How to delete Calibre ePub bookmarks Whenever an ePub file is opened with Calibre's ebook viewer, a bookmark file is created inside that ePub. This file does not store user bookmarks, it is automatically used by the program to remember the last used location inside the book.
More precisely this bookmark file is called calibre_bookmarks.txt and is located in the META-INF folder, inside the said ePub book main directory.

I'd like to know if there is an easy way of getting rid of these bookmark files from inside Calibre, ideally from multiple ePubs at once (doing it manually for every single ebook wouldn't be very handy), effectively cleaning them and restoring their "newness".

There's a plugin called Modify ePub which could remove Calibre bookmarks. But I haven't tried it myself.


Can I change the cover of a mobi/epub book? Can I change the cover of a mobi/epub book so that in Kindle or Aldiko reader software, the book cover is shown as my own customized cover?

Yes we can do that using opensource software like Calibre.

Install the Calibre software and start the program.
Copy the ebook.mobi file to your PC.
Drag the book onto the Calibre software UI. It will get imported.
Right click and select "edit metadata" for individual book you want to change.
There is option to browse and select the cover that you want.
Save the file.
Right click on the book and select open in directory, now copy the ebook.mobi file.
Go to kindle directory on your device and delete the original ebook.mobi file and paste copied file in that location.

The cover will be updated in your Kindle device. If its not updated try restarting the device. It will work after some time.

The steps for epub files are similar, you will just need to copy the file to a different directory.

(There are other programs like Cigil to edit epub files but Calibre can be used for both formats.)


How to update the firmware for a K3 Kindle keyboard from Linux? From Linux, how do I update a K3 Kindle from 3.4 to 3.4.2 version?

This is a slightly different question than previous because it's Linux specific.

My device is:

  Kindle Keyboard 3G (Free 3G + Wi-Fi)

  Your serial number starts with "B006"

If you have software version 3.4.1, download Software Update 3.4.2.
If you have software version 3.4, download Software Update 3.4.2.

I'm just not sure exactly how to proceed once it's downloaded:

  Amazon Device Support  › Fire & Kindle Software Updates › Kindle
  Keyboard Software Updates› Transfer & Install Software Updates
  Manually

  Software updates automatically download and install on your Kindle
  Keyboard when connected wirelessly; however, you can also manually
  download the software and update your device via USB cable.

  Before you perform these steps, make sure you determine your software
  version. Go to Determine Your Software Version.

From your computer, go to Kindle Keyboard Software Updates and download the applicable software update file.
Transfer the software update file to your Kindle device:
    Turn your Kindle Keyboard on and connