added to your Approved Personal Document
  E-mail List. To add an e-mail account, visit the Personal Document
  Settings page at Manage Your Kindle. To send a document to your Kindle
  device or app, simply attach it to an e-mail addressed to your
  Send-to-Kindle e-mail. It is not necessary to include a subject in the
  email.


Editing a published epub book I have tried for several hours to edit an eBook with Calibre, the page I wish to edit comes on screen but will not edit. I have read the instructions a dozen times and I cannot find an answer to what I am doing wrong.

Do you see this as in this picture when you're trying to edit an eBook?

You can only edit EPUB and AZW3 formats!

Here's the tutorial with pictures how to proceed when editing eBook in Calibre.

As an alternative, you can use Sigil to create and/or edit EPUB format.


Can Kindle previewer preview older Kindles? Can Kindle previewer (from Amazon) preview what a document will look like on older Kindles?

Kindle previewer can preview Kindle:

Paperwhite
Touch
fire
Kindle for PC or Mac
All other Kindle apps

Does it preview first generation Kindles (not apps)?

Yes, it can. In the Devices menu, select "Kindle e-ink", then from the tabs across the top select either "Kindle" or "Kindle DX" instead of "Kindle Paperwhite". This will show you the mobi (as opposed to the KF8) view, which is what the older devices use.


iBooks - Cover Image Page iBooks is correctly using the image I designated for the cover as a thumbnail in the shelf area of Ibooks where all the books are displayed.  However, it is removing the cover.html page from the ebook.  That is, there is no way to turn the pages of my eBook to the cover page and just stare at the cover.  Obviously, this also means it is not opening to the cover page like I would like it too.  Has anyone discovered the proper way to set up the .opf file or .ncx file, (this is in EPUB2 specifications) in order to include a cover page?  Bonus points for also explaining how to get it to open directly to the cover page as well*

linear="no"

is the attribute that prevents a file in the spine from appearing in iBooks. In your case, you would simply remove it from this line which appears in the content.opf file:

<spine toc="ncx">
<itemref idref="cover" linear="no"/>


How can we validate an ePub3 file in Windows 8 system We have validate an ePub files in the epubcheck-3.0.1 version in windows 8.1 system, and we received below error message in the epub files. could you please help for us?

ERROR: 9088098774672.epub: Mimetype entry missing or not the first in archive
Validating against EPUB version 3.0

Check finished with warnings or errors

This error is not related to Windows itself. This means that ePub file is bad compressed. Decompress this file and compress it via this tool ePubPack


How do I open my Ebook library in kindle? I recently saved my library of kindle ebooks onto a flash drive (I got my nephew to do it for me). I have the file saved on my desktop now and it's quite a few books (10 gigs). Now I have windows 8 and have the kindle app but have not the slightest idea on how to save all these books to the kindle app locally, without using the internet. The books are in a folder format of Author - titles - data.
So I have 1 folder called Kindle, in this folder i have countless folders of the names of all the authors I have and in each of those the titles of the books by that author and in that I have the data for that specific book which is 3 different files; a '.opf' , '.mobi' and a '.jpg'. Now these I presume are the cover the book itself and the mobile version?

Anyways I really would just like to copy this file locally so that I can browse my books on the kindle app.

In Calibre, the Add books menu choice has several options. One is:

"Add books from directories, including sub-directories (Multiple books per directory, assumes every ebook file is a different book): Allows you to choose a directory. The directory and all its sub-directories are scanned recursively and any ebooks found are added to the library. calibre assumes that each directory contains many books. All ebook files with the same name in a directory are assumed to be the same book in different formats. Ebooks with different names are added as different books."

If you point to the folder and use that Add option, it will do them all,see this:


Is it possible to self-publish ebooks with DRM? I've created software to generate valid ebooks from HTML/XML and auxillary files (metadata, cover artwork, etc.)  The software produces books in both the ePub and MobiPocket formats and does everthing except add DRM to the book.

My ebooks will be in Norwegian.

I am aware of publisher's arrangements, such as Kindle Direct Publishing. Unfortunately, they will not publish unless the book is in one of the following languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, or Japanese.

What options do I have to add DRM to books that I self-publish?

Assuming no free or near free option exists, if I were to purchase the necessary framework and licenses to do this myself for the ePub and MobiPocket formats, where will I get this software and what will it cost me.

I am also interested in learning about publishers that will accept books in Norwegian and will publish them on the Kindle platform with DRM.

Per your comments I have read on EditionGuard that offers an extension for WordPress sites.  There is a fee associated with content but my understanding is you upload your content to them, you can sell through your CMS and they will send a DRM ePub.  I have not tested this yet, but I had planned to in the future when I had time.  Also, note this is for only .epub and .pdf files NOT .mobi files yet.


Amazon eBook Self-Publishing vs Major Publishing Houses Quick question for anyone who has some insight... Do the major publishing houses have a different process for publishing ebooks through Amazon than "independent" publishers? I get the feeling that, yes, the big boys have access to more tools than the smaller houses do, but I just wanted to confirm.

Big publishers may have a more direct route they can take for submitting their titles, but they are still required to follow the same formatting guidelines and provide the same information that Amazon requires of any self-published authors who use their Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program. The KDP program provides an interface that authors can use to submit and manage their titles to Amazon for sale as e-books. Basically, this interface is how the author (or publisher) provides all of the pertinent information for the book, and regardless of who is submitting it, that information has to be provided. I think the only real advantage a major publishing house would have would be in their ability to hire a staff that manually enters this information for each book.