Are soft hyphens supported by epub devices? Sometimes it would be useful to hyphenate some long words, so that the spaces between words remain small even in case of justified text. This is even more important when reading in a small device, where a line can contain only a few dozen characters. But of course hard hyphens do not work with a fluid text.

Soft hyphens could be a nice solution, but I fear that they do not have a wide support. Do you know if ePub2 manages them?

I don't have definitive information here. But a google search reveals that Kindle has improved their support for soft-hyphens recently. But mostly this is done within the reading system.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/standardebooks/v_oRXH6mLwQ
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=285812

Quote:

  While Amazon, intent on keeping developers miserable, declined to explain how their new hyphenation engine works, it actually appears to just be support for the Unicode soft hyphen character (U+00AD).  If Kindle encounters a soft hyphen near a line break, it considers it a hyphenation opportunity.

I did a quick check of Google Play Books and Kindle for Android and see that body hyphenation doesn't seem to be turned on. I seem to remember that iBooks hyphenated body text (maybe). The Amazon formatting guidelines doesn't mention anything about it.

I suspect that unless you are using specialized or technical texts with a lot of long multi-syllable words, it doesn't make sense for the author/publisher to add the soft-hyphen character yourself.


Does .epub support inline links? I want to better understand what options the .epub format have to provide more dynamic experiences than just reading a text linearly.

Is there a way to have links inside an ePub that point to another location in that ePub?

Yes, you can do that, .epub books are basically made of HTML and CSS, so if you have knowledge of these languages, in theory you can manually build an .epub from scratch (but the norm is to use specific GUI editors, that help you with this and many other tasks).

Anyway, like I said, it is just HTML, so you just need to set ID's and anchors:

  Example

  First, create a bookmark with the id attribute:

Chapter 4

  Then, add a link to the bookmark ("Jump to Chapter 4"), from within the same page:

  Jump to Chapter 4

  Or, add a link to the bookmark ("Jump to Chapter 4"), from another page:

  Jump to Chapter 4

  Source: HTML Links from W3 Schools


Can I legally remove DRM from ebooks I have purchased if I live in Canada? I live in Canada, and I currently use a Sony Reader. My family keeps giving me Chapters/Indigo gift cards to buy books with, which used to be great when I had a Kobo reader and could get ebooks that way.

However, I have discovered that the Adobe DRM that Kobo/Chapters/Indigo use for their ebooks works in such a way that it isn't actually possible for me to put those books on my Sony Reader without removing the DRM.

This is incredibly unfortunate, as now I have books that I can't read unless I use Kobo's mobile/desktop apps. I know removing DRM is, well, not exactly looked positively upon by the companies, but do I have a legal leg to stand on if I am only removing the DRM for my own personal use, once I have already paid for a copy of the ebook?

Well, according to this blog, it says Bill C-11 (Copyright Modernization Act, which amends the existing provisions of the Copyright Act) has made it illegal to break DRM in Canada.

An excerpt from the actual Bill C-11 (Section 1f):

  Bill C-11 prohibits the circumvention of any access control installed
  on a work, performer’s performance fixed in a sound recording or a
  sound recording, even if the work subject to the digital lock is
  legally acquired.

  The digital lock prohibitions in the Act could potentially “trump” or
  prevail over various exceptions in the Copyright Act, e.g. the fair
  dealing or educational exceptions.

Bummer...


Does a “one-fits-all” file format exist or should I offer multiple ebook formats? I want to publish my first e-book, but the multitude of available file formats (PDF, ePUB, MOBI, TXT, etc.) is a bit overwhelming. As a result, I am not really sure which format (if any) would be able to reach most readers.

Before I opt-in to simply offering multiple file formats (and let individual readers choose what fits their needs best), I would like to know if there is any "one-file-format-fits-all-ebook-readers" file format.

Does any "universally agreed-upon standard file format" for ebooks exist, that most (if not all) ebook readers are able to handle?

Virtually all e-book readers can display PDF files. Unfortunately, PDF documents are "pre-rendered" - the text is positioned on the page in absolute coordinates and text cannot reflow on smaller / larger devices (without hacks or trickery that rarely work well).

TXT files are a good option if formatting isn't a concern. Most e-book readers can display TXT files (I just double-checked that they work out-of-the-box on my Kindle Touch). The downside, of course, is that you cannot use any formatting.

This leaves you with two common formats:

EPUB (supported by Nooks, iBooks, Kobo, and Sony devices)
MOBI (supported by Kindle devices)

This page displays a table of devices and their supported formats.

I would actually suggest a completely different approach - produce content using a markup language (like Markdown or HTML) and then use a tool to convert the files to the e-book formats you wish to support. Tools like Calibre support nearly every format under the sun, so you can choose as many formats as you want.


Could my eBook reader be infected by some sort of virus? There're many eBook Readers out there, each one with its own operating system, some of them based on Android.

Is it possible for these devices to get infected with some sort of virus or trojan? Or there have been already any experience with this problem?

As long as those readers don't provide the possibility to install third party software you should be quite safe.
As the main weakness of Android is the Enduser - installing bad applications containing malware and in the worst case viruses.


How to change the images displayed when my Kindle Touch is put to sleep? Whenever I press the power button on my Kindle Touch, an image is displayed on the e-ink screen. The images depict various typographical tools and elements (like a typewriter, etc.).

However, it would be nice to use my own images in their place. Is this possible? How would I go about doing this?

This is possible. However, you must jailbreak your Kindle first. Basically you:

Jailbreak the Kindle.
Load the screensaver hack to your Kindle.
Copy the images to your Kindle. This site has a list of places to get these.


How to avoid ebook image distortion I'm experimenting with Calibre. I have a Word document, with several JPEG images inserted, each of them 537px wide. I exported the document as html, zipped everything and re-opened in Calibre.

After conversion, in the Calibre reader the images are squashed horizontally.
Is there anyway to have them scale proportionally?

Also, the cover - a PNG - does not scale proportionally (e.g. when the TOC is opened, it squashes horizontally too).

thanks

This sounds like a problem with the CSS that Calibre is generating for the epub file. Without seeing the code, it's impossible to say for sure, but my guess is that it's got the width and height for images both set to 100%, which would distort the images in the way you're describing. The answer is to simply remove the height declaration, which will make the images full width of whatever height is appropriate given their aspect ratio.

I don't use Calire, so I can't tell you how to use that tool to do this, but if you're comfortable editing HTML and CSS, all you'll need to do is crack open the epub file (rename it from .epub to .zip, then unzip it), find the images being affected in the HTML, figure out which selectors the CSS is targeting them with, and go change the relevant CSS declarations.


Can Kindle for PC be downloaded without an Amazon account? I do not have an Amazon account and don't know much about how it works, but I really need to download the Kindle app on my PC. Is it possible?

I love reading but I don't have much knowledge about how an Amazon account is used for buying, downloading and managing ebooks. So I was wondering if we can use the Kindle app without having to register an Amazon account.

Is that possible?

You can certainly download the app onto your device without actually using it. But I assume you really want to know if you can open .mobi files in the Kindle app without an Amazon account.  And I'm afraid the answer to that is no.

The good news is that you can use other apps to read .mobi files. FBREADER is one such reader which works on both ios and android; you can find other android apps here http://www.androidauthority.com/best-ebook-ereader-apps-for-android-170696/ . They just can't read the .mobi digital rights management locked files.

Also, remember that .mobi is in many ways an inferior ebook format to .epub . If at all possible, I always prefer the .epub file to the .mobi file (and open them in Google Play Books, iBooks, Adobe Digital Editions, whatever). If you don't have access to the Kindle store, then you can probably find the file as an ebook in another store.


section numbers in epub headings I want to display chapter and section headings in an epub file (epub version 3.0) so that the titles preceded by the corresponding section numbers.  Currently I am explicitly writing the section numbers inside the corresponding HTML tags:

1 Exciting Concepts

1.1 Introduction

...

1.2 Buildup to Excitements

...

To my eye, this approach seems somewhat ugly, because the numbers are not really part of the chapter/section titles and including the numbers in the header tags may violate the separation between content and presentation.

My questions:

Will my approach cause any problems?  For example, are ebook readers guaranteed to not add their own chapter/section numbers?
Is there a better way to display numbered sections?  For example, I found tutorials for adding automatic section numbers to HTML via CSS, but it is not clear to me how will work when the text is split between different HTML files, and whether there are compatibility concerns with ebook readers.

EPUB3 defines a profile for CSS which is pretty much a superset of CSS 2.1 and a subset of CSS 3.

I haven't checked to see whether the CSS facilities mentioned are covered in the profile, but if they are it will then depnd on how well those are implemented in particular readers.


What is the hidden file .adobe-digital-editions on my Kobo? What is the hidden folder .adobe-digital-editions on my Kobo? I just did a factory reset, but it is still there. Can I delete this?

Kobo's devices are compatible with Adobe Digital Editions. If you have books with DRM, you will need that feature, otherwise you can simply ignore it exists.

More Detail on Kobo + ADE on their Website


How to make money by giving books away for free? I recently did my first free book giveaway for a few books on amazon and was getting hundreds of downloads a day, my first reaction being holy crap ... my second being does anyone have any ideas how I can make more money by giving away books for free?

(besides the obvious advertising my other books at the end)

I suspect advertising won't get much traction -- unless it's a product related to the subject of the book (I'm assuming nonfiction here).

Probably the best payoff from a freebie is getting the email from a downloader. That way you can form a relationship with the reader/customer over time. From the book perspective, you can send book announcements and special discount coupon codes. (I'm talking about outside amazon.com here).

Also you can drive traffic to your blog, which can in turn can lead to more ad possibilities and more things to sell.

I think the hardest thing for authors is author branding. A free ebook can help alleviate that issue -- especially if you can persuade them to sign up for an occasional newsletter.


