How can I toggle text reliably across all ereaders in an epub file? I'm trying to make a multilingual ebook where I have two different translations of the same story. I'm trying to get it so that you can toggle the language by clicking on individual paragraphs. I asked a similar question on Stackoverflow a while ago but I found out that not all ereaders support Javascript.

I thought that I'd try doing it with only CSS. I just the checkbox hack that I found on this Stackoverflow thread, but that didn't work. How can I recreate a toggle effect on ereaders.

Even though it may be difficult, I've seen it done before.

Javascript would be the best way to do this, but as you note, not all ebook reading systems support Javascript—in fact, very few of them beyond iBooks do. Without Javascript, this isn't really possible, unfortunately. The doppletext site that you link to uses Javascript, for example.

Ebook reading systems support a fairly limited subset of HTML and CSS. Of particular relevance, most of them do not support the advanced CSS selectors like the type being used in the checkbox hack that you link—there's no selecting the adjacent sibling.

The only other option that I can think of is epub 3.0's epub:trigger. Unfortunately, at present that only allows you to toggle visibility:hidden and not display:none, which means the space the invisible paragraphs take up will still be there, so you'll have giant translation-sized holes in your text. Even if the IDPF adds a display control to epub:trigger, epub 3 support in reading systems is sadly lacking (despite it being the approved standard for two and a half years now), so that probably won't get you any farther than using Javascript.

Sorry for being the bearer of bad news! I'd love to be proven wrong on this—I've worked on several ebook projects that could benefit from this type of thing, and have never been able to find a way to do this acceptably other than with Javascript.


How to load large mobi files on a Kindle e-reader? `How do I set this ebook:

thufir@dur:~$
thufir@dur:~$ ll /media/thufir/Kindle/mobi/microsoft/Microsoft_Press_ebook_Windows_10_Support_Secrets_MOBI.mobi
-rw-r--r-- 1 thufir thufir 30318271 Jul  7 22:17 /media/thufir/Kindle/mobi/microsoft/Microsoft_Press_ebook_Windows_10_Support_Secrets_MOBI.mobi
thufir@dur:~$

to readable on a Kindle e-reader, 7th generation?  I've mounted and unmounted the Kindle multiple times.  The file is there, it's the correct size, it's readable from Calibre -- not sure what else I can do.

There it is, on the Kindle.  But, not getting picked up.  Other mobi files are recognized and readable.  But not this one.

why?

this is in the context of:

The Kindle Personal Document Service can convert and deliver the following types of documents:
Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx)
Rich Text Format (.rtf)
HTML (.htm, .html)
Text (.txt) documents
Archived documents (zip , x-zip) and compressed archived documents
Mobi book

Even after compressing to .zip it's too large (at least for gmail).  To re-iterate, the e-books is perfectly readable from calibre and so I don't see that it should be a problem with the file being corrupt or unreadable.

I don't seem to be alone with this general problem of dealing with absurdly large e-book files on the Kindle...

see also:

https://superuser.com/q/1337407/55747

Perhaps convert the EPUB to PDF, slice into tranches, then re-convert back to EPUB?  Sounds like an invitation for everything to go wrong, but might work..

Oddly, the mobi size seems quite out of whack versus the EPUB format:

Usually a .mobi file actually includes a couple copies of the book in different formats. Is the .mobi file much larger (like, multiple times) than the epub file? This is the giveaway. The KindleStrip plugin (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96903) might help you remove that excess content to bring the file down to a manageable size.


Kobo by FNAC does not show covers when sleeping I've got a new Kobo and, although I've heard it used to show book covers when sleeping, mine only shows the FNAC logo in the screen. First I thought it used to happen because I was only using it to read Pocket articles, but then I started a book and it's behaving the same way.

It turns out it's a factory setting for the FNAC versions. It can be changed by connecting it to your computer and editing a file inside a hidden folder: .kobo/affiliate.conf.
You should change it from affiliate=fnac to affiliate=Kobo.

This was found at a MobileRead Forum post, and I thought it should be here for making it easier to be found.


Selling ebooks of school textbooks I have a scan machine at my home so i have scanned a lot of school textbooks to create ebooks. I am wondering if it possible for someone to buy an ebook from me in this manner and for it to be legal.

What i want to do is to create a website that sells ebooks (since some people prefer them to actual books) You'd still need to pay as much as for an original book and I would buy the actual book and scan it for people and then send them the file.
I wonder if that is breaking any laws since they technically do own the book but they might not have the equipment necessarily to create an ebook.

Do you guys have any idea about laws concerning this kind of business?

This is not legal advice, but the answer to your question is almost always no.

In general, it is illegal to sell a copy (physical or electronic) of a book if you are also keeping a copy. Say you own a physical copy of a book. You can sell that copy, but you generally cannot sell an electronic copy, regardless of whether you keep the physical copy. This is also generally true even if the buyer owns a physical or electronic copy of the book already. This is because copyright protects the copyright owner's exclusive right to make or distribute copies in the first place.

If you are even thinking of doing this, you absolutely must consult a copyright lawyer. There are very large potential penalties for copyright infringement, regardless of the amount of money changing hands. For example, one person was ordered to pay $1.5 million for sharing 24 mp3s.

So, the answer is: probably not. Tread with extreme care and consult a lawyer.


Why won't Microsoft EDGE show EPUB ebooks? I have been using the Microsoft EDGE web browser to read EPUB ebooks (my favored format, since they're smaller than the equivalent MOBI/AZW3 or PDF ebook file).

However, EDGE now won't show the content once loaded.

How can I fix this?

Sorry, but Microsoft declared EDGE will no longer be able to show EPUB files, so when they get the KB4522355 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.


Debug javascript epub3 code How can I debug a script write in a epub3 .js file? The script in question read with an xmlhttprequest a file and do some operation with the extracted text. Parsing the file is ok but other operations no. So I'm looking for a debugger but I can't use the FF or IE or Chrome built in debugger because transport all the pages and the script externally of the epub3 file is not my choice. I need to debug and see the wysiwyg of the xhtml code. Actually I use Sigil with the last release published.
Another solition could be change colors code in my .js file: actually it is located in Misc folder and all the code is black without colors that could help me reading better than now.
Any help or suggestion world be appreciated.
Than at all

I use HTML Sandbox. It's from W3 Schools. I get some false positives (easily identifiable) but it works for me. I hope this helps.


How can I set my Kindle Paperwhite to ignore font color settings? I bought an e-book from a 3rd party bookstore which looks really bad on my Kindle Paperwhite. I've investigated the book and it seems to me that the basic font color is defined to be grey instead of black.

p { ....; color: #231f20 }

Is there a way to set my Kindle just to ignore the built-in style sheet and use the default black as a font color?

I've fixed the book using Calibre by manually changing #231f20 to #000000 but I still looking for a more universal solution.

In the case you have bought pure ePub and later converted it to Mobi, you could delete the color attribute at all (Kindle will treat this with it’s built in color spec.). This needs unpacking of ePub, deleting the css part you have mentioned and proper packing into ePub again.


Which platform is better Calibre or Kindle? Which platform is better between calibre and kindle

Calbre is free desktop software for managing digital libraries, and includes an ebook reader, ebook editor, conversion tools, and the ability to communicate with an ebook reader or other device over USB.

Kindle is Amazon's ebook/audiobook platform with desktop and mobile apps.

Both can be used for storing and reading ebooks, but usually they are used together (or Calibre with some other kind of ebook reader).

Library Management: Calibre
Ebook reading: Kindle (hardware or app)


How to sort on books that aren't in a specific format in calibre I'm using calibre to convert my books from pdf to mobi. My issue is that I have hundreds of books that are already in the mobi format and I'm looking only to convert the books that aren't already in the mobi format.

When I try to convert all of my books it converts the pdf books into mobi even if they are already in mobi. To convert my book collection is going to take many hours, and I'm wondering if there is a way to mass convert books that aren't already in the output format.

Thank you. Will accept any work around that accomplishes this.

I'm surprised nobody has responded in six months, sorry I haven't been here :-(

I do this all the time.

You want to convert everything that has formats:"=PDF" and doesn't have formats:"=MOBI".  You can just put those conditions in the search box, or in the tag browser:

Select the PDF format (which will place a big + beside it), then
ctrl-select the MOBI format twice, instead of a + there'll be a -

You'll see the following selection string in the search box: not formats:"=MOBI" or formats:"=PDF". Now you have all the books that are either not MOBI or are PDF.  That's not nearly what you want, but now just change the or to and (or delete it—no conjunction is the same as using and) in the search box and you have all of the PDFs that don't also have a MOBI.


how to redeem Amazon gift cards on a Kindle? I currently have some money in my Amazon account purchased through an Amazon gift card and can redeem an additional card through the web interface.  I have redeemed cards directly on the kindle, but that was when prompted because the balance was too low for a purchase.

Where or how can I redeem a gift directly on the Kindle itself?  I've looked through the online store interface and been through the settings.  It's a seventh generation kindle with touchscreen, but not a paperwhite -- it uses e-ink.

I can just redeem through the web interface, but would like to be able to use the Kindle itself.

I'm guessing that the reason you are asking the question is that for some reason you don't have access to the account associated with the device. YOu could probably check with the Amazon people, but I'm pretty sure that the only way to redeem a gift card is via a web browser and only if you have the account holder's login/pass.

Another option is to just wipe it clean and create your own account.

If you have ebooks that you want to add to the device and they are not encrypted with DRM, you can add them via usb.


Why my EPUB background is black? I converted .docx file to .htm and convert it to .epub in Calibre. When i view it, the background color is black. How to change it?
I tried change the css background color but it doesn't work.
Any idea?

I changed the viewer preferences and it worked. Thanks


Two kindles bricked, can there be a common cause? I used to have a Kindle 3 (keyboard). After almost 3 years of honourable service, it started getting stuck more and more, until reset wasn't solving anything anymore.

