Is there any e-ink technology that can display colors? I had opportunity to buy a Kindle Paperwhite and I was looking for an equivalent which support colors. Amazon have the Kindle Fire but it is a tablet technology which is not comparable to the e-ink.

The reader with e-Ink are (for my usage) superior for the battery life (several weeks without charging) and for the readability under bright place (sunny).

My question is: do you know any device with color e-ink, and if it does not, do you have proof that it can be real one day?

I hope my question is not too opinion centric, I am looking for facts not opinions.

E-ink have had their Triton technology for a few years, which has been available in several commercial products: Hanvon color eReader, JetBook Color and PocketBook Color Lux.

I cannot find the reference, but IIRC there are multiple layers through which the light needs to reflect. Therefore the lighting conditions need to be better than for monochrome eInk displays.


Changing reading speed from book to chapter in Kindle How do I change the reading speed bar from displaying "Mins left in book" to "Mins left in chapter"?

Device:  Kindle - 6" Glare-Free Touchscreen Display, Wi-Fi

Tap in the lower left corner on the reading speed indicator.


How to login to windows 8 kindle app I have an account on amazon.ca and I can login properly and it works to buy and read books from the kindle store. But when I go onto the kindle app for windows 8.1, it says that there is no account with my email and password. I am guessing this is just because the kindle app is trying to access the US server/database, but my account is for the canadian kindle/amazon server. If this is the case, is there any way of changing the server it accesses or linking two accounts accross amazon.com and amazon.ca. If not has anyone had the same problem, and how did you fix it?

I found out that they have two kindle apps for windows. One that you download from their website and one from the windows store. the one on the windows store is the one I had problems with, the one I downloaded on the website works perfectly fine. This is more of a work around than a solution, but it works.


Breaks and White Space in Epubs I created an epub framework in InDesign, exported it as a book, then opened it with BBEdit so I could import my html files.

It's working great, except that break tags trigger errors. I got another error message for the entity nbsp. (I'm previewing it with iBooks.)

So I'm trying to figure out what's going on here. Are break tags and white space not allowed in epubs? If so, is there another protocol for inserting breaks and white space?

Break tags are allowed, but be sure you close the tag as required in XHTML: <br />.

Named entities such as &nbsp; are not allowed in epub3 (thus, iBooks). You can use the numeric value &#160; instead.


Need suggestion on selecting the font type for self-publishing book I just want to know what sort of fonts are appealing to the users, in book format and also in e-book format?

I did the normal internet search and found lots of information, still most of them are talking about,

  Serif Sans.

I'm using open serif, still need some suggestion on selecting the font to first self-publishing book.

I knew being elegant is also bit perspective think, changes from the person.

  I want to use the font which is widely used in the professional poetry
  book. One font for book ebook and paper book.

Recommending a specific font without actually seeing where it's going to be used is a lot like suggesting a wardrobe without knowing the person who will wear it.

The purpose of a font is to make text readable. This is particularly true when there's a lot of text for the reader to process. Setting the text of a book in a fonts with potential for slowing down reading speed is going to hamper readability. (Also, support for custom fonts varies between e-book platforms. Different ebook standards handle fonts differently, and what's supported in different platforms can change. If custom fonts are important to your book, PDFs and printed books can handle any font you like.)

What do users find appealing? That's extremely subjective. Different designers, who have been trained in font use, will disagree on this. In general, a font will set the mood of a page. Looking into past use of a type of font will help you predict what kind of feel a font will create in users. What kinds of fonts do other books like yours use? Knowing that will help you, whether you want to blend in and let the words do the talking, or stand out from your peers with a page that has a different feel.

Readability is a large area to explore. There are many studies and articles on which fonts are most readable, but the conventional wisdom (which has often been questioned) is that serif fonts are best for body type. Sans-serif fonts are often used to set off headlines and titles. Using no more than two fonts on a page is a good rule of thumb; without real knowledge of how fonts work together, using more than that looks chaotic and amateurish.


Is it possible to jailbreak Kindle Oasis 2? Is it currently possible to jailbreak it? If not, have there been Kindle e-readers before without jailbreak possibility, and has Amazon released the jailbreak possibility later?

My motivation for jailbreak is to display the cover of my book on standby, and to install reader software that shows the number of "pages" left in my book or chapter (the number of times I can press next page before the end with current display settings).

Is it currently possible to jailbreak it?

Only if the original firmware (5.9.0.5.1 or 5.9.0.6.) of your Oasis 2 hasn't been updated. For more information see this website.

  If not, have there been Kindle e-readers before without jailbreak possibility, and has Amazon released the jailbreak possibility later?

Amazon has never released any jailbreaks. Hackers have reverse-engineered the firmware and developed jailbreaks for specific firmware versions.


How can I embed fonts in a kindle ebook (azw3/kf8) I want to read a Microsoft Word document (.docx format) on my Kindle Paperwhite, with its original two fonts (every third paragraph has a different font from the rest of the document). How do I do that?

I'm just speculating wildly here, but the first thing you need to do is to specify 2 fonts which you know for sure are supported on the Paperwhite.

Kindle Personal Documents Service does some strange things. I'm not sure if it even reads font information from MS Word. It certainly will not embed fonts automatically from MS Word.

However, if it is able to read and convert font(s) info from MS word, Here's a list of Kindle fonts you can choose from (which may or may not be out of date). http://www.paulsalvette.com/2012/06/embedding-fonts-in-kindle-ebooks.html

You can differentiate texts in other ways than fonts. For example, you can put it in italics or make the font size smaller. Generally it is frowned upon to use more than one font except on the heading.


Does un-registering a kindle device remove ebooks downloaded to the device? I would like to know if I can still continue to read my ebooks downloaded to one of my kindle devices, even after unregistering the device from my amazon account?

Can I un-register a kindle device (to test and wanted to know if its safe to do it) and re-register it again?

Appreciate your advise!!

For an Kindle Fire, no, all purchased content will be removed when you de-register. For an e-ink Kindle, ebooks that have been downloaded will remain on the device until they are removed. Note, however, that this will not necessarily be the case forever.


Publishing an ebook for free on Kindle Direct Publishing? When doing research on improving SEO/site traffic, something that was often mentioned was using Kindle Direct Publishing as a method for generating this.

Is it possible to upload resources that we have created and have them up there for free?

It is possible, though there are certain conditions.

If you publish with KDP and sign up for Kindle Unlimited, it will allow you to make the title free for a limited time (it used to be 2 days out of every 60).

You can upload ebooks to Smashwords, which will you can choose to give a free price tag for. Then, SW will  redistribute the same ebook to all the major ebook stores. So For BN, Apple, Kobo, etc, you can make the price free.

Amazon.com claims it will do price-matching. If you report that a title is free on another ebook site, Amazon is supposed to match the free price. But what usually happens is that Amazon is price it free for a while, and then it will revert back to the previous price.

I don't know what you're trying to do from a SEO perspective. Amazon.com usually will capture the top spot for all book titles, but that isn't that good of a thing. If anything, it takes away SEO juice from your own site.


How to write a presentation slide using pdf I want to create a PDF that can look like¹:

This kind of format is good for presentation, since you can reveal items as you read downwards.

I would like to know which application I can use to built this kind of PDF or ebook.

¹ The original site is http://www.slideshare.net/uyar/discrete-mathematics-proofs#, code on that side causes Google Chromium Version 31.0.1650.63 to exit

As Nathan Yegler already blogged: “it’s more fun to write programs to help you write slides than it is to write slides.”. There is a plethora of programs out there that allow you to make slides in many forms and there are books on the subject as well¹.

From personal experience I can recommend starting with a structured mark-up based format for editing that is then converted to PDF and your preferred ebook format (e.g. EPUB). Using mark-up instead of visual positioning will make it easier to keep the slides consistent. Sphinx, based on the reStructured Text markup, can generate both PDF and EPUB and an extension allows you to embed your slides on slideshare.net.

If your slides are going to contain mathematics formula, you might want to look at LaTeX and the slide generation package (beamer) for that instead.

¹ Edward Tufte has written a great essay on the problems with PowerPoint presentations, a must read for anyone making slides.


Are there good book recommendation services? I would like to get some book recommendations. Are there any services that you can suggest?

What Should I Read Next is a decent service. It doesn't require an account, which is an added bonus. You simply type in a title or author and the service will recommend books by the author or similar to the title you entered. The links provided will point you to Amazon for further information, so it is not ebook specific (and may take a few manual steps to find it on ibooks).

There is also this post that lists the top 10 book recommendation platforms (though it is a year old and includes the Sony Reader Store which no longer exists).


Does deleting a book from a Kindle account delete it from Kindle devices? This answer: How do I delete a book off of my Kindle account?  - shows that you can delete a book from your account/library on Amazon's web page.

What effect does this have on your Kindle readers?

Does it delete the book from the book list on Kindle devices?
Does it delete the book from the book files stored on Kindle devices (independently of #1)?
Do #1/#2 affect Kindle applications on various non-Kindle-device platforms as well?

By deleting an ebook I assume that it is a matter of a book that you have purchased and finished reading. In this case if you delete your book from the online library all Kindle synced devices that had the book will also delete it.

In case you are talking about a book that you have published, and then unpublished for editing, the previous version of the book that was published and bought by a reader will continue to survive on their Kindle devices. When you finish editing and upload the changes the new version of the book will then be synced to the kindle devices.


Installing own font & using it to read ebook I have been looking for the possibility to install manually a font on an ebook-reader and use that font to display downloaded ebooks. I have not found any clear answer...

The reason is as follows: there are dyslexia-optimized fonts available, reducing the number of errors while reading. The number of printed books using this font however is very limited.
If it thus would be possible to download a random ebook and configure your ebook-reader in an optimized way (downloaded font, limited amount of text per row, left aligned text), this would be very interesting.

So in fact I have these questions:

Is it possible to manually install a font on an ebook-reader?
Is it possible to changes the font and text outline in which a ebook is displayed?
Does the DRM-type on an ebook file influence the possibilities to change it's appearance (font, text outline) on an ebook-reader?
Are there ebook-reader types known to be more flexible in this matter?

Kobo ereaders are known for their font customization capabilities. They have a dozen of preinstalled fonts, and a couple of them aimed exactly to dyslexic readers.
Besides selecting the font, you can also tweak it to your needs with many options for dimensions, spacing, margins, justification and thickness.

You can read a couple of reviews, here and here, that explain these features with pictures so you can see if this is what you need.

On Kobo ereaders it is also easy to add custom fonts, we already have a question on this site that explain how to do it.


What is the native pixel resolution of the viewable area on a Kindle Paperwhite 2 when displaying a .pdf file? My goal is to produce files which, when displayed, are rendered 1:1, pixel-for-pixel, in order to ensure maximum text clarity. The values provided in the GUI version of the k2pdfopt program, seem to be incorrect, and produce an obviously degraded result when displayed on the device.

Of course, this should exclude the chrome at the bottom of the screen, and any margins that are drawn. Also, a means of preventing the software from automatically scaling the image would be useful to know.

To prevent the images from scaling you should set the width of the image in pixels rather than in, eg, 100%. It appears that the Kindle Paperwhite is 4.6 inches wide at 212 ppi (source), which comes to an unlikely 975.2 pixels wide—but it's a place to start. I would suggest setting image width (or width of containing div) to 970 px for starters. If it's distorted, then there is probably a hard-coded margin for the page of greater than 2 pixels, so reduce a small amount and try again.

Note that specifying the pixel size will mean that on other Amazon devices, the image will not resize to fit the screen—iPad and iPhone Kindle app users may not be happy with the end result.


Parsing an epub file and displaying its contents on a website? I want to show my epub files on my site, so I'm thinking of creating my own reader in PHP. First I need to know how to read this file type.

Can I show the HTML files that are in the epub directly in the browser?

Yes, the files are 'real' HTML (or rather XHTML) and will work in any web browser.


How can I put footnotes in an ebook? I am currently formatting a manuscript into ebook formats (epub and mobi). My manuscript contains many footnotes, and I don't know how to handle them.

It's important for me that these be footnotes rather than, say, endnotes - they're humorous asides; I need the user to be able to glance at them and be able to get right back to the main text (and also, not to get a peek ahead at the next dozen footnotes from future chapters...).

I'm interested in both officially supported markup for major devices (I know the Kindle Paperwhite now has inline footnote functionality), and in workarounds which produce a good final result.

Kindle footnotes:

I don't think there is an official way to put footnotes, at least in EPUB2. What I do in the ebooks I prepare is to add an hyperlink to the note (placed in a chapter of its own at the end of the book, and to put at the end of the note another hyperlink which goes back to the original position. It's a bit ugly, but at least it helps readers (in the sense of people, not devices!)


Kindle highlights not syncing between devices I have the Kindle app on my iPhone and iPad. When I go into a book on the iPad and add a highlight I never see it appear on the same book on my iPhone, even if I press the sync item from the side menu on the iPhone.

I was able to fix this by removing the book from my iPhone and redownloading it.

Now if I want to see highlights sync immediately between the devices I have to go to the Library after adding a highlight and then go to Library on the other device, press sync and go back into the book. Then a few seconds later the highlight appears.
Not ideal but it works.


Question regarding kepub format I have a problem that’s specific to Kobo and would love some advice from anyone familiar with the kepub format.

I’m currently making epub files though I would like to begin sending Kobo kepub files since, as the guidelines explain, kepubs use Kobo's Webkit rendering engine rather than the default ADE engine. This not only adds a lot of enhancements, like reading statistics, but also resolves a lot of formatting issues.

At the moment I’m “converting” to kepub by simply changing the file extension from .epub to .kepub.epub. This works well except I don't get the cover thumbnail on the home screen. The only way I can get the thumbnail to appear is to add the "properties" attribute to the relevent line in the OPF: properties="cover-image". This causes further problems though since I'm currently making epub2s (with plans to switch over to epub3 in the near future) and the "properties" attribute isn't valid according to the epub2 spec.

So, my questions are:

Does anyone have any experience with Kobo's kepub format and what has your experience been?

If you are working with kepub, could help with a workaround for this issue of the cover thumbnail?

Additional note: I’m currently QAing on a Kobo Glo HD

Thank you in advance for any help anyone can provide.

If you use Calibre, there are a couple of plugins that can convert your epub files to kepub (not just by renaming them). Then when you send them to your device, it will properly recognize the format. I always used this method and I think it's the quickest and better way to solve your problem.


Why "compress images using MRC" is always grey in ABBYY FineReader? Does anybody using ABBYY FineReader 12 here? I found the "compress images using MRC" in "save" tab and "pdf" subtab is always grey and cannot be selected.

What is wrong? According to documentation, MRC will result much greater compression. But why it is always grey?

It seems to be disabled when the document color mode is set to black & white rather than full color.


Convert Blog to book I prefer reading technical blogs in Kindle, is there an easy way to convert a technical blog from any site – MSDN blog or personal sites – to a e-book format like .mobi?

I am aware of http://blog2book.pothi.com/ but it supports only Blogspot and WordPress sites.

Edit
I tried Calibre to download blogs via custom news feeds and it downloads recently added items only. I could not find a way to download the archive in chronological order. If we can compile the blog into a book it would be worth a read. We don't find may technical e-books in e-pub or mobi format for download. The technical blogs would have enough information to read it as a book.

I used to convert web pages to PDF, but on the Kindle it is much nicer to read mobi documents.

To convert web pages to mobi, I highly recommend the GrabMyBooks firefox extension. It is the one piece of software that has dramatically improved my experience on my Kindle this year (and I already use great software such as Briss, Librerator and Kranf's Kindle Collection Manager).

GrabMyBooks lets you gradually build an ebook in a separate Firefox tab by selecting web pages or content as you go. You can add pages one by one by right-clicking on the page and selecting "Grab this Page". If you only want part of a page, you can also select text and grab it. And you can also select multiple links and grab them, which is very convenient if you are interested in multiple blog posts.

Usually, when you grab a web page for your ebook, there are many components of the page you do not want: the sidebars, the comments and so on. GrabMyBooks is pretty good at guessing which content you want, but it sometimes gets it wrong. In these cases, it's very useful to be able to select the text you want, right-click and choose "Grab selected text".

By default, GrabMyBooks creates an Epub. But in the Settings, you can tell it to create a mobi file. For GrabMyBooks to create mobi files, you must have Calibre installed. You then tell GrabMyBooks where Calibre is installed. This may sound like a lot of work, but configuring GrabMyBooks properly is well worth it if you want a luxury experience of creating ebooks from web content on the fly.

For instance, there is a setting where you specify the default save directory. Well, I have it save my ebooks directly to my Kindle's "documents" folder.

Also, there is an option where GrabMyBooks saves an Epub file in addition to the mobi file. This allows you to later load the Epub book in GrabMyBooks and edit it again, adding or deleting web pages. In the settings, you can set a directory where the software will save Epubs, since your default format will be mobi.

I recommend always editing the Metadata setting before grabbing your book so that it displays with a nice title and author name.

Hope you like it as much as I do.


How can I manually enter number of "Hours Read" in Kobo Aura HD? I did a factory reset on my Kobo Aura HD ( but I did not backup KoboReader.sqlite file ). Now I do not have my previous reading stats.

I don't care about per book statistics but I want to manually enter "total Hours Read", how do I do that ?

UPDATE:

Following is a one row from my KoboReader.sqlite file Event table:

id:             11
EventType:      1021
FirstOccurence: 2015-02-17T12:20:34.000
LastOccurrence: 2015-02-17T12:21:13.000
EventCount:     2
ContentId:      file:///mnt/onboard/ebooks/Kościotrzep - Cherie Priest.epub
ExtraData:
Checksum:       ebbab9da762b1381853b5999319bed04

The simplest way (still not simple one) is to connect your reader into linux machine and manually edit KoboReader.sqlite file via sqlite3. Now you need to know the structure of this database and try to find place where total hours read are stored. I don't have any Kobo reader so can't help you more.


eBook Portfolio / Resume Has anyone created an eBook portfolio to attract clients?  I have been working at a publishing house and have converted many titles (some complex and impressive) and am wondering what is the best way to display my work now that I am considering going freelance.

Of course, because I have been working for a publishing house, they own the rights to their titles and thus, copyright infringement could be a potential issue.  I obviously know how to strip my .epub file down to a few sample chapters but is this enough, legally speaking?

Please don't be afraid to answer if you know the technical part (where/how to display) but not the legal (posting work that belongs to my employer) or vice versa.

I definitely feel your pain. As a technical writer I've usually signed NDAs about things I've worked on, but I also need to show samples for potential employees.

I think everybody would be fine with doing a screenshot of a single page (or back to back pages)  to show off formatting. After all, most of the time, consumers can see these limited samples on Amazon.com or Google Play store anyway. Another option would be doing a screenshot of the sample page on Amazon or ibooks, etc and then storing it at your own website.

More important than the screenshots would be an accompanying narrative. What was the challenge in designing this page or template -- and how did you go about solving it?

Best case scenario is definitely putting dummy text inside your template, but this can be time-consuming and impractical.

You don't need to have chapters (it would be unwieldy to do anyway), but a few select screenshots would do the job (and your job opportunity requires an interview, you can definitely show things off on your tablet).


Avoid additional styling of images in html made by Calibre viewer Under Ubuntu 12.04 I converted with Calibre an html source to epub format, but when I read the resulting epub with Calibre I noticed (using the 'inspect' command of Calibre viewer) that images get some additional styling, absent both in original html and in html that epub is made of. For example,

in html becomes

inside Calibre viewer, when inspecting the image.
This prevents me to make manual modifications to the size of a single image.

How can I avoid such 'restyling'?

Does it happen just with Calibre viewer or it is typical behaviour of ebook readers?

Testing this it seems that this is simply a quirk of Calibre's ebook viewer. It adds the absolute calculated size of the image dynamically into the source. This size changes when you resize the window (with the inspector window open it shows continuously). Whether max-width and max-height styles are set by the viewer depends on the viewing mode. In page mode (default) these values are set, they seem to be needed for the calculation. In continuous mode your values will not be overridden.

So this is just a quirk of that specific software. You can't change it, you can't draw any conclusions about the behaviour of other software; e.g. my Sony T2 doesn't set own max-width leading to pictures that are not completely visible. In fact I would prefer the intelligent behaviour of Calibre viewer here. FBReader resizes the image to a smaller size to fit it into the width.

Sizes smaller than 100% or the current pixel width can be used without problems, Calibre does not ignore it in either mode. (Absolute pixel widths are obviously a bad idea in any case.)

You can set the values to your needs. As different applications use different heuristics to produce a readable rendering you should stay as close to a semantic markup as possible to be able to ignore such additional output.


What are the benefits of Amazon Kindle device over Amazon Kindle app for a power user? Are there any benefits to reading e-books on Amazon Kindle device over reading those same e-books on Amazon's Kindle app on a smartphone/tablet, for someone who is a power user?

I'm excluding the obvious hardware differences (e.g. Kindle had bigger scree size than an average smartphone and has better battery life; and presumably Kindle's screen is easier to read books on).

What I'm interested in are features that are open to Kindle device users, that aren't easy to recreate/achieve on an Android device.

As an example, may be some e-books are exclusive to Kindle devices (permanently or on launch). Or some features of Kindle device software aren't present in Kindle Android app which can't easily be replaced.

Lending only works on Kindle devices, not the apps. Specifically, there are two things that Amazon lets you do only with Kindle devices. First, Amazon Prime members can "borrow" books from the Kindle Library, which includes lots of bestsellers and older books, but only on Kindle devices. Second, users can lend many (but not all) books to other Amazon users. But, the recipient can only accept and read the loaned book using a Kindle device.

Other than that, I don't think there are any advantages to the Kindle 3G over reading in other contexts. I do 80% of my Kindle reading on the iOS apps, about 19% on the PC app, and the remaining 1% on my actual Kindle.

With a Fire, this is less of an issue, since it is much faster, prettier, and more full-featured than the older Kindles.


Fixed Layout vs Reflowable For A Puzzle e-Book I am putting together a puzzle book. In fact, I have been able to get the book organized into a valid .epub format. However, when I go to view the book on Amazon's Kindle Preview, the layout is less than desirable on the "Phone" and "Kindle e-Reader" options. The content shows fine when I view it through a web browser or if I open it through Google Play from a variety of tablets or if I view it on Kindle Preview's Tablet view --- and that was how I had tested it.

The dilemma is this. The puzzle book format in order for it to make sense needs to have certain elements together. The general layout each page is this (pretend there's a stylesheet somewhere and there are divs in various spots)

Puzzle #
Puzzle Goal
Number of Possible Solutions (with link to solution page)

Puzzle Image HERE

I need for the image to not get tossed on to the next "page" (another swipe). I want each puzzle to be self-contained on one screen regardless of the device. I've tried to have the image auto resize, but this behavior isn't always reliable and if the user chooses a different font setting, auto resizing is irrelevant since the image will simply be too big.

I did some digging around on Amazon's website and found this
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/A1WQ3CZGEVWE1V which effectively says that if you have a book that is image heavy then you want a fixed layout file format.

So I read Amazon's Kindle Publishing Guidelines: http://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf to see what it would take to get everything converted to fixed layout file format. From what I gathered, every page has to be its own separate HTML file, with its own stylesheet. I have 100 puzzles, with accompanying solutions making this effectively a 200+ page book (intended).

Thus, my questions are as follows:

Is the fixed layout file format, the only way to achieve what I'm after (without making the entire page itself an image)?
Is it true that I have to have a separate stylesheet for each page for fixed layout file format? If so, why?
Can I have <a> tags in a fixed layout book? (so that I can link to a puzzle's solution and also have a link from the solution back to the original puzzle, among other things)

I ask these questions because this looks like a considerable amount of work and if there are alternative methods in a reflowable way that aren't too much work, I'd rather that. Or if you happen to know some way of taking an existing .epub file which looks as desired in a .pdf [one puzzle on each page] and converting that to fixed layout, I would greatly appreciate a point in the right direction for how to do that.

I'm not answering the main part of your question, which is what are the capabilities of fixed layout ebooks. I think someone with a moderate amount of experience on reflowables could do a reflowable version provided that readers were informed to use a minimum screen resolution (768 pixels width?) and not  use devices older than K4.

Fyi there is an issue with  Google Play Books which does not honor this bit of code:

img {
page-break-after: always !important;
}

That makes it impossible to do a page break using css alone in Google Play Books. I'm pretty sure this code works on Kindle devices and other reading systems though.

For a reflowable book, you probably could use css media queries to ensure that each display size works on Kindle. The css breakpoints I use are 320-767px width (both portrait and landscape), 768-1500 (landscape), 1500+ (landscape), 768-1024 (portrait) and 1025+ (portrait). You should use high resolution images and then let Kindle downsize them when needed. Each css media query should specify a different size for the div container which contains the image.

On Kindle the css max-width isn't supported, so I use the code here: https://kdp.amazon.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=1005910

If you do reflowable, you could declare that ebook is only for tablets and not for phones (that's the easiest thing!). For smaller screens you could split the content into 2 screens, but it wouldn't be optimal.

A lot of testing would be involved, but it wouldn't be impossible.


How to bundle 5 PDF ebooks into 1 file for download How to bundle 5 PDF ebooks into 1 file for download

I have 5 PDF eBooks that I sell  I want to have these 5 PDF file into 1 file

Hi you can do so by using sites like ilovepdf.com and combinepdf.com. They are very straightforward to use and there will instructions. But if you have trouble, please leave a comment below.


Can EPUB 3.0 be viewed on EPUB 2 devices This prior question is about the differences between EPUB 2 and EPUB 3.

What is more interesting to me, as an owner of three different EPUB 2 devices, is: can EPUB 3 files, and particularly the book text parts, be rendered on a EPUB 2 reading systems (of course dispensing with EPUB 3 specific features)?

Can all such files be rendered, or do they need special setup? Assuming compatibility is possible, is there software already supporting generation of such EPUB 3 files compatible with EPUB 2 reading systems?

The IDPF states the following in a thread about EPUB 3 Rendering in EPUB 2 reading systems

  Although EPUB 3 is not perfectly backwards compatible with EPUB 2, a goal of the recent revision was to ensure, as much as possible, a basic level of rendering when features overlap.

The thread particularly mentions that providing the NCX data is necessary, which has been superseded with EPUB Navigation Documents
as described in the EPUB 3 changes document

So, if some care is taken, EPUB 3 files can be made to render on EPUB 2 reading systems.


What 's the best way to read a scientific PDF? I need to buy a device for reading. It must have all these features:

Smoothly zoom all pictures
Format all tables properly
Read PDF (or be able to convert)
Not create eye problems and be visible in the sun

Is there a category of devices that is able to meet all these demands? What is the best size?

Buy an iPad or iPad mini and install Goodreader (the latest version at this time is actually called GoodReader 4, according to the previous link; it can be found here).That is the best choice.


How to customize the font when converting from EPUB to MOBI with Calibre? From within Calibre I generally right click an EPUB book, select "share" and send it to my Kindle address -- it pops up on my e-reader fine.
I'd like to set a preferred font for that automatic conversion, while keeping the same easy and simple flow.
How can I customize the font?
Incidentally, I'm using Linux.

If you are starting with an .epub file, there is an editor program in the Calibre suite which can change anything in the .epub, including the fonts:

C:\Program Files\Calibre\ebook-edit.exe

But if you convert the file from .epub to .mobi, with any program including Calibre, it's then almost impossible to edit the resulting .mobi file. So you get stuck with whatever default font the conversion program has specified in the conversion process.

The .mobi reader program on your computer (e.g. Mobipocket Reader v6.02) will let you apply any font that is currently installed on your computer to the .mobi file, regardless of what font the .epub file specifies (in effect, the specified font is simply treated as the default setting, hence you can impose a different font in your reader program).

But if you transfer the .mobi file from your computer to a kindle, the kindle will probably only have one choice of font, a default that can't be altered. With no user option to choose a different font, you can only change the font size on the kindle, but not the font itself.

I only have an older kindle, admittedly, but the design philosophy is clearly to deprive the user of the ability to select a font. The kindle comes with what is an attractive and easy to read font, and the manufacturer doesn't want the kindle to get a bad reputation by allowing users to set up fonts which look less attractive, or which might be harder to read within the limitations of the kindle's hardware.

The kindle is a cheap device to buy, because of its extreme simplicity. And part of the business motivation of the manufacturer in not including fancy fonts with it is to avoid the cost of paying licensing fees for the use of such fonts, all of which have a commercial cost - a fee will be due to someone who owns the rights in the fonts. Fonts that look nice always belong to someone.

It might be possible for the user to tamper with the kindle's default font, by delving into the program code using specialist hacking tools. There are plenty of such tools. I've used some of them, even though they use a commandline interface of no mean complexity.

But I don't have any idea how to do that particular bit of reprogramming.

If what you want is a device that gives you a choice of font, you might be better off buying a different device, even a small tablet, that allows a choice of font.

Any device on which Mobipocket Reader v6.02 will run would meet your needs, because as I say that program has easily configurable settings that can apply any font you have on your computer to your current choice of .mobi file (without needing to change anything in the .mobi file).


self-hosted, self-updating book repository My Amazon Kindle synchronizes with my Amazon library.  Additionally, I have a Calibre library, which publishes its contents via a web server.  As far as I know, you can only copy books from the server, whereas Amazon functionally rsyncs your book, keeping your highlights, notes, and current reading position updated.  Is there any technique or product which facilitates similar functionality using a self-hosted solution?

Thank you

At this time, I'd say "no".  When you read an epub in Calibre's internal reader it sets a bookmark in a file inside the epub, but most readers set that bookmark in a related (usually sqlite) database. And there's no standard for the bookmark format (well, there is, in epub3, but I haven't found anybody using it yet...).

But if you're willing to settle for using a particular set of devices, you could probably fairly simply extract the bookmarks from those, and translate them to be useful by the other devices. Notes, otoh, are much more complicated. Calibre does have a "universal" notes plugin--unfortunately, it requires support to be written for each device driver, and I think there are only one or two drivers that have it.


Can I only transfer files to my Kindle Paperwhite using the cable that shipped with the device? I read a lot of out of copyright (and sometimes out of print) books, which I download from Gutenberg.org and then transfer from my Mac to my Kindle, usually with the excellent Calibre app. I just connected my Kindle to my Mac with a regular micro USB cable, and while the Kindle charged okay it didn't show up as a storage device on my Mac and Calibre didn't recognise it, either.

I then tried another micro USB cable, and that didn't connect the Kindle as a storage device, either (it charged it, though, just like before). Finally, I dug out the micro USB cable that shipped with my Kindle and this one worked: my Mac recognised my Kindle as a storage device, and Calibre was able to send books to my Kindle.

So, should any micro USB cable work fully with my Kindle (i.e., connects it to my Mac as a storage device, as well as charging it)? If not, what's special about the cable that shipped with my Kindle?

Additionally, there are some USB cables that are with charge-only feature. They have less pins, usually a lot cheaper or come with devices that are not made for a pc-device storage connection. For example, a Chinese cable for 0.99$ or a cable that came with a portable charger (power bank). I've come across quite a few of these in my life, they will not work with your Android phone also, or your camera, or any other device that needs the data transfer pins.

[Edit] oh, and NO, the cable that goes with your Kindle is NOT the only one it can use, it's only the ability to transfer data with it that is required, as already stated by the other answerer :-)


How can I optimize an epub file? How can I optimize an epub file, in order, but not limited to:

limit the chances of compatibility issues?
make it faster to load and to be processed from the reader?
keep its look consistent throughout different devices and readers?

Limiting compatibility issues

Perform a validation of the file structure. See this question about this subject.

Making it faster to load

Keep the size of individual internal HTML files small. The reader usually load them individually when needed, and it is (obviously) faster to load a small file than a big one; as a rule of thumb the size limit is considered to be 250~300 KB. It is better to have many smaller files than a single heavy one, so try to have any file cover a single chapter or section rather than the whole book.
Always to keep the individual files smaller and to reduce required processing power, use a distinct stylesheet to define the CSS styles, rather than putting them inside each individual HTML text file.
Try to keep the HTML code of you files as simple and tidy as possible. I.E. use  and  tags for italic and bold text instead of their relative  and .
If you are including images, keep their size as small as possible. Consider the screen resolutions of the devices where the book will be read, whether they have color or B/W displays, and if the images are photographies or other complex illustrations, or instead simple drawings or diagrams.

Keeping it consistent

Keep the visual look as simple as possible; if you want to include some fancy layout (i.e. for chapter titles or other particular portions of text like quotes and so on) try to define it as properly and accurately as possible with CSS styles, and test the outcome with the greater number of reading devices and software that you can.
If you want to use any specific font, be sure to include it in the epub file and to define its @font-face and styles in the CSS file.


How to convert scanned pdf to text? I recently downloaded a programming book. All pages are in image format. If I want to run a code, I'm unable to copy it from that ebook. How to convert these kind of pdfs to normal pdf. I google but I didn't understand what they are saying. They are telling about some OCR and something which I can't understand. Is there any tool or software for it.(I'm using windows and linux (ubuntu) operating systyems)

It sounds like the pages you've looked at are telling you the right thing. If you have an image-based PDF, then there is no text in it, just pictures of text. In order to convert the pictures of text to actual text, you have two options: have a human do the conversion, or have the computer do the conversion. Having a human do it would mean someone sitting down and typing out your book for you. Having the computer do it for you involves Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. If you have Adobe Acrobat (not Adobe Reader), it has built-in OCR software. Other than that, I know that ABBYY Fine Reader has an excellent reputation. There may be other options as well.

Bear in mind that whatever OCR software you use, the conversion will not be perfect, particularly if you're dealing with a bad scan. Even in a best-case scenario where you've got 99.9% accuracy on the conversion, you'll still have about one error every thousand characters—two or three typos per page. That will mean that you'll have to be careful cutting and pasting code; the whole process may not save you any effort over just typing stuff in.


Removing identifiable metadata from azw3 Amazon's "Send to Kindle by E-mail" service lets me write a DOCX file, etc. then send it to my Kindle. It automatically converts the sent file into AZW3. But during the process they add identifiable information to that AZW3.

Does it contain anything else other than e-mail address and is there a simple way to remove the identifiable info, just like you can remove such info from other file formats?

Note I'm not talking about DRM, just identifiable metadata.

(I've pixalated the blue highlight which has the username's e-mail address)

You can edit the AZW3 format with the calibre editor.


Format flash problem on Boox M92 My Boox M92 e-reader is brand new. I realized that internal storage was roughly 2GB/3GB full. (In fact it should have 4GB in total)

I tried to format flash as I had nothing anyway, except maybe a test scribbles.
After the format my internal storage is 3149MB/3149MB full and the same is after the restart, after another format...

Is anyone familiar with the problem? Is this a bug in memory info or is it a bug in flash format procedure?? Should I try to fix it or return the product?

The M92 manual says:

Format Flash
Select Format Flash button in settings, you can format the
internal flash. Note, after doing this operation all of the data
in internal flash would be removed

From the internal flash memory, some should be reserved for databases containing the metadata of your ebooks and other content. Even empty databases take up some space.
2-3Gb out of 4Gb seems excessive for that, but only another Boox M92 user can really give you a comparable figure. As a comparison: My Cybook Odessey HD has 135Mb used from the 1.5Gb internal flash memory.
On the other hand I think you can expect such a device to complain if flash memory cannot be properly formatted.


ePub 3 option for age restriction metadata? I'm looking for the equivalent of the RTA header for websites but for ePub - something I can put in the metadata section to label the ePub as intended for an adult audience and not suitable for children.

Does such a standard opt-in content rating system exist?

Excellent question. To my knowledge there is no equivalent function in epub. In a web browser, RTA is done on the meta tag in your browser. But with epubs, you already have to store your Dublin Core metadata in the package.opf file, so there is no need to do so on individual html files.

I skimmed the Dublin Core metadata and did not see anything for an Adult label, although perhaps genre/audience/subject might be relevant here.

I knew that when you sell your ebook, Amazon or Google Play ask you to put a put it in a category (I later learned that they correspond to BISAC codes). An Oreilly article mentions other categorization schemes like marc and onix.

To summarize: The book creator usually can mention certain DC values which will be wrapped up in the epub. But I don't know of ebook reading systems which are using it to prevent the user from viewing it. On the other hand, when you submit your ebook to an ebookstore, they usually ask you to give some values that would allow the store to prevent younger readers from seeing it or buying it.

But what if you are selling directly from your own website? What can you do? In addition to RTA labeling, you can require some proof of age to access the page or file. Ultimately though, when you are dealing with DRM-free ebook files, there is nothing preventing an underage user from loading it into an ebook reading system.


How to create DjVu format with selectable text? DjVu is efficient at compression, but sometimes the text becomes an image and non-selectable. Is there anyway to make sure that the text remains selectable? Which program should I use for this conversion?

DjVu files are normally image only. From these file sections can be selected as images but not as text¹.

If OCR was applied during, or after, the conversion to DjVu. Extra information is stored in the files that associate image areas with text. Only if that was done you can select text from such a file².

Applying OCR to a DjVu file can be done online. If you don't like that you could try this script, that uses Tesseract. Or you can go for commercial software such as Document Express.

¹  e.g. using  the djview program.
² In theory one could do OCR on the fly in the DjVu viewer, but I don't think any of the currently available viewers can do that.


How do I convert a Word document into a page by page Kindle ebook? I downloaded a very important document in .docx format (Microsoft Office Word format).

Is there a way to convert it to an ebook page by page to read on a Kindle?

To convert a .docx file to another format, you should download a program called Calibre

First you must add the .docx file to your Calibre library

Then you need to select the book, and click on Convert books

Select your output format (for Amazon Kindle, select AZW3), and click OK. After it has completed, the newly converted ebook will appear in your Calibre library folder


How do I crop out an image from a pdf file? I have an android phone and use Adobe Reader to read pdf files.

I have a pdf file that has some images that I want to crop out. I have not found a way to do this using Adobe Reader on Android.

Is there a way to use adobe reader to select and save images? or is there any other software I can use?

This is not possible using only Adobe Reader unless you either take a screenshot with another tool or use the Edit > Take a Snapshot feature of Adobe Reader (may be version specific... I don't have an Android device to confirm, or know which version of Adobe Reader you are using). Doing the latter will require you to paste it from the clipboard.

Another option is to look into using different software. A google search (or Google Play search) reveals many. For example, you may want to look into the PDF Utility - Lite. The description for this software says specifically:

-Extract Images from pdf


Exporting epub fixed layout Im trying to export an epub 3.0 from indesign as fixed layout but when I do it, the layout and typefaces are actually changing,.. anybody knows how could I fix this problem... I'm new and about to publish some material but I can't until I fix this...

Thanks

ePub is just a whole bunch of HTML, some metadata, and CSS. So, you have the same rules as with any HTML page.

You can't force any browser to display a page the way you want it. Your "fixed layout" is at best a suggestion.
If you specify a typeface, and that typeface is not available on the client device, it will be ignored. You can ensure that the font is available by packaging it in your ePub, but you'd better be sure you have a legal right to do so! If you aren't including the font in the ePub, then you have no way to force the client to use it.


What is the Paperwhite 3 Collections Cover Size? What is the size of the collections "cover" on the Kindle Paperwhite 3?  I'd like to resize the book covers so that everything is the same size.

It's OCD I know...

I recently downloaded a book from Amazon and noticed that the book cover was really close in size to the collections size.  I downloaded the book manually from my content and imported into calibre and it said that the size of the cover was 926wx1400h.  After resizing my side loaded books my problem is solved.


Continuous scroll for ePub reader in PWA Is anyone aware of limitations that would prevent an ePub reader within a PWA built with Typescript/Javascript in an Ionic/Angular framework from having continuous/infinite scroll?

this.rendition = this.book.renderTo("book",{
        flow: "continuous-scrolled",
    });

works for each section except the first page. after calling this.rendition.next() from first page scroll works correctly. but I dont know how to fix it for all sections. I want all sections to scroll.


Any opensource or free css stylesheets for books? I am creating epub using sigil. Every book has almost (if not all) same elements: Headings, paragraphs, images, tables, quotes, boxes, notes, footnotes, references, bibliography etc. I don't have a good sense of design. So I was wondering if there are any free or opensource stylesheets or templates that one could use?

Paul Salvette wrote an ebook formatting guide which I recommend. He wrote boilerplate css which you can view/download here: http://bbebooksthailand.com/bb-CSS-boilerplate.html

His company has produced some epub3 files which you can download for free. http://bbebooksthailand.com/samples.html (You can inspect them by changing the .epub file extension to .zip and then unzipping). I haven't looked at them yet (I just found them when I started to answer your question), but they should be good guides -- especially because the code epub3 compliant.

Here are some other things to think about:

Most publishers use the epub file as input to generate a kindle file, so there are usually  conditional Kindle adjustments to make. Some use a separate kindle css file, while others just combine everything into one generic file.

You can open and inspect css any epub file which is not protected from DRM. That means you can view code from Oreilly Books or Smashwords. Another option is to download any recent Project Gutenberg title. I recently published a title Soldier Boys by Jack Matthews on smashwords which has some up-to-date templates.

I just uploaded my css for Soldier Boys:

http://www.imaginaryplanet.net/private/general-kindle.css

Some notes about my file: Last update was April 2016 not 2013 as I said on the top. I used some default values from a docbook style sheet at the top which would not be relevant to anyone. Also, I did some hocus pocus to make images into chapter titles, so you can ignore the any css classes marked "image-replace-title" or p.pseudo-title. (Also I  figured out some Kindle-friendly image css  which I detailed here).
The cool stuff about my css is my list of breakpoints (which take into account different devices but don't use any kindle-specific media queries). There's no footnotes, boxes or references, but my ebook did have a bibliography. Important: I included a reference to an embedded font -- which you must  delete (I think epubcheck won't validate with a bad font reference).


Can you suggest an advanced ereader application for textbooks? I need an ereader application that can be effectively used with textbooks; it should support features like note taking, searching, highlighting, and organizing books of any format (EPUB, PDF).

What are my alternatives?

Assuming you are interested in Android apps (you don't specify your OS), I can suggest you Moon+ Reader and Aldiko Reader.

Both of these apps have the features you need.


ePub 3: Finding the Navigation document I've been looking at a few different ePub3s (programatically, not through ePub-specific software), and notive that the navigation document containing the TOC doesn't seem to be constantly named.

Is there a way of finding it, other than through reading each file for the relevant HTML?

Thanks

Edit: Digging around further, perhaps the package.opf is the answer: <item id="nav_1" href="nav.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml" properties="nav"></item>?

I'll post an answer which seems to be working for me.

I found relevant documentation here: http://www.idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-publications.html#sec-package-documents

Using Ruby and Nokogiri, I decompressed the ePub file, read the package document as HTML, then used an XPath statement:

unzipped_file   = Zip::File.open(epub_file)
package_file    = unzipped_file.glob("*/package.opf").first
package_as_html = Nokogiri::HTML(package_file.get_input_stream.read)
package         = package_as_html.at_xpath("html/body/package")

nav_file_name   = package.
                    at_xpath("manifest/item[@properties='nav']").
                    attribute("href").
                    text


Flip between L->R and R->L reading on CBR/CBZs on Kobo Is it possible to easily switch between Left→Right and Right→Left panel display (in terms of page flip as well as zoomed view)?

I've been considering a e-Ink reader recently, and while I have been able to find the info that Kobo has CBR/CBZ support, I haven't been able to find more details or demos for CBZ/CBR reading on the devices

While many desktop readers have this feature, I own a Kobo Glo and this option doesn't seem to be available.
As you probably already know, CBZ and CBR files are just plain standard zip and rar archives with renamed extension. On their inside, the comic pages are numbered image files, which the reader simply shows to you in alphabetical order.
So, in example a typical content could be
 - cover.jpg
 - page01.jpg
 - page02.jpg
 - page03.jpg
 - page04.jpg
and so on. If you have comics that should be read in R>L order, I think that your best option is to rename the image files to their correct display order, so, in the previous example, page01.jpg should be renamed to page02.jpg and viceversa, page03.jpg to page04.jpg and viceversa, and so on.
Doing this manually can be an annoying task, but surely if you put in a search engine "file renamer" plus your OS, you will find a lot of tools that can assist you in this task.


Do epub and paperback publication of same book need seperate Identification number (like ISBN)? Does the epub and paperback publication of same book requires separate following identifiers ?

ISBN
ISSN
ISMN
URN
LCSH
DDC

First, we need to distinguish what is what code is used for. Some code do not describe books (ISSN, ISMN, URN). Others describe library sorting (LCSH, DDC), where these systems were built long before computers and electronic books (LCSH - 1898, DDC - 1876). And there is not a complete practice of dealing with this.

ISBN - International Standard Book Number

This is for books. Practice is such that every format (Epub, PDF, Mobi, DjVu etc.) has own ISBN. (It should be.) Sometimes a paperback and a hardcover book have their own ISBN code.

ISSN - International Standard Serial Number

This is for periodicals (magazines, a periodically published series of books etc.) It is not required in my country. Perhaps it will be similar in other countries. What I know, the code should be the same (for paper and digital copy).

ISMN - International Standard Music Number for Printed Music

This is for music. No for ebooks.

URN - Uniform Resource Name

URN uses a "urn" scheme and does not address the availability of the identified resource. This is prefix example for ISBN and ISSN.

urn:isbn:0451450523
urn:ISSN:0167-6423

LCSH - Library of Congress Subject Headings

I am not American. I do not know how you handle it. I recommend visiting the congress library web site.

DDC - Dewey Decimal Classification or Dewey Decimal System

I suppose it should be taken as another edition of the book. What I know is distinguished by the letter (one character) at the end (in my country). But library practice may vary.

Summary:

ISBN - different
ISSN - same + postfix
DDC  - same + postfix


Calibre - keep personal folder format I have spent the last few days manually organizing my ebook collection into folders and sub-folders. When I load everything into Calibre, everything gets changed from the title to the way its saved in my Library.

Is there a way where I can force Calibre to use MY titles and MY folders when creating a mass conversion? I want everything the way I have it, just converted to one format.

Main Folder
- First Category
---- Book 1
---- Book 2
---- Book n
---- Sub Category
------- Book 1
------- Book 2
- Second Category
---- Book 1
etc.

Calibre doesn't look at the directory structure nor at the name of a file to determine the name of a book it imports. It tries to extract that information from the metadata that if finds in the file. What it actually retrieves depends on the file format.

I add all most all my books to Calibre using the command-line tool calibredb, specifically using Python program that gathers the correct info, corrects it where necessary, and then calls:

calibredb add --duplicates --authors="author names" --title="title of the book" file_name_of_the.ebook

If you provide the parameters, Calibre will no longer try to extract them from the ebook.

(There are a lot more options there use calibredb add --help to see them).

With a small program you should be able to walk the directory tree and automatically construct the right parameters for calibredb, or maybe an editor with learning mode working over the list of files should get you the script/batch file to do the upload into Calibre.


How to update Chinese fonts on a Kindle Paperwhite registered at US Amazon? Recently Amazon rolled out an update to Kindle Paperwhite(Generation 1) which added functionalities like vocabulary review, which are nice. However, one big problem I'm having is that it somehow deleted the KaiTi（楷体） Chinese font it originally had, leaving only SongTi（宋体） and Heiti（黑体） as possible choices. Those fonts have a very tight line spacing which makes for a difficult reading experience.

I read from users who register at Chinese Amazon that the updated Kindle Paperwhite should automatically download KaiTi（楷体） and YuanTi（圆体） once it's connected to network. However it's not happening to me. If I have to deregister my Kindle and re-register it at Chinese Amazon just for the sake of fonts, it'll be quite a pain, not to mention I'll probably have to re-download all the books I have in US Amazon account, plus the potential loss of some reading progress. Therefore, is there some way to update the Chinese fonts on a Kindle PW which is registered at US Amazon? Thanks in advance!

Well OK I somehow found the answer myself. The problem of Chinese fonts not updating is not because of my registration at US Amazon, but because of my system font not being Chinese. As soon as I changed my font to Chinese it almost immediately started the font update.


Are image subfolders allowed in Sigil? I started out with InDesign. I was able to create a simple epub, then drag it onto eCanCrusher to crack open its contents. I could then copy images from another location into my epub and drag it back onto eCanCrusher, resulting in an epub filled with images - most of which were in subfolders.

Today I decided to give Sigil a try, and it's much easier to work with than InDesign. But I'm confused about the way it handles images.

If I create an epub with Sigil, then do the eCanCrusher routine, all images that are in subfolders vanish. If I copy fifty images into Sigil, the only remaining image is Cover.jpg, which isn't in a separate folder.

So my first question is: Can images be placed in subfolders in Sigil? If the answer is YES, then how do I do it?