Can I publish my book (paperback) using createSpace if I already initiated paperback and published Kindle edition in Amazon? I have published my ebook in all Amazon websites (US UK DE FR ES IT NL JP BR CA MX AU IN). I also initiated paperback through Amazon.

Unfortunately for Amazon India paperback option was not available. So I searched all over places and found we have to go using CreateSpace to make my paperbook available in India.

Now my question is can i initiate my paperback in createSpace also as paperback in Amazon status as "Publishing"

Please suggest

I don't know if Createspace works in India, but Amazon controls that company too.

It's fairly easy to find a local company produce the print books somewhere to be sold on Amazon.

In my opinion, I would focus exclusively on ebooks because the author has more control over what price to give it (and can receive a higher percentage of the profits). When I published 2 createspace books, I found that the prices you were allowed to set was way too high to make it competitive.


How to (easily) get the back cover off a $35 Polaroid PER7021 e-reader? I have an e-reader I picked up at Big Lots for $35 and it's a great machine, aside from two problems:

It eats through batteries when turned off.
The battery cover doesn't remove easily without using a butter knife.

I think that the former problem could be resolved if I could just take care of the latter problem.

What do you do about this fellow PER7021 e-readers?

Try using an iSesamo — it's a tool explicitly made for popping open the panels on electronic devices (www.newertech.com/products/isesamo.php)

The iSesamo is thinner than plastic spludgers and sits in a sweet spot between stiff/inflexible and too-bendable-to-pry-things-off.


Trouble hooking up Goodreads with sideloaded ebook on Kindle Paperwhite So I'm using calibre to load ebooks onto my Kindle Paperwhite and everything seems to be working just fine except when I try to use any of the Goodreads options on that book  ("View on Goodreads" or "Add to Goodreads shelf") I get the error "There was a problem connecting to Goodreads." My Goodreads profile is hooked up and works for some other books just fine. I'm assuming there's something up with the way calibre is adding the metadata for that book but even after messing around with the ISBN data I still can't figure out what's wrong.

Any chance that anyone has worked through this issue already?

I have found the best way to get it 100 percent working is this:

If your book is not already in AZW3 format then convert it. (Has to be AZW3 and not just AZW.)
Secondly, highlight the book and edit metadata.
Once you are at that screen delete any other format that you have shown in the top right side leaving only AZW3.
Delete the tags by hitting the recycle icon next to the tags box and hit download metadata.
Once you have done that make sure the only tags you have are ISBN, Google, goodreads and amazon. You may not have all 4 but make sure that you do not have any mobi-asin tags.
Save and download the quality check plug in for calibre.
Highlight the book and click on the quality check icon at the top, look for 'fix' on the drop down menu and click 'fix asin for kindle fire'. Don't worry it will also work for paperwhite etc.
Delete any copy you already have on the device and resend.
For completeness I also go to the top of calibre and click device and update the cached metadata on device.
Eject device and you should be good to go! Full integration with goodreads as if you had purchased through Kindle store.


Is it possible to set Calibre Editor to automatically backup a book file before modifying it? Pretty much as the title says, is it possible to set Calibre to automatically create a backup copy of a given .epub file before editing it?

When experimenting, it would be handy to keep the original file untouched.

I've contacted Calibre's developer, he said that it is not possible and that he doesn't find such feature useful, so he is not willing to implement it.


browser tools to test custom viewport sizes? I'm coding html for ebooks, and my first test is in the Firefox browser.  I need a down-and-dirty to simulate and compare web design in different device viewports in both landscape and portrait mode.

When  I use the web developer --> responsive design view in Firefox, I have some presets, and if I click the rotate button I can see both landscape and portrait mode. But I don't see any capability to add custom viewport dimensions... which is strange given all the devices which are coming out these days.

Is there a way to do this? Also, is there a good URL which lists all the most popular viewport sizes for devices?

Once you're in the responsive design view, the handles on the right side and bottom right corner of the view let you drag to set a display size. The drop-down menu in the upper left corner shows the dimensions as you drag. Once it's at the size you want, you can click on the menu, select Add Preset at the end of the list, and save those dimensions with a name.

Here's a question that lists some resources for viewport dimensions: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5784485/how-to-figure-out-common-viewport-dimensions-not-screen-sizes-of-common-device


What happens if I have used 2 different fonts in mobi/epub and user changes the font in the devise? What happens if I have used 2 different fonts in my content for mobi/epub and user changes the font in the devise,like in kindle?
does both the fonts change? if yes, is there any way to protect the fonts from changing(apart from  converting to images)?

There isn't much you can do, if the device allows to change the fonts and the user is willing to use that option, he will do it.

If you use different fonts not just for aestethics, but with a functional purpose (i.e. to display code with a fixed width font, or to differentiate quotes from default paragraphs, and so on), your best option, IMHO, is to insert a disclaimer where you explain this to the end user.


Epub reader limitations Some ebook readers (like Sony PRS-650) does not handle epub files which contains HTML files bigger than ~200-300kbytes. Is there any other limitations which are not part of the standard but ebook readers cannot handle or handle erroneously? I would like to avoid these pitfalls to create epub books which can be used by most of the devices.

The answer to that can largely be broken down into two parts for EPUB2 and EPUB3.  First, for EPUB2 as it is currently the most common EPUB format: The most important thing to understand with regards to EPUB compatibility is that there are actually only a few readers available for commercial (i.e. DRM'd) EPUB content. As you might expect, Amazon and Apple made their own readers, but the vast majority of other commercially DRM'd readers are based off of Adobe's RMSDK, and as such they are mostly subject to similar limitations and quirks.  Now since there are literally hundreds of known and fixed issues with RMSDK, there is no possible way that I can list them all, but I can point you at the best publically available resource I know of, Datalogic's Release Notes.  These are issues that Datalogics finds and fixes itself with regards to RMSDK rendering bugs, and these issues are often then fixed by Adobe in future versions of RMSDK, so at any given time you have to be on the lookout for any of these issues with regards to whatever RMSDK renderer you are looking at (including for example any of the Bluefire Reader Branded Readers.) The last I knew, Kindle was still using RMSDK to render EPUBs, so this would apply to Kindle as well unless something has changed recently.

The second biggest place that I know of for rendering EPUBs is Apple's iBooks, and a quick google search will turn up copious numbers of frustrated authors trying to get their books rendering correctly, but unfortunately I don't have any kind of "current issues" source for them.  (If anyone else does, I would love to see it).  They do regularly improve their rendering engine as well, but their release notes tend to mention solely the user interface changes.

Then of course, the there is the issue of the EPUB3 Spec. This might be where I have the best news of all, which is that there is an on-going, regularly updated support grid put out by BISG that tracks which renderers support which features.  That extremely helpful document can be found here.


how to convert djvu files to some files? I want convert a djvu file to six pages, for example,

how to convert a file with 504 pages to 84 files with 6 pages?

There is AFAIK not such a utility that does exactly what you want but you can explode the file by repeatedly using the djvused utility:

djvused  file.djvu -e "select <nr>; save-page-with <filename>"

where <nr> is the pagenumber and <filename> the output filename. I have a python utility that does this automatically for all the pages while using incremental filename of the form page_<nr>.djvu.

After that you can combine multiple files with the djvm command:

djvm -c output.djvu page01.djvu page02.djvu ... page06.djvu

for each of the combinations of page. The images and associated data (like OCR-ed text) will get in the 84 files. That data is not unpacked and repacked, so the process doesn't lead to any loss of quality.

The following is a minimalistic version of my Python program that calls djvused to explode the file into individual pages:

#! /usr/bin/env python

import sys
from subprocess import check_output

page_base = 'page_{:03d}.djvu'
file_name = sys.argv[1]
djvused = 'djvused'  # r'C:\Program Files\DjVuLibre\djvused.exe'
number_of_pages = int(check_output([djvused, file_name, '-e', 'n']))
for x in range(number_of_pages):
    page_name = page_base.format(x)
    check_output([djvused, file_name, '-e',
        'select {}; save-page-with {}'.format(x+1, page_name)])


Improve 'Look Inside' view of the Kindle mobi eBook in Amazon I want to improve the "Look Inside" view of the Kindle ebook.

When I click on the eBook Cover in Amazon, the "Look Inside" window appears. Although I have split the book into separate files at each page breaks, "Look Inside" appears as one page without any page breaks.

Kindly suggest how to add page breaks in "Look Inside" view too. So there will be page breaks for the title page, copyright page, part title page, chapter pages.

I believe this is working as designed by Amazon. When they create the mobi package of files from your upload on KDP, one of the things they create is a .html version of the whole book - basically the entire book on one long scrolling page. I think this is used for the Look Inside feature. Look at some other major Kindle books and see if it's the same.


I have a book written in Word format There seems to be answers on here for converting .docx books to read on the kindle, but what would I have to do to allow it to be read on more platforms then the kindle? A lot of people I know do not have kindles and will an IPad for example read kindle formatted ebooks?

The accepted answer for the question How do I convert a Word document into an ebook? describes how to convert a book in .docx format to AZW3.

As is very clear from the 3rd picture in that answer, where AZW3 is selected as output format, that there is a whole list of "calibre output formats". Searching the latter phrase should get you to the complete list of supported formats in the FAQ:
AZW3, EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, HTMLZ, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ.

From that list, someone can just select what they prefer for their device and/or software¹. For iPad users that depends on their software, but if that doesn't support AZW3 directly, it probably does support EPUB.

Assuming you already can convert the .docx to AZW3, and since the capabilities of EPUB and AZW3 in formatting the eBook are very similar, selecting the conversion is the only thing you (or the owner of the iPad) needs to do. There is not going to be any additional considerations, beyond what you do for going from .docx to AZW3, on how to go about the conversion².

