How can I validate an epub file? How can I formally validate the structure of an .epub file and check it for errors?

IDPF, the consortium that promotes the .epub standard, has released a tool named epubcheck.
It is available both via an online web-app here, or as a stand-alone program here.

There is also another tool called FlightCrew, available here; this is also integrated within Sigil, a full fledged epub editor (available here).

All these tools are free and cross-platform.


Audio ebook not working in iBooks I have created an ebook via the Moby Dick epub example here:

https://github.com/IDPF/epub3-samples

I can open the ebook using iBooks (1.14) on Mac (High Sierra 10.13.4), but I can't get it to play the audio. When I press the volume button with the text "Read Aloud", the volume always goes down to its lowest level and when I turn it back up I still don't hear anything. The ebook itself contains a mp4 file. Why is it not working? Are there any alternative readers for mac? I also couldn't get it to work on iphone, again via ibooks. Is this not supported yet? Is there an alternative app I can try for iphone?

Try the Adobe Digital Editions apps for macOS or iOS. Also check out Menestrello and the free Menestrello media overlay epub3 books.

If you're a software developer, also check out Minstrel.


Kindle Direct Publishing: How to mention other Books Somebody knows how I can create "View in Store" Links within my Kindle E-Books?

I noticed that some books I've bought on Amazon use these special type of links which have a little book symbol next to them. When I click on the link a modal window opens which shows a preview of the Book and three options:

View in Store
Try a Sample
Add to wish list

Here is a Screenshot:

Beside that at the end of the book there is a section of "Books mentioned in this Book" which directly links to other Books that where mentioned in this one.

It seems that those things are related but I couldn't find anywhere on how to actually create these type of links.

Maybe somebody has an insight.

Great question. I don't see any documentation for this in the Kindle guidelines. https://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf

My best guess is that this is simply an external hyperlink which Amazon recognizes, something like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EZ4B0UK/

I'll test this on my own ebook and see whether I can duplicate it.

Finally, I don't think this feature is particularly useful. Having this book-buy link can be distracting.(I try to minimize the external links in my ebooks).


Are there any solutions available for managing a corporate library of ebooks? My employer maintains a small library of technical books for developers. If there's a book we think would be useful for us, we typically buy a number of copies and place them in the library, where the employees can borrow them.

This works well for paperbooks, but with more and more people wanting to use ereaders or tablets to read, we are looking for a solution that solves the same problem, but for ebooks.

Ideally, it would be a solution that works with books from any publisher, and with any ereader/reader-app.

I've seen that Overdrive offers a corporate library service, but from the description I was able to find on their site, it seems rather limited and a bad fit for our needs.

In case it's relevant to the answers, we are located in Norway, but will typically purchase books in english from the US or UK.

PS.
If we were to ignore legal issues, we could simply set up calibre on a machine with the web-interface running, and add books when purchased. However, I believe this would at the very least land us in some very grey areas legally speaking.

There aren’t many choices. The most simple is to have a cloud-like space/service or simply a shared intranet directory. The need for controlling readers requires much more and is typically dependent on a special app or DRM. This issue is typically a thing for bigger companies like publishers or libraries (Adobe Content Server, Azardi Online).

If it is simple, small library it would need simple and strict rules. Otherwise the solution would be expensive, complex and annoying for you.

You could also try: Personal Book Space but I have no experiences with it.


How to auto-left justify text in personal kindle documents I use the 'Send to Kindle' for Google Chrome extension to send longform articles to my Kindle. It works great, except that it seems to force justify text flush both left and right. I have a vision problem and read at the largest text size, which creates unsightly gaps in the text.

This post: How can I left justify text on my Kindle? covers how to handle it for existing books, but I am wondering if there is a solution for documents scraped from the web, ideally as part of an integrated browser extension.

If not browser extension based, what is the suggested workflow for web article → ebook creation software → kindle personal docs?

HTML has to be clean for conversions. Often webpages may use custom/extra styles which confuse Kindle or these plugins.

One idea would be to paste the contents onto a MS Word file and then send the MS Word file to Kindle.

Paste the text of article to MS Word from a web browser. (Make sure to choose to paste TEXT ONLY). Apply only two styles: HEADING1 to the headline and NORMAL to the body. Don't manually style anything.

If you want, you could right-click the NORMAL style button and make sure justified is checked. But I'm not sure it will work (or it is even necessary).

At that point, you can send to kindle. Because Kindle is receiving a clean/unformatted document, it should convert it fairly well.

I actually think that sending a MS Word doc to Kindle is a lot easier than some of these browser-based plugins. Of course, you may end up losing lists, centering, colors, etc.


images of footnotes are not appearing in pop up window in epub I am doing epub-3(With footnote pop-up option) and I have used images in footnote section. When I am checking with Ipad, the images are not appearing in the pop-up window. The following is the coding and screenshot of iPAD view.

Screenshot of an iPAD

What am I doing wrong?

Use "object" tag instead of "img" and image extension should be .svg.


How do I direct links in popup-footnotes directly to main text? Using calibre and epub3 I'm using popup footnotes (with epub:type). In some of the footnotes I present links (ex. a link to Chapter 2) to the main text. This referred text should not be presented in the popup windows itself (se right panel) - the links should direct to other chapters in the ebook (se left panel).

At the moment it seems that the referred text (ex. Chapter 2) are shown directly in the popup window (see right panel). How can I change this, so the links bypasses the popup window?

The problem occurs on a iMac in iBooks 1.16.

Regards, Dan

First, one possible thing to look at is using the ASIDE element to contain the footnote. The Kindle way to do footnotes requires this.I used a DIV container which contained epub:type="footnotes" and inside that a ASIDE element containing what you want to be in the note. This is just a stab in the dark though.

Here's  a suggestion for a workaround on iBooks.

Perhaps iBooks only does this for internal links, but not for external links. The popup box fills with the internal HTML page you are linking to. This might be a feature, not a bug --- because letting  an HTML fragment appear in the popup is a cool thing though probably not part of the EPUB 3 spec.

Unfortunately I don't have an ipad handy now or I'd test and report back. But I vaguely remember seeing this before for footnotes on iBooks.

If you are linking to another place in the same ebook, why not just do an ordinary hyperlink in the main text and not a footnote? (If you need to add extra explanation, you can do it in the main text as well). It seems that providing an internal link from the popup is redundant. That's my two cents anyway.


Can I make custom fonts show up in iBooks? Is it possible to include custom fonts in an ebook and have them show up in iBooks, or can you only use the various default fonts listed on the device?

It is certainly possible to embed custom fonts and have them be used in iBooks, as well as on other EPUB reading systems. The process is known as embedding. Embedded fonts are simply included in the .zip archive that comprises the EPUB file, and then referenced properly in all the relevant content files. Places you will need to reference them include:

CSS file

This is just like using fonts on the web: the first thing you need to do is define @font-face:

@font-face {
  font-family: roboto;
  src: url('fonts/Roboto/Roboto-Regular.ttf')
}

and then use that declaration in for whichever styles you'd like to use that font:

p.intro {
  font-family: roboto;
  font-weight: normal;
  font-style: normal;
}

content.opf file

Just like all the other files in your EPUB, you'll need to include any font files you're embedding in the <manifest> of your .opf file:

<item id="Roboto-Regular_ttf" href="fonts/Roboto-Regular.ttf" media-type="application/x-font-truetype" />

The above steps are sufficient for most reading systems, but iBooks has one more hoop to jump through:

com.apple.ibooks.display-options.xml

This is a file that goes in the META-INF folder of the EPUB, rather than the OEBPS folder, and as the name suggests it's iBooks-specific. Neither this file nor the container.xml file need to be declared in the <manifest>, so don't worry about that. Here is the file in its entirety:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<display_options>
<platform name="*">
<option name="specified-fonts">true</option>
</platform>
</display_options>

A more in-depth writeup can be found on Liz Castro's excellent blog. As noted elsewhere, be aware that there are some potential hurdles, both legal and practical, to embedding fonts.


Adding blurb/summary metadata to an ebook file Is there a standard way to add a blurb to an epub file, and to Amazon files, such that the information will show up on an ereader device?

Anything that you want to actually show up on an ebook reader will need to be in the content files of the epub, just like any of the chapters or other divisions of the text. It is possible to include a description in the metadata of the book; this should appear in the <meta> section of the content.opf file and be formatted as described in the epub 3.0 specification. That metadata will not necessarily be visible to any reading systems, but it'll be in there.

Note that the <dc:description> element uses the Dublin Core Metadata standard, which says

  Description may include but is not limited to: an abstract, a table of
  contents, a graphical representation, or a free-text account of the
  resource.

So while there's some room for interpretation, it's not really the place for blurbs as such, which are generally endorsements rather than "account[s] of the resource."

Again: if you want it to be read by devices, just include it as another section of the manuscript.


Why can't I download the same books to Adobe Digital Editions and Overdrive apps? According to Overdrive, if I get an ebook from a participating library, I should be able to get it on up to six devices, as long as I login with the Overdrive ID on each.

So I've checked out a book, and managed to get it without a problem, onto:

Overdrive app on my iPad,
Overdrive app on my Windows 8 PC (the one in the app store).

Then I'm trying to get it onto Adobe Digital Editions on my Mac, and ADE, when reading the .ascm file, says it's linked to another user.

Just to note, I've authorized ADE with my Overdrive login, and I've never used AdobeID directly.

I can also get another book from the same library, download it into ADE just fine, but then the apps (both iOS and Windows 8) refuse to download it, saying it's authorized to a different user.

So apparently, Overdrive apps and ADE with Overdrive login generate different Adobe IDs (although looking in the settings shows the same thing).

What is going on, and how do I solve the issue--i.e. get the same book on Overdrive apps and ADE?

Use your Overdrive account to authorize ADE:

"If you plan to use ADE and our mobile app, we encourage you to use your OverDrive account to authorize ADE. That way, you won't run into authorization issues when you read the same eBooks on your mobile device and on your computer. You can sign up for an OverDrive account through our mobile app or on overdrive.com."


Problem with left alignment in Calibre/iBooks Using Calibre I have tried to use ´text-align: left´ in CSS but viewing the resulting epub-file with iBooks the result is still justified text. How can I change to left alignment?

I don't think text-align left and Justify text have anything to do with one another. Justification is usually controlled by the reading system, while text-align left is the default behavior for text. The css property text-align mainly has to do with alignment inside of a box (usually a single line). You could use another css property to scoot the text to the left or the right (margin, etc).


What is the different compatible formats between Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Fire? More specifically, I would like to know why this eBook is not compatible with the Kindle Paperwhite.

It says that it is a print-replica with the additional features given by X-ray which is compatible with the paperwhite.

Why is it not compatible?

The book in question is a "Print Replica" textbook.  See how it says Networks: An Introduction [Print Replica] [Kindle Edition]?

When we look up information about Print Replica:

Kindle Textbooks:

  Kindle Print Replica textbooks maintain the rich formatting and layout of their print editions while also offering many of the advantages of standard Kindle books.

  Each page in a Print Replica textbook displays words and images in the same position as the corresponding print edition, while adding Kindle features such as annotations and the ability to sync your last page read across multiple Fire and Kindle devices and Kindle reading apps. Kindle Print Replica textbooks also have most of the same features as PDF-formatted books, including advanced zoom and pan functions.

  Kindle Print Replica textbooks are supported on:

Kindle Fire
Kindle Fire HD
Kindle Fire HDX
Fire HD
Fire HDX
Kindle for PC
Kindle for Mac
Kindle for iPad
Kindle for iPhone
Kindle for iPod touch
Kindle for Android Tablet
Kindle for Android Phone
Kindle for Samsung Tablet

  Kindle Print Replica textbooks will have the words "Print Replica" next to the book title in the Kindle Store.

Also, with regard to the "Look Inside" preview having adjustable text sizing, note the little FYI at the top of the previewer:

  Just so you know... This view is of the Kindle edition (2010) from
  Oxford University Press, USA. The Kindle Edition edition (2010) from
  OUP Oxford that you originally viewed is the one you'll receive if you
  click "Buy With 1-Click" on the left.

So it looks like the preview is not of the same exact Kindle file that you'd be buying.

I also downloaded the sample of that book onto my K4iOS app, and it's totally fixed layout, with margins containing notes and illustrations and stuff, while keeping the text fully searchable.  This kind of thing generally isn't supported on an e-ink reader.


Attempting to create an ebook for sale on kindle I'm trying to create an ebook for sale on Amazon. I have Calibre and can sort out an epub version with automatic hyphenation, but when I convert to mobi it won't echo this (and I really want automatic hyphenation because I hate huge spaces). The answer, I'm gathering, is to convert to azw3, which does support automatic hyphenation. The problem I'm having now, though, is that my pc isn't reading the azw3 file and so I can't send and check it on my Amazon Fire. Any suggestions?

If you upload valid epub2/epub3 books to Kindle KDP, Amazon will automatically convert them to KFX books with enhanced typesetting, if the device/app supports enhanced typesetting.

In order to preview enhanced typesetting features, you'll need to install Kindle Previewer 3.

Once you've installed the previewer, you can also install the KFX Output Calibre plugin and generate KFX files that you can sideload to Kindles and Kindle apps.

For more information on enhanced typesetting features also see Appendix A of the Kindle Publishing Guidelines.


Why I can't buy books from Kindle Store using Kindle app on iPad? It's really surprising to me to see why it is not easy to buy a book using the Kindle reader app on iPad. It has only provision to download the samples but there is no option to buy a complete book. For that I am using a browser or Amazon Store app. Is there anything I am missing here or it's just like that?

Because otherwise Amazon would have to give Apple a cut of the 'in-app purchases'.

One article on the subject.


How to install new font to Kindle 5.6.5 I have bought an Kindle paperwhite with version 5.6.5 and I want to know how to install new fonts to my device. I have seen that previously it was possible to just copy paste the font with a file and restart the device will install the font. But now it is not working. I have to read non-English book but kindle don't support it. Can someone please help me to solve this?

Unless your Kindle was previously jailbroken, you can't install new fonts. If it was, you'll have to re-install the font hack.

  have to read non-English book but kindle don't support it.

Kindles with the 5.6.5 firmware support pretty much all languages without additional fonts. However, you must convert your books to the AZW3 format with Calibre, because the old MOBI format doesn't fully support some less frequently spoken languages.
If you don't like the default font, you can also embed fonts in your ebooks with Calibre. For more information see the Calibre documentation.


Is it advisable to add sound excerpts to an ebook? As far as I know, many ebook readers may also play music. Does it make sense to create an ebook which contains (internal) link to audio snippets? Does the ePub standard allow it?

(snippets would be copyright-free; moreover they should be internal links, so that the ebook is self-contained)

[EDIT] What I am interested in is to have links to music excerpts, not a soundtrack going on while the book is read. Just to clarify it: think at an ebook about music theory. I may talk about Aeolian cadences, explain what Aeolian mode is, add a picture of an Aeolian scale... and a link which if clicked on plays an Aeolian scale.

It's great to hear about a project where the audio would actually add substantively to the content of the book--that's too often not the case. In your case, I'd say yes, it does definitely make sense to add the audio, as it is directly relevant and helpful to understanding the subject. It is also perfectly allowable in the epub 3.0 specification, though support is optional rather than mandatory--not all reading systems will have support, but there is a standardized method for those that do support it.

Outside of the epub world, things are a little less rosy: Amazon sells files with audio built in, but only supports multimedia on their iOS apps. In addition, last I checked they weren't accepting multimedia-enabled files through KDP (their self-publishing program), even though the instructions for making such files are clearly available in the Kindle Publishing Guidelines. In order to sell a multimedia file through Amazon, you'll need to be able to talk directly to Amazon--if you're a mid size or larger publisher, you probably have a contact you can speak with about that.


Command line using the mobi file? How to extract the.mobi file using the CMD command line? Please advise.

Install Python, download KindleUnpack and unpack the mobi book using the following command:

python kindle_unpack.py INPUT_FILE OUTPUT_FOLDER

(KindleUnpack only works with DRM-free books.)


Command line extraction of metadata (title. author) from epub file I would like to use a command line program to extract the title of a book
(possibly also other metadata) from its epub file and return it as a
string.
I am using Linux, but my guess is that the question makes sense in other
environments, too.
I expected to easily find a clear and simple answer by searching
the web. But apparently that is not the case, or I am still too
ignorant to recognize answers.
The command could look like this
getbookinfo -m title myfile.epub

and would yield the title of the book found in the epub file.

exiftool can read (but not write) epub meta data. For example

  exiftool -T -Title main.epub


Why does the text in my aside display in my ebook? I'm trying to use the pop-up footnotes for that are now supported by iBooks see here. I can get the pop ups to work and it has the text that I want, but for some reason the text in the aside is also showing.

Why does it do that? I can't tell what I'm doing differently compared to the examples that I've seen. I put my markup below. I've also taken screen shots of my computer so that you can see what I'm talking about. See here and here

    <meta charset="utf-8"/>
    <title>Hello World: My First EPUB</title>
    <link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="all" href="stylesheet.css" />

      Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?'
      1

  Alice estava começando a ficar muito cansada de sentar-se ao lado de sua irmã no banco e de não ter nada para fazer: uma ou duas vezes havia espiado o livro que a irmã estava lendo, mas não havia imagens nem diálogos nele, "e para que serve um livro", pensou Alice, "sem imagens nem diálogos?"

    So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

  Então, ela pensava consigo mesma (tanto quanto podia, uma vez que o dia quente a fazia sentir-se sonolenta e letárgica) se o prazer de fazer uma coroa de margaridas valeria o trabalho de se levantar e apanhá-las, quando repentinamente um Coelho Branco com olhos rosados passou correndo perto dela.

First of all, note that iBooks for OS X is very very buggy, and its behavior differs from iBooks on iOS with respect to many functions.

Said that, note that "iBooks hiding <aside> elements" is an Apple quirk; any other reading system, in absence of relevant CSS rules or if they don't have a specialized behavior on elements carrying an epub:type, will display an <aside> as any other <div>.

Have you tried applying a CSS rule (e.g., visibility: hidden) to your <aside>?

BTW, for compatibility reasons, I tend to group the notes at the end of the XHTML file.

Some links you might find useful:

http://www.idpf.org/accessibility/guidelines/content/xhtml/notes.php
http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2012/05/creating-pop-up-footnotes-in-epub-3-and.html
http://www.heliconbooks.com/article/epubfootnote


Can I use Google Docs to write an ebook for Kindle? I'm in the process of writing my first eBook. The writing is nearly finished - I will be done by Tuesday.

Currently I'm writing in Google Docs and I plan to publish on Kindle. Are these compatible? If not, what should I do with the document I already have?

Yes. You can write. Here are my experiences.

MS Word approach

I exported the manuscript as .DOCX. This format worked best for me. I faced serious problems with .epub and .pdf formats.
Caveat - If you have used Google doc specific embedded drawings then they are likely to get clipped. I had to convert them to pictures using Windows sniping tool and embed them  back as an image
Caveat - I had lots of problems with equations. They would not align well with oridinary text or with bullets. Some of the Equation toolbar symbols like the summation did not show up at all. I had to use the "insert symbol" approach
Caveat - Table column widths appeared different on Kindle

Overall suggestion using MS Word - write a couple of pages on GD which captures some of your complex formatting scenarios, export to DOCX and preview the file on Kindle previewer (online) . I would recommend doing this upfront so that you can learn lessons

HTML approach

You can also save your Google Doc content as a HTML file. This will come down as a ZIP with 1 HTML and a subfolder with all the images. But there were serious challenges.

HTML errors - Kindle Previewer 3 would frequently complain that there were errors in the HTML. I had to un-minify the HTML and then run Kindle Previewer again. Go back to the offending line number. There were many empty IMG tags and I had to remove all of them
Font units - The font sizes were too large when viewed on Kindle. I had to change the font units from pt to em for much improved rendition on Kindle
Equations -  If your manuscript has mathematical equations then these will be converted to static pictures.
Table of contents -  The table of contents that was generated inside Google Docs would not work nicely on Kindle. Clicking on the ToC would take me to unpredictable locations in the book. I have no explanation for this.
Further reference -

https://medium.com/@perrygarvin/how-to-make-an-amazon-kindle-book-using-html-and-css-146070ba0d7e

https://daveparsonsnz.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/converting-a-google-doc-to-a-kindle-format-mobi-file/

Summary
Yes you can definitely use Google Docs for authoring Kindle content. You can use MS Word or HTML. You should try out a short sample before progressing too far down the road. However, in my case, I am almost on the verge of abandoning GD in favour of a tool like Scrivener, which I believe is more suited for such an endeavour.

Hope this helps.


Endnote formatting when using epub and kindlegen I try to use ePub formatting as below. This is based on the output of the pandoc tool.

Chapter Two

Chapter two has just begun.

Here is a footnote reference,1 and another.2

This paragraph won't be part of the note, because it isn't indented.

Here is the footnote.↩

Here's one with multiple blocks.

Subsequent paragraphs are indented to show that they belong to the previous footnote.

{ some.code }

The whole paragraph can be indented, or just the first line. In this way, multi-paragraph footnotes work like multi-paragraph list items.↩

When I use kindlegen to produce a .mobi file, and view it on my Paperwhite, the endnote pops up, which is good. But the contents of the second endnote is also displayed, after the content of the first. It seems that the device does not realize that the first endnote has finished.

What's the correct markup for endnotes that does not string together consecutive endnotes in this way?

When I put pagebreak elements between the footnotes, the two-footnotes-in-one problem on my paperwhite goes away.

The footnote section of my ch001.xhtml file (generated by Kindlegen) looks like this:

Here is the text of a footnote↩

Here is text of another footnote↩

and so on...


How to tell whether a Google Play eBook is bootlegged/pirated? How can I tell if a Google Play Book is legit, i.e. submitted or sold by the author, publisher, or party with permission, and not a malware linking/containing or deliberately misleadingly edited bootleg?

Google Play has at least 3 elements of style to its eBook listings:

•   Whether the author name links to a list of other books available on the store written by the same author or links to an “about the author” page.

•   Whether the seller/publisher name is preceded by “Sold by”

•   Whether the seller/publisher name links to other eBooks they sell here

A.  One Second After has its author name linked to its “about the author” page, its publisher name preceded by “Sold by”, and its publisher name not linked.

B.  Rick & Morty Vol. 1 has its author name linked to its “about the author” page, its publisher name not preceded by “Sold by”, and its publisher name not linked.

C.  The Secret of Game Coding: Game Coding Complete Guide has its author name linked to other books by the same author—none on Google Play—no “about the author” page, its publisher name not preceded by “Sold by”, and its seller/publisher name is linked.

eBooks A & B are listed under the featured “Topsellers Under $10” section, have many positive reviews, and are likely legit. Why does A have the “Sold by” and B does not?

eBook C seems fishy. Its title is different from its print and NOOK edition’s, which is Game Coding Complete, Fourth Edition. Are there any cases for any book in which the Google Play edition’s title is different than the print or other eBook editions’?

The Google Play edition is $1.14, whereas the NOOK’s is $41.99. Is Google Play’s edition a bootleg? The publisher of the print and NOOK editions is Cengage Learning. The seller of the Google Play edition is BookSmart. Does Google allow the seller to not be the publisher? Googling BookSmart turns up nothing relevant to this seller in the top 10 results.

Aside from the title not matching its print edition’s, C’s main difference vs. A & B is that C has no link to “about the author” and C’s seller name links to the seller’s other items. Are either factors cautionary signs that can be applied to Google Play books in general?

It's very common for the listing for publisher to be the company that formatted and produced the ebook. I wouldn't read too much significance into that. Sometimes this conversion services just duplicate everything -- though it is peculiar that it doesn't include some identification on the title page.

Booksmart is the name of an application for blurb.com. It is not the name of a conversion company. (That is suspicious!) Also, note that the other items published by Booksmart all seem to be free. https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=BookSmart

I see all sorts of discrepancies on prices between BN, Amazon and GPB, but generally GPB tends to have the highest prices of them all. That's why it sounds suspicious.

It's hard to believe that someone has got through the hoops to get ebooks listed on GPB. (I have published 10 ebooks and still can't figure out how to get listed on GPB easily). But someone has managed to do so.

As an aside, this is just a PDF of the original printed ebook. (That's why it's not listed on Kindle -- formatting it properly would have been too difficult.


Kindle 5th needs repair I have Kindle 5th generation, model number D01100. I had this problem for few years now and I gave up. Recently I tried to turn it on and to my surprise it worked. Unfortunately after reboot it showed the same message: "Your Kindle needs repair. Please contact Kindle Customer service at kindle.com/support". I don't understand why did it turn on and why is it bricked again. I tried holding power button for 40 seconds but nothing happens. I plugged it to my PC but it is not detected.

Some Kindle users managed to trigger a factory reset using the following steps:

Charge the Kindle for several days (some users did this for a week).
Create an empty text file with the name DO_FACTORY_RESTORE and without any file type extension.
Connect the Kindle via USB and copy the file to the root directory.
Safe eject the Kindle and hold down the power button 40 seconds to trigger a factory reset.

The trick part is having the computer recognize the Kindle. (It might be only be visible in the Windows Explorer for a couple of seconds.)


Size of Epub Title Page (not cover) The title page is part of a book's front matter. The problem, of course, is that the concept of "page" in an ePub is slippery. In order to create a good-looking title page, some publishers embed a title page image. My question is, what size should this image be?

I am not referring to the size of the cover; that is a separate issue.

There are no size constraint as such for images ( eg . title page or any other image), however it is preferred to have high resolution images.

Note :  Just make sure if the book contain too many images, due to high res images epub size should not become too heavy.

Secondly make sure as a best practice following styling is carried for all images

All images width should be 100%:

img {width:100%;}

Bind every image inside a holder to control the size of the image as required:

div.imgHolder {
width: 85%;
text-align:center;
display:inline;}


SDK to create adobe id Does anybody know how to create adobe ids from some api or sdk? I have been looking for a while but I did not found anything yet

Adobe does not support this. Adobe does sell (or its partners) have what is known as a Vendor ID that you could build an API around for use in your application.

They do not allow the programmatic creation of Adobe IDs though.


What was the first book to be published electronically? If we consider an electronic book to be an non-printed book that is only "readable" via an electronic device.  Which book is the first book to be published electronically?

According to Wikipedia "The NLS was established by an act of Congress in 1931 amended in 1934 to include sound recordings, talking books.". It seems reasonable to assume that the first ebook was published in the early 1900's, so what was it?

Even though you tried to specify it, the answer still depends a lot on your definition of "book" and "electronic device". Wikipedia has a whole section on History of Ebooks. The quoted term "talking books" most likely refers to something we would call "Audiobooks" today, which even preceded the invention of electronics. Wikipedia on Gramophone Records

On electronics: The thermionic triode was invented in 1906, the transistor was invented in 1925, and the first programmable computer (Zuse's Z3) was built in 1941. Anything that we would consider a "book" needs significant storage space - a single page of text is about 10000 bits of data. Early electronics were not capable of anything of that sort. So the "early 1900s" is not a reasonable assumption.

You also mention "to be published"... that is a different matter entirely. Project Gutenberg started in the 1971, commercial publishers followed later.


Sending data automatically to a server from a PDF document Is there any way to send directly data from a PDF document back to a server?

I would like to collect data from readers of an ebook, preferably more or less automatically (with their full consent of the reader). Most ebook reader do not allow to send data e.g. reading analytics back to the writer, however PDF Forms supposedly designed explicitly with the purpose to collect data. However, the exact details and limitations are not clear for me even after reading their website:

Can I send any kind of data back to a server, or is there any restriction (e.g. only text that was typed some kind of From field)?
Can I send data automatically, e.g. after once the reader set the permissions or every single time I have to wait till the reader pushes some "send" button?

Answer:
the easiest way is to add URL-links in the PDF text, because is the unique widespread (standard) option to online interactivity, present in near all PDF-readers. Some variations: 1) a link to a complete online form webpage; 2) one link for each question/answer.

Comment: why to use PDF? and about EPUB?. EPUB is HTML, so have standard support to HTML interactivity.


Reducing size of e-book on .MOBI file. Or any alternative to .MOBI file for KDP I´m working on a e-book for kids with some images on it. I want to load to Amazon Kindle KDP.

I have a book that it is only 26 pages and that it would have about 25 images.

I tried to load the file in the Amazon KDP webside in word and pdf format and the whole formating is mess-up so the only way I found the format is correct is with using "Kindle Kids Book creator" and converting it to .MOBI

Kindle Kids Book is created by uploading a PDF

Initially my word document was 2.5MB --> 1,8MB the PDF --> Converted to 8.3MB the .MOBI File --> and 4.48MB the final or "fee" file

I tried to reduce my word document to reduced the size of the final file but the .MOBI and final final are still the same size

After reducing to 1.8MB --> 1,2MB the PDF --> Converted to 8.3MB the .MOBI File --> and 4.48MB the final or "fee" file

I´m sure I´m doing something wrong but I don´t know where:

It is not normal that other poeple told me that with the same number of images and 300 more pages his final file is 1.8MG and my file is 4.48MB
Is there any way to reduce the .MOBI file size??

Any help or clue it would be highly appreciate. Please considered that I´m totally new at this, so don´t fell bad talking to me like I´m a little baby
Thank you very much to all of you

It is not normal that other poeple told me that with the same number of images and 300 more pages his final file is 1.8MG and my file is 4.48MB

That measurement is not reliable and can very wildy based on the image quality and compression potential. Besides, 1.8 mb to 4.5 mb is not a big deal to worry about.

Is there any way to reduce the .MOBI file size??

How are you generating the mobi? Kindle Previewer or Kindlegen actually pack multiple formats into the result. For example Calibre's converter only outputs one format, thus reducing the file size. But as I said, the file size is not really anything to worry about.


Any way in Google Play books to reset my location to the beginning of a book? If I previously read a book that I bought on Google play, and wish to read it again --- is there a way to tell the Google server to forget about all the progress I made reading the book the first time -- that I want my "last reading location" to be reset to the beginning of the book?

I have tried looking both on the Google Play web-site and on the Google Play Books app on my phone --- and no place do I find the option for doing this. Can anyone help me here?

I have searched and searched and searched on the Internet for a way to do this --- and have found nothing. If there is a way to do this, that would be much appreciated.

Tap in the middle of the screen and a slider will appear at the bottom of the screen.


What is "text to speech"? I see some kindle books advertised on Amazon that say "text-to-speech: Enabled" what is this? How is it different from an audio book?

Text to speech is an ability of some computing devices to run a special program that will "speak aloud" a given text to you. That is, they process the text, and generate the sounds that resembles a person speaking that text aloud using speech synthesis algorithm.

A lot of different software supports text to speech; among them, Microsoft Reader as well as Kindle - at least the latter software running on Kindle 2d-gen or DX - here are instructions.
The difference from an audio book is that the latter is just an audio file; a recording of an actual human reading the book aloud, not the program producing the sounds.

Think of it as analogous to the difference between a video file from a movie depicting an actor doing things; and a computer game demo where a rendered video game character does those things on-screen.
"text-to-speech: Enabled" means that the book supports the ability of supporting book reader to render its text into speech, both from technical and licensing perspective. In case of Kindle Amazon books, since the technical capability is always there (same format), it's merely a question of licensing - see discussions of this (somewhat controversial and unpopular) feature here and here.


Using Nook outside the US I bought a Nook and I live in Mexico, I've read that you need a credit card to purchase books, but I don't want to buy books from b&n, my question is: do I need to add a credit card in order to use the nook? for example, there's this option where you can load your own ePubs from your computer, and that's the reason why I bought it, will that work without an account or US credit card?

Yes, you can load ePubs from your computer. I've done this in Israel with both a 1st generation Nook and a Simple Touch.


Kindle Touch 4th Generation does not render published font correctly I am using Calibre to create an ebook in Urdu language. The language is written from right to left. The whole book is in Unicode and uses UTF-8 encoding. If I open the book in TextEdit on Mac. Mac own fonts such as Helvetica shows the book like this:

Macbook TextEdit Screenshot

When using default Kindle fonts like Caecilia this is how it looks like

On Kindle with Default Font

However, when I use the published font i.e. the TTF font I have embedded in the ebook. It doesn't join the characters the way it's supposed to for languages like Arabic/Urdu. It shows each letter individually and it looks like:

On Kindle with published font

Am I missing something here or Kindle just can't use these embedded fonts correctly for non-latin languages?

I managed to solve this problem with help from mobileread forum. I am posting the link to answer here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3849282&postcount=2


Can I store my Kobo library on a PC to prevent lengthy download times Downloading my library each time I plug in to my account is eating into monthly download allocation.  Can these books be kept on my PC instead of in cloud?

Absolutely.

Download & install Adobe Digital Editions (http://www.adobe.com/solutions/ebook/digital-editions/download.html).
Follow the instructions here


Calibre: Adding ", " as a separator for splitting the authors string All of my ebooks have a filename of the form

author1, author2, ... - [series seriesindex - ] title.*

and I have set up Calibre to read metadata from the filename.

Calibre, however, does not seem to split on ", ". How do I modify the regular expression under "Preferences"->"Tweaks" -> "Splitting multiple author names" (authors_split_regex) to add ", " as a possible separator?

I wouldn't recommend this, to be honest. The general naming convention that Calibre expects as default uses comma to delimit author's first and last name, i.e. either Jane Doe or Doe, Jane. If you fiddle with the splitting regex and then try to import a book with this name pattern, you'll get into trouble - and I don't know if this tweak influences just newly imported books or all books within your library.

But if you want to experiment, this regular expression should work: (?i),?\\s*(and|with|,)\\s+. I would try this on a test library first, though, if I were you.

In general, I highly recommend using an online regex tester (with Python regex flavor) such as this one for working with Calibre, it saved me a lot of headaches in the past.


Kindle Create and full page images I use the kindle plugin for MS Word and Kindle Create from Amazon. I have several images in my book, which I want to always take up a full page with maximum size (margins are okay), independent of the chosen font size.
How can I do that? In both kindle previews which are provided by word and kindle create, the images resizes randomly if I change the font size. Even though if I choose the "full size" option in kindle create. What am I missing?

I guess it might be saving me some frustration if I would just hard code those ebook files. Any recommendations for free software making this more convenient than a text editor?

Thank you very much for any help!

In general, there is not a software solution to this problem because you have to design a responsive solution that works in various display sizes. Fixed layout solutions like Kindle Create may work in one display but not others. It is designed for simple ebooks; images involve some sophisticated css.

I wrote a code solution for the problem of image size on Kindle: https://www.reddit.com/r/selfpublish/comments/991c1h/what_is_the_ideal_image_size_for_kindle/e4t5oca/


Can an ePub 2.0 contain multiple .opf files? I've received an ePub with the following structure:

Abstract Container:
META-INF/
   container.xml
   varience.txt
OEBPS/
   content.opf
   Great Expectations.opf
   cover.html
   chapters/
      chapter01.html
      chapter02.html
      … other OPS files for the remaining chapters …

There are two opf files contained within it, but only content.opf is referenced by the abstract container's container.xml

I think this valid as I don't get any errors thrown by epubcheck, but I'm having trouble understanding why an ePub would be structured this way. I'm also a little confused by the Open Packaging Format (OPF) 2.0.1 spec as it says under the package conformance section: "it may consist of one or more XML files, but only one may use the file extension .opf."

So I guess my questions are:

Is it valid to have more than one .opf file? In what circumstances would this be useful?
Is it valid to list an .opf file that isn't referenced in the container.xml?
Is it valid to list multiple .opf files if they are referenced in container.xml? How would this be represented in container.xml? How would an ePub reader decide which to use?

I am not sure what your two .opf files contain, but the EPUB 2.0.1 specs http://www.idpf.org/doc_library/epub/OCF_2.0.1_draft.doc (section 10.1) say:

  The <rootfiles> element MUST contain at least one  element
  that has a media-type of “application/oebps-package+xml”. Only one
   element with a media-type of
  “application/oebps-package+xml” SHOULD be included. The file
  referenced by the first  element that has a media-type of
  “application/oebps-package+xml” will be considered the EPUB rootfile.
  The EPUB rootfile (the OPF package file) MUST NOT be encrypted.

This means that you can have more OPF files in the container, and even reference them in the container.xml, but only the first will be considered the primary one. (And, I add, most real world reading systems will ignore the others.)

Note, however, that you can have multiple renditions inside the EPUB container:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<container version="1.0" xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container">
<rootfiles>
<rootfile full-path="OEBPS/My Crazy Life.opf" media-type="application/oebps-package+xml" />
<rootfile full-path="PDF/My Crazy Life.pdf" media-type="application/pdf" />
</rootfiles>
</container>

So, just having another OPF file is fine, as long as you list it in the <manifest> (of the OPF actually referenced in the container.xml). For any functional purpose, it will be ignored by the reading system.

Comment 1: I still think that the EPUB you have been given is probably the result of some sort of experimentation, and having two OPF files is the result of some mistake.

Comment 2: in theory, having multiple OPF files is a way to pack multiple renditions of the same publication inside the same EPUB container. The IDPF has a working group on multiple renditions: http://www.idpf.org/epub/renditions/multiple/


Occasional blank pages in ePub produced by calibre from Word document I'm completely new to calibre and e-book creation in general. I've converted a large .docx file to ePub format. When I browse the result with the calibre e-book viewer there is sometimes a "blank page" between the end of one chapter and the start of the next chapter, i.e., I have to press PageDown twice instead of once to get to the next chapter. This worries me; I'm thinking the customer will consider this to be a formatting error, and result in negative feedback.

The location of these extraneous "blank pages" depends on the size of the viewer window, which makes it difficult to debug the situation.

In my Word document I end each chapter with a page break, so the end of a chapter may look like this:

When I look in the ePub file with calibre's file editor, I see this:

When the barman arrived Piotr waved him away. “I have changed my mind, it is time for me to go.”

Paul said, “Let us drive you home.” He got his wallet out and gave Piotr $200. When Henriette reached for her backpack Paul said to her, “No, no, expense account, remember?”

Now, if I delete the second-last line, the one with id="calibre_pb_14", this seems to "fix" the problem of there sometimes (depending on the viewer window size) being an extra "blank page" between this chapter and the next one.

But maybe that second-last line is needed for some functionality? Or maybe I'm doing something stupid somewhere? Can this problem be fixed, or should I ignore it?

EDIT

Sorry, but I've come to the conclusion that my question is in error. That second-last line represents an actual blank line in the .docx file. I had removed it from the Word document, but apparently failed to successfully replace the book in calibre's book library.

I don't use calibre to produce ebooks, but you should be looking at the css file. My guess is that p.block_7 has some code to force a page break.  You can probably fix the problem in two ways -- by removing the blank p tag  with the corresponding css or changing the css file itself. Here's code from my recent css file to see what live code looks like.

  p.centeredpagebreak {
     text-align: center;
     font-size: 1.2em;
     page-break-before: always;
     }

MORE about CSS

As you can guess there are also options to do page-break-after and to specify "never" instead of always. By the way, support for this css declaration is flaky; it varies on which reading system you're testing on. IIRC, Google Play Books doesn't support that.. Depending on the device and the context, sometimes Even Kindle doesn't always render it properly.

Answer 2: Like I said, I don't use MS Word/Calibre to format ebooks. But my guess is that if you use the HEADING style for each chapter, you don't need to include a page break in the MS Word file; Calibre will just assume that for every section with a HEADING style, it should insert a page break. Try this suggestion first before trying to mess with the css.


How to delete the comment in the pdf? I've tried using Adobe Reader and Adobe Acrobat to delete a comment in a pdf file. The comment was restored the moment I deleted it. How to delete it?
File: https://github.com/mjs225/deletepdf/raw/main/HowToDelete.pdf

I wasn't able to try your example, because it was using a non-standard font that would have required me to download a font pack.
In general, to delete a comment in Adobe Reader, you simply right-click on the comment you want to delete, and select "Delete" in the menu that pops up.

Comments never come back when I delete them that way. If your comments continue to return, then it sounds like there's something wrong with your document.


How to check easily MD5 signatures for Humble-Bundle ebooks? Humble-Bundle has a book section that sells weekly ebooks bundles. They
are very professional and provide a MD5 signature for each file, i.e.,
for each format of each book title. This makes it easy to check ebook files integrity, i.e., that
the ebook files have been dowloaded on the computer without error. One only has to recompute
locally the MD5 signatures, and compare them with those provided by
Humble-Bundle in the HTML dowload page, from which ebooks are dowloaded.

My problem is that when you download 3 files corresponding to 3
formats for each of 40 books in a bundle, that makes 120 files, and
the checking is a tedious and time consuming task, that should
nevertheless be done carefully (I think).  Actually, I feel that this
remains true even when you download only one format for each title.

I have started looking for a way of checking automatically the
signatures for all the downloaded files in a bundle. Of course, my
first question is whether existing tools are available for that.

I am specificaly looking for a tool running on Linux, but I guess
answers for other systems may be relevant answers, though probably useless for me.

The Humble-Bundle site does not seem to suggest anything of the kind.
All I found is the basic explanation for checking the MD5 signature of
a file.

A download checker for Humble Bundle book bundles.

Since there seems to be no answer from this community regarding an application meeting the request in my question, I decided to make one myself.

When you buy a bundle from Humble Bundle, whether books or games, they send you a web link to a HTML page (which I call here the download page).. You can then click on various buttons on the page to download the files composing your bundle. This page can also display on request the MD5 checksums (or signatures) for each of the files, which may be very large for comics and audio-books (and for games).

I wish to check mechanically with a single command that all files have been downloaded, and that the MD5 signature of downloaded files is identical to the MD5 signature specified in the download page provided by Humble Bundle.

The next section describes the rather simple script wrote to achieve my purpose. Given the doubts expressed in a comment to my initial question, it is worth noting that, while applying this script to my own purchases from Humble Bundle, both to check my downloads and to debug the script, I discovered a variety of problems, some related to mixed up MD5 specifications
(not really critical) and others related to various problems that must have occurred during download, that actually required action on my part. So the work was worth my effort.

As usual, this program is doing thing that were not initially intended by its author.

The download checker

The obvious first step is to have a command that will extract from the HTML source of the download page the names of the files together with the corresponding MD5. Here is such a command which is called humblemd5. It takes a single argument which is a file containing the HTML source code of the download page. This HTML source code can be downloaded with your browser.
The output is the list of names of the files to be dowloaded, each preceded by its MD5 signature. This is the standard format of the Linux command md5sum for computing the MD5 of a bunch of files, probably chosen for readability reasons.

Here is such a command written in Perl, developed on Linux, but hopefully working on other platforms. I have also a version written in Linux command line language BASH, since some users seem to have a liking for the command line, which I can add if requested.

#!/usr/bin/perl
# USAGE:  humblemd5 <local download page>

# Attribution : This code was written by Babou and is licensed as
#               Creative Commons By-SA or GNU GPL. Live long and prosper.

# This script "humblemd5" is intended to extract MD5 signatures of
# Humble-Bundle files books to be downloaded, from the HTML download page
# that provides the hyperlinks to the files.

# The only argument <local download page> is the path to a local copy
# of the download page.
# The standard output contains one line for each file, containing
# first the MD5 signature, followed by 2 spaces, followed by the file name.

# This is the format used by the command "md5sum" in Linux (probably
# also in other Unices).

use strict;
use warnings;

my $file= $ARGV[0];

my $pattmd5='^ *(
)?
$';

my $pattname='^      <a class="a" (download="" )?href="https://dl.humble.com/(.*)[?]gamekey=.*" data-web="https://dl.humble.com/\2[?]gamekey=.*$';

my $md5sig;

open my $fh, '<', $file or die "unable to open file '$file' for reading : $!";
while(my $line=<$fh>) {
    if ($line =~ s/$pattmd5/${2}/) {
      $md5sig = $line;
      chomp $md5sig
    } elsif ($line =~ s/$pattname/$2/) {
      print  $md5sig.'  '.$line
    }
}
close($fh);

The next step is to compute the MD5 signature of all downloaded files and check that they correspond to the list of names and md5 computed by this humblemd5 command from the download page.

The proper Unix/Linux way would be to have a standard command that checks whether a given bunch of files meet a specification defined by a list of file names preceded by MD5 signatures. I do not know whether such a command exists. Combined with the previous command, it would solve my question.

Instead, since the local topic is not programming but ebooks, I designed a command humblecheck that can be used directly to check downloads. This command is written in the BASH command language of Linux, which I think runs only on Unix systems. The reason is that my knowledge of Perl is getting very rusty, and that I am not sure I could write properly in a system independent way, given that I have no Windows or Mac for testing.

Hopefully the use of this command humblecheck is self explanatory. Its first argument is the download page, as for the previous command, and the second argument is the name of a directory supposed to contain the downloaded files.

#!/bin/bash
# USAGE: humblecheck <local download page> <books directory>

# Attribution : This code was written by Babou and is licensed as
#               Creative Commons By-SA or GNU GPL. Live long and prosper.

# This script "humblecheck" is intended to check MD5 signatures for
# book files downloaded from humblebundle.com. It probably works as
# well for other files, such as games, but I have not tried it.

# The first argument is the path to a downloaded local copy of HTML
# page used to download the book files, for example (this is a fake):
#   https://www.humblebundle.com/downloads?key=kabjr3jkj5&guard=JGUDEOP7

# The second argument is the path to a directory that contains the
# downloaded book files.

downpage="$1"
downdir="$2"
currentdir=`pwd`
tmpdir=/tmp/hb-md5check
rm -rf $tmpdir
mkdir $tmpdir

[ -s "$downpage" ] || { cat << END-text
First argument file $downpage does not exist or is empty. ABORT.
END-text
                     exit; }

[ -d "$downdir" ] || { cat << END-text
Second argument $downdir is not a directory. ABORT.
END-text
                     exit; }

[ "$(ls -A "$downdir"|head -1)" ] || { cat << END-text
Directory $downdir is empty. ABORT.
END-text
                     exit; }

cat << END-text
The files to be downloaded are accessed from a download page on the
Humble Bundle web site. This html page is copied locally in the file:
   $downpage
It contains the names of the files to be downloaded and the corresponding
MD5 signatures.

The files are supposed to have been downloaded in the download directory:
   $downdir

This script will now check that all files have been downloaded, and
that they have the correct MD5 signature.

It will also list files found in the download directory that are not
specified in the download page.

---  ---  ---

END-text

(cd "$downdir"; md5sum *) > $tmpdir/copysig
humblemd5 "$downpage" > $tmpdir/srcsig
cd $tmpdir

# We sort the lines of the two files in order to compare them.
# However, it seem more logical to sort with respect to file names in
# order to have a readable result, since it is the usual order of
# files. Hence, we have to exchange the order of MD5 and name on each
# line, before we compare the two files with "diff".

# However, we will change back the lines of the "diff" result, if any,
# to display the MD5 before the file name.

sed -e 's|^\([0-9,a-f]\{32\}\)  \(.*\)$|\2  \1|g' srcsig > srcsig-r
sort srcsig-r > srcsig-rs

sed -e 's|^\([0-9,a-f]\{32\}\)  \(.*\)$|\2  \1|g' copysig > copysig-r
sort copysig-r > copysig-rs

diff srcsig-rs copysig-rs > diff-r

sed -e 's|^\([<,>] \)\(.*\)  \([0-9,a-f]\{32\}\)$|\1\3  \2|g' diff-r > diffmd5

grep '^< \([0-9,a-f]\{32\}\)  ' diffmd5 > missing
grep '^> \([0-9,a-f]\{32\}\)  ' diffmd5 > extra

sed -e 's|^< \([0-9,a-f]\{32\}  .*\)$|\1|g' missing >  MISSING
sed -e 's|^> \([0-9,a-f]\{32\}  .*\)$|\1|g' extra >  EXTRA

if [ -s MISSING ]
then
   cat << END-text
The following files, specified in the download page, are missing in
the download directory, or contains errors (wrong MD5 signature).

`cat MISSING`

END-text
else
   cat << END-text
All files specified in the download page have been correctly downloaded
in the download directory.

END-text
fi

if [ -s EXTRA ]
then
   cat << END-text
The following files, not specified in the download page, or downloaded with
an error (wrong MD5), are found in the download directory:

`cat EXTRA`

END-text
else
   cat << END-text
All files found in the download directory are correct dowload of files
specified in the download page.

END-text
fi

 ( [ -s MISSING ] || [ -s EXTRA ] ) &&   cat << END-text
All file names listed are preceded by their MD5 signature.
It is the MD5 of the intended file in the download page, or of the actual
file found in the download directory.

END-text


What are my options for reading an ebook in the bathtub? About the only thing I miss about paperback books is reading in the tub. I don't think there are any waterproof ereaders so this is not a shopping question.

I have considered using the text to speech of my kindle keyboard, but pretty sure I would be tempted to try and pause or change the volume or do something else stupid that gets it wet and kills it.

I have considered putting either my Paperwhite or keyboard in a gallon-size zip lock bag and trying to read through the bag.  I have not tried reading through the bag, because if it works I would be tempted to jump in the tub and try it.  Not sure if I am ready to pay the price of that experiment if it failed.

Are there any viable options for reading an ebook in a tub full of warm water?

Waterfi sells waterproofed Kindle paperwhite. It's rather expensive ( approx. $100 more than a non-waterproofed Kindle ), here you can find a video review.


Kindle Paperwhite VS Kobo Glo: Screen Contrast Comparison The two e-readers are almost evenly matched in the physical features department. The only variable left out is the quality of the screens.

Both have great support structures (e-book stores) that may differ between several countries around the world (in my own country, the Kobo has two online stores that sell localized - translated - ebooks, while the amazon is rather lacking).

So I am going to compare only the devices technical specs.

Pros for each one (mostly taken from here):

Kobo Glo:

  28g lighter (13% lighter than Kindle)
  9mm shorter
  has Micro SD slot
  dedicated light switch button

vs

Kindle Paperwhite

  1mm thinner
  USB mass storage (can connect to thumb drives?)
  has a 3G version (I won't get a 3G e-reader though, but as reference)
  WHITE E-PAPER DISPLAY

Now, the real question is:

I had not the opportunity to put both devices side-by-side in front of me to test their screens. What is the contrast ratio on those two devices?

Bonus points if answer points me to tech sheets with the contrast info.

The Paperwhite uses a Carta e-ink screen with a contrast ratio of 15:1 however, here's a German test that says the contrast actually is 12:1 (assuming Google translate was accurate -- my German is horrible). It has comparisons with other models, too.

The Kobo Glo uses a Pearl screen with a contrast radio of 10:1

Here is an older comparison of the two models that puts the Kindle Paperwhite's contrast ratio at 11.5:1

Also, in terms of lending Kobos are compatible with library lending systems.


If a publisher owns the rights to their own content does it become public domain if they go out of business? If a publisher owns the rights to their content and they go out of business how can you find out who owns it?  Does the content they created and published become public domain?  Who would own the copyright if the author IS the publisher?

The publisher does not own the copyright unless they create the work--the author does. In traditional publishing, the author typically gives a world-wide exclusive license to use the copyright to the publisher, though many small and mid-sized presses will only ask for rights to the areas or languages they distribute in. If the publisher goes out of business or the work goes out of print, the rights generally revert to the author. If the rights do not revert, they may get sold to creditors or other interested parties to help settle the publisher's debts. If the publisher goes under in a huge mess, it's possible that the manuscript will become an "orphan work"--which basically means that nobody is really sure who owns the copyright.


How can I extract all the pictures from an ebook? I read most of my books in txt format. I use Calibre to convert them to that format. While it works great for books that are mostly text, some ebooks which contain pictures can be very confusing when the pictures are removed. Is there some way to either:

Take all the images from a book and save them into one folder without having to copy each picture one at a time, or
Screenshot each page of the book with a program (again, I don't want to have to do this manually)?

If it could be done in bulk for many books, and with a Calibre plugin, that would be even better.

Any non-DRM'ed epub ebook is just a renamed zipped folder. All you'll need to do is rename the file from <filename>.epub to <filename>.zip and unzip the folder. At that point, you should be able to navigate within the folders to find the images and do whatever you like with them.

Hope that helps!


How to read books on computer on kobo I made an account on kobo, then bought a book, but then i have no idea what to press to read it, when i go there it says ''you already own this title, write a review or view in my books'' i go to view in my books  and it brings up the book, if i press on the picture it goes back to the start, if i press on the name under the picture it goes to the start, i am not sure how to start reading the book.

You need to download it to your pc. Kobo does not seem to have a Web viewer unlike amazon.

The easiest way is to get the kobo app from the kobo site from the apps and ereaders menu.


Where can I download free ebooks? I have been searching for ebooks but I don't have money to buy them. Can I get them for free?

I am not sure what you consider an interesting book.  That depends much on the reader. Anyway, I edited your question to remove the reference to "interesting books", since it is a matter of opinion and as such is generally a proscribed issue on StackExchange.

Asking for, or giving a list of places where you can find free ebooks is also proscribed, as it can give rise to endless lists and answers. Furthermore, it would make little sense since the question would become far too broad (another proscribed situation), because you did not specify (fortunately, I think) the kind of books you are interested in.  I am saying fortunately, because it does leave open the one proper option, which is to describe in general terms some current disseminations and pricing practices, which structure the ebook market.
These should be hints as to how to search on your own the current market for sources of free book. Ad searching is good, because its is always an open door for serendipity.

Answers to your question may also depend on how legal you expect the download
to be. For several reasons I would discourage downloading from illegal
sites and I will thus ignore this possibility.

Parameters that may play an important role include :

the kind of book you are looking for : romance, scifi, thriller,
philosophy,   mystery, comics, etc.;
the book format:  epub, mobi,
pdf, scanned pdf, ... knowing that  readers do not always accept all
formats;
your tolerance to DRM  (Digital Right Management systems).
Though rarer for free books, they manage to be a pervasive annoyance
in any context;
whether you might be willing to pay a very small
price rather than nothing.

Note also that some books (whether free or not) may not be
downloadable from some countries.

Without attempting to list sources, 2 sites are major entry points for public domain books, that cannot be ignored:

The primary source of well formatted free ebooks is certainly
Project Gutenberg. I would say they have a very large
collection of interesting books, well digitalized.
If you are not fussy about format, there is also the Internet
Archive, which has pointers to lots of library resources, some
of which do offer public domain books for free. And there is the
Internet Archive own repository. But these books may be in
awkward formats, or poorly digitalized ... the technical quality is
very variable.

But since the above sources are making available public domain books, they are   unlikely to contain recent books.

Many independent authors give some of their ebooks for free, though
you seldom get complete series (but it does happen). They will often
ask you to subscribe to their mailing list in exchange for the free
book(s). And some of these mails will contain information about other
free resources. See BookFunnel and Instafreebie. Many author will give you books for free, in exchange for honest independent reviews on various sites. You may also get pre-release versions (ARCs, i.e., advance review copy) in exchange for reviewing or proof-reading the book.

Most retailers (including Kobo, Smashwords or Amazon) have a lot of
books available for free, sometimes permanently, sometimes only for 2
or 3 days. Grab what you want, as it may be gone tomorrow.

You can subscribe to various daily mails that will keep you informed
of such opportunities. Examples include BookBub, The Fussy Librarian,
Book Cave , Robin Reads, BookBarbarian and many others.  Some mailing
lists may specialise on topic, publisher or retailer. Just subscribe
to some.

Some publishers give away free books to people who are subscribed to
their mailing list. Some of them are quite good, though they are often
the first volume of a series. For example, the publisher Arc Manor (aka Phoenix Pick) specialises in science
fiction, and has one book for free every month.

Many books can be bought for very low prices, such as $1 or $2,
including award winners and classics.

A good source can also be to buy book bundles. Humble Bundles has some
great opportunities in all kinds of books (including comics). You can
typically get a bundle of 25 books of good average quality (including
some top ones) for $15. You may also want to look at StoryBundle
bundles, though they are less varied, and a bit more expensive. Besides these two bundling retailers, you can sometimes get bundles from publishers or retailers.

There is a lot more to be said and found, but this ought to get you
started. My information is probably biased by the kind of books I am
interested in.

But it is also important to help by paying when you can. Most of these books
have to be produced and edited by people who try to make a living.


Can you use CSS to target iOS night reading mode? Is there a way to target Night mode (or Sepia or Gray mode for that matter) on iBooks with custom CSS? I have decorative elements in my chapter headings that I would like to match with the text colors in the various modes, but as it is they are disappearing against the black background.

Since I'm trying to match those themes, what are the hex codes for the text and background colors? I know that the text in Night mode is not true white, so I'd like to match that if possible.

I found the answer to this on stackoverflow. You can target different iBooks reading modes using these special CSS selectors:

:root[__ibooks_internal_theme*="Sepia"]
:root[__ibooks_internal_theme*="Gray"]
:root[__ibooks_internal_theme*="Night"]

Here's an example. I was using an <hr> below my chapter heading. I set the color to black, but in Night mode it disappears on the black background. This CSS changes the color to match the text when Night mode is active:

hr {
  border: 0;
  border-bottom: 1px solid black;
}
:root[__ibooks_internal_theme*="Night"] hr {
  border-bottom: 1px solid #b0b0b0;
}

Used appropriately, this is super useful for getting your decorative elements to show up in Night/Gray modes or for retaining syntax highlighting in a programming book while in Night/Gray mode. However, as others have said on stackoverflow and at the github page with sample code, this is not a method that Apple has officially sanctioned, so remember not to abuse it or they could start blocking it.

For reference, here are the default text and background colors for all four themes (obtained from screenshots of iBooks on my iPhone 6):

"White"
    color: #000000;
    background-color: #fbfbfb;
"Sepia"
    color: #000000;
    background-color: #f8f1e3;
"Gray"
    color: #c9caca;
    background-color: #5a5a5c;
"Night"
    color: #b0b0b0;
    background-color: #121212;


Will I be able to read PDFs in Cyrillic on Kindle (classic)? I have many PDF's in Russian, with embedded fonts. Will I be able to read them on my Kindle (classic) device?

Yes, Kindle (classic) has no problem with displaying Cyrillic characters in PDFs.

Here is the proof:


How widely used is Social DRM? I know through past questions and some researching that the four most widely used DRM formats for e-books are: Amazon's DMR, Adobe's Adept DRM, Apple's Fairplay, and Marlin's.

I am just wondering how widely social DRM models have been adopted by e-book publishers and if there are any prominent examples.

Also are there any good sources of information to look through if a publisher were trying to decide between technical DRM and social DRM?

Most of my experience with social DRM has been through smaller tech publishers like The Pragmatic Bookshelf, where they embed the purchaser's name into the title of the book, like <dc:title>Programming Ruby 1.9 &amp; 2.0 (for [name])</dc:title>.

Probably the biggest titles to use social DRM, though, are the Harry Potter books through Pottermore. Here's a link to an article that goes into detail about it: http://copyrightandtechnology.com/2012/04/08/the-harry-potter-watermarking-experiment/ and a relevant chunk:

  The EPUB version that I downloaded is not DRM-protected; instead it
  contains two things: “This book is watermarked and was acquired by
  user ec107c00b9577436d6354e54cd9da5c9 on 31 March 2012″ on the
  copyright page, and various bits of data inserted invisibly into
  images and other places inside the book.

As far as pros and cons of social DRM vs. more traditional DRM: there's lots of info out there that suggests that DRM in general is not terribly useful, but there are strong feelings on both sides of the issue. I'd suggest checking out what tech publisher Tim O'Reilly has to say: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0411/focus-tim-oreilly-media-e-book-antipiracy-steal-this.html.


How to make images scale with text size on an Amazon Kindle? I am trying to create an book for use on my Kindle.  The text has mathematical inline formulas rendered as images and for the formulas to fit in well, the images need to scale with the text size.  I got this to work for epub files, using tags like <img src="int.png" style="width: 20.35ex; height: 3.76ex; vertical-align: middle"/>, but when I convert the epub file to mobi format, the image scaling breaks and the formulas come out the wrong size, looking for example like this oversized  integral.

Is there a way to make my images scale proportional to the font size on a Kindle, either in a mobi file, or in any other format the kindle will display?

Updates:

I am using Calibre to convert epub to mobi.
The approach described above works with Amazon's kindlegen utility.  Because of kindlegen's somewhat restrictive term's of use, I am still looking for a solution which works with Calibre.

First, I don't know the specifics of using Calibre for images, but here is the css code I use to make images work in epubs which will be converted by kindlegen to Kindle.

https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/a/6515/417

Generally I upload d a high resolution image and then specify the width for certain sizes. Kindlegen will downconvert the images as needed.

From my example, I said that width was 95%, but you can make it 30%, 50%, whatever.

I don't know why you're using ex as units -- especially because you dealing with images of text rather than actual fonts as text. I'm guessing you're looking at autogenerated code from MS Word or Indesign?

For more background about formatting images for kindles, see their publishing guidelines. http://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf

Eventually I imagine you could use MathML instead of a graphic, but that's not supported yet in Kindle.


Can a PDF run scripts or code? Can a PDF run JavaScript?

If yes what are the limitations of running scripts in a PDF when compared to a browser?

Can it do network requests using JS?

Can it run other types of scripts?

Is JavaScript used to submit embedded forms?

Yes, it can JavaScript or what they call as Acrobat Javascript , but not all the PDF viewer can are designed to follow the Adobe Javascript API. There are few limitations defined in the API, it can make Ajax network calls but no it cannot run any other then the JavaScript  as of now.

But you can disable it by

Select Edit>Preferences.
Select the JavaScript Category.
Uncheck the Enable Acrobat JavaScript' option.


Can I disable Calibre from doing any conversion? I’d like to use Calibre purely for librarying and sync, and I don’t want it do do any conversion between different ebook formats. It is possible to turn off autoconversion when syncing ebooks with my reader (Kobo Aura H2O)?

To give a specific example, I’d like the Kobo edition of Standardebook’s Crime and Punishment to not be converted to a normal EPUB on loading into Calibre, as it loses a chunk of formatting and the cover when synced. Manually sideloading it into my Kobo retains the cover, chapter progression markers etc etc. This is using latest Calibre (3.7).

In Preferences - Adding Books in Adding Actions tab there is a preference Automatically convert added books to the current format You need to click that off. The default is off.


How to OCR tables of contents to proper outputs? Usually when OCR an table of content the columns are separated by a large space, so the outputs are not properly order. For example, for an table like this:

The output would be:

The Rank Function
Permutations of Atoms
Pure Set Theory and Axiom System ZF
3.5
3.6
3.7

I'd like it to be:

3.5 The Rank Function\112
3.6 Permutations of Atoms\116
3.7 Pure Set Theory and Axiom System ZF\118

But different TOCs has different the output patterns, so there is no way to build a regex script to automatically fix every book. The best approach is to fix it at the first place. But how?

Define what is: "fix it at the first place".

If you want to fix wrong output from OCR analysis, a simple solution on an infinite set of TOCs you will never make.
You will never apply all variations. You would have to create a machine learning algorithm that would analyze each TOC variant.

Or count substrings of the same characteristics (in simple TOC).

Chapter number
Chapter number
Chapter number
Chapter number
Chapter number
...

= 5

Chapter title
Chapter title
Chapter title
Chapter title
Chapter title
...

= 5

If you want to fix OCR analysis, it's a good to answer:
What OCR tool do you use?

For example, in Tesseract you can set, that text is processed by rows instead of columns.


Moon+ Reader -- what kind of CSS support? formatting tips? A friend recommended Moon+ Reader for android and I was initially impressed by all the features and controls.

Then I checked how my own published books render in Moon+. I saw lots of weird things. If it matters, I'm on Android 4.21 for one device and Android 4.1 on my Nook HD+ tablet.

For example, I formatted a play epub which involved lots of hanging indents and centered paragraphs and verse, none of which seemed to render correctly. This play rendered correctly on ibooks, kindle, ADE and nook, but it seems that Moon+ Reader seems to disable css completely.

In options --> Miscellaneous, I toggled Disable CSS styles and checked "SHow "Preview with Publisher Formatting" button.

But it seems to make no difference. I see almost no publisher css except for bolds and italics.

I'm guessing that Moon + just doesn't support a lot of CSS and that "Preview with Publisher Formatting" just doesn't work.  If that's the case, so be it, but I find it hard to believe. Also, I would appreciate any online references to CSS support for each  ebook software. Maybe moon+ doesn't have a lot of mindshare, but I find it hard to believe that I'm the only one to notice these deficiencies.

This thread http://www.mobileread.mobi/forums/showthread.php?t=194146&page=11 seems to confirm that Moon+ Reader disables publisher defaults by design, but the setting to change that doesn't appear to do anything as well.

There is now a setting in MoonReader to disable publisher's CSS. But even when it's not checked, not all CSS is supported.
I've tested multiple Android Epub readers with a bilingual epub I made, where the two languages are distinguished by the background colour and the font style (the second language is in italics). Only the Gitgen Epub reader displays the background color and the font style properly.
According to my tests, these Android epub readers support font styles (bold and italics) but not background color:

Prestigio
Moon Reader
Pocketbook
Mantano
UB Reader

FB Reader did not even show italics.
I applied the CSS by selecting the class, using !important.


How can non-US customers buy Kindle Active Content Kindle Active Content allows software to be purchased and used on the e-ink Kindles. It is however only available to US customers. Is there any way for foreign customers to buy these items?

I have heard suggestions such as changing your Amazon account postal address to a US address, though this might be in breach of their Terms of Service and I haven't done it as I don't want to risk my account. Is this a good idea?

You got me curious, so I started digging through the terms of service. Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer, so anything I say is just my own personal interpretation of the terms.

After reading through who-knows-how-many documents, this is all I could come up with.

The Kindle Store Terms state:

  "In addition, you may not bypass, modify, defeat, or circumvent security features that protect the Kindle Content." (emphasis mine)

This is a little vague, but using an address that isn't yours to access Kindle content could possibly be seen as "bypassing" security features.


NCX TOC - Hide the external TOC in EPUB 2? Is there a way to completely remove or deactivate the external TOC?  Would the code be written in the NCX file or elsewhere?  If code could be provided that would be helpful as well.

You cannot deactivate/remove the ncx file. As the epub will not validate without it. Why dont you just simply remove all the links from within it, that way, if a reader does open it up in a sidebar it will simply show a blank screen. Not really user friendly though. I would recommend you add atleast one entry, pointing to the start of your book or your "internal toc".
Taking the above into consideration your navmap inside your ncx file would look something like this:

<navMap>
    <navPoint id="navpoint1" playOrder="1">
        <navLabel>
            <text>Your book title</text>
        </navLabel>
        <content src="page1.xhtml" />
    </navPoint>
</navMap>


How can I add a European card to my nook? I bought a nook in the USA and I live in Ireland. I would like to buy online books from B&N but my credit card is from Ireland.

How can I add a European card to my nook?

B&N will not sell ebooks overseas (well, they did not last time I checked). I guess they may use the credit card to check that.  However, You do not have to buy from them.

What matters for you is the standard used for ebooks, not who sells them. The nook uses epub, which is the main international standard (Amazon uses its own private standard).
So you can buy epub books from some other source and then load them onto your nook ereader.

You can buy epub from Kobo, Humble Bundle, smashwords, Wildside Press, Baen, Phoenix Pick, and lots of other sources (my own sources are SciFi oriented).


What page size maximizes readability across common ebook readers? Suppose that I have to create a PDF ebook (meaning no automatic word reflow, etc). What page size (width by height) maximizes readability across common e-readers and mobile devices?

Context: I typically create my ebooks using LaTeX, meaning that the PDF format is the only option I have easy access to. It's possible to design for multiple form factors, but each additional form factor requires additional debugging (in the form of looking for overfull/underfull hboxes, hyphenation issues, etc.), which is why I would prefer to work with only one form factor.

This would be extremely difficult since the broad range of devices out there have vastly different physical screen sizes and aspect ratios. Your best bet would be to use a small page size (perhaps 4" x 3") so that users with e-book apps on their smartphones would still be able to comfortably read the text. This comes at a price: e-book readers or tables with large screens will display very large text - although some might allow you to zoom out or display multiple pages at a time.