After doing more research, I've learned that Calibre allows subfolders in the Images folder but Sigil doesn't. There are some suggestions that you can tweak Sigil to allow subfolders, but I haven't verified that it can be done.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=283132


Adobe digital edition I want to create website for ebook vendor sell own ebook, And i looking for method for protect ebook, and i found adobe digital edition which can solve this because reader have to identify device with adobe, so i spend more time on the internet for find how to convert pdf or image for adobe digital edition. Unfortunately i cannot find it. Please help me solve that. "Can i convert pdf or image for adobe digital edition with drm"

Yeah, finally i'm found the answer. You can use adobe content server service for store your ebook when you upload to the server you will get ascm file for download the ebook and the ascm file can open on Adobe digital edition which the reader can download adobe digital edition in free program and reader have to identified device with adobe, so you can limit your ebook for use in personal cannot pass them to another.


Will I be able to put Kobo books on my Sony Reader? As you may or may not know, Sony's Reader store closed, and they ported everything over to Kobo's services. However, in the past, I have had a lot of trouble buying Kobo books for use on my Sony reader, as they often couldn't be used on the device because of DRM lockouts.

While I managed to find a solution, it did involve stripping the DRM, which is, well, a legally dubious step.

Now that my only purchasing route seems to be Kobo ebooks, have they removed the restriction? Will I be able to use their desktop app or the like to put their books on my device without any problems?

I tried searching for this myself, but I only got results pertaining to the Kobo store switch, but no specifics on how it would or would not work.

Absolutely, yes. I was a Kobo customer long before I had a Sony reader. I switched to Sony when my Kobo Touch died.  I was actually happy that the Sony store was killed because it resulted in the Kobo store being put on my Sony reader.

You need the latest firmware update (or at least since the Kobo rollover), and then you will have a "Kobo Bookstore" option on the home screen, and under "Bookshelves", where there used to be "Books", "Collections" and "Evernote" options, there is now an additional "Purchased Content". Select "Purchased Content" and it should show you everything you've ever bought from both the Sony and Kobo stores (and it will handle DRM'd content just fine).


Can Amazon know about the books I upload to my Kindle device? One user can upload her/his own ebook files onto a Kindle device .

I'd want to know if Amazon is able to know what you are uploading on the device or not.

While it is possible, it is improbable as long as you ensure all data capabilities of the device are always off. If they are ever turned on, there would be nothing stopping Amazon from snooping what's on your device. Furthermore, if it's 3G enabled, you have no guarantee that it doesn't switch on data without your knowledge and snoops your files.


Looking for software to combine articles into ebook I'm looking for a way to combine articles from the Internet into an ebook that I can then read on my ebook reader. I have tried:

(1) using the Export Pocket to EPub Chrome extension, but all it did was just take me to the extension's homepage.

(2) using Instapaper and Pocket as custom news sources with Calibre but the ebooks Calibre created were empty.

(3) using the EpubPress Chrome extension, which with about 10 article got stuck in the 'Fetching Images' stage and then did nothing.

Are there any other specific approaches I can try? Thank you.

Actually with instapaper (if you're logged in) You can visit either:

https://instapaper.com/mobi
https://instapaper.com/epub

to download the latest 20 articles.

Then there is the normal download option in the drop down menu (under your user name).


Converting EPub consisting of images to proper text I recently bought an ebook online (DRM-free). It was supposed to be in epub format, which it technically is, but as it turns out they just packaged an image of each individual page rather than the actual text. As result the whole thing is around 100MB and does not work on any of my readers. The only way to read it at the moment is to extract it and use an image viewer.

How can I convert this to actual text to make it usable?

What you need to do is run OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the images of the book.

If you cannot find a program that does the OCR directly on the ePub file, you can try to convert it to PDF first, or extract the images. Make sure that if you do a conversion, that the images do not loose quality, as that would negatively influence the results of the conversion. Programs like Calibre allow you to do such conversions.

There are some online OCR services, mainly for conversion of PDF, make sure that you understand the implications of using such a service, as there is no guarantee that your book information is removed after conversion (and if you images are watermarked, or contain metadata pointing to you, that could get you in trouble).


Managing Kindle Collections from a computer I have plenty of e-books on my Kindle (some in the cloud and some in local only) and I created many Collections to classify my books.

One silly things I tried first time was to create a folder hierarchy in my computer and when I transfer the root folder in the Kindle, it was flatten; In fact I learn after the Collections are not equivalent to Folders (it would be too simple...).

After transferring few hundreds of books (and took some free ones from Amazon site) I did not found any other way to choose a Collection and then browsing all e-book from the kindle.

My question is: is there a way to prepare the Collections structure from the computer (Windows and Mac OS X) and to have the books already classified after transfer?

Some options are:

There is Kindle Collection Manager (I didn't try that.) Here are some instructions. And here you can find the developer.
Calibre also has a Kindle Collection manager plugin, here is a howto, a semi-official forum.


Export .ePUB to text but somehow retain formatting Is it possible to export an .ePUB document to .txt but also be able to retain the formatting of italicized and bold text? (For example, they can be in their own tags.)

You could convert your epub book to a markdown/textile text file with Calibre. Make sure to select markdown/textile, before running the epub to txt conversion.
(Preferences > Output options > Text output > Formatting > markdown/textile.)


If I update an already published book on iTunes Producer, will those changes be pushed to purchasers? Similar to this question, but would like to know specifically if there's a way to do this through the iBookstore/iTunes Producer, and what the process might be.

The books are epub2 and epub3, not iBooks Author.

Yes, this happens automatically.

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH12101?locale=en_US

  During the publishing process, you specify whether the book is new or
  an update to a previously published version. If it is an update, you
  must provide a new version number. Readers who downloaded your book
  are notified in iBooks that a new version is available.


Is it possible to share annotations between a Kobo Glo and Calibre Viewer? Is it possible to share annotations between a Kobo device (I own a Glo, but it should not matter I think) and Calibre internal viewer?

I'm aware that there is a plugin for Calibre that can export annotations out of a Kobo and save them as separate text files, but that's not really what I'm looking for; what I'm interested in would be some way to highlight some text and add comments on the Kobo and display these annotations also when opening the book in Calibre Viewer (of course after a synchronization) and vice-versa.

Is that possible?

Apparently Calibre does already have the capability to capture the annotations from Kobo.

When Kobo is attached to your computer, the "Send to Device" logo appears as a menu option in Calibre.  If you right click on that logo, the bottom menu option is "Fetch annotations (experimental)".  One caution however is that Calibre seems to fetch the annotations for ALL books that are on Kobo (rather than just the book that is currently highlighted), and then copies the annotations for each book on KOBO and appends it to the comments metadata of the corresponding book in Calibre.  All annotations are copied including any auto-generated bookmarks that identify how much of the book has been read on Kobo.


How to convert an HTML5 and JQuery featured E-book to an Executable file(exe), having inbuilt browser? I want to distribute the e-book content, which has some HTML5 and Jquery features, securely by converting the whole HTML package into an EXE.
Does any HTML Compiling software exists which has its own inbuilt browser and runs the majority of HTML5 and Jquery?

I have already tried and tested HTML Executable 4. But it's internal browser is very outdated and don't support HTML 5 or Jquery.

You actually want to build HTML5-based standalone desktop apps. You should try:

App.js (http://appjs.com/)
Tide SDK (http://www.tidesdk.org/)
Node webkit (https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit)

I don't know how well they play together with JQuery, or with already written eBooks, but you can make a try.

Actually many times the point with this packages is that you can develop multi-platform (i.e not exporting in EXE is the end all be all)


Reading progress on a Kindle Paperwhite I like to know how much time I've got left in any book I'm reading on my Kindle. I set it up each time a start reading but it seems to default to location or no reading progress at all. I know it's easy to put it back to show what I want but it's frustrating! Why won't it just stay on the setting I want?
Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks.

Once you open any book in your kindle notebook. you need to go Aa > More > Reading Progress and Apply Time left in the chapter and click on Save current settings.


Epub: Paragraph breaks in unwanted places and leaves Widows I converted my book from print format (indesign) to .mobi by exporting it via a kindle export plugin. After that I used Calibre to convert it to an epub. When I view the book on Google play Books reader, I see that in some places my paragraphs are breaking in odd places when the page ends and the last line consists of one or two words (widows) hanging in there abruptly. Sometimes the reader displays an entire page as between two paragraphs although there is no HTML that relates to it.

I checked the in-design document and found no page breaks or other break characters. I also checked the HTML code for any  tags that may have come up but I found nothing.

I have tried to to do some research and use standard techniques for e pub creation also but to no avail. The breaks still occur.

This issue occurs with almost all of my books and I have tried to replace the fonts too.

Kindly help to resolve this.

Many epub apps don't render ebooks in Indic languages correctly. However, there's one more thing that you could try.

Open your epub with Sigil or Calibre Editor and add the following parameters to the paragraph section of the main stylesheet:

p {
   /* more entries */
   /* more entries */
    orphans: 2;
    widows: 2;
}

This should theoretically fix your issue, however, many epub apps don't support the widows and orphans parameters.

Obviously, this solution only works with DRM-free ebooks.


The mimetype file has an extra field of length n. The use of the extra field feature of the ZIP format is not permitted for the mimetype file I am using the C# library DotNetZip (Ionic.Zip and Ionic.Zlib) to generate an ebook from a directory. Directory looks like this:

BookName
|
|___content/
|       images/
|       css/
|       (html pages, .ops, .ncx)
|
|___META-INF/
|       container.xml
|
|___mimetype

The code to generate the archive looks like this:

using (ZipFile zip = new ZipFile(pathTemp + ".epub"))
{
    zip.RemoveSelectedEntries("*.*");
    zip.AddFile(mimetype, "").CompressionLevel = CompressionLevel.None;
    zip.AddDirectory(pathTemp + "\\content", "content");
    zip.AddDirectory(pathTemp + "\\META-INF", "META-INF");
    zip.Save();
}

When I run it through the EPUB Validator, it throws this error:

  The mimetype file has an extra field of length 36. The use of the extra field feature of the ZIP format is not permitted for the mimetype file.