¹ One can argue that if the device/software does not support any of these formats, it should not be called an eBook reader.
² That should only be an a concern if the other output format allows for very little formatting control, like TXT


Does Amazon accept fixed layout ePubs? Since Amazon offers conversion on their site from an .epub file to .mobi file do they support fixed layout ePubs or is it only for KF8 files?

If you have a fixed layout epub 3.0 file, it's not much of a jump to prepare it for conversion to KF8 fixed layout. KF8 is, of course, the newest version of Amazon's proprietary ebook format.  KindleGen or Kindle Previewer are the two options for creating a KF8 file from an epub file. Kindle Previewer is essentially a graphical interface for KindleGen that comes packaged with a previewer for the various Kindle devices. Personally, I prefer it over KindleGen; the previewing functionality is really handy. That said, don't trust the previewer too far--it will not always accurately represent what the devices will show. It's always best to test on an actual device, if you can.

The guidelines for preparing an epub file for KindleGen/Previewer are found here: https://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf (PDF format) In general, having a validating epub 3.0 fixed layout file will get you 95% of the way there, though KF8 introduces some extra functionality like being able to define verso and recto (left and right) pages in a two-page spread, and also region magnification to allow zooming on particular areas of text. There is a sample KF8 fixed layout file available at http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000729511.

Again, be certain that the Fixed Layout epub that you have is the epub 3.0 variety, rather than Apple's iBooks-only fixed layout format. The Apple format came out before the IDPF developed Fixed Layout for epub 3.0, and while Apple's format seems to have served as the basis for the IDPF format, it doesn't necessarily make a valid epub 3.0 file. You can use the online validator here (http://validator.idpf.org/) to test your file to be sure that it's valid.

So, long story short: Amazon does not sell or support epub files of any type, but they do have tools and information available for converting valid epub files to mobi/KF8, including for Fixed Layout books.

Hope that helps!


Convert epub to epub, to do more heuristic processing During format conversion, Calibre can perform some heuristic processing.
For example detecting chapters and scenebreaks.

I've notices that a few epubs (especially from Project Gutenberg),
could really do with that kind of heuristic processing.
For example their chapters may not all be separated.

Is there a way I can execute the heuristic processing part of conversion without actually doing any conversion?

Use the command-line tool

[Manual]

If you use the command-line tool,
you can do just this.
Though you need to make sure the input filename and the output filename differ.

for example

ebook-convert myorig.epub mybetter.epub --heuristic-processing


There are a standard EPUB version or format to assign with PGP? There a standard way to assign (PGP) EPUB eBooks?

A way to use digital certificate, like in the PDF's certificate-based signatures, but not PDF.

Theoretically, you could add a signatures.xml file to the epub. However, I don't know of any epub app that actually supports this feature.

I.e., you'd also have to provide readers with a standalone app that validates the checksums.

It'd probably be easier to generate an MD5 checksum for the whole epub.


Why are ebooks priced lower than their physical counterparts? Was this some sort of marketing gimmick that companies employed to familiarize and promote ebooks to people?
Or are there other factors that result in this pricing?

There are three main factors why the price can be lower. One is transportation costs. The second is the 'cutting out the middleman'. The third is the cost of producing the physical book.

The physical transport costs and the need for human handling fall away if a book is transferred electronically. This is both the case when buying in a bookstore or from an online shop.

Physical books often go through distributors to stores and smaller online retailers. Ebooks cut out these distribution channels and their profits. Some publishers even have their own ebook sites, eliminating the profits of the ebook stores as well.

I hope the diminished cost of not having to kill and process a tree to make an ebook is clear.

I actually assume (but have no proof) that electronic books are artificially expensive compared to their physical counterparts, based on the percentages of physical book prices I have heard that authors receive.


Join broken paragraphs Regex Sigil I'm trying to edit some xhtml on Sigil.

With the command "
([a-z]) I'm able to find all paragraphs that begin with lower case. That tells me that they shouldn't be separate from the previous one. It's just a conversion issue.

What should I do to delete both the
 from that paragraph and the
 from the previous one in order to join the two blocks of text into one single paragraph??

It looks something like this:

 ... that is why relationships

 are not what they should be.

And it should be:

 that is why relationships are not what they should be.

The following regex should cover most cases.

Find:

([[:lower:]],*;*:*)</p>\s+<p[^>]*>\s*([[:lower:]])

Replace:

\1 \2


Delete books from the sony erearder TRS1? I have a Sony Ereader TRS 1 and I want to delete books from my library on the pc. It only lets me delete books from the "All Available Books" drop down menu - NOT from the "Purchased from the Store" menu. I know how to delete books from my reader, but I have titles that I don't want anymore taking up space on my computer.  Is there a way to do this?

I believe you have to go to the Kobo store and move  the books from your Library to Archive (view books in the library, click on  the "..." below the book image in the cover view, or in the action column of the list view, and select "Move to Archive").


Converting DOC (with images) to EPUB Is there a way to convert (preferably in batch) .doc files with images to .epub without the loss of the images and formatting?

Calibre is very useful piece of software for ebook-handling purposes, it has many options for converting between formats and generally does a good job keeping the original formatting and images intact. Also works for batch conversion.


Kobo Pocket stopped working for specific sites I've been reading some writings on a few different blogs and news sites through the Pocket integration of the Kobo H2O Aura. How the system works is that you add the web page to your list on Pocket, and then you sync your reader and it automatically downloads the new articles there. Simple stuff.

However, two specific sites have started to give me problems. The firs is the blog I Rolled A Zero, and the second is marxists.org. I've been able to add articles to Pocket just fine, and have them download onto my Kobo just fine, but the downloading suddenly stopped working. For I Rolled A Zero, the downloading stopped working september 25 around 22:00 UTC. I can't download any new blog posts I've added from the blog, they don't show up as even existing on my Pocket account at all. I've tried re-adding older posts that I've already read on my Kobo previously, and those don't show up either.

With marxists.org, I'm not sure how long the problem has been there as when I was checking the Pocket website to see what was going on I noticed that one of the pages that I recently added from there wasn't showing up on my Kobo either. Tried adding a few others, and surprise surprise those didn't show up either. Same goes for stuff I've read on the Kobo before through the same system.

There is no hardware or software change on the Kobo whatsoever. It just was working one moment, and then suddenly not.

How do I fix this?

Nothing needs to change on your Kobo for this to stop working. The only thing that needs to happen is that the site where you get your pages from changes from providing whole pages to partial ones that read the rest of the content using JavaScript that the Kobo doesn't (correctly) interpret.

You can check that the above is the case, by going to the pages with JavaScript switched off in your normal browser. The pages most likely will be incomplete.
If this is indeed the case, a remedy is available, but not simple: you have to automatically retrieve the pages with a fully functional browser (with JavaScript turned on), wait until you assume the page is fully rendered (there is no way to be 100% sure about that) and then save the rendered page to a location on a server where you Kobo can read it. Once that is set up, update the URLs on your Kobo to the location where you save it.

I have done such trickery with a Python program and selenium running on my headless server co-located in a data center where I can easily get at the saved material. Other combinations of programming language and browser driving library might work as well.


Converting PDFs results in fragmented sentences/paragraphs I'm using Calibre to convert a PDF document to amazon paperwhite,

The issue I'm experiencing is that some of the sentences are split among multiple lines to the point where sometimes each word is on its own separate line.

I've tried MOBI, AZW3 formats but I keep getting the same result.

I read on another forum that the best way to improve PDF conversion was to enable the heuristic processing. Hope this helps
https://www.reddit.com/r/ebooks/comments/1hst5i/converting_pdf_to_mobi_in_calibre_getting_a_gap/


What device is Amazon basing their error location on? I've always wondered where the error location in the Amazon reworks list is using when the emulator is not very good for testing and all their devices are different sizes causing pagination to become different between devices.  So my question is, since I haven't found anything mentioned in the documentation, when Amazon sends you a rework for a Mobi file with a loc: ### what device are they basing the loc on?

I've never seen a rework, so I can't be certain what the format is, but my guess is that they are not using display pages, which would be specific to particular devices as you mention. Instead, I would think they are using their location numbers. There is a lot of speculation about where those numbers come from, but the consensus seems to be that each one represents 128 bytes of data.


light at maximum normal? I just got a 6th generation Kindle paperwhite and I have to have the light up to the maximum to get a decent light to read it during the daytime indoors.  Is this normal?  Why would it not have a stronger light that I could dim if I wanted to?  My older version of Kindle paperwhite (that I lost) had the light more in the middle to upper middle to get the strength of this one at max.

Ask for a replacement.  Generally, a brightness setting of 9 is quite enough for day/night reading.  Actually, 9 is still too bright in the dark.

This happens with most of the Kindles since they are mass-produced in China and don't follow the lumens standard, nor was it written anywhere in the description, so that we can verify it.  I have seen the Kindle white is white but the Kindle black appears slightly yellowish to me.


How to choose where/which to buy ebook/book online? When searching for George Orwell's 1984, different results appear where one can buy the book. Like on kindle, or at play store here and here.

Can someone help me understand as to

why all the options have ISBN numbers?
why there is difference in the page count?
the ones in play store seems to be from different publishers. Do the different publishers also have some extra contents added?
to what extend does the publishers have liberty with the book, well apart from the cover design?
how do I go about and choose which one should I get?
Am I missing something obvious that one should know for purchasing ebook?

Methods for estimating page count for ebooks  depend on a variety of things and don't really indicate anything.

Different ebook distributors use different ISBNs. It used to be that print publishers would have a single ISBN. Nowadays, when you publish on a distributor's platform they will tend to assign an ISBN specific to the store.

Google Play stores tend to have the same store for everybody, but Amazon has stores for each region or country. I would expect that Google Play Books to have more editions  -- especially for public domain titles.

With print editions, there are often different editions with different covers and prefaces and annotations. That is especially true with books for classrooms. Typically less developed countries may produce cheaper print editions and be priced accordingly.  With ebooks, there are not as many different editions unless the work is public domain. It can sometimes be different to tell the difference among them.