The very helpful Amazon customer service replaced it (albeit out-of-warranty) with a Kindle Touch. Happy again, I copied some books I was reading to the new device and started reading.

After less than a month, the Touch got stuck too. Now since I don't believe in cursed ebook users, I'm trying to figure out if there is a common cause. I haven't treated any reader badly, always charged before getting the warning, never let it fall (at least the new one).

I'm starting to suspect it's because of some book I loaded, can it be? I usually use Calibre on Windows 7 to manage ebooks.

You can try and convert all of your Calibre managed files, to any format and see if any of the books show a problem.

If you don't want to polute your book database, make a copy first and work on that. No guarantee to find the culprit, but not a lot of effort either.


What text format is least likely to clash with ebook formats? There are several different software products for collecting and formatting the electronic written word. Microsoft & Google, are two big names offering products, there are also many others.

Looking at some of the questions here on ebooks, it is obvious that all software is not created equal and some formats translate to other formats better than others.

If I want to write and save my work, with basic formatting. Only modifying; italics, bold & font size for chapter headers.  What software and/or file type, will be the most consistent when converting to ebook formats?

I want to be able to write, edit and provide basic formatting to my book, and not have to worry about doing a complete edit review for each ebook format I convert to.

TL;DR; In order not to worry about the output, you have to be sure of the input and the translation process into an ebook. The input has to show you everything that is there and hide nothing, and the translation process must be deterministic.

If you only need basic formatting and want it to be consistently converted, the best you can do is use a mark-up language like reStructured Text, markdown or DocBook.

The reason for this is that common word processors like Word¹ are what-you-see-is-all-you've-got: you often have no idea what the internal structure of a document is even though it shows "right" on the screen.

This happens e.g. when you have three words in italics, and select the middle one and set italics again. Is the internal structure such that italics ends after the first word and begins at the third; or does it end at the beginning of the second word (after the space) and start at the end of the second before the space; or is the second word just italics and does italics within italics mean: display non-italics? And what happens to this structure when you then deleted the second word?²

With a mark-up language the mark-up is explicit and you see what you do: where things start, where things end. The translation of mark-up gets you the same result every time, and that makes it predictable. And predictable means you know what you get as an end-result and you don't have to check it. At least it should not be a result after the first time using some construct ;-).

The preceeding isn't necessarily true for two documents that look the same in Word: they might have different internal structures, which translate to different output in an ebook.

For many people this is not a problem, as to how this differs depends on the the target ebook format. Formats that do less rendering of structure (such as image based ebook formats like DjVu, or typesetting oriented formats like PDF and DVI (LaTeX output)) are similar to output to a printer. Word has control over this, and makes it look the same whether it renders to screen, to the printer or to PDF. That is why you normally have no visual difference directly printing from Word, or generating a PDF and printing that.

This can be different  if your input text is translated in another mark-up, as in ebooks in EPUB, MOBI, etc. format. In that case knowing exactly what structure you started with is important as that may influence the output rendering. And that is where Word could get a different output for similar looking input, because there might be hidden elements, but something in a mark-up language will be the same if it looks the same, because there is nothing that is hidden.

The aforementioned example, which looks the same in Word could translate in one of the following HTML pieces (there are more possibilities, and this might be an oversimplification, but the I hope it conveys the principle):

abc def ghi → abc def ghi
abc def ghi → abc def ghi
abc def ghi → abc def ghi

If the output was to be LaTeX instead of HTML (where italics in italics switches back to non-italics) the third would look the same as the first two, and the inter-word spacing would differ after italics ends (it might be different in HTML rendering by Firefox as well, I just can't see it).

The conversion process should be deterministic, and it probably is for your purposes. However Knuth did do the calculation in TeX in integers because he argued that the floating point units in computers (at that time) where not deterministic enough because of rounding differences. IIRC this was to get the same result on different computers, so this is—hopefully—only an example of to what extremes people go to control the repeatability of their output.

For conversion of mark-up, have a look at Sphinx or pandoc. The former can generate output in PDF without having to install LaTeX, the latter has more in- and output formats. Both can generate HTML which you might use as a basis for MOBI as I have not seen any direct generation towards that of mark-up languages (but since I don't have a MOBI device, I have not really looked for that).

¹ I use Word here, but this applies to OpenOffice writer and similar editors as well

² I fear too many of us have edited documents only to have new text at the cursor have some font or formatting that we did not expect and is a result of some program internal formatting lurking invisible.


Some classic literature is available for free - but where? Knowing some classic literature works being free... what would be typical sites to find and download those? (By "classic" I mean those older works that are now regarded to be “copyright-free”.)

I know iTunes, GooglePlay and the rest offer some free literature works via apps, but I am looking for more "open" resources like free online libraries, archives, etc. Does anything alike exist? Is there a directory or something where (copyright-) free books are listed for reference purposes?

The reason why I am asking is that I would hate having to waste time scanning my  hardcopies just to read them on my ebook reader, when such books are freely available in ebook-compatible format somewhere...

Note: I'm talking about freely available literature, and not stolen (non-free) works offered by illegal download sites, and certainly not things like useless "get rich quick" PDF guides. I did my homework and (ab)used some search engines, but in contrast to my usual experiences, search engines didn't really help as most of what they suggest turned out to be sites offering illegal downloads.

The only usable example I found and which had an acceptable quality was Archive.org's texts. In fact, it is a pretty good example of what I'm looking/asking for. There must be more, alike resources out there…

Also note the discussion on Meta related to this question — “Should we make the free books question a community wiki?”

The best-known resource is Project Gutenberg, which exists for precisely this purpose.


Send periodicals via email I have same RSS feeds, that I would like to read them via periodicals menu. I can create a .mobi file as need format for periodicals and send it to Kindle PW2 with usb cable or download it from a remote web server, it goes to periodicals menu as I need, but if I send same file it with email to kindle, it goes Docs. So how can I send file to periodicals with email way ?

No, this is impossible.

Since the Kindle email service converts everything to a personal document, you must USB sideload in order to retain the periodical tag.


Cannot view the collections I created on my kindle touch I was recently given a kindle touch. I have created 3 collections, and have added several books to each. But when I go to the dropdown to sort the view, "Collections" is greyed out inactive. Did the same on amazon webpage - still cannot see the collections on my kindle. Tried clicking "sync and check for items" - it just says there are no new items. What am I doing wrong?

New collections were not implemented on K4. Collections which you can create on  K4 were created only on the local device. They won't go on the cloud.

According to the Amazon site, QUOTE: "Cloud Collections are currently supported on 6th Generation and newer Kindle e-readers, and 3rd Generation and newer Fire tablets." (and also, Kindle apps on Android/ios devices)

Finally, a tip from someone who uses collections often, you should organize your collections via the Manage your Content and Devices interface. (This is especially true if you are on an e-ink device). It's much easier.


What is "Read an Ebook Week"? I was just sitting down to start shopping at Smashwords, and found this listing.  A quick look on line seems to indicate this is some kind of world wide deal.

What is "Read an Ebook Week"?
Where did it get started?
What is in it for me? (looks like sales maybe?)

There's a pretty lengthy write-up on HuffPo.
Short version:

For one week each year, Rita Toews, 61, a soft-spoken mother of two and grandmother of one, sits at the center of the ebook universe.
Operating from a spare bedroom in her home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada with her cat Lola by her side ("Every author needs a cat," she says), Ms. Toews is the creator and chief ringmaster of Read an Ebook Week, an annual international celebration of ebooks....
For the one week only, publishers and authors offer thousands of original ebooks for free and at deep discounts to encourage book lovers around the globe to give ebooks a try.

It apparently dates to 2004. The domain in the article, ebookweek.com, now redirects to Valor eBooks. Not sure of the relation there.


How to show all the books under a tag and its subtags? Calibre has a feature that lets you create subtags. See "Making subgroups of tags" in the official blog post.

  Now to actually get hierarchical tags, in the tags section of the metadata entry enter a tag of the form MainTag.SubTag. Like in the top figure on the right and example would be Classics.Russian or Classics.English.

Say, I have tags

Classics
|__ Russian
|__ English

What search expression should I use to display all the books that are tagged with "Classics" or with its subtags i.e "Classics.English" and "Classics.Russian"?

I can get the result with

tags:"=Classics.English" or tags:"=Classics.Russian" or tags:"=Classics"

But its becomes ungainly if there are more than few subtags.

What search expression I should use here?

Solution 1

tags:"=Classics.English" or tags:"=Classics.Russian" or tags:"=Classics"

can be reduced to

tags:"~^Classics"

It will show all the files whose tags start with "Classics"

Another variation is

tags:"~Classics"

If you omit the ^, then it will show those files too whose tags have "Classics" in them, but not necessarily in the beginning. For example

- Classics
 |__ Russian
 |__ English
- Children Classics
- Foreign Classics for University

Solution 2

When you click on tag icon

two times, it shows double plus sign. This happens only for tags that have subtags.

When this double sign is on, Calibre shows all the books that are tagged with the tag or its subtags.

Solution 3

Use following search expression

tags:"=.<tag name>"

For example,

tags:"=.Fiction"


Transfer books from Adobe Digital Edition to Calibre I have a number of free ebooks and pdfs maintained under Adobe Digital Edition. I would like to move all of them to Calibre which I use to maintain my ebooks library on another PC. The Calibre tool is also used by me to manage my Kindle PaperWhite.  How do I do that ?

The simple, answer is that you export the PDFs to files on your disc and then use the add books function of Calibre to add them  (or drag and drop) to get them into Calibre.

Any files that have DRM you will not be able to import and read, but you should continue to use these on ADE. Removing the DRM is probably against the law.

Once you have the files adding the ebooks that have correct metadata should give you little problems. Calibre will ignore a lot of the PDF metadata during addition, I am not sure if it just tries to extract the title from the filename, but up to 2.19 my Calibre (on Linux Mint 17.1) would not extract the author from the appropriate metadata field. I always add PDF files using a python script that extracts the Title and Author from the PDFs metadata and then calls calibredb add -t Title -a Author.

I used that to add other files to Calibre as well because the script does some basic clean up, e.g. on the author's name (changing "Lastname, Firstname" into correct "Firstname Lastname" form etc).

You can of course also add your ebooks using calibredb add that way too.


how to extract specific tag using calibre I only want to use a specific "< d i v>" of the htmls to create epub, say, all the other part is useless.

Because each of the htmls is about 20k, and there are a lot of junk informations, scripts, ads, ...

All I need the "main-content" div:

<html>
....
<div id="main-content">
....
....
....
</div>
...

</html>

I know its xpath is :

//*[@id="main-content"]

How to use it in calibre or ebook-convert?

AFAIK, this can't be done automatically with Calibre. However, if it's possible to download parts of a website with a custom Recipe.

If you're familiar with Python, you could also use BeautifulSoup to scrape websites.

For more information, see How to scrape websites with Python and BeautifulSoup.


Is it possible (and how do I do it) to set up my Kindle to talk to Calibre over Wifi, instead of talking to Amazon? I have a Kindle Paperwhite.  I also have Calibre, and a goodly number of DRM free ebooks that have nothing to do with Amazon.  I'd like to be able to transfer these to the Kindle without the hassle of a USB cable.
I.e. what I'm looking for is to change some setting on the Kindle to make it talk to my Calibre server instead of to Amazon - so that I can disable airplane mode, turn on the wifi and tell Calibre to "send that book to Kindle", and have it appear on the device once it's downloaded.
I don't care about missing out on software updates from Amazon.  To be clear, I'm looking to bypass Amazon entirely if possible.
Is it possible to do this?  If so, how?

Kindle devices have the ability to receive books via a special email address. Each kindle has a unique address ending in kindle.com. You can use Calibre to send the books via email to your kindle through your own email address. However, if the end goal is to bypass Amazon entirely, this method would not suffice.
Before sending any books to your kindle email address, your sending address will need to be added to your document "whitelist". You can find this list of permitted senders on Amazon by navigating to "Manage my Content and Devices", selecting "Preferences", and scrolling down to "Personal Document Settings". You will then need to configure Calibre to send emails; when doing so Calibre's FAQ recommends sending the email through a known service, as sending the mail directly may lead to it being dropped as spam along the way.
The options for configuring send to email can be found in Calibri's Welcome Wizard.


Kindle Devices Which Support Two Page Layout Which kindle devices, exactly, support two page layout spreads and which do not?

All Kindle devices that support fixed layout ebooks (so, the Paperwhite and the various versions of the Fire) should support two page layouts. It's important to note, though, that in the Kindle Publishing Guidelines, the only place that two-page spreads are mentioned is in Section 5: Creating Fixed-Layout Graphic Novels/Manga/Comics. In Section 4: Creating Fixed-Layout Children's Books the only way that page spreads are demonstrated is by making a single html page that looks like two print pages. In other words, if what you want is a book that will display a single page in portrait and two facing pages in landscape, you need to make sure it's a comic rather than a children's book.


Ellipsis flowing to next line in epub I'm currently doing an epub where the original scanned pdf has many "xxx !…" — that's any word (xxx)… followed by a thin space… followed by an exclamation mark, followed by an ellipsis.

In unicode code points: xxx U+202f U+0021 U+2026

I use a bunch of different e-reader apps on android or Kobo and I noticed that occasionally when justification sends the "!" to the end of the line, the ellipsis flows over to the next line. As a result when this ellipsis is the last character of a paragraph I end up with a line with just the ellipsis sticking out like a sore thumb.

Obviously I would like to avoid this and have the ellipsis stay where it belongs, next to the exclamation mark with no intervening space. The original appears to follow the typesetting standards for French literature in the 19th century and I don't wish to mess with that and change this typesetting quirk to something else.

I did a pdf of the same text using LaTeX and haven't noticed the same thing happening.

How would I go about fixing this annoying problem with epub/html?

Thanks,

CJ

If the rendering implementation supports this, You might want to wrap that string in a span tag and add the white-space: nowrap style.

You can see it here in action.


Stretching an image to fit the screen I am converting a book for use on a Kindle 7. I want certain images to display as large as possible while keeping the original aspect ratio. I can get the images to display properly in EPUB format, but when I convert to MOBI, the image shrinks back to its original size.

HTML

CSS

div.span img {width: 100%;}

Both of these methods seem to work, but they do not survive the conversion to MOBI. Isn't there any way to force images to span the width of the screen?

Side by side for comparison http://imgur.com/aYKvxGc

unfortunately you can't make width:100%; in mobi files. Amazon just strip that away. You can try to set min-width:100%; instead but this is little different in behave so test are needed. More about which CSS kindle respect you can read in this documentation.

2017/06/27
Changes in KF8 format allow now using width css property


Kindle doesn't read the files after being formatted I have borrowed my friend's old kindle to read some files on it. They were plenty and he had a large archive himself. So, I had to transfer them somewhere else. But the capacity was still full so I formatted it (To exFat)♀. Now I have all the files on its folder but it doesn't recognize them on the device. I'm panicking. What shall I do? I don't even know the model. Its quite old, non-touch, doesn't have background light, a square and four other bottoms on it.

Older Kindles usually only support FAT32. Reformat it as a FAT32 partition.


Standard settings for OCR'ing and compressing a book scan Is there a set of standard best practices for compressing and adding text recognition to a scan of a book chapter? I'd prefer open source tools, but I'm hoping there is an existing script that reasonably does these two functions to bring PDFs to reasonable size and usefulness (hopefully in batch)

The answer really depends on your needs, time you might be willing to invest, money you might be willing to spend (for commercial software), and what you are going to do with the result (is it just for your own reading, or do you plan to distribute it).

A couple of open source tools that might help you are k2pdfopt and ScanTailor.  They can both clean up scanned images, de-skew them, and crop them.  k2pdfopt can perform OCR (using the Tesseract OCR engine).  I believe they both do batch processing.  If you have MS Office, MS Word also will automatically OCR a scanned PDF and convert it to .docx format if that is helpful to you.


Alternate covers for different devices and software Quite new to writing and editing ebooks and I wondered something.
I know in webpages it's possible to produce alternate styling and content based on what the content is being viewed on. So CSS can style something differently for print than for screen and differently for mobile than for tablet or PC.
Is the same true in epub?
I'm thinking most specifically of cover images and other (potentially) colour content.
I'm painfully aware, due to being sight impaired, that some book covers which look great and are easy to look at or read in colour are less than optimal in black and white or are great as a full size cover but barely recognisable as a thumbnail.
Is it possible to code an epub so that a different cover image is shown on a black and white ereader than would be seen on a colour screen.
I'm asking not just as a user who needs acessibility but also as someone who would like to produce ebooks which are as acessible as possible.
The other route is going for high contrast low detail colour so that, monochrome or coloured and large scale or thumbnail, you always get something recognisable and readable. However this places more limitations on design options.
Of course I'm not even sure that thumbnails are a part of the epub or whether they're just generated from the main cover image by whatever software or device holds the ebook.
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

Generally the answer is no. You are defining  only  one cover in your source -- but you can easily test how it renders in both color and greyscale. So it should be high contrast and not so much color-dependent.
The next question is required resolution and file size. Generally, Amazon and others require one high res cover but will downconvert the file size depending on the display size.
I'm not an expert on accessibility (and am certainly no artist), but know a lot about formatting and what is possible  for ebooks.  The key thing is reducing the key elements in the cover -- unless you are going with something that looks like an actual scenic view. Even that is hard to pull off (although in scifi, it is more commonly done).
By the way, from a marketing perspective it is crucial to have only one cover for a ebook. Even if a second cover is a simplified view of the original cover, it can confuse customers and ebook distributors.
One thing you should absolutely consider is how the cover appears in a thumbnail. Full scenery in a cover often does not work well in thumbnails. I wrote a little piece about ebook covers and noticed these constraints on ebook deal ads.

One last thing. A common way to advertise your ebooks is through ebook
newsletters. Each daily newsletter normally brings 20+ book ads with
the ebook cover. The art included with these newsletters tends to be
small, so you should make sure that a thumbnail conveys the cover
concept adequately. I haven't verified these dimensions, but a quick
check in my browser reveals that Bookbub uses 215 pixels, Bookgorilla
uses 180 pixels, Bargainbooksy uses 250 pixels, and Fussy Librarian
uses 170 pixels...Typically on Amazon, the ebook covers appear as
150-175 pixels wide on the search results page and 300 pixels wide on
the ebook product page.


Save reading percentage, bookmarks and highlights inside of epub file Is there  a way or a specific epub reader that can save highlights and bookmarks inside of the epub file.
Basically I would like to have an app that works like kindle on different devices, so that my highlights and bookmarks and reading percentage are synchronized.
I already have a way to synchronize the epub file between different devices, but the reader I tried do not save these information.
I have only Android devices.

ReadEra

Quick access to the reading settings, table of contents, bookmarks, text highlights, quotes, notes, page browsing history in a book and other eBook options. Navigate the book using the page pointer or the progress line. Footnote texts in Epub, Mobi, Docx, Fb2 formats are printed at the bottom of the page, as in a paper book. Displays the total number of pages of a book and separately pages of a reading chapter.

If you have books and papers deleted, moved, or downloaded again, ReadEra will automatically find where you left off.


When it is better to use plain HTML instead of CSS? I published a book which contains some (simple) math formulas, like axn+bxn−1+ … + hx + k = 0. Such formulas may be displayed just with (X)HTML, as you may see. However, some friends of mine complained that on their Kindle the formulas were misformatted, and the exponent was at the same level of the text, like axn+bxn−1+ … + hx + k = 0. I checked the content of the ebook, and I found this snippet:

axn +
bxn-1
+ … + hx + k = 0

("corsivo" means italics in Italian and "apice" superscript, in case you wondered why the names of the classes).

My question is: for better compatibility among browsers, is it better to create a lot of CSS styles and to add spans in the text, or to stick to (ugly) XHTML primitives?