I'm not compressing the mimetype file, so I don't know what is happening.

UPDATE: This problem has been solved; see the solution here.

I'm responsible for an attempt to improve this error message, see https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/pull/497 for details. Essentially your Zip packer puts some application or operating system specific stuff into the file, which breaks EPUB mimetype magic number support.


How can I verify that the statistics provided by an DIY publisher are accurate? We want to publish an (e)book through an DIY publishing company. (We haven't choose one yet).

How can we verify/be sure/cross-check that sell statistics of the publisher is accurate?

For example, we publish our book at 'Foo.inc' and they say that they sold for us 100 books and owe us 100$ but in reality they sold 110 books and keep 10$ for them.

How can we find that? What stops such these companies to do in practice such a thing? I know that's illegal but there is a real mechanism to protect the authors against this thing?

As with so many things in life you cannot be 100% sure. That is somewhat more true for digital distribution, as there is no way to check e.g. that a company bought paper for 1000 books and said it only printed and sold half of that.

Unless the DIY publishing company is really small, there will be multiple people involved in faking such sales (the person doing the website, the accountant, the manager), all of them have to play along. And if one of them gets a better job the chances would be, that a an ex-employee discloses fraudulent practises. If that kind of thing comes out you can normally close your shop, and I would not want that to happen if it was mine. Building a business is much more difficult than selling 10% more, so that cheating and losing all of it doesn't make sense.

That doesn't mean that small companies are more susceptible to fraudulent activities. If you work on your own you are much more likely to lose your personal credibility.

It is in my experience with companies, much more likely that payment will be late than that they try to cheat on you.


PDF vs DjVu benefits and disadvantages What's the point of these two ebook formats? The quality and file size of the ebooks tend to be near identical and ereaders for these aren't exotic at all.

Why would you choose one over the other?

Well in my opinion and also testing knowledge of ereaders... the djvu and pdf doesn't hold that great difference anymore...
In the past djvu use to have a higher compression ratio cause the files to be much smaller in storage and also had higher quality rates at this compression...
Now with tech as far as now pdf is also able to have high compression ratio...
Though when it comes to ereaders you see pdf is sometimes much more secured when doing DRM as such it would be more used above djvu... also I know from tft eReaders they tend to not always be able to support the djvu format that greatly where as all tft eReaders do support pdf, due to the fact that most development with eReaders ensure adobe support so that people can get DRM ebooks.
E-ink readers are able to support djvu again very good so yeah on the end nowadays I would say use the format of the ebooks easiest for you to obtain :D

I hope that my explanation help a bit.
This is my personal opinion from my experience of testing across different eReader devices and E-ink as the company I work for use to back in the day import them when they were big in the market and I was lead tester for many of these devices :)

Also seeing now the title you wanted advantage and disadvantages... okay well then

pdf: safer, more secured, available across more platforms, but more detail slower loading, refresh ratio is low

djvu: better caching for E-ink, redraw faster, graphical book, not as secured, not available on many different platforms


How to skip those hyphens while searching in acrobat I have two pdf files:

original image pdf where the pdf file is just an image of the text
ocr pdf produced by OCR, using ABBYY FineReader 11

these are the process i did

i have a image pdf then i use abby to perform OCR function
then i convert my pdf to scanble pdf in abby transformer 3.0
then i compare both the source file and ocr file using acrobat but all those hyphens are in error how to skip those hyphens while searching ?

If I understand your question correctly, you are asking for a way to automatically double-check an OCR conversion from image to text. I'm afraid that is not possible: checking would require conversion from image to text via OCR, which I'm sure you can see is circular. If you want to proof an OCR conversion, you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. At least it's faster than typing the whole thing out (and then proofing it again)!


How do I have Calibre automatically create a cover image from a non-ebook file? I am an RPG publisher and use Calibre to maintain my research library (PDF, mostly) and my stock art library (various image files).

When I load a PDF, Calibre automatically creates a cover image using the first page of the PDF.

When I load image files, it cannot. I must assign the cover image explicitly. Is there a way to have Calibre automatically create a cover image from a 'book' that is a raster image (JPG or PNG format)?

I'm afraid this isn't the answer you need, and it's been a long time coming. Although I don't recall the method, be it via an add-on or whatever, I succeeded in using a jpg image of my own design (CS6) as a cover. It was available in the Calibre cover customization window, so applying title/author text in the usual way was no problem. So, yes, there's an easy to use method, and if I re-discover it before you do, I'll post the details.


Should a person learn DocBook in 2019? Should I learn pandoc??

I really really really want to write a book (and book-stuff).

I have a question.

I'm learning (finally) about something "I've been meaning to learn for a long time but hadn't had the time", which is DocBook.

It's been on my radar for a long time.

It looks like its a technology which seems to be loosing steam and is being used less and less in the last 20 years.

I somehow feel I "missed the boat/party"

It looks complicated, hard, and it will involve some pain (XSL).
I know XSL, but I'm rusty on it, and I remember it sucked.

So, the question is, if you were me, would you learn how to use DocBook?
or would you learn another, perhaps newer technology for typesetting books?

These are side-quests:
Is Docbook being used by companies?? like, if I put it in my resume,
will it increase the chances of getting hired?? is there a company
where I can go and hack on Docbook full time that will take me in?

Docbook looks like the kind of thing I could do for a living, like
for a company, but I don't even know who is using it, I need to do more research.

I feel like I'm learning php3, all the websites that talk about it look dated, and there isn't a lot of new information, it looks like it is a dying art, and I'm afraid all my knowledge will become obsolete at some point.

On the good side, if I learn it, it's unlikely to change, so I won't have learning fatigue. (or will there be a Docbook 6???) OMG.

Can you advice a stranger?

I use docbook for my ebook workflow, so I have a good deal of insight into this question.

Employment-wise, I haven't seen a lot of demand for docbook, though occasionally it is called for in open-source documentation. A lot of programmers know about it, and tech pubs know about it. I'm guessing that DITA is somewhat more popular in tech writing circles.  Knowing how to do XSLT is a somewhat hard to find skill (even among programmers).

Some positives:

The docbook-apps mailing list is small but dedicated. I usually get a
good answer fairly soon.
Docbook -- like DITA -- is a modular XML-based method for producing
documentation. I've repurposed it for ebook publishing. The semantics
are rich, and indeed, a branch called DOCBOOK FOR PUBLISHERS, uses
the same tools, tosses out some of elements used only for technical
pubs and adds a few ones for poetry and drama.
The best thing about it is that it's easy to read, it's easy to use
for version control and you can use general XSLT in a customization
layer to add functionality you need.
the HTML output is very clean, so it's easy to customize the CSS.
XML Oxygen is an extremely good client-side tool for producing and
transforming docbook files.
The standard is likely to remain stable and backward compatible for a long while. For now at least Oxygen is adequate as a tool.

Among the negatives:

Even though it's theoretically possible to produce epubs from docbook
xml and it's possible to use a framework like ANT to produce the
final output, I find it unwieldy. Instead I use the built in XSLT
transformations in Oxygen XML, and actually I do some manual steps --
moving image files into a directory, zipping the files up.
I often perform these manual steps because I'm too lazy/stupid to
write appropriate xslt code, but sometimes the stupid solution is the
easiest.
Because Docbook outputs into several files, often you will see some
extra elements and attributes which are remnants of this
functionality. Example: <div class="titlepage">
I have not seen any server-solutions for Docbook output although I'm
sure they exist.

The future:

3 trends I see that may suggest declining importance of docbook.

First, a lot of source is being written in markdown. I am seeing more tools (like Pandoc) to allow for richer presentation. Markdown isn't xml and not really a semantic language.

Client-based WYSIWG ebook tools are improving. None are really great (maybe Calibre?), but every year means more functionality and ease of use.

Static Site Generators - if they become more widespread, might result in more web-based ebooks. Docbook has a website builder function which I have never used btw. Hope this helps.


How can I get an HTML input converted to PDF at 6x9" or otherwise for KDP paperback creation? I am trying to get from HTML originally intended for Kindle formats, to an output appropriate to KDP paperback format.

Calibre appears to be producing 8 1/2 x 11" output, too large for this service to accept. A little searching has a Library of Babel tinge to the documentation. Doing a "ebook-convert" by itself has three options, one of which looks promising but "ebook-convert --recipes" does not do a standard "List all, or all major, options"

So:

Let's say that I have material in HTML, ePub, or .mobi.

How can I convert this to a PDF file of my own, with a page size of 6x9"?

Thanks,

You could install Prince and the Calibre Prince plugin to generate the .pdf file. You can specify page sizes via CSS.


Is there a way to push epubs to iBookstore moreover using iTunes Producer? I am wondering if there is an API that will allow me to push epubs, with all the needed meta data, to Apple iTunes/iBookstore. Currently I am using the desktop app iTunes Producer.

There is most likely an API working between iTunes Producer and the iBookstore, but AFAIK Apple has not published it. It is of course much easier for Apple to control a protocol— and change if needed—when you control both client and server sides (client: iTunes Producer, server: iBookstore). This keeps development cheaper than with a published API and it might even allow Apple offload some of the work to the client side that they don't want to re-check on the server.

If you are not willing to do repetitive work using iTunes Producer, I see two possible alternatives:

checkout if any of the iBookstore aggregators (approved or others) has an API you can use. Of course a commercial service costs you, reducing earnings from the list price down from 70% when directly dealing with Apple¹.
programmatically drive the iTunes Producer application to do the uploading  using the Quartz Event Services². This might actually be quicker to develop than trying to interface with an API programmatically.

¹ I am not sure if any aggregators have an API available. Earning will  e.g. be down to 63%  using Lulu; to 60% using Smashwords

² I have done that kind of automation, programming the 'driver'
for the .tiff to .djvu conversion in a Windows GUI application.