You may not realize this, but 1984 is in the public domain in certain countries (but not the USA).

If you are unsure, the best thing to do is to check the main website for the author and see what editions that the author's site links to.

Finally about Orwell's 1984 and Amazon, I see that various Kindle editions cost from $2  to $2.99 (for a collected novels). Also, translations have different prices. If you live in a country where the novel is in the public domain, you may see more editions (and a greater variety of prices).


How to adapt annotations from an old edition book to a new edition book? I like to write notes on ebooks for reorganizing the topics and for helping with my understanding.

One question which I have with this way is that: when a newer edition of the same book comes out, what should I do to migrate the notes that I wrote for the old edition to the new edition?

More specifically, my ebooks are all pdf files.

A book in an old edition and in a new edition are two different pdf files.
I have written my notes in the form of editable annotations on the pdf files. By annotations, I mean, for example, text comments, underlines, shapes that single out parts of the text, arrows that connect different parts of the text, ....

Here are some ways that I can think of:

Find some way to export the annotations from the old edition of a book, and then import them to the new edition of the book. The problem with this way is that there is likely to be a problem of mismatching positions of the annotations in the new edition.
Copy the annotations of the old edition of a book into a plain text file, and rewrite them to make them less independent on specific edition of the book. When reading the new edition, add or modify the notes in the plain text file accordingly. The problem with this way is that the work to copy the annotations from the old edition into the plain text file may be huge.
Leave the annotations on the old edition of the book, and when reading the new edition of the book, consulting the annotations on the old edition, and making new annotations on the new edition.
The problem with this way is that reading several editions of the book at the same time is cumbersome.

What are your suggestions?

This is a very interesting question, and I did some preliminary research on it.

The basic problem here is that PDFs are generally  not considered to be an editable document and that most annotation solutions are specific to one software platform.

Because PDFs are considered to be more as output than an editable document, versioning hasn't really been implemented for the annotations.

I am not particularly well-versed in the Adobe platform, but I know that some mobile PDFs readers let you export annotations to a text file. (Several can do this).

Some other options are to do the annotations and versioning in MS Word and/or Google Docs instead of PDF. Those are both good for storing annotations and keeping track of versions. Also, both software have all sorts of mobile apps and syncing solutions.

Here's an interesting thing. If your file is an epub and if you have uploaded it to Google Play Books (GPB), then when you annotate the epub file, the annotations will be stored in a (versioned) Google Docs file for your account.  (Here's what one of my files looks like: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FvqqixSaZoY04Ua2L6wTK1mHmU5UptYISZ4z4oFSd1I/edit?usp=sharing )

Another possibility is to search through the available plugins for Google Docs or MS Word to see if there are plugins (free or commercial) which let you version comments better.

I realize that this is not the solution you want, but those are the solutions I am aware of.


How can I reset the reading speed data on a Kindle? I'd like to test the theory that the Kindle Touch/Paperwhite ignores long pauses between page reads when learning your reading speed for a particular book.  But experimenting is complicated by having to import fresh books for testing.

Is there any way to reset the reading speed data?

According to a Kindle forum thread the command to reset this data is:

;ReadingTimeReset

On a touchscreen Kindle, tap the top of the screen to bring up the search box.  After you type the command and get no results, return to the book.  The status line will show Learning reading speed...  Since the search string is saved, you won't have to laboriously type the command again in order to reset again.  That ought to make testing a lot easier.


How can I create an ebook from existing HTML files? I will be writing software that allows me to select stretching exercises, put them in order, and then create an ebook, one per page, and then use it on my kindle.  I was hoping that my software could produce the final ebook, e.g., mobi, but that seems unlikely (I can't find the spec for the file format).

So my next idea is to produce a set of HTML files, a table of contents file, and manually use Calibre to convert it to mobi/azw and upload it to my kindle.

I did the HTML part once years ago by creating the HTML files by hand so it should work.  But I was wondering if there is a better way?

You could also use Pandoc in conjunction with the kindlegen command-line tool.

Converting your HTML files to Markdown files is not necessary but if done will allow (easier) conversion to other formats should the need arise later on.

The table of contents can be automatically generated using Pandoc. Pandoc can export to the epub format which in turn can be converted to mobi using the kindlegen tool. It's possible to write a bash script to automate the process.

Sample command using Pandoc to export to epub:

pandoc -o myBook.epub myBook.md --toc \
--epub-cover-image=cover.jpg \
--epub-stylesheet=myStylesheet.css \
--number-sections


how to NOT have calibre reduce pictures' resolution when converting from epub (or anything I guess) to MOBI I'm selling art ebooks on KDP Amazon, and I need the pictures not be shrinked as they automatically are when passing from odt to mobi/epub.
But it would be easier if Amazon didn't have to convert epub itself, time-wise to begin with, and also since there are errors here and there (rarely but still) and it just can't do it sometimes. A hussle.
Now, I'm forced to make epub from libreoffice, then correct it a bit sometime with sigil, then provide it to Amazon. Too time-consuming.

Thanks.

If you go to:

Preferences->Preferences->Common Options->Page Setup

you can set the Output Profile to Tablet. The Profile description reads:

  Intended for generic tablet devices, does no resizing of images [Screen size: unlimited]


How can I make mathematics look good in ebooks? I have so far tried using Pandoc to convert Markdown text containing LaTeX math to ePub with MathML. This works, but the resulting math displays quite horribly compared to what the corresponding math looks like when generating PDF from LaTeX. For example, upper and lower limits of an integral do not align well.
I have tried using Calibre too and here it is actually possible to convert the math to MathJax-viewable format, but it seems I cannot rely on other ebook readers to be able to use MathJax. Besides, this only worked when converting from HTML, not Markdown.

Update: @karsten-w's answer made me think more about embedding the maths as graphics. I found out that ePub seems to support SVG, at least ePub from v. 3.0 according to what I stumbled across. So for example, I can generate the math SVG from LaTeX using http://www.tlhiv.org/ltxpreview/ (see https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/103282/convert-latex-to-svg-online). I can then easily embed the SVG in Markdown and convert to ePub using Pandoc.

Now I would just like a smoother workflow that can take me directly from LaTeX with maths or Markdown with LaTeX maths to ePub with embedded SVGs...

For my ebook experiment, I use PNG, via Formula Sheet.


Which FREE ebook readers for Windows allow two-column view and left justification? Which ebook readers for Windows allow two-column view and left justification?
Calibre and Sumantra allow two-column view but not left justification.
I find left-justified text faster to read. This is in accordance to typographer's opinion.

BlueFire Reader displays the text in multiple columns, and you can set the alignment to left or justified. The alignment setting shows up when you check the advanced settings box in the settings dialog (the gear icon in the toolbar).


How to correct unicode errors after converting file format? To convert epub to mobi I utilized on online tool, but it seems to have resulted in odd unicode errors.  Throughout the text there are 0092, 0093 and 0094 in place of punctuation.

Is this likely to to be a problem with the source material?  Perhaps the author just used strange punctuation which results in hiccups and glitches during conversion?  Or, is this more likely a problem with the online converter?

I'll probably have to convert manually with Calibre, which looks doable.

Might this be a problem with Amazon, or the Kindle e-ink reader itself?

There are some issues with sending azw or azw3 to Kindle cloud via e-mail.

To convert epub to mobi I utilized on online tool

Most online tools actually use Calibre as the conversion tool. I.e., you might as well use Calibre.

  Throughout the text there are 0092, 0093 and 0094 in place of punctuation.

There's most likely a problem with the original epub file. You might want to check your epub with the IDPF validator before converting it with Calibre.

If the validator doesn't report any problems, open the file with Calibre Editor and search and replace all numerical codes with the equivalent punctuation characters.

When using Calibre to convert your epub files make sure to select AZW3 as the  target format. For even better results install Kindle Previewer 3 and the KFX plugin and convert your epub files to KFX files.


How to read DjVu files on Kindle? I want to be able to read DjVu files on my kindle.  I don't want to convert DjVu to PDF or MOBI.  Is there a way I can do this?

Check out Document Viewer (fork of the now defunct EBookDroid). It's also on the Google Play store.


Cannot find books added from PC onto Kindle I have added 2 books from my PC onto my Kindle, into the Documents folder.
I was able to read it.

It only showed when I tapped on the Home icon (the Pentagon symbol), but when I click on Library it can't be seen there.

Recently I added 2 books from Kindle Unlimited, and now I can't find those books which I added from my PC.

But when I connect it to my PC I still can locate those books inside the Documents folder.

Please Guide me.

I am unclear if this is two separate questions, or the same question asked twice. The first question appears to be a question pertaining to locating 2 books transferred from a computer to a Kindle via USB, and the second appears to refer to 2 books from Kindle Unlimited that were also transferred from a computer to a Kindle via USB. As both Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite are tagged, I will address both as they are not the same.

Whether it is a book you own or a Kindle Unlimited book, transfers are the same. Just remember that you don't own the KU books and there is a cap on how many titles you can have at once. Hopefully, I can be of some help, though.

Paperwhite Instructions:

After downloading the books to your computer you can transfer the files via USB from your computer to the Kindle's Documents folder, then click on "My Library" at the top left of your screen and your files should appear in the "Downloaded" tab.

Kindle Fire Instructions:

After downloading the books to your computer you can transfer the files via USB from your computer to the Kindle's "Books" folder. Then, on your Kindle Fire, tap the Books content library from the top of your screen, choose the "Device" tab, and your Kindle content should show up.

Just remember that EPUB, Mobi and DRM-protected files are not supported file formats, and not all Kindle content can be transferred. If you do have unsupported files you want to place on your Kindle, you can easily convert those files to AZW or PDF for free using http://ebook.online-convert.com/convert-to-azw3. I use this exclusively for my business and there is nothing to install, no pop-ups or malware, and it's much quicker than Calibre, which you have to download.