In general, formatting with HTML (though regarded as outdated by many, including W3C) tends to work more reliably than formatting with CSS. Support to CSS varies and can be disabled (though this is rare and mainly applies to web browsers). However, HTML formatting is very limited. You can use  for italic,  for superscript, and a little else, but you cannot e.g. specify the size or vertical position of superscripts (which depend on user agent and vary considerably).

In e-books, however, we can expect CSS work well for the simple formatting that would be possible in CSS, too. I tested your example, with an ebook created with Sigil and then converted to .mobi format with Calibre, and viewed with Kindle for PC, the exponents worked OK, the same way with HTML only, when I used the obvious CSS rules

.corsivo { font-style: italic }
.apicecorsivo { font-style: italic; vertical-align: super; font-size: 80% }

So if the exponents didn’t work, probably either the e-book is missing a CSS rule that makes .apicecorsivo appear as a superscript, or that rule was somehow lost when generating the .mobi version.

For stylistic reasons, it is best to avoid mixing HTML and CSS formatting so that e.g. some exponents are marked with , some just styled with CSS (set on  elements for example). The reason is that generally you cannot guarantee that the style applied is really the same. Your example has n-1, which is meant to produce “n−1” as superscript, but it may happen that they will be differently subscripted, i.e. in different font size or in different vertical position.

There are considerable styling problems with  in web browsers; they tend to produce uneven line spacing as well as qualitatively questionable superscripts. Such issues might not be that relevant in e-book readers, but it might still be safest to use a combined strategy, using  for italic (it’s rather safe) but CSS for superscripting. This would mean, in the example case, HTML markup like

axn +
bxn &minus; 1 + … +
hx + k = 0

with CSS like

.sup { position: relative; bottom: 1.8ex; font-size: 80% }


Kindle paperwhite loses the Wifi connection all the time I recently purchased an new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite and I wanted to configure the Wifi.

My Wifi router hides the SSID (it is not broadcasted) and I am able to connect the Kindle by entering the SSID by hand.

The problem occurs when I switch off the Kindle, after switching on again, the wifi connection is lost and I have to re-enter the wifi settings.

Is is a known problem, or someone have a trick the Kindle to be able to stay connected after power down?

This appears to be a known issue with the Kindle Fire. I'm assuming it is also an issue for your model. I would suggest that you just broadcast your SSID. Most people report this is fixes the issue. If you are not broadcasting it for security reasons, that is what encryption and password are for. If someone wants to break into your network, hiding the SSID is not going to what stops them from getting in. There are many freely available programs that can detect non-broadcasting networks.


How to upload my Malayalam book in Kindle? I have published books in Malayalam language through Creative Space.

Now I know that kindle is accepting Malayalam language books and when I try to upload the files (as per KDP they need docx file), Kindle is not accepting and rejects the book with an error. I have tried many times and received the same error which says: to check the file.

I think that the 'font' of my file is not accepted by Kindle.

What type of file format is required in Kindle?

I don't know the precise answer to your question and you probably have more experience formatting in your native language.

My guess is that doing a conversion from DOCX to Kindle or DOCX to epub will be horrible. MS Office will probably specify its own font, and then Kindle won't support it or allow it to be embedded.

Here is a better strategy. Focus on producing an epub file which validates as EPUB 3 http://validator.idpf.org/ If it validates, my guess is that it will also render easily on Kindle if you convert from epub to Kindle using Kindle Beta Previewer. https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1003018611

The work processes (and the necessary steps) for producing a kindle/epub file are a lot different for creating a Createspace printed book. What works in Createspace will probably not work for Kindle and vice versa.

To produce a good epub/kindle file, you should probably create the content using an HTML/epub editor. Try using either of these two (free) products:

Calibre's EPUB editor (which is different from the Calibre
conversion part). See https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/edit.html

or
sigil epub editor.

The one thing I do not know is if the included Kindle fonts include support for Malayam characters. If you have heard that they do, then it should be easy.

If not, then you will have to embed a special Malayam font yourself. This is not extremely difficult, but it is complicated. See https://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf Chapter 9 .

Good luck, and try to tell us what worked for you!


Connect Kobo Touch to Linux PC using USB; PC not recognized by reader I have an old Kobo Touch that has gone unused for a year or two. Now I want to copy new books to it. This used to be easy: Connect via USB to my PC (running Linux), click "connect" in the dialog box that pops up on the reader, copy files to the mounted file system, done.

This still works like this with a friend's Mac (so the reader isn't broken), but not with my Linux anymore. The "your reader is connected to a computer" dialog never appears when connected to the Linux PC, so I cannot mount the reader. Has anyone else had this problem under Linux? Is there a solution?

Some remarks:

as I said, sideloading like this still works from a Mac, so the Kobo is fine
I'm running Linux Mint at home, Ubuntu at work, neither works
my USB ports and cables are fine, other devices work as expected
when I connect my Kobo, it starts charging, so at least on some level it realizes that a cable is connected
Calibre doesn't recognize that a reader is connected
when I connect the Kobo, there are no new events in the output of dmesg or in /var/log/syslog, the output of lsusb doesn't change, and there are no new devices under /dev/
I'm running an old version of the Kobo system because I don't want to open an account with them; still, it used to work with this version and Linux

Exactly  the same problem.
Fedora 24, Kobo mini connected via micro USB cable

Kobo starts charging but no sign of it on computer, no "connect" option
on kobo.

Tried a different cable and hey presto - instant success...

Sadly, I've seen this behaviour before, hence trying a different cable
was my first thing to try (after checking internet and finding no real
answers but coming across your question... )

Motto is - not all cables are equal in all situations...

Hope this helps


How can I create beautifully designed ebooks? Are ebooks created in Photoshop? or I should first insert photos in M.S word then convert it to .pdf file?

I want to create a ebook for marketing purpose.

also, how can i have a menu in my ebook, so the reader select the chapter he wants etc. ?

There are several ways to create ebooks. 1. MS Word --> epub. 2. HTML --> epub. 3. Adobe Indesign --> Epub. 4. (Various formats) with Calibre --> epub.

There are other tools like those described here: https://www.epubor.com/epub-builder-freeware.html

Remember that all epub files must be validly formatted. In other words, if you run it through this validator, it will give you zero errors. http://validator.idpf.org/

Then from epub, you can use Kindle Beta Previewer to convert to a kindle file.

An epub file is basically a zip file of various HTML files and package.opf. The package.opf will list the TOC so it's virtually a given that if you have a valid epub file, you will have a correctly formatted TOC menu.

If you are using content as a marketing device, I would be fine with keeping it in PDF form. Many people who read things have tablets which allow them to see PDF in its native format. EPUBs are better for content-heavy stuff and for viewing on multiple devices of different sizes.

I don't use the Adobe Indesign --> epub method, but if you are already comfortable with Adobe tools, this might be your best bet because they let you export to epub.

Obviously there's a lot more to say, but this information should give you enough to get started.

UPDATE: The question seems to ask specifically about how to create a beautiful ebook.  That's hard to answer directly, but I can say that PDFs created via Adobe offer lots of options for font and pixel-perfect layout and illustrations that you're unlikely to find in an epub -- even on a robust reading system. You could argue that epub follows the responsive design paradigm, which means the end goal is to have a consistent reading experience on multiple platforms, whereas Adobe tools and workflow are more dedicated to one single form factor. I don't think I'm really being too controversial in saying that Adobe tools can produce lovely and complex designs and layouts, and it would take at least a decade before epub reading systems catch up. On the other hand, epub files are more functional and flexible and less dependent on having the right reading system to read it on. I have seen some amazing things produced for iBooks, but these are optimized only for one platform and not easily read on other platforms.

The question boils down to: do the benefits of designing for a single reading system outweigh the benefits of responsive design?


Publishing HTML to Kindle - Encoding problem I am publishing an HTML page (a book) to Kindle using kdp.amazon.com and I encountered an encoding problem so I added:

lang="en"

to:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd" lang="en">

and

charset="utf-8"

to

<meta charset="utf-8"/>

But I am still having the same problem with characters like ' or |. Please see the image attached below.

(should be it's)

Most likely your source files aren't properly encoded. It's not sufficient to add utf-8 charset declarations, you'll need to actually save your source files as utf-8 files. (If you happen to use the old Mobipocket Creator, you'll also need to save all HTML files with a BOM (byte-order mark).

If your source file is an ePub, open and save it with Calibre Editor or Sigil. This'll re-save them with the proper encoding.

If you hand-crafted your book, open all HTML files with Notepad++, change the encoding to utf-8 and re-save them.


Can I expect one chapter per html file in an Epub? Is this the rule or can I find several chapters in an html file?
Having 1 chapter helps moving back and forth chapters or set bookmarks.

No it is a valid file if there are several chapters in one file. You can even have the whole book as one HTML file.

The epub spec says

  Each Rendition of an EPUB Publication contains one or more EPUB Content Documents

Book marks can be made to a point in the file so don't need separate files.

Readers have a limit to the size of the HTML file and I think that is a reason to split the files.

Again with movement in the files it depends on the reader. Having smaller files might well help the reader as it can cache a whole file


Which is the quickest way to change apostrophes to quotation marks? I am proofreading a text, and I would like to change all occurrences of ' to the relevant character, ‘ or ’; ditto per " and double quotes.
The task cannot be automated, because there are apostrophes in the middle of the text, like in "I'm", and of course " is heavily used in the XHTML markup. At the moment I am using Sigil, but replacing every single character takes a bit of time because of the tidying involved. Do you know of any better way?

You could use the PunctuationSmarten Sigil plugin.