Are DRM free ebooks considered a better quality ebook? Many authors, editors, and publishers appear to feel they should wrap a DRM around their ebook.  However, a DRM can be removed from an ebook which appears to only cause an annoyance to the purchaser.  That said, do DRM free ebooks provide a better quality to the customer ebook?  Do DRM ebooks cause the ebook to be slower and are there any statistics or tests on an ebook with and without a DRM?

This question is a little subjective (is it better) and broad (there are many different DRM formats).

With that being said, in my personal experience, I prefer DRM-free ebooks. They work better in various readers that support the given document format. I don't always like to use my Sony Reader for books that I purchase (usually epubs). For programming books I often like to use my laptop (either web browser or Calibre) because the programming examples are more difficult to read when shown on a smaller screen that forces line wrapping in unusual places.

I've also had scenarios where I have bought an epub that only worked properly on a Kobo reader (bought from Chapters). I was forced to remove the DRM protection and manually edit the CSS files and remove some javascript code that was causing the font-size to be so large that the book was illegible.


Upgrade Kindle 4 system from 4.1.3 to 5.6 I haven't found a way to upgrade the system of my old Kindle 4 notouch. I also have a Kindle Paperwhite and its interface is very nice, and has a great addition: vocabulary cards made from those words looked up in the dictionary.

Is there a way to perform that upgrade manually, or will Amazon in one day offer that to those devices?

The firmware update page of Kindle does not list Kindle 4th generation notouch. Accoring to this answer and Amazon, your kindle is listed under 5th generation.

The latest firmware version number for the Kindle 5th generation is 4.1.3 so you cannot update it to 5.6.0.


Why does Google Play Books not allow search for uploaded books? I just uploaded an eBook I bought directly from the publisher to my Google Play Books account and went to search for some text in the book only to see the following text come up in a tooltip when I hovered on the search magnifying glass icon...

  Search (Unavailable for uploaded books)

What kind of nonsense is this? Is this some resentment that I didn't purchase this thing directly through them? Is search a service only for books purchased on GPB as some kind of perk?

Dear Sir / Madam & Citizens of the Internet,

I find that, with the current version of Play Books on android (version 5.7.5, as of 09/02/2020), if one launches the app connected to Wi-Fi or the internet via. mobile-data, then the search option is "disappeared", i.e. it simply doesn't show up.
But, if one disconects from the internet (i.e. turns off Wi-Fi & Mobile data) then the search option suddenly appears. I also found, once the search option appears, then wi-fi and mobile-data can be turned back on again.

I hope this is useful to someone. I was annoyed and perplexed by this, but didn't know for quite some time that the "fix" was so simple. I hope Google doesn't see this and patch it out.

Take care,

G. Ward.


Should every paragraph tag have a CSS style (InDesign)? I'm working on my first epub, and I would like to use the following CSS scheme:

Most paragraph tags would have no class assigned and would be styled by a simple rule in the style sheet...

p {}

A special series of paragraph tags would have a different style. However, I would put these paragraphs inside div's, so the style would just look something like this:

div.footnote p { margin: 2px 15px; indent: 0; }

Any remaining paragraphs that require special styling would be assigned classes. They would be the only paragraph tags with classes.

Is this scheme OK, or is there a special reason I should give every paragraph tag a class? I'm asking because I think I remember a comment about this on some tutorial that I can't locate right now. I just want to make sure I'm not making a major gaffe by creating an epub with empty tags.

There is no need to give every paragraph a class, the definition at 1.  will apply to every paragraph, with or without a tag, and only on paragraphs that are directly below a footnote the settings will be overruled by those of the CSS of 2.

You might not even need to have the CSS at 1., but for the defaults of the ePub reader.


Are there studies that show whether reading ebooks on e-Ink, LCD, SLCD or AMOLED displays are better for eyes? When people review different cell phones, they usually look at whether a specific display type (e-Ink, LCD, SLCD that HTC uses or AMOLED that Samsung uses) is better or worse for image quality.

But is there any data - preferably medical research - on which one should be picked when choosing a cell phone when one of the main use cases is reading e-books and eye health is a consideration?

I don't know about any for those particular screentypes, but LCD vs E-ink has been researched by Siegenthaler, et al.

This study showed that the objective reading behaviour is little different between the two types, but strangely (to me) the subjective preference shifted over time from a small advantage by E-ink to a small advantage by LCD.


How to send web pages to a Kindle from Firefox? I'm looking to send web pages to a Kindle from Firefox, so am looking at:

https://www.online-convert.com/

Unlike Calibre, there's no convenient share button.  There is an upload button for "the cloud" -- but can I get this to work with the Kindle?  Perhaps through Calibre?

Perhaps there's a better work-around to send web page content to a Kindle from Firefox?

What type of Kindle do you have? Most of them support browsers, even though some are quite basic. So one option would be to simply view the website on the kindle itself, no?

If this is not sufficient please can you clarify why in your original question.


kindle users guide requires registration to read? A newly acquired Kindle running Firmware 5.8.9.0.1 has a Kindle Users Guide, Third Edition on the home screen.  Opening this just leads to "register your kindle."

How can I read the manual without registering?

You can download user guides for all Kindle models from Amazon.


Calibre viewer displays books wrong I'm using Calibre the ebook viewer to view PDFs, DjVu, and ePub books. I don't know what version the program is, since I couldn't find any about dialog to confirm it. But I downloaded a couple of weeks ago. There was a update very recently which I installed, so this could be due to bad installation or something like that.

My problem is when viewing ebooks with Calibre viewer, two things happen:

If I try to choose them with Calibre open from my library, then they never finish loading.
If I open them from Windows, and I choose to "open with" Calibre the ebook viewer, the result is that they are displayed very badly, with a ugly standard font, with equations all ugly, It easier to show it so I will copy some images comparing how it's viewed with Calibre vs other viewers that work fine.

Calibre with a DjVu, all the pages looks like this:

Other viewer (not calibre) can format equations, of the same ebook, and displays the whole book correctly, this is how it should look:

I don't understand if Calibre is having a bug or if it's converting ebooks to some basic format. I don't understand why this happens. Help me to view books correctly.

Edit (day 06/ month 05/year 2016): I filed a bug report and got a response from the developer.

When the DjVu support for Calibre was added a few years ago, it was implemented by taking the  text layer, when available, and extract and convert that to textual material usable for conversion, by Calibre, to other formats. When available it uses the C++ based djvu2txt from the djvu-libre toolset, otherwise it uses a, much slower, decoding done in Python.

That text layer can be generated when "printing" to DjVu, but it normally is built from the image material that you get when you scan files to the DjVu format. And the layer allows you, in most DjVu viewers, to select something on the image and then either copy the image rectangle or the associated text in the text layer.

What you see in WinDjView is the image layer in your DjVu file, what you see in the EbookViewer is the text layer. The text layer has some positioning information (otherwise a viewer would not be able to associate text with a picked area of the image data), but most of that is discarded and only used to make paragraphs.

When I wrote the original DjVu support for Calibre (several years ago), I did so, to make it possible for conversion as indicated above. I had no idea that this made it into the Calibre ebook-viewer. The ebook viewer should directly use the image data, but it obviously doesn't (and that is even less trivial than writing a Python based extractor of the text layer).

I tested viewing a DjVu file without text layer on a recent version of the Calibre ebook viewer. It shows nothing, which confirms my expectation.
It could be that the ebook-viewer just picked up the DjVu plugin by using the same interface as the convertor, that would make sense, but in the case of DjVu files that is not the right approach. IIRC there was no way to provide such a plugin and tell Calibre it should only be used for conversion (and not for display).

You're not doing anything wrong. I would rather say this works as can be expected knowing the implementation, but that doesn't make it very useful for books that are not paragraph oriented. So in your words: it is converting the books to some basic format. And this is not easily/quickly fixed.


how to add page-map.xml in Sigil? I understand that ePub2 standard does not include page numbers, but ADE added a non-standard extension which may or may not work on an actual reader. I would like to try to use them, but I found a problem.
MobileRead Wiki says to add in content.opf a reference to an xml file, usually called page-map.xml. Sigil, as of version 0.9.6, recognizes and updates an existing page-map.xml, but I don't know where to put it (and how to put it in, short of renaming the file in .zip and adding it with brute force).

What should I do?

Right-click the Misc folder icon and select Add Existing Files...
(You'll also have to manually update the .opf file.)

BTW, Sigil won't automatically update this file.


Using Kindle for Windows 10 with NordVPN I use the Kindle for PC app on Windows 10 to read ebooks.  I'm reasonably happy with it (although it keeps losing the collections I create!)

Let me state that again: I'm talking about the Kindle PC app, running under Windows 10, not a Kindle device.

I recently started using NordVPN on my Windows 10 PC. The Kindle app doesn't like this, and won't sync when I have the VPN connected:

.

The Network Settings:

I've tried all three options, including connecting to a specific NordVPN server and putting in that information.

I've found next to no information about using the Kindle PC app and a VPN: all the information is about Kindle devices and VPNs.

Can anyone provide guidance about configuring this?

Having the same problem. After several attempts to resolved I contacted NordVPN support. The proposed solution:

  Disable CyberSec feature in NordVPN application.
  Connect to US servers 1324, 1702, 1703, 1707, 1709 1829 (Provided by support; timing issue on one. Note: Others were not the fastest speed.)
  Enabled TCP protocol in NordVPN Advanced Settings if the issue will persist.
  However, it did not work. I set everything back and am awaiting their response.

Latest Update - Instructed to:
1) Please change your DNS servers to NordVPN DNS servers manually by following these steps:

2) Navigate to Control Panel -> Network and sharing center -> Change adapter settings

3) Locate your main Internet connection adapter. Please right click on it and select Properties.

Select IPv4 and Properties again and then please add these our DNS addresses: 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1

Latest - IT WORKED!