How to remove extraneous page numbers from ePub TOC I've created this epub file as an export from an Indesign file, and it's got two problems that I can see immediately:

The ToC includes page numbers after the chapter titles, even though I've created a special epub export ToC style in Indesign that isn't supposed to include the page numbers of references (see .

Note that in the ePub export dialogue, I made sure to set my special ToC style like this:

Yet the ToC in the ePub when viewed on Apple books still has the page numbers there -- like this:

How do I get rid of the page numbers that appear after the chapter titles?

The title pages aren't carrying over the Playfair Display font from the print PDF of the book, and there's a page break on the dedication page. How do I fix this?

Thank you so much if anyone can help!

I suspect you can persuade InDesign to export this correctly, but if this is a one-off and you don't need to do many like it, it would very probably be easier to open it in Calibre (free), edit the ToC, and use Calibre to re-pack the ePub. Alternately, you can unzip the ePub, edit the ToC file in a text editor, and re-zip it in this order -- OSX, but I think the flags work on Linux and maybe Win:
prompt$ zip -X0 title.epub mimetype
prompt$ zip -Xr "title.epub" "META-INF/" "OEBPS/"


How to simulate an epub ereader and inspect its DOM? I have an ebook that I'm trying to make adjustments to.  When I load it on my Nook Simple Touch, it has large margins, ignoring the settings on the Nook to have a minimal margin.  When going through the HTML for the ebook, nothing jumps out at me as causing this large margin.  After I make changes to the CSS, I need to package the files back up as an epub, copy the file to my Nook, and then see if I fixed it.  That whole process is time consuming, especially since I'm testing one minor change to the CSS at a time.

Is there some software that will simulate the epub renderer of an ereader on a computer and let me inspect the DOM to see why it's maintaining large margins on an ereader?

For editing an EPub, I would look into sigil. It has the ability of WYSIWYG editing and comes recommended by other users on this forum. It's free and open-source.

An alternative is Calibre. Editing EPubs is a bit more code-centric in contrast to sigil. It's also free and open-source.

For some comparisons between the two programs, check out this blog.

As far as an actual hardware emulator for specific eReader devices, I'm not aware of any.


How can i add a copy right/license to my book online I have being writing a book which i am planning to publish but i don't have a copy right/license. I was asking of how to do that online.

In many countries you don't need to register a copyright, but it is automatically granted to you. Therefore it is probably unnecessary for you to do anything. Typically you can declare it on the title page of the book.


Formatting Table of Contents in epub using HTML TOC or Logical TOC and how to include TOCs in I am trying to create an epub file (in epub 3), and will be using KindleGen to convert it into kindle's mobi format. At the moment I was working on the table of contents files, and there were a few things that I needed to ask, that I would be glad if someone were to answer.

Firstly, I wanted to include superscripts and have different font styles and sizes for each subheading in the table of contents, is this possible in the logical TOC without all the botchings in different eReading devices, or should I create an html TOC for this purpose ?

Secondly, after having created these two TOCs (if two are needed), should these both be included in the  tag ? How will the reader know which one is logical and which one is html (and hence shown to the reader at the beginning after the cover page) ?

Thirdly, I am using 'list-style-type: none' in the epub css to remove numbers from the ordered list for epub's table of contents in the logical TOC. Is that acceptable for epub and kindle ? I looked up at some sample epub code, and they seem to have included it without any ill-effects. Tried to look up if Amazon allowed this property for kindle but didn't find any reference to it. So, is it an okay property to use ?

The epub 3 toc.xhtml was created specifically to do away with the need to have separate logical and visual ToCs. Unfortunately, it's not quite there. As long as you're only interested in adding some styles to the text, though, you should be fine. Where you start to run into problems is if you want to have lots of other stuff going on in your ToC, like a number of images. Here's a quote from the relevant section of the epub 3 spec:

  The optional heading must be followed by a single ol ordered list; no
  other elements are permitted as direct children of the nav element.
  This ordered list represents the primary level of content navigation.

  Each list item ( li ) of the ordered list represents a primary
  heading, structure or other point of interest within the EPUB
  Publication and must contain either a child a element or a child span
  element. The a element describes the target within the Content
  Document that the link points to. The span element serves as a heading
  for breaking down lists into distinct groups (for example, a large
  list of illustrations can be segmented into several lists, one for
  each chapter).

So as long as all you're doing is enclosing parts of the list items in <span>s you'll be fine and won't need to create a separate visual ToC. If for some reason you do need to create a separate visual ToC, I would advise only including the visual one in the <spine>. The reading system will use as the logical ToC whichever file has properties="nav" declared in the <manifest>.

As far as using list=style-type: none; goes: technically, you shouldn't need it, but it doesn't hurt at all to include it, and some reading systems will include numbers if you don't use it. So yes, by all means include that statement. It will cause no problems with KindleGen.

Finally, the frustrating note: be sure that you also include an epub 2.0-style toc.ncx file. It's perfectly valid to do so in epub 3.0, and it's the only way that epub 2.0 reading systems will be able to make use of your table of contents. Yes, this means that if you have a visual ToC separate from the logical toc.xhtml, you're now up to three tables of contents in your file.


Why are there so few color e-ink devices on the market in 2014? The Wikipedia article on e-ink indicates that the technology exists to provide thousands of colors on e-ink display.  As I understand it most (all?) of the the  'multi-touch color display' screens are LCD not e-ink.

It seems there is at least one production color e-ink device, why are there not more?

I guess it is because having colors reduces resolution.

The Triton eink that is used in the JetBook referred to is basically a black and white eink display with a color filter on top. So for each 2x2 square of pixels there is one pixel each tinted red, green and blue and one staying in black and white. So effectively you have a resolution of 800x600 with the costs of a 1600x1200 display (plus the costs for the filter).

I think most people use eink devices to read pure text (without many images) and therefore prefer sharper text over colors. Of course this may change if there are more colored ebook devices and subsequently more colorful ebooks offered. It will be a recursive process.

So far it only makes sense to read colored textbooks on colored ink devices. I guess this is why it the new JetBook is manufactured with a 9.7" display. This may be too large for people who just want a reasonably small device for reading their novels. But the time of colored ebooks will surely come at some point in the future -- probably when the resolution improves further and the colors become more brilliant.


Has anyone managed to replace a screen on a Sony PRS-T1? I dropped my PRS-T1 and the screen cracked (one-third of the screen diagonally still works), so the electronics is still functioning.  Replacement screens were available on eBay from the far-east but with no instructions.   Before risking ordering one, I stripped down my T1.  The screen appears to be heavily glued to a skeleton metal chassis... I am presuming I'd need some special heating jig or solvent to remove it... and so I gave up.  Is there any chance of reviving this or should I just bin it?

Look at this thread on Mobileread, it also has a link where you can download the service manual.

There is also a video guide on youtube.

Please note that I don't own this ereader and that this is only the result of a quick web search, so I can't help you further.


How to mark up tales and poems using epub:type? The epub:type attribute provides 5 values for the content of an e-book: volume, part, chapter, subchapter and division. I wonder which one is best to use in books which are composed entirely of independent tales or poems.

Excellent question, and kudos for thinking about the semantics! It's depressing how few people do this.
The best resource for epub:type is the Strucutral Semantics Vocabulary from the IDPF. In the "Document Divisions" section, they detail what these divisions are used for:

volume: A component of a collection.
part: A major structural division of a piece of writing, typically
encapsulating a set of related chapters.
chapter: A major structural division of a piece of writing.
subchapter: A major sub-division of a chapter.
division: A major structural division that may also appear as a
substructure of a part (esp. in legislation).

Each of these divisions should apply to either a <section> or a <body> element.
For your case of independent tales and poems, I think we can probably rule out sub-chapter, unless some of your tales are long enough that they have sections within them that are distinct enough to warrant new levels of headers. My inclination would be to use chapter for each item, and potentially part if you have relevant content groupings, eg all the tales in one section and all the poems in another. Division seems to be a division that is larger than a chapter but smaller than a part, and volume would be a whole new book. The Lord of the Rings, for example, would be three volumes (one for each book), each comprising 2 parts themselves made up of a number of chapters.
It should be noted that at present, there are few devices that make use of epub:type tags at all, and none that I'm aware of that use the document divisions. Adding in the semantics now means that when a reading system does come out that makes use of this information, you'll already be set though, which is nice.


Epub read-along, Highlighting is not working My fixed-layout read-along book is validated finally.  I tested it on the Ipad.  Everything looks fine,  The audio is working fine.  However, there is no word highlighting.  I put this code in the CSS file and the content.opf file.

.-epub-media-overlay-active {
color: #f09aec;
}

What else do I need to do?

You need to include the following line in your content.opf file:

<meta property="media:active-class">-epub-media-overlay-active</meta>

Further information and examples can be found on the IDPF's site.


Can not Copy from a Pdf Document I am using Adobe Reader and Preview in mac to read a book in pdf format but I couldn't able to copy any word in the book. I don't understand what is different in this case because I have always done that on a pdf document so far. Any help would be great. Thanks

This sounds most likely that the document has been scanned, and then not processed with OCR (Optical Character Recognition).

Just with Adobe Reader and Preview.app, you can not do much about it. In order to make it copyable, you would have to get OCR software, or if you have access to Acrobat, use its OCR capability.

There may also be some security settings with the file; you can see that by opening it in Adobe Reader, press  to display the document properties, and then select the Security tab.


How to add external epub to Kobo Desktop? My Kobo Aura HD H2O is "in the mail" so I'm trying to prepare for it by adding existing non-DRM ePub books that I already own.  Ideally I'd like to be able to add books to the Kobo Desktop App and have the device sync via WiFi when it arrives.