How does Google Play choose page number / how to influence it? Our book has quite simple page numbering: 1, 2, 3 and so on. (We don't use any special numbering for the first pages, e.g.: the book title is on the page 1, technical information about the book is on the page 4, table of contents starts on the page 5, the main content starts on the page 12. Maybe that's unusual, but the book is already printed, and we can't change it.)
We have the PDF and want to publish on Google Play Books. The problem is that Google Play assigns page numbers in a different way: i, ii, iii, iv, 1, 2, 3 and so on — such page numbers are displayed in the Google Play user interface controls: on the trackbar (bottom) and on the “Contents” pop-up (top-right). So, the actual numbering in the book (visible in the corners of pages and in the in-book table-of-contents) and numbering in the Google Play UI controls (trackbar and TOC pop-up) don't match.
I know PDF allows to specify \PageLabels. We successfully specified them in the PDF (other PDF viewers display them correctly), but Google Play simply ignores these specifications (we even tried several unusual styles like “cover, zzz-I, zzz-II, zzz-III, 1, 2, …” for the sake of experiment — just in case Google Play ignores only the trivial specifications like “1, 2, …” but respects others — but it ignores any).
I would think that the problem is unsolvable and that Google Play is simply hardcoded to set “I, II, III, IV, 1, 2, …”, but the thing is that when we did some experiments with submitting a smaller PDF into Google Play, the “I, II, 1, 2, …” (without III and IV) numbering was used! So, it looks like Google Play does support multiple ways (and maybe even supports “1, 2, …”) — but we simply don't know what influences its choice.
Some time ago I assumed that it renumbers pages in the way that a page referred by the first item of TOC (I mean a TOC in the metadata) gets number 1. So, I thought that if I artificially start metadata-TOC with a “Bla-bla-bla — page 1”, pages won't get renumbered. But it appeared to be not true.
So, any ideas how I can force Google Play Books to use “1, 2, …”-style numbering for PDF book?

I've promised to write semi-solution to my own question. So…
Empirically, as of 2020-12, Google Play uses the following criteria for PDF books to choose where Roman numbering (“i”, “ii”, etc) will change to Arabic numbering (“1”, “2”, etc):

If the PDF has no table-of-contents in metadata: the first page after ii (Roman two) that has “enough text” on it, will be interpreted as “1” (Arabic one).

I the PDF has table-of-contents in metadata: the first page after “ii” (Roman two) that has “enough text” on it and is referred by the table-of-contents, will be interpreted as “1” (Arabic one).
To be precise, a page must comply to all of the three criteria (not just one or two of them):

It must be not first or second page of the book (probably Google Play just doesn't take into account that somebody could upload a book without a front cover).
It must be referred by at least one entry from the metadata-stored table-of-contents.
It must have “enough text” on it (see below).

So, returning to my specific case:

Initially, the book was uploaded without its front cover and back cover. I was unable to make all page numbers Arabic – at least first two pages must have Roman numbering. Thus I prepended the PDF with the front cover and an empty page (obviously, being forced to have two extra pages in the beginning anyway, I preferred to have meaningful ones; but see notes about the automatic empty page below).
I have several internal title pages at the beginning of the book (the book is a Ukrainian translation of an English book, so it has Ukrainian title page, then English title page, then more detailed Ukrainian title page); after I inserted the front cover and the empty page in the beginning of the PDF, the internal title  pages are still there (right after the front cover and empty page). From Google Play's point of view, these internal title pages have ”not enough text” (and, besides that, were not pointed by table-of-contents entries), so it was a puzzle for to force Google Play to reduce amount of Roman-numbered pages to two (it tended to have 3–6 of them). To force Google Play to have only two Roman-numbered pages, I needed to apply both of the following measures:

I created a fake table-of-contents entry (I named it “Title and technical pages”) pointing to the first internal title page.
I added almost-invisible fake text on the first internal title page.

About “enough text on the page”/“not enough text on the page”
I didn't experiment with it a lot. I know that adding white (invisible unless user clicks on it and displaying text layer is turned on in the book settings) text of normal/large font size in such amounts that it covers most of the page space, works. I know that adding tiny-font-size text (even huge amounts of it) in the middle of page doesn't work. Finally, I've ended up by adding white text that doesn't intersect with the proper (visible) page content but covers most of the page space and is somewhat-meaningful (like “sorry, this text is here for technical reasons” and etc).
About an empty page after the front cover
Google Play has feature to automatically add an empty page after the front cover page (“Book info” / “Settings” / “Show advanced settings” / “Insert a blank page after the cover?”). Theoretically, I thought that, when using this feature, it would be enough to prepend only one page (front cover) to my PDF (the empty page would be inserted automatically, and the rest of the pages of my PDF would be numbered as “1”, “2”, etc if I add fake TOC entry & fake text on first of them). But in practice, turning this option on doesn't decrease number of forcefully-Roman PDF pages from 2 to 1 but instead seems to increase it from 2 to 3. I have no idea why, maybe some bug. So I've ended up by inserting an empty after the front cover into PDF manually and not using this option.


How do I liberate ebooks from Kindle device? I have a Kindle ebook reader. How can I liberate ebooks that are stored on it? (transfer to my PC and make them readable on any device).

Also, I tried copying my ebooks to Kindle directly, but they don't get recognized in any format I tried. I send them to my email address @kindle.com and they appear on my Kindle alright, but they get converted to azw3 format. Is there a better way to transfer ebooks to Kindle, e.g. just make it read mobi files?

I use Linux, so I can't use Apprentice Alf because apparently it is Windows and Mac-only (even though Calibre works on Linux)

Recap: I'm concerned about freedom of both Amazon and non-Amazon content:

I would like my ebooks bought from Amazon to be readable on other
    devices (the most pressing issue)
I would like to be able to get my ebooks (not bought from
    Amazon) back from Kindle, if necessary.

I had the exact same issue you are having now when I first bought my Kindle. I had many books in EPUB that the Kindle just didn't read (got used to it - found http://www.epub2mobi.com/ :-) ) and then I bought first e-book on the Amazon. Boom, stuck in there. I wanted to put it on my iPad and eventually I managed but was it worth it? Meh, not sure...

First I had to get rid of DRM - I am a Mac user, so I used Mac DRM removal. Questions here: Is it legal? Is it right?
-- I didn't share it with anyone but I was not sure. It required that the book was on the reader downloaded and it needed the serial number of the reader. Because only with that the software was able to remove it.

For you, I suggest reading this article for getting the tools for the workflow I described above. And then I suggest reading also this article for converting the book formats. However...as I said - the work was simply not worth it. I still read the books most of the times on my Kindle only. Once I read them I don't come back to them so why would I store them anywhere else?


Where to find Programming Ebooks in epub/mobi format? From where can I download programming/coding or any book related to computer science. I am trying to have a collection of epub/mobi/azw3 programming/computer science books. Is there any site for that or can anyone share me those ? I don't want pdf because they are almost impossible to read on kindle.

Depends on a lot of things.

First, are you using an eink version of a kindle? or a Kindle Fire?

If you are using e-ink (and therefore can't use pdf easily), I would recommend buying ebooks from Oreilly or Packt Publishing. They're very expensive, but at least they will format properly for an eink device.

(by the way, both companies have pretty good sales (and occasional free downloads), so I would recommend signing up for their email list.

If you have a Kindle Fire, then all you need to do is to download a PDF reader app (there are many -- don't try to read things  with the Kindle app).

You may be limited by what you can afford, but because PDFs are not reflowable, you want to get a fairly good screen size to read them. You need at least 8 inch screen in my opinion. If you buy smaller, the text size will be hard to read. (There's a zoom function in smaller devices, but it's inconvenient).

Try http://openbookproject.net/thinkcs/ for a good (and famous) introduction to basic structures (using python as an example). I recommend this for starting out. Here's the pdf of the latest version http://www.ict.ru.ac.za/Resources/cspw/thinkcspy3/

(Older editions of this book in other computer languages are here: http://www.openbookproject.net/thinkcs/archive/ ).

Here's a list of ebooks for free out there
https://github.com/vhf/free-programming-books/blob/master/free-programming-books.md

One more thing. If you have kindle fire, I would sign up for evernote, download the app on your tablet and then clip recent web tutorials on subjects which interest you. this is a good way to read articles when offline; evernote renders the content pretty well.

Finally, I want to really recommend buying a tablet which you can be comfortable reading PDFs on. 6 or 7 inch tablets just aren't good enough for most people to read PDFs on. I have an ipad 1 with the 10 inch screen and I still use it for reading technical manuals.


What is the difference between giving away my only print copy or my only electronic copy of a book? The question If a book doesn't have DRM does that mean it is OK to give a copy to my friend to read? has answers implying that without permission there are legal and ethical hurdles in giving away a copy of an ebook.  In the United States, there are stores selling used books, which are under copyright.

As Harvard Law School buys back used text books, presumably with the intent of resale, it is probably safe to assume the action is not illegal, in the US.

It seems that selling or giving away your copy of a print book that is under copyright is a not a problem, so how is that different than doing then passing on your only copy of an ebook, assuming you delete the existing copy on your device?

There are a couple of key legal differences between print books and ebooks:

First, ebooks generally are not purchased, they are licensed. If you "buy" an ebook from Amazon, you don't actually own it--you're just allowed to use it.
Second, there's the First Sale Doctrine. This is what allows owners to sell print books when they're done with them. At present, it's unclear whether the first sale doctrine applies to digital goods, but the courts seem to be leaning away from letting it, meaning that selling your ebooks when you're done with them is not likely to happen. There's a good writeup on this available here: https://library.osu.edu/blogs/copyright/2013/04/23/the-first-sale-doctrine-and-the-sale-of-digital-goods-in-light-of-kirtsaeng-and-redigi-inc/. A relevant excerpt (talking about reselling digital music files, but probably indicative of thoughts about ebooks as well) is:

  Capitol Records brought suit against ReDigi on the grounds of
  copyright infringement. The United States District Court for the
  Southern District of New York held that ReDigi’s website infringed
  Capitol Record’s rights of reproduction and distribution, and that the
  distribution of the digital music files was not covered by the first
  sale doctrine. The court reasoned that the process of creating a copy
  of the work on ReDigi’s cloud server was an unauthorized reproduction
  (the first sale doctrine applies only to lawfully made copies that are
  distributed, not reproduced) and that because an additional copy was
  made for the server, users did not distribute or sell the particular
  copy that they had originally purchased.