I would suggest a slightly different route based on this similar question. Instead of exporting from LaTeX to PDF, export to HTML. Then use a tool such as Calibre to convert the HTML files produced to a MOBI or EPUB file.


want to convert OCR PDF to computer font my pdf text is too blurry. so i want to convert it to computer font from scanned image.i already tried increassing quality by adobe/edit/preferences/page display.
<img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/LvQ5l.png" alt="
ht" />

The problem is that the original image of the text is "in front" of the actual digital text of the PDF.

Figure 1: How layers are stacked in a PDF

PDF is composed of overlapping visible and invisible layers. OCR attempts to use algorithms to identify text placement and size, then place text objects under the original images of the pages.
See these blog entries: blogs.acrobat.com
Also, please see question by @tel here for additional discussion: How to replaces images of text in PDFs with formatted text using OCR
Without a professional subscription, I would use Adobe Acrobat DC to output as XML or DOCX, go into the XML and remove the images (e.g., using a regular expression), then try to apply text correction to the resulting document.

Figure 2: ABBYY FineReader 15 Option

By the way, ABBYY FineReader has an option to save your OCR results as pure text — not invisible text under an image of the text. The software isn't cheap, but the investment can make sense if you're often doing OCR.


Unable to purchase from UK kindle store (2nd Gen) I'm having a problem purchasing from the Kindle Store in the UK with my 2nd generation kindle (3G).

My account was originally with US store then moved to the UK store not too long after Amazon opened the UK store.

The message I get is "The Kindle store is currently unavailable. Please try again later." I can still download already purchased content from both the US & UK stores, so it just means I have to buy via my computer and don't get access to the limited Prime lending library.

My attempts to fix this by speaking to Amazon UK gets the answer speak to Amazon US it's a hardware problem, speaking to Amazon US gets the answer speak to Amazon UK it's an account problem (after being walked through factory default resets etc by both support desks).

What I have noticed (annoyingly after speaking to Amazon)  is that the time is out by an hour on the Kindle. Changing network by typing '311' on the setup page doesn't seem to fix this. I'm pretty sure the last thing I purchased via the kindle was on the 3rd of May so I'm not sure if my store problems are related to summer time.

Using @time in the search box displays the time zone as being British Summer Time but out by an hour. The 611 page displays the time as the current local time with a local time offset of +1h.

So my questions are as follows:

a) Is the incorrect time likely to be the reason the Amazon store won't let me connect?

b) If you can't get to the store when the clock is wrong what can I do to correct it?

First, did you update the firmware https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/20/11271880/amazon-kindle-emergency-update-unable-to-connect-at-this-time

Second, a second gen device is REALLY old (released in 2009). It's probably a good idea to upgrade to a reasonably new device. It's hard to service a model that is more than 8 years old, and sometimes Kindle disables features or won't fix bugs on older models.

You could probably buy a good used model that is 2 years old  (say the Paperwhite 2) from ebay or woot (which is owned by Amazon btw) for less than 100$ and probably get better support for these kind of syncing or global issues. Also, there were major changes made in 2013-4 which would improve the layout and design of the text (Bookerly font, support for KF8 format), not to mention performance.

Here's some FAQ about having a Kindle account in multiple countries.

https://www.ereader-palace.com/faq-different-countries-amazon-kindle-stores-accounts/


How can I reduce the resolution of images in an epub or mobi file? Some of the last O'Reilly ebooks I got have become really large (e.g. 60MB for the mobi version and 5.5MB for the epub version) - and these are computer science text books (not art books). The customer support claims that this is o.k. and they want to provide high quality images.

Is there software that can easily reduce the size of images in an epub or mobi by e.g. downsampling them? Is there a calibre plugin for this?

Calibre already offers this functionality without any plugin. It's part of the ebook editor that installs with Calibre.

The editor will only edit files in the epub or azw3 format though. You can convert the mobi file to azw3 and then edit it. Converting it from mobi to azw3 may automatically downsize the file, but I'm not sure.

Once you have the file opened in Calibre's ebook editor, click on Tools, then click "Compress images losslessly".

Calibre > click the ebook > Edit book > Tools > "Compress images losslessly"

This will bring up a dialog where you can accept the default compression or choose your own. The downside to this is that it only compresses images that are in the jpg format.


Transferring files from one Kindle to another with a forgotten password My cousin has recently got a new Kindle Fire HDX and she wants to transfer onto it all her books and music from her older Kindle HD (smaller than the newer Kindle, but in all other respects they look the same). Unfortunately she cant remember the password for the older Kindle.

Being the family IT "expert" Ive been given this problem to solve, however I have never used a Kindle before. After some searching about on the web, it seems to me I just need to log into the new Kindle with the same account (xxx@kindle.com) and password as the old one, and then select Archive and download all the books etc. from the cloud.

However, not knowing the password to this original kindle poses problems. Looking on the Kindle Support section of the Amazon website it seems there is no password recovery option - you have to reset the Kindle, wiping everything off it, to be able to set a new password.

Is my understanding of this all correct?

Is there a better / simpler way of transferring all the books and music from the old Kindle to the new one?

I just wanted to get some advice off somebody who is more knowledgeable than me on Kindles before I start wiping devices and the realizing I made a terrible mistake.

Thanks in advance.

You don't need to worry about accessing the old kindle. Everything purchased through amazon remains available from the cloud. Presumably your cousin used the same Amazon account to purchase both kindles.  Just log on and send it to the new kindle.

If not, go to amazon.com click sign in and than go through the forgotten password process for the original Amazon account. The password for the old kindle may be different and does not matter, it is only the account that matters.

Once you have access to both accounts, you will need to transfer the new kindle to ownership of the old account. Then you will be able to download to from the cloud as you learned in your earlier research.

Alternatively you can keep the accounts separate, after you have accessed the old account, you can download to the PC and transfer to the new kindle, but this will only work for non-DRM works.  DRM works will be restricted to devices registered to the original account.


Can I make my ebook free while retaining the paperback available on KDP I have a computer title as an ebook and a paperback on KDP. Because the book is about an open-source software I have promised to make the ebook free after one year. I can make the epub a free download from my website. My question is whether KDP will allow the ebook to be removed while continuing to sell the paperback.

Paperback and ebook are two different items, as far as KDP is concerned. I have published some paper book without the Kindle version (which is free on my site) and nobody ever complained.


What is the best way to read manga on Kindle? I have a Kindle 5 and I would like to read manga (japanese comic) on it. What methods can I use? What format is the best and is there any converter that can create that format from a bunch of JPEG files?

Also, I have Ubuntu, so if a program is required, it would be better if it is available for Linux.

The fastest and simplest way is to use a comic book archive format.

If you already have the image files, make sure that they are named with the correct alphabetical and numerical order (I.E. cover.jpg, page001.jpg, page002.jpg and so on); the program that you will use to read the comic will display your images in alphabetical order.
Then you can simply compress them in a .zip archive, and rename it's extension from .zip to .cbz. If you prefer, you can also compress the files in a .rar archive, but in this case you should rename it in .cbr.
Your ereader should be able to read one of these formats.

Alternatively, you can try PDFtk, it is a nice tool for manipulating PDF in various ways; it is cross-platform (hence you can find it also in the Ubuntu repositories) and can be used to create a PDF from the source images.
I've always used it from Command Line, but on openSUSE repositories I found at least a couple of graphical interfaces, the packages are named pdftk-qtgui and pdfchain; I suppose that these should be available on Ubuntu as well, try to look for them (bear in mind that on different distros, the package names could be a little different).


How to sync my Kindle with my Kindle library without using WiFi? This is a question that plagued me a while ago when my wireless router refused to work correctly with my Kindle Touch (3G edition).

I had a document that I wanted to transfer to my Kindle as well as my Kindle Library. Both of these tasks where easy enough to accomplish on their own:

I connected my Kindle to my PC via USB and copied it to the appropriate directory on the device.
I sent an email to my send-to-Kindle email address with the document as an attachment.

Unfortunately, when my Kindle would sync via 3G, I would end up with an extra "book" in my library - the document I sent to my library via email. Of course, the document wouldn't download since I wasn't connected via WiFi so I was left with a copy of the document on the device and another copy waiting to download.

Why couldn't my Kindle recognize that I already had the document on the device? Is there any way to add a document / book to your Kindle library and still have the Kindle recognize that it exists when manually copied to the device?

Using Calibre you could try :

Adding the book in the Calibre library
Sending the book to your Amazon email address (Right click on the book > Connect / Share)
Sending the book to your Kindle while it is connected to your computer (Right click on the book > Send to device)

Of course this requires some initial configuration (telling Calibre how to send email, ...) and I can not guarantee it will work having no 3G Kindle to test it myself.

But it seems to be worth a try as it would most likely make sure that the file that gets copied on your kindle has the right format/information to be identified correctly.


How to put downloaded Kindle e-books on to a Kindle device that cannot access the internet I have a Kindle device, but it cannot connect to the internet because the only internet I can access requires signing in, and the Kindle just can't be controlled accurately enough for me to select the User Name and Password fields to type in.

The Kindle itself is also registered with some Amazon account whose details I don't have. I have my own Amazon account, and I have purchased an e-book on it. I have also downloaded it from the Cloud on to the Kindle app for PC, and downloaded it (apparently on to my hard drive) from the Kindle app. So the book should be sitting somewhere on my PC.

Is it possible for me to transfer the book file from my PC to my Kindle over USB? How do I even locate the book document on my PC?

Or, to circumvent this problem, if anyone knows how to navigate sign-in screens on a non-touch-screen Kindle, that would make everything a lot easier.

(Note: I can read the book on my PC with no problems, but I'd much rather read it on the Kindle.)

Calibre can transfer the book from your PC to Kindle.