In the interim, and ongoing, I'd also like to have the Android App installed on my phone & tablet so that I can read the same books there and also have them sync location, bookmarks etc.

I've looked through the Kobo support / KB section and google a bit, as well as explored the Kobo Desktop app, but I'm not seeing a way to do this.

What am I missing?  Thanks in advance!

(And please please don't say that only books purchased via the Kobo store can be added and that I have to copy them onto the device directly and not have any sync capability...  The reason I'm switching to Kobo from Kindle is to rid myself of the hassle of having islands of content!)

Please note that if you simply need to transfer .epub files to the reader, you can simply connect it to your computer with an USB cable, it will be treated like an external USB storage drive; you can simply copy your books on the reader (maybe on a new sub-directory to keep things clean and neat) and when you disconnect it, it will update the database and recognize your new books. There isn't anything easier than this ;-)

Anyway for a more complete management, I suggest you to try Calibre, it is a superb ebook manager itself with a ton of features; also, it is free and opensource and it is available for Linux systems too, if these are things that are relevant for you.

One of its strengths is the opportunity to add plugins to extend its functionalities. It works perfectly with any ereader device, without the need to add anything, but I suggest to you a couple of plugins that are specifically aimed at Kobo users, that can be useful to have:

Kobo Touch Extended Driver: It replaces the standard Kobo device driver shipped with Calibre, its main feature is to optimize the .epub books you are sending to the device with the particular format used by Kobo, called .kepub.epub. Kobo e-readers have two different readers inside (I mean "reader" as a software here), one is used for standard ePub files while the other has some different features and is used for Kepubs. I prefer the last one, but in the end it is a matter of personal preferences, so I suggest you to try both of them and see which format you like the most.
Kobo Utilities: this is a must-have tool, IMHO. It allow you to perform many operations directly on the device, by manipulating its internal database; it is nothing too complicate, but it could be considered as a tool for advanced users that know what they are doing; I must say that I've never had any kind of problem, but I suggest you to read the warnings from the author.

Please note that you don't have to download these plugins from the MobileRead forum, the easiest way is to install them directly from inside Calibre, where this task can be performed from a nice and handy graphical interface.


Kindle Reader no longer syncing correctly My Kindle 3rd gen has recently started not syncing to the right spot; it asks me if I want to go to the furthest pg read and I click "yes" and it goes but not far enough. It used to work fine; my software is up to date so any advice?

Hold the power button or slider for about 20–30 seconds. Release it then hold it for about 5 seconds or until you see something happen on screen. That does a power on reset. Obviously you’ll have to make sure it’s charged.
Alternatively you can start it as normal then:

From the Kindle Home screen, press Menu.
Select Settings.
Press Menu.
Select Reset to Factory Defaults.


Can I suppress Wikipedia lookup on a Kindle Paperwhite? Reading Chinese on my Paperwhite I need to look up lots of characters.  Often the Kindle offers me the Wikipedia lookup first and I have to swipe over to the translation or dictionary.  Wikipedia is literally never the one I want. Is there a way to stop the Kindle from going to it, or at least stop the Kindle from offering it as the first choice?

People not familiar with Chinese may not see why this is such a problem, so I'll explain.  Many (maybe most) words in modern Chinese are two characters long.  But sentences are written with no breaks between words.  So you often look up two-character combinations -- and you will often pick two characters that some given dictionary does not recognize as one word. In that case Bing translate will almost always get it right for you.  Wikipedia will almost never help at all. Wikipedia is great, but is not designed to help people read novels!

Combined with other infelicities in the way Kindle handles Chinese characters, the frequent pointless detours through Wikipedia waste a lot of time.

I share your pain and although I don't have a solution (almost in 2020...) I do have a viable explanation why they keep it this way.

Two factors, based on my thinking:
- They don't want to show an empty card, so they switch to another source when a dictionary definition is not found. (to Wikipedia)
- They have to pay for translations over a certain quota, so they avoid doing unnecessary queries, and therefore will never show the online translation card first.

In addition, it seems likely that they don't pay for Wikipedia searches and don't care about the unnecessary, pointless, mindless load that they make on Wikipedia servers.

In my opinion they should show the dictionary card first, regardless of whether a definition was found. Show the online translation second, and the Wikipedia one third. (Assuming that they would never pay extra and show the online translation first... which would actually be best for users). So I suggest that they ALWAYS show:

Dictionary-Translation-Wikipedia

Current behavior, as of Dec 2019:
Regardless of whether the WiFi is turned on, they show:
- Dictionary-Wikipedia-Translation when the term is found in the dictionary.
- Wikipedia-Translation-Dictionary when the term is NOT found in the dictionary.


Calibre fails to unwrap Georgian text I am trying to use the calibre conversion feature to convert ebook written in Georgian from PDF to Mobi. The effect is however very poor. Someone in 10 lines gets unwrapped. I tried to use different unwrapping factors but to no avail. I tested this feature on a Polish book and the effect was satisfactory with default settings.

Important note about Georgian – its script is unicameral. So I suspect that the lack of capital letters at the beginning of the sentences can cause the unwrapping algorithm to fail. But I didn't look at the code, so maybe someone who knows the algorithm better could confirm.

So my questions are:

Can it be the unicameral character of the alphabet that causes the problem?
Can I tweak the algorithm to fix it?
Is there any other conversion tool that could work for me here.

I have checked the source code and it turns out that Calibre doesn't support non-latin script at all. The bug was filed here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1753533 the developer, however, refuses to use Unicode data to recognize alphabetic characters. Mkhedruli was added, but if you want other alphabets to be supported, you either need to manipulate the source code or file another bug.


I can't connect my Kobo Glo to my Laptop All of a sudden, I'm unable to connect my 1st gen. Kobo Glo to my Laptop.

It usually worked without any kind of problem (I sideloaded a book not earlier than 15 days ago), but today I was totally unable to connect it.

My laptop has is a dual boot Linux/Window machine, I tried on both systems, with a lot of different USB cables, everytime without success.

On the Kobo device, plugging in a cable correctly detects to be linked to a PC, it even asks the usual confirmation to connect, but the computer won't detect it.

Is there anything that I can try to solve this?

Under Linux, if I try to run dmesg -v whe I connect the device, I get this info:

[93021.088380] usb 6-1: new full-speed USB device number 22 using uhci_hcd
[93021.224031] usb 6-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[93021.468342] usb 6-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[93021.704332] usb 6-1: new full-speed USB device number 23 using uhci_hcd
[93021.840343] usb 6-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[93022.088343] usb 6-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[93022.196336] usb usb6-port1: attempt power cycle
[93022.640345] usb 6-1: new full-speed USB device number 24 using uhci_hcd
[93023.068350] usb 6-1: device not accepting address 24, error -71
[93023.196345] usb 6-1: new full-speed USB device number 25 using uhci_hcd
[93023.620330] usb 6-1: device not accepting address 25, error -71
[93023.620405] usb usb6-port1: unable to enumerate USB device

It's difficult to answer this in a format that's useful for Stack Exchange since it usually turns into a long comment thread of "Have you tried this?" so I'll try a more generic answer.

The sequence I follow when trying to debug things like these is to systematically swap out things to see what could affect it. You have already swapped the operating system which is a good thing - we know it's not a Linux kernel upgrade issue or something like that.

I would now swap out these things in the order of least-to-most amount of work:

Try a different USB port.
Try a different USB cable (I see now that you have already tried this).
Try a different USB device with a different USB cable.
If it works, try the new device with the old cable.
Try it in another computer.

If all of this fails, you can try to reset the device in two ways:

Try simply turning it off and on again. Sounds stupid, but for example my Kobo is essentially always on since I tell it to go to sleep mode when I close my case lid.
Factory reset. On my Kobo Aura ONE this is in the Settings>Device information menu.
I don't know how to do this, but it could be possible to force a firmware upgrade even if it's to the same version.

If none of the above helps, I would simply give up and declare it broken.


Edits aren't being saved in Calibre I've just spent the last two days taking all the bad line breaks and correcting type errors made in the conversion of my novel into an epub file. Up until an hour ago, my saves were taking. The file looked good.

I was on the home stretch and stopped for lunch. I hadn't closed the program and had carefully saved the files every five minutes or so. Now all my work is gone! The file looks terrible, as it did before I began editing.

Where did all that work go? I saved the files hundreds of times during the work on this editing job. Is Calibre broken? Should I do this tedious editing work in another program?

For safest saving work with text in the text field, whether in special programs (Calibre, Sigil) or writing a simple post in a discussion or forum, it is good to copy this text(ctrl + c)and paste(ctrl + v)to notepad (or its equivalent according operating system) and save it separately.

(For example, PSPad or Notepad++ highlights special characters)


How to install KOReader on Kobo Aura ONE I am a complete beginner with Kobo or generally ebook readers but I got a Kobo Aura ONE reader mostly for reading PDFs on its large screen. However, the builtin reader is not very great and I have heard very good things in this regards about the KOReader alternative.

I found multiple differing guides on how to actually install it but I am not too wise from it. Is there someone who actually successfully installed it on Kobo Aura ONE? How should I best proceed? And what are the dangers of doing that (can my device be irreversibly damaged?).

Thanks!

I was impatient so I went ahead with the procedure. (Although worried about bricking a new device, I got it mainly to read PDFs and therefore really wanted to have KOReader up and running).

So I will sum up here the procedure for first-time installation of KOReader on fresh new Kobo Aura ONE.
Note that this is just the procedure that I followed, it might change in future or not work for you. Off course, I provide no guarantees about accuracy of this guide. Please read the information in the below links for most up to date information.