As much as we may think they are basically the same thing, ebooks and print books are quite different in a number of ways, and we're still all figuring out the nature of those differences, let alone how to deal with them. It may well be that the entire business model changes enough that the first sale doctrine becomes irrelevant to ebooks—if ebook subscription services become the primary method of distribution, for example.


Page flipping effect in eBooks I am new to the world of ebook publishing. I have created an ebook of format .epub and I am wondering what can I do to enable a page flipping effect when user navigates from one page to another, on a touch or non-touch device.

Here is a Wikipedia article that classifies ebook readers based on page turning effect capabilities, which hints that it depends on the reader app and not on the epub XHTML. I also found numerous softwares on the web that claim to convert to some kind of flash format and thus enabling the page flipping effect. So here is the crux of the problem:

What do I need to do get the page flipping effect experience in my ebook? Is it natively supported by the reader app or do I need to add something to my epub XHTML to enable this effect? I don't want to convert my ebook to Flash or any other format.

Page flipping¹ is normally supported by a reading application (not necessarily by all). For this to be effective on a software reader, or specific hardware reader, the refresh rate of the screen needs to be relatively high, to be able to draw and redraw all of the intermediate stages of the 'flipping' page.

So some ebook readers (I would assume most e-Ink based ones) will not have that kind of refresh speed. But tablets and desktop PC based readers might. In the former, no amount of JavaScript or Flash would help to get the effect you want.

¹ On a personal note: I have been forced to get these page turn effects in PDF files of catalogues of products. And it is a guaranteed way of losing me as a customer, if this cannot be switched off, and to make me annoyed customer if it is on by default.


Recommend a new e-book reader, main need is highlight and add notes to my books I have an e-book reader ( in fact it is a gift) Kobo aura.
The problem I faced with this e-book is that  I am not able to highlight in pdf files, nor add  some notes  to my pdf books as in adobe reader.

I don't know if there is a way to do this with this kobo version, even though I tried to authorize it with my adobe reader account.

My question is that, which e-book reader have such properties? i.e. allow highlighting and adding notes to the books, since I am planning to buy a new one.

Thank you in advance.

If you will only be using PDF files, then either the Sony DPT-RP1 or the smaller Sony DPT-CP1 will allow you to add notes and highlight directly on the PDF file itself. You can then transfer the modified file to your computer and share it however you want. Those readers will even allow you to take any type of handwritten notes. However, the only way these features work is with the use of the electronic pen that is included with the device. There is also the reMarkable which even allows you to transform your handwritten notes into typed text.


Which Kindle Paperwhite model/generation do I have? I need to determine which firmware update to download. The Amazon site is helpful if you know exactly which generation or model of Kindle you have. But they give no guidance as to how to determine which generation or model I own.

Is there some way on the hardware or within the software to determine which generation of Kindle Paperwhite I have?

While impossible for me to find on my own, an external link brought me to this page by Amazon with hints as to how to identify which of the many Kindle models you may have:

Which Kindle E-reader do I have?

From the blog post, How to Tell Kindle Paperwhite Generations Apart, I learned this:

The first Paperwhite has big “Kindle” logo on back, versus “Amazon” for the 2nd and 3rd Paperwhites.
The 2nd generation of Paperwhite has a light “Kindle” logo on front versus the 3rd generation that has a blacked-out “Kindle” logo on the front.

Generations

The first generation of Paperwhite is also known as “Kindle 5th Generation”. (firmware updates)
Second is “Kindle 6th Generation”. (firmware updates)
Third is “Kindle 7th Generation”. (firmware updates)

Flowchart

I distilled the information from the articles linked above into this flowchart.


Is there a difference in rendering between Paperwhite and Voyage? The question title pretty much sums it up.  If I'm testing how my eBook looks across different devices, and I have a Paperwhite for testing, is there a significant difference between that and the Voyage, such that I should buy a Voyage for testing as well?

Apparently the Voyage rendering system is similar to the Paperwhite, but not the same.

I (currently) know of one difference between the two; there is a rendering bug in the Voyage that the Paperwhite does not have, as described on the MobileRead forums:

  let's not forget that Voyage has that weirdo width bug, too, for
  images? Not the same, mind you...but not totally dissimilar, either.
  If you have an image that's <50% wide in Voyage, you're set; but if
  it's 51%, you're screwed, it blows up to full width. Now, again: this
  isn't the same as this wacky, "the image won't float unless it's SMALL
  enough, in iOS," but...I wonder if they are in some wild-ass way
  related? In some algo, somewhere?

  —Hitch

I'll try to update this with any further information I get.


How do I get my sideloaded books to appear in the Books section? I have some DRM-free books that I purchased before acquiring my Kindle Fire.  When I sideload them on to the device, they end up under the Documents menu instead of in with the other books.

How can I get them to go in the right spot in the device's UI?

Using the Calibre program, you can clear the [pdoc] tag from the mobi file.

Remove the tag from this textbox, and convert (back) to .mobi.

Finish by sideloading the converted files via USB or Dropbox.


Can I include code in .mobi to control the native voice synthesizer in a Kindle? Some kindle models come with a text to speech software that has several optional settings.  There is both male and female, as well as 3 speeds, which gives 6 different combinations.

In theory, a low budget writer could create a complete audio book using only synthetic voices, 3 male & 3 female.  It would have the advantage of the smaller file size of a text book, but still allow for distinct character voices.

For this to work, there would need to be code in the book that switched between the 6 optional native voices.  Assuming the user has activated the text to speech speech.

What (if any) code could I include a .mobi file that would control the native voice synthesizer?

That is not possible in any of kindle eBook formats. Amazon is stripping all html which is not supported as they stated it in Kindle Publishing Guidelines. Also you don't have access to any of device settings - including Text to Speak.


Are ebooks licensed only to a certain email address? I have Adobe Digital Editions installed on my computer.  Adobe Digital Editions is tied to my Adobe ID email address, oldemail@domain.com.

Over the past several years, I have purchased several (non-public domain) ebooks from the vendor ebooks.com, both EPUB and PDF.  My ebooks.com account is, like my Adobe ID, associated with oldemail@domain.com.

When I purchase and then download ebooks from ebooks.com, I am given an .acsm file ("Adobe Content Server Message" file).  Once I have downloaded the .acsm file to my computer, I double-click on it, Adobe Digital Editions opens, and the ebook file (EPUB or PDF) is downloaded to my computer and automatically placed in Adobe Digital Editions.

Once the ebook is in Adobe Digital Editions, if I right-click on it and select "Item Info," it says:

Permissions
Licensed To: oldemail@domain.com
urn:uuid:########-####-####-####-############

where # is a number 0-9 or a letter a-f.  When it says Licensed To: oldemail@domain.com, what does that mean?

My overall question is, are ebooks tied to (i.e., licensed to) a particular email address?

Are they tied to a particular email address as soon as they are purchased or only when they are opened on Adobe Digital Editions for the first time?

Another way to ask this question is the following: which of the following statements is true?

An ebook is tied to a particular email address as soon as it is purchased.  So if I purchase an ebook from a vendor (e.g., ebooks.com), the ebook is tied to the email address I used to purchase the ebook as soon as I click purchase.  In other words, if I use oldemail@domain.com to purchase an ebook from a vendor, I can only open that ebook using software that is authorized to oldemail@domain.com.
An ebook is tied to a particular email address only when the .acsm file is actually opened and the ebook is loaded into Adobe Digital Editions (which itself is tied to a particular email address).  In other words, if I use oldemail@domain.com to purchase an ebook from a vendor, I can open it for the first time either with Adobe Digital Editions authorized to oldemail@domain.com or with Adobe Digital Editions authorized to newemail@domain.com.  However, once I open it with either authorization (either oldemail@domain.com or newemail@domain.com), the ebook is forever tied to that particular email address and I can no longer open it with the other authorization.

My issue is that I want to change my email address, from oldemail@domain.com to newemail@domain.com, without losing access to my ebooks.  To do this, do I need to ask the vendor (i.e., ebooks.com) to change the email address associated with my account, or do I need to just to redownload the .acsm files and open them in an Adobe Digital Editions authorized to newemail@domain.com?  Neither support team is at all clear on what I will need to do.

I do disagree with idiotprogrammer's answer because this question does dive into DRM which plays a large part in ebooks.

You could try changing the authorization of your Adobe Digital Editions account, reference: "How do I change the authorization on my laptop" with a re-install.

If that doesn't work you would need to contact ebooks.com. Since you're getting a .acsm file I would 99% think they are using Adobe Content Server.

  First, it's ridiculous to think that a DRMed ebook is tied to an
  email. Instead, it is tied to a user account created for a specific
  vendor. Every website under the sun allows you to change the email for
  the account. Even if the sign on you use is the email I suspect you
  will be able to change the email associated with it from account
  management on the user's site.

Actually not..  ebooks.com might treat the email address as the ID and use it for validation to prevent transfer.

Your issue will need to be addressed at the vendor if a re-install of ADE is unsuccessful.  To my recollection DRM is scoped to what they have identified as the ID.  In this case your ID is your email address.  You might be allowed to change your email address in the account settings of ebooks.com but I do not have an account there so I wouldn't know.

I did run across this in research: "I figured out the .acsm problem!".


How can I personalize each copy of a PDF to add the reader's name or email address to each page? To discourage readers from uploading it to public file-sharing sites, I'd like to personalize each copy of a PDF document to embed some identifying information to each page.

I'm thinking of something along the lines of adding the name and/or email address of the "authorized" reader (i.e., the "owner", the original buyer, registrant, etc.) to the footer of most pages.  (Maybe prefaced with "From the library of..." or something like that to make it a little more friendly.)

I'm not trying to hide this from the reader. In fact letting the reader know that sharing their copy of the book is also sharing their name or email address is much of the point of the exercise.

It isn't difficult to merge two PDF documents together, so it would be easy to add the identifying information on a single page, but I'd like it to appear on all (or at least most) pages.

This particular book happens to be generated from a LaTeX document. There are LaTeX packages that can be used to customize the page footer, of course, but I'd prefer a solution that would work for an arbitrary PDF document.  (The LaTex-to-PDF process is relatively slow, and I'd like to be able to do this both on-demand and/or in batches.)

This particular book happens to be distributed as a PDF document, but something similiar for other ebook formats could be useful in the future (both for me, and I suspect, others).

I am aware that a moderately savvy reader can probably remove or overwrite the identifying text, and that this is likely to be even easier to do with formats like epub or mobi.  That's OK. I'm not looking for bullet-proof DRM.

TL/DR: Can anyone recommend a utility or process for generating multiple copies of a PDF document, each with a small bit of text added to the footer?

BTW, I believe that 37 Signals did this for one or more of their books, but I've been unable to find any mention of exactly how it is done.

EDIT: I know that a Google search for "PDF Watermark", etc. yields a number of tools for doing this.  The trouble is that there are many such tools, all of them seemingly from small shops, and many of them look to be crappy at best and shady at worst.  Can anyone recommend a specific application or approach?  (My ideal solution would be Linux-based, since the rest of my publishing workflow is Linux based, but I'm sure many readers would be happy to see Windows-only recommendations as well.)

Create a watermark pdf which contains the footer using imagemagick:

convert -background none -geometry +0+0 -fill \#000000 -pointsize 12 label:"From the library of..." -set label '' -page A4 watermark.pdf

It creates a simple pdf ( size: A4 ) with the text From the library of... at the bottom left corner. You might change the font, the position of the text, the size of the text...

This watermark.pdf can be added to ( all pages of ) a pdf file using pdftk:

pdftk input.pdf stamp watermark.pdf output output.pdf

I've used stamp instead of watermark because it overlays on top of the input pdf.


List of places to publish free ebook in PDF format I wrote a mathematics textbook (high-school level), in PDF format. It is free and I just want it to be as widely-distributed as possible.

Converting it to any other format makes it awful. (It's merely awful when converted to .docx, but completely unusable when in .epub format.)

Many websites (e.g. Smashwords) don't accept PDF though. So I'm wondering if someone could give me a list of sites where I can publish my PDF ebook.

Scribd (https://www.scribd.com/1) will let you publish a pdf for free.
If your original manuscript was written in latex you could also convert that to an epub, although that it can involve a little work.


Can I use a third party software as a full OS replacement on a Kindle Keyboard? If you purchase a new PC, it comes preloaded with some software, this is mostly just a convenience. You could reformat the drive, remove all the windows software and load Linux or similar software, as your operating system.

An ereader is essentially a computer built to specialize for the specific task of reading.  In theory the same rules would apply.  Is there anything preventing my from reformatting my kindle and installing an operation system that is not an Amazon product?

I do not think that there is any measure to stop you. Maybe except for the fear that you end up bricking the device by not being able to connect to it from your PC.

I do however not see a reason to do this. The only alternative firmware that I know of is Duokan, which works fine in dualboot. So there is no need to remove the original system.

Also since the Kindle is already running a Linux (without an X server though). So you could just install the programs you want without having the trouble of missing drivers etc.

So all in all it should be possible and I do not think anything would stop you. But lacking any alternative options, I do not see why one should do it.


Is there any ereader that can split the document in to 2 I am looking for an ereader that allow me to split the screen in to 2, so that I can read different pages of a file at the same time, or I even can open 2 files together?

I have searched a lot but have found nothing about this.

You didn't mention what platform you wanted (iOS, Android, Fire, etc) so I'll just answer this the best I can for Android.

Android OS has a feature where you can run 2 apps at the same time - so you could run any e-reader app on both sides, and open different documents.  If the e-reader app itself didn't like running twice, I'm sure you could just use 2 different e-reader apps of your liking.

If your Android device does not already have MultiWindow capability, then you can install a package like XPosed (you can find instructions here) that will (in some cases) give you that capability.

Note that on the Samsung devices where multiscreen is built in, not all apps are supported.  In order to get around this limitation, you can install an app like MultiWindow Apps Manager that allows you to specify which apps should be listed.

Hope that helps!


How do I add an ISBN to Calibre ebook? According to the Calibre website:

Click the book you want to edit and then click the Edit metadata button or press the E key. A dialog opens that allows you to edit all aspects of the metadata. It has various features to make editing faster and more efficient. A list of the commonly used tips:

The ISBN box will have a red background if you enter an invalid ISBN. It will be green for valid ISBNs

I see no ISBN box, red, green or otherwise in the edit metadata dialogue.
On another Calibre page I see:

you might want to display the ISBN, a field that calibre does not display.

… followed by something about "simply hover your mouse over the column header" in the Calibre template language, which I cannot find.
So, how do I add an ISBN (which I have) to the publication I need to convert to ebook?

The field for the ISBN is labeled "Ids:" and is located between "Tags" and "Dates". It allows you to enter ID types other than ISBNs.


Can I float an image to the top or the bottom of the screen? Is there a way to create floating images for Kindle (or for any eBook format) that float up to the top or down to the bottom of the screen/page?

I have a written children's book for my daughter, with some illustrations. I'd like to make a Kindle version of it for her, since she has a Kindle, but I'm worried about how the illustrations affect the flow of the text.

I understand how to include images and have them appear in-line, or directly after the paragraph in question. But the risk is that at a given font size, the image may be large enough to overflow onto the next screen, causing a big gap in the text.

What I'd like to do is attach an image to a paragraph such that it appears at the top of the screen that that paragraph starts on, no matter what size the font is or where on the screen the paragraph itself appears, and not to have any gaps in the text. I appreciate that it's not quite that simple -- there need to be rules for what if having the image present pushes the paragraph onto page p+1 but omitting it pushes the paragraph onto page p -- but I assume those layout rules could be worked out too.

I understand that you can create floating images, but my understanding is that they float left or right but not up or down.

You can't float to top or bottom. But you can use the CSS break-before property to ensure a page-break before your pictures. Obviously, this will put pictures at the top of the page.


Adding Page Numbers in Word How do I add page numbers to an ebook in Microsoft Word, in the following format:

No numbers on opening pages (Title page, Copyright, Dedication)
First page Number appears at bottom of Chapter 1
Second page (2) appears at top of next page in chapter
Third page (3) appears at top of 3rd page in chapter and so on...
Subsequent Chapters - First page in each Chapter lists page number at bottom (same as Chapter One)

I've been tinkering with this for about an hour, gone through Help pages in Word and can't figure it out. Is it really this hard? Perhaps opening file in Calibre and adding numbers there?

To do this, you will need to use Sections. Also, when you create a new section, make sure to disable the "Link to Previous" option so that the formatting starts where you want it to. Make sure your opening content is in one section, then start your first chapter in a second section. Add a footer to the first page of the chapter and insert your page number there. To get the rest of the page numbers to appear at the top, you will need to create a third section starting with the next page, then add a header with the page numbers in the header. When you start the second chapter, you will need a new section, and so on.

This behavior will vary depending on the version of Word you are using, so you may have to play with it some. This kind of formatting can be very frustrating with Word, and they certainly don't go out of their way to make it easy.


Problem with hyperlinks after converting chm to epub with calibre I have a book in .chm format and I had to convert it into .epub format so I used Calibre for Windows for this operation. I am satisfied with the result except for a hyperlink problem. There are some words in the book that you click to jump to another page where the word's definition is found. So in .epub format when I click to one of those words the link takes me to the beginning of the page where the word is found. By saying beginning of the page, I mean the page group that is linked to one of content title on the left in .chm formatted documents.

In broad explanation, in .chm books you have contents tab on the left and there are titles and when you click one of them the page can be very long or short so when I click a word in a text (in the .epub book) to go to its definition page I am being sent to the top of the page then I have to find the definition by myself on that long page.

What can be the problem? I am not very familiar with the file formats so I cannot identify the problem to find the solution. Are these kind of hyperlinks directly linked to word (like searching) or to a page number?

Thanks

Update One:
Here is how one of the links appears in .chm

mk:@MSITStore:C:\Users\XXXX\Desktop\Mybook.chm::/7859final/LiB0052.html#8960

And this is .epub version of the same link source

file:///C:/Users/XXXX/Desktop/Mybook/LiB0052_split_001.html#8960

This is html code

GARP

CHM and epub are based on html files, but generally the production method for chm determines how simple the code is. Often the HTML files in the CHM files are made of complicated code which confuse calibre.

The first question to ask is: why do you want to convert it to epub? 1)Because you have one special file  you wish to read in that format or 2)eventually you want to republish (i.e., "repurpose") the content so that others can read it in an epub reader? or 3)you have many different chm files you wish to convert.

If you need it just for your reference, I would try skipping the step of converting to epub and just look for a chm reader on your device. Android and Ios have decent apps which can read chm files natively. That is always the best option.

I tried converting a simple chm to epub using calibre. Guess what? All the hyperlinks work for me. It sounds as if you are saying that the glossary for your chm contains all the definitions, and the problem is that every defined word goes to the top of the page (instead of going to the right part of the page).  My test files don't have anchors, so I cannot see what you are talking about.

To diagnose the problem, you need to view the source of the chm and epub.

The first step is renaming the epub to zip and then unzipping everything so you can see the html. Then open one of the files in a text editor (or open it in a browser, right click and select VIEW SOURCE).

You can also view source in a chm file on Windows. Just right click on the topic with a defective hyperlink, view the hyperlink and see what is supposed to happen.

From doing these two steps (and especially the first), you can see why the hyperlinks in the epub are not working. Perhaps epub stripped the part of the hyperlink that would put the target hyperlink to the middle of the page.
Normally it should look like this  where "elephant" refers to the anchor in the middle of the page.