Prepare your device. Make sure your device is working properly with no errors. It's recommended to update to the latest firmware version. Charge the battery full and switch off WiFi.
A prerequisite for installing alternative readers is the installation of Kobo Start Menu (KSM). The detailed instructions and the most up-to-date archive can be found here. Download it and follow the instructions:

  Step 1

  connect the Kobo to the PC
  copy the folder kbmenupngs to the root of the device (e.g. K:\)
  eject safely and disconnect
  check that all images (exit_nickel.png, switchtokoreader.png, etc.) are listed in the library and their thumbnails are displayed there, and at least once as tiles on the home screen. Only then proceed to step two.

  Step 2

  connect the Kobo device to the PC
  copy KoboRoot.tgz to the folder .kobo of the device
  eject safely and disconnect
  wait until the update is finished (do not interrupt it, even if it takes some time)

Note 1: You can always return to the default Kobo reader by starting the Nickel reader (press start nickel).

Note 2: KSM is by default only launched every second time but if everything is working correctly for you, you can set it to be the default:

  KSM is by default configured to run only after every second reboot, and nickel automatically runs after every other second reboot. This is a kind of security measure in case KSM does not properly run after installation (something that cannot be excluded with future firmwares or changed hardware). After KSM has started the first time, please change this behaviour:

  Select tools > activate > set runmenu settings.msh > always

The KSM should now be installed and working. But for Aura ONE (and some other newer devices) we need to apply also a patch. You can find the archive and instructions here. Follow the instructions:

  extract the KoboRoot.tgz from archive uploaded to this post
  copy the extracted KoboRoot.tgz into .kobo of your device (If you cannot connect to the pc from within KSM, connect from within nickel.)
  safely eject and disconnect your device
  select (in KSM home) handle update > install update (do not select install partial update)
  wait until the device has rebooted

After the patch, you should notice that the KSM font is slightly larger (at least on the bigger Aura ONE).
Now that KSM is up and running, you can install any compatible readers and utilities. This is relatively simple. Download the latest (or a version of your choice) nightly build from
http://build.koreader.rocks/download/nightly/
Extract the archive and copy the folder koreader to the .adds directory of your connected device. Safely eject the device and press start koreader to launch KOReader.

That is all. I haven't encountered any problems and the process was quite simple, after I gathered all the information (which was the hardest part).

On a sidenote: After brief testing, KOReader is definitely superior to the default reader for reading PDFs, thanks to its adaptive zooming (cropping) of whitespace. This makes even A4 documents readable. So if PDFs make big part of your reading, I definitely recommend it. For EPUB ebooks, I might keep using the original reader (a subjective choice) but thanks to the KSM, it is relatively simple to switch between the two readers.

The main information sources I followed were:

KOReader Wiki: Installation on Kobo devices - Aura One, Aura Edition 2,
tshering's post at MobileRead Forums about installing Kobo Start Menu (KSM),
tshering's post on MobileRead Forums about updating KSM for newer Kobo devices, and
Ken Maltby's post on MobileRead Forums about whole procedure to install KOReader (and other utilities)


Possibility of converting a pdf containing equations to mobi I have a pdf with lots of equations which gets distorted when converted to mobi format using calibre. Is there any reliable way of doing that? The equations in the pdf might have been written using Latex or any other software which I do not have any idea of.

Try https://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/download/ or FineReader. You'll likely get a usable but bad result.


Sizing my Epub for Edit for read-along I formatted an ePUb in Indesign CC 19.  I am ready to put in the audio for the read-along.  I researched the viewpoint size to fit more than one IPAD.  2048 x 1536 is what was suggested for my epub because it has a one page landscape spread with no border.  I tested it along the way and it looks fantastic in  Readium and IBooks.  The problem is that when I cracked it open to add the audio. in the page view and the code view both in Dreamweaver and Sigil, the font is too large.  It also has put the words vertically.  I can't read the words because I can't see the full page.  I wonder if I can change the size of the screen so I can add the audio?

I'm inferring a couple assumptions from what you're trying to do. It sound's like a fixed-layout book. Don't worry so much about screen size. Fixed layout books will resize automatically. Just make sure it's still readable on the smaller sizes without zooming.

Then, don't try to edit a fixed layout epub with software, they will never display it properly. You have to add the audio files to the epub package and then edit the .xhtml and .css files manually:

Unzip the .epub (try a free download called ePub Zip/Unzip)
Copy the audio files into the OEBPS folder
Open an .xhtml file with TextEdit (Mac) or other editor
Insert the code in the header, or wherever it needs to be to accomplish your goal for that particular page in the book.
Save and repeat for each of the files you need to add. You can test along the way by opening the .xhtml files in your web browser. Don't worry so much about the layout here, just test the audio.
Once you've linked all the audio files to the correct pages, rezip the epub and open it in iBooks to test.


Why/Where is calibre writing author/title in metadata when saving to device? When I connect my device Simple Touch Nook, I send a book to my device using the calibre management software. Although I have the template {title} - {authors} set for sending to device, when I open the Library in the Nook (now unplugged from my computer), I found {authors}/{title} as the title of the book.

I don't know why/where is calibre doing this. It's not documented, not defined and not wanted.

I want to have {title} as the title of my book in Nook's library.

I had trouble with metadata from Calibre until I realised that I had to either reconvert or polish the ebook after making any changes to the title, author, description etc.

For the metadata to "stick" you have to polish (in the case of an epub) or convert (in the case of a new book in other than epub format).

Although the metadata will look fine in Calibre, if you've made changes you need to polish or convert for the changes to be applied to the ebook.

Hope this helps you.


Kindle Paperwhite Repair Code 2 One of my Kindle Paperwhite's recently came up with "Your Kindle needs repair" with a Repair Code 2.

Amazon instantly sent out a new device, no questions asked (bit odd). Which is great, but they wouldn't tell me what repair code 2 meant and Google only shows other people having the same issue but no underlying cause.

Has anyone figured out what this code means?

Yes, see the discussion on:

http://www.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/2xojx2/how_to_fix_your_paperwhite_if_it_says_your_kindle/

It is happening IMHO due to Over The Air (pushed) software updates failing, either due to bugs in the new release or the update process not behaving. The biggest issue is that Amazon won't admit it and if your unit is out of warranty they want to sell you a new one instead of telling you the simple method of doing a factory reset, i.e. adding a DO_FACTORY_RESTORE file to your root directory! This is utter fraud by Amazon and I spent hours on calls to Amazon trying to get my unit fixed/replaced to no avail. The biggest conspiracy is why this simply fix seems to be widely discussed on Chinese and Russian web site but not on any english sites (hence my propencity to add the magic file name in posts on this topic).


How does Adobe Digital Editions work with Kobo's DRM? In some occasional cases, books purchased from the Kobo store must be read or run through Adobe's Digital Editions software. What is the benefit to this requirement, why use Digital Editions specifically, and what happens in the process?

According to the Kobo website:

  When do I need to use Adobe Digital Editions?

  If you use any of Kobo's free reading apps or a Kobo eReader, you may
  never need to use Digital Editions at all. Kobo's reading apps and
  eReader can automatically download most books from the Kobo Store, and
  update your library with them.

  The exceptions are when:

  You want to read eBooks from another store or from a library on a Kobo eReader;
  You buy Adobe DRM PDFs from the Kobo Store and want to read them on a Kobo eReader;
  You want to read books from the Kobo Store on an eReader from another company.

  In these cases you will need to use Digital Editions to open your
  books and transfer them to your eReader.

  The reason for this is that most eBooks from online booksellers and
  libraries are protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM
  prevents the unauthorized copying or redistribution of eBooks, to
  protect the rights of authors and publishers. There are different
  types of DRM, but Kobo supports a version by Adobe. This is why you
  may need to use Adobe's software, Digital Editions, to open and
  transfer some eBooks to your eReader.

Also, when you buy a book from the Kobo store, you often receive an ACSM file (I have received this type of file often when buying ebooks from the Kobo store for my Sony Reader PRS-650). An ACSM file is a license file that Adobe Digital Editions will first verify and then download the appropriate ebook.

UPDATE (I should have read further down... they mention the ACSM files on the same page as linked above):

  Why did I get an ACSM file when I downloaded my book from the Kobo
  Store?

  Your Kobo eReader can read books in EPUB and PDF format. (A file
  format is how books are stored on your computer.) If you downloaded a
  book and received an ACSM file, don't worry – this isn't a problem.
  The ACSM file is the license for the PDF or EPUB book you bought. To
  get the book itself you just need to open the ACSM file in Adobe
  Digital Editions. Digital Editions will verify your license and then
  download your eBook in either EPUB or PDF format. You can then
  transfer your book to your Kobo eReader (or another compatible
  eReader).

  You will get a license file if you download a book that is protected
  by Adobe Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM prevents the
  unauthorized copying or distribution of books, to protect the rights
  of authors and publishers. Most books in the Kobo Store are protected
  by DRM.


css - select only when followed by specific element I have a specific problem in which I need to remove the margin-bottom of every Element that has a class only when followed by the same element with the same class.
So p.1 has a margin-bottom:1em to give space to any other element that comes after it. But if p.1 is followed by another p.1 the margin-bottom should be 0. The thing is, I can't just give p.text a margin-top because of reasons I don't really want to elaborate.

text

___

___

___

text

So in this exhample the first and second p class="1" need to be selected. I tried p.1 + p.1 but this only selects the second and third because it selects the sibling preceded by another one and not the sibling that is followed by one. Is this understandable?

Is there any way to do that in EPUB2?

As you've discovered, the challenges here are that:

in CSS, it's not possible to select a parent or ancestor element by its child; the browser applies CSS 'downwards' only; and
you can't know what CSS properties and selectors EPUB2-capable readers will actually support.

If I've understood your needs correctly, here are three possible options you could try. For readability I've renamed your 1 class as line.

Option 1

.line {
  margin: 0;
}
.line + .text {
  margin-top: 1em;
}

Option 2

.text + .line {
  margin: 0;
}
.line + .line {
  margin: 0;
}

Option 3

* + .line {
  margin: 0;
}

I've created a pen here to demo these: https://codepen.io/arthurattwell/pen/NQKRrp Just comment out/uncomment the options in the CSS to see how they behave there. You'd need to test in some older EPUB2 readers to see what really works. As @idiotprogrammer explains, support for the adjacent sibling selector (+) is very unpredictable. As I see it, users whose readers support it get your ideal spacing, and those that don't can still read the content at least.


eBook format in nowadays: EPUB is de facto standard? It is a basic and old question...

There was a "format war" for ebooks (a "Tower of eBabel" for users)... EPUB won?
Wikipedia says that   «... EPUB format is the most widely supported vendor-independent XML-based (...) is supported by the largest number of e-Readers (...). The popularity of Amazon.com's Kindle devices in United States has led also to the prominence of KF8 and AZW » ... It is a truth for this "Ebook  publishers and readers" community?

So, putting in other words:

EPUB is a world-wide consensus? It is the most popular, for ebook readers today? We can put all money in this format?
And about the "second place", what is the format? (PDF? MOBI?) This second format is still important for ebook-readers?  There are reliable and updated statistics? (2010 example, 2009 example)

NOTES (EDIT)

The question is about "Comercial + Public Domain" content.

For public libraries and public domain content the perception statistics are  changing... People feel that there are "some standard" (EPUB?).

What we have heard (since 2009) in the comercial scenario is «PDF is still the format of choice for most people, though EPUB is getting respectable usage, with Mobi in third», but no reliable statistics about it.

To join "public domain scenario" with "comercial scenario" perhaps another kind of statistics must be also used: a survey like "ebook users read more comercial or public content?"

The world-wide statistics have distinct profile than USA-statistics, but most of the compiled data came from USA.

About replacement of the old and stiff PDF by EPUB, we have heard that "the market" is waiting the advent of HTML5 + CSS3-paged completion (be terminated and official W3C recommendations) and consolidation... How many years?

About reference numbers: how many ebook-titles user have (at Internet) in each format and each scenario?

Public domain and open content:

PDF: a lot of titles (!!) ... some reliable statistics?
EPUB: as of March 2014, Project Gutenberg claimed over 45,000 items in its collection (but have no format-download statiscs); SciELO and many other minor public domain e-book projects are also distributing ebooks. Another source of Ebooks, scientific articles: PubMed Central have 3.1 MILLION articles that now (2014) are ditributed also in EPUB format.

Comercial universe: ...? Amazon dominates?

First, a note: I will not be considering PDFs in this answer, because I do not consider PDFs to be ebooks. There are a number of reasons for this, like lack of reflowability and end-user customization options, but the primary reason is that PDFs are not generally sold at sites that sell ebooks--you can't sell your PDFs through iBooks or the Kindle store or whatnot. Others have other opinions, and that's fine—the relevant info is that I won't be considering PDFs here.

In terms of variety of devices supporting the format, epub is the clear standard—it's supported on nearly everything that reads ebooks. When you look at numbers, though, it's a different story: according to an article at Digital Book World, a recent Book Industry Study Group found the following statistics to the question "Where do you typically acquire ebooks?":

Amazon.com website: 51.3%
Amazon App: 15.7%
iBooks/iTunes (Apple): 8.2%
Barnes & Noble App: 6.1%
Barnes & Noble website: 5.7%
All other sources: 12.8%

This means that Amazon accounts for roughly 2/3 of the sales of ebooks, making their proprietary mobi/KF8 format the dominant format.

In essence, there is no "winner" yet, and there is not likely to be any time soon. Apple, Google, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo are enough to ensure that epub will remain alive and kicking for quite some time. With a majority of the sales, Amazon has no impetus to switch to a standard, and they don't appear to be in any danger of losing much market share. Where we are is where we're likely to be for quite a while, which means making two formats: epub and mobi/KF8. fortunately, Amazon has gotten much better at making tools that convert from epub to their format, so concentrating on epub will give you something for Amazon as well with little extra work.


How can I turn my hardcover book into a digital copy? I have several books that I love reading but because of my asthma I would need them in digital format. The paper back is too old and would affect me. I tried to find one of them in digital format but found the author has passed and there is no digital format in existence.

If you do not plan to distribute the copies, there is a better solution to just re-type everything - especially if there is more than 1 book.

Scan book page by page.
OCR the resulting images.
Sister only makes correction where it is needed - or not at all, if mistakes can be "corrected" in the mind, while reading.

Depending on the choices for step 2, you need to slightly adjust step 1.

There are even solution for the smartphones - take picture with smartphone, get text. I did a lot of scans for personal purposes, but I do not have much experience with OCR. Try a search on the net for first steps to OCR.

Discussion - Convert paper book to ebook

OCR = Optical Character Recognition


Importing XHTML Files into InDesign I just watched a series of InDesign tutorials on Lynda.com. It looks relatively simple, but one thing I'm hung up on is importing content.

I created my book as a website in Dreamweaver, so I could get some idea of how it will look. I then learned that Microsoft Word is the default for importing content into InDesign. So I tried copying text from a Dreamweaver file into Word then importing it into InDesign, but that apparently just gives me plain text.

I then previewed by Dreamweaver file in a browser and copied the text from the browser into Word. When I import it into InDesign, I get most of my tags, but not superscripts, and I get a ton of code bloat with extra spans, styles, etc.

I discovered that I could change my Dreamweaver file extensions to xhtml, then paste them directly into an InDesign file that has been opened with eCanCrusher. But I don't know what to do next; how do I sync the file I just pasted in with InDesign and make it part of my book?

To put it another way, can someone explain the work flow for pasting .xhtml files into an InDesign project, rather than using Microsoft Word to import the content?

EDIT

I may have to delete this question. I just realized that eCanCrusher opens finished epubs, not the InDesign files. I thought it was possible to work with HTML in InDesign, but I can't even remember how to access HTML files in InDesign documents. I'll have to ponder my question a little more...

After doing some more research, it appears that X/HTML files can NOT be imported into InDesign. The best you can do is use InDesign to create a framework for your epub, export it as an epub, then use BBEdit to open and modify the HTML files that make up your epub. If you have to copy an entire HTML file into your epub (or delete a file), then you can use eCanCrusher to crack open your epub, giving you full access to everything inside.


Does anybody read interactive eBooks? "Interactive" eBooks are books which integrate various means by which the "book" can interact with the reader. They often incorporate audio and graphic elements.

My question is as follows:

Is anybody familiar with, or can point me to, any statistics pertaining to the success of interactive eBooks (or lack thereof)?
This can include sales/market share stats, critic or customer reviews, relevant articles, personal opinions from experience.
My goal is to get a feel for how users, on average, are receptive to interactive eBooks as opposed to non interactive books.

I appreciate any insight into the matter.

Publishers have been very slow to push the boundaries of interactive ebooks, outside of education and children's books. One exception is a French language version of H.P. Lovecraft's "Kadath", published by the publisher Mnémos, with Walrus Studio. That seems to have been almost an experiment on their part.  ( https://vimeo.com/43381264 )

I've developed epub3 interactive training materials. One consideration is that you have to know how the user will consume the content, as reader apps vary in their compliance with the epub3 standard. Apple's iBooks app is actually quite good. It's what I developed for and tested against, and the only option for reading Kadath.

I suspect that for the average person reading text for entertainment, the demand isn't there. If they want interactivity, they think "app," not "ebook."


How can I access a web browser on the Nook Simple Touch? I have a Nook Simple Touch and am frustrated by its lack of a web browser. I want to download ePub files from websites and read them on my Nook. I know there is supposed to be no web browser accessible, but I have heard that there are ways to get around that. What are they/is it?

Perhaps this might help:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-secret-nook-simple-touch-web-browser.html
Relevant quote:

  With the NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight and the original operating
  system, the process is a bit more complex: Connect to a WiFi network,
  use the Quick Nav Bar to go to Settings, and then choose Connect your
  Facebook, Twitter, and Google Accounts.

  Tap on the link to Google; you will be asked to “Link your Google
  Account,” but don’t bother. Instead, tap Forgot Password. Now look
  closely and locate the small Home button that has mysteriously
  appeared at the bottom of the page. Tap Home, and you will get to the
  Google search engine, and from there you can connect to most Web
  pages.

This page shows the same method with a video:
http://goodereader.com/blog/e-reader/how-to-access-the-hidden-internet-browser-on-the-nook-simple-touch-with-glowlight


Is there a way to produce an epub with numbered equations? Is there a way to produce an epub with right-justified numbered equations?

I can produce the document using Microsoft Word plus MathType or using a TeX editor.

I am looking for an automatic procedure to translate the file to ePub format.

It would help if provided a sample of the content to give a better answer or suggestion. Are the equations in html, mathml, or as images? What is your current html output for the equations, do you have a sample you could share?

If your number is wrapped in a tag with a unique css class, then you could use css to float the number to the right.

Example html:

The para with your equation 1/2(1)

Example css

span.eq_nu {float: right;}


Highlights and notes are not save to my Clipping file I regularly delete the My Clippings file in my Kindle when it gets too big. Usually a new one appears the next time I make a highlight or a note, containing just that one highlight or note.
However, after the last delete, I am unable to save highlights and notes. When I make one a new My Clippings file is created, but it is empty and it remains so no matter how many highlights or notes I make. The highlights and notes are saved somewhere, since they remain in the book, but they are not logged in the My Clippings file.
I've tried deleting it again, but the same thing happens. I've also tried restarting the Kindle after and before the new file is created, but it doesn't help.
What can I do?

Ok, much to my surprise, I solved this.
I had to delete my (empty) Clippings file, then connect to the internet, then make a highlight. Apparently the issue was somehow caused by synchronization, because after doing this my highlights and notes appear on my Clippings file again, even if I'm not connected to the internet.