Another possible cause of the problem is that the chm file might be doing weird stuff. Perhaps, depending on the authoring tool which produced the chm file, javascript is making the anchor (I'm guessing randomly here).

Another possibility is that when producing the epub file from chm, for some reason calibre removed the anchor references. If the glossary page does not have something like:

 or

it will be impossible for the hyperlink to find the anchor on that file.

Calibre gives you powerful tools (like regular expressions) to rewrite certain code when converting. (although it may take you a while to learn how). If you are motivated, you can probably just re-edit the html files and make sure the references work and then rezip it again and rename the file extension to epub.

Again, without seeing the HTML source, it's hard to know where the problem lies.  But again, finding an chm reader to read the file natively would probably be the easiest thing to do.


Different size pages in DJVU book I have a djvu book that has different sized pages.
How can I solve this by making all pages to same size. I am familiar with Python programming and I'm ready to try it. Any advise is appreciated.

As all pages are having the same or very similar width and height, this seems a "simple" problem of some pages having the wrong resolution. Most pages have metadata that specifies 600 DPI others only 96 DPI. That later are then of course displayed much larger.

My Linux distribution comes with djvutoxml and the corresponding djvuxmlparser (from package djuvlibre-bin) which can extract the metadata, resp. merge the metadata back in. Those should be available for Windows as well (http://djvu.sourceforge.net/, make sure the executables are in your PATH) That metadata includes the DPI information from the file. Actual changing of the XML is fast, but extracting and merging takes a long (several minutes) time.

Make sure you have a copy of your book, in case the merging breaks something, and run python program.py book.djvu on this program.py:

import sys
import subprocess

book = sys.argv[1]
xml_in = 'in.xml'
xml_out = 'out.xml'

print('extracting XML')
subprocess.check_output(['djvutoxml', book, xml_in])

print('converting XML')
with open(xml_in) as inf:
    with open(xml_out, 'w') as outf:
        for line in inf:
            if line.startswith('<PARAM name="DPI" value="96" />'):
                line = line.replace('96', '600')
            outf.write(line)
print('merging XML')
subprocess.check_output(['djvuxmlparser', '-o', book, xml_out])

print('done')

In general I am against parsing XML without a real parser, but you don't need regex or anything that easily breaks to get this information fixed.

The intermediate XML (two files) has the same order of size as the DjVu file itself, although the XML has no image information, it is just inefficient. Make sure you have enough room (and run this program on a fast/local drive)

There are 367 incorrect pages out of 1201, you might be able to speed up the process by only including the incorrect pages in the output XML, but then you should use an XML parser. If this is a one off conversion, I would not bother with such an optimisation.


Anonymous publishing I am writing a book of short stories. I am planning to self-publish the stories as an e-book but would like to keep my anonymity - I will use a pseudonym.

Obviously, I would like to sell the e-book and wondered how I would be paid - would I have to set up a company and be paid through this in order to be anonymous or do I just set up a bank account in a different name?

If anyone can help me I would be most grateful.

If your work is going to be successful enough to make it cost effective to set up all the legal niceties of staying hidden.  There is no possible way to guarantee you will keep your anonymity.  The recent article JK Rowling lawyer fined over Robert Galbraith leak(BBC 2 January 2014) is but one example of failure.

If you are already an established author, your risk of exposure increases.

If you are not already an established author, your potential for recouping expenses is doubtful at best.

If anonymity is a significant concern, do not publish.

If anonymity is passing concern, then money is probably not a significant concern.  Publish all your works for free, or direct all incoming funds to a charitable concern without ever coming to you.

There is no anonymity on the internet, there is only presence or lack of common knowledge (assuming anyone cares enough to look).  As of this minute there are 277,316 published works on Smashwords Many of them published with pseudonyms.  The majority of them make such a little splash, that no one is drawn to search out the authors.  But if the right people, care enough to look hard enough, there no possibility of sure anonymity.


Big screen dimensions or high DPI for vision impaired users? I'ld like to get my dad an ebook reader for Christmas. Yet, he is a bit vision impaired which means that he only has a good reading experience with bigger and sharper/clearer/more-acurate font rendering.

To be sure the display renders the fonts as clear as possible at a zoomed (125%) font-size, I would like to know what I should focus on… should I focus on a big screensize (display dimensions, width x height) or should I rather go for a high DPI screen? What advantage would the one have over the other (from a vision-impaired reader's point of view)?

I would suggest going with an iPad with Retina Display not because:

Its a bigger screen
At the current time, better resolution than a few other devices

BUT because Apple requires their typeset to be adjustable and coded in to accommodate for visually impaired and not a fixed font size.  So what this means is if your dad buys a book on iTunes, he tries to adjust the font size and fails, he can request a refund on the book and Apple will require the publisher to correct the issue to re-activate their content to be sold.

My experience with Amazon is across the board and is generally a "How many users have complained base" and their support is across the board.  If he does have an issue with the book he can get a refund but the smaller device would be harder for your dad to read perhaps.

This may be an extension on your question but the quality of the content is as much important as the device you are getting.


Is there any way to address encoding errors in purchased ebooks I have found a number of ebooks that I have purchased have some glitches in the encoding.  Most often I notice that the pages are mapped incorrectly. For instance, in one case I advance to the next page from 121 and it returns me to 117. In another instance, I advance from 91 and it takes me to page 192. The pages all exist and going in the opposite direction does not seem to have the problem, though I have found a few cases where it did have quirks going backwards as well.

Is there a way to correct this locally without stripping the DRM, finding the incorrect encoding, and fixing it manually? Is there an established channel to go through for reporting these glitches?

There is not a way you can correct an ebook without removing the DRM and adjusting the code.  Depending on where you purchased your ebook you should contact their customer service and they will require that the publisher/author correct the issue and issue you a refund.


Can I get just the EPUB file from the Kobo store? I am interested in a DRM-free EPUB (Switching Social) available only on the Kobo store.

If I purchase it, can I download just the EPUB file, without having to use the Kobo app? I'm quite happy with my existing EPUB reader.

Yes. Once you've purchased the book, you can go to "My Books" and find the one you want to download. Below the thumbnail of the book cover there is a "..." menu which looks like this when expanded:

Click "Download" and you'll be presented with a dialog:

Now you can load the downloaded epub on any reader you like.


how to convert a wikibook to e-pub or mobi? Not strictly a Kindle question, e-pub would work.  PDF isn't suitable.

How can I get a wikibook, in full, on my Kindle?

  Kindle support

  I know it's been a bit of time, but maybe it's time to add Kindle
  support. First, mobi isn't only used by Kindle, it just happens to be
  the most popular. Second, mobi is XHTML so the conversion from HTML to
  mobi is actually quite simple, which is why it's the preferred
  submission filetype for Amazon. And, the Kindle (one of the most
  popular eReaders), also handles straight up HTML files as well, with
  full chapter support, etc. With most older Kindles you have to change
  the file extension to .txt or .nownow but leaving it as HTML is fine
  and it will read it the same as it does mobi.

  It's just on my mind because I had such a fun time today realizing
  that the standard book maker on the left and the supposed WS one
  listed in Prefs/Gadgets weren't able to make epub, odt, or pdf of the
  few books I tried. However, I should note that the epub link on the
  left menu did work well.

  Anyway, I'm just thinking that we could install an already-made script
  to handle this if any admins feel similarly. The Haz talk 05:08, 3
  February 2014 (UTC)

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource_talk:EBook

a "book" example:

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Structured_Query_Language

One way is to use EpubPress to make an EPUB and then open it in Kindle Previewer and export it as a MOBI file.

An issue I found is that opening each page of the SQL book individually results in too many tabs for EpubPress to process. It can process the single-page version you get from one of the printable version links on the book's main page, but then the pages won't be listed individually in the EPUB's contents.


How can I read Hebrew .docx files with their original fonts on a Kindle Paperwhite? I have Hebrew documents (.docx file format) on a PC which I want to read on my Kindle Paperwhite with their original fonts (2 fonts).

(i am not asking if Hebrew works - that's a separate discussion)

I already tried embedding the fonts in Word (pressing file > options > save > embed fonts) before converting it or using Send to Kindle, which didn't work (i.e. it lost it's original fonts during conversion).

Is there a different way to do it?

If you are comfortable making HTML from your Word documents, I was able to print Hebrew text strings to Kindle KF8/Fire (phrases, not whole documents) using HTML with CSS tags.

@font-face {
    font-family: 'Hebrew';
    src: url('.../Path/HebrewFont.ttf');
}
p.hb {
    font-family: 'Hebrew', serif;
}

In your HTML, you need to call the .hb class in your P tag:

hebrew text

non-hebrew text

If all the text is Heb, I suspect that it will work better if you wrap each paragraph in the P with hb class rather than applying it to the body.

I don't know how complex your formatting needs are, but if they are simple, you could get away with Word find/replace paragraph breaks (^p) with

^p
^&

This will wrap every paragraph in your Word doc with the needed HTML tags needed. Export (save as) the file from Word as text, not HTML/Webpage (mind your encoding). From here you need to work in a text editor, not Word You will need a HTML head and foot for the top and bottom of the file.


Did Kindle contrast get better or is my old Kindle growing old? I have a 4th generation (iirc) basic Kindle which I bought new. My mom has a newer, also basic, Kindle that is now one year old, also bought new. The screen of her Kindle looks lighter / whiter than mine, and the writing feels darker/blacker. Is it because the e-ink technology improved, or did my Kindle lose contrast with use/age? I don't remember thinking my screen was too grey when my Kindle was new, and now I do because I've seen a better one xD The contrast on my Kindle is definitely (still) good enough to read, or I wouldn't be asking.

TL;DR : can e-ink lose contrast?

Apparently E-ink does age due to various physical processes. There is
lost of contrast (greying), but also freezing of some microcapsules to
the black state where they are kept too consistently in that state (typical
for some parts of device state display which stays on-screen).

I am not a specialist, but you can get more (layman level) details
on the web, such as the article Aging of e-ink screens, which come
with other articles on display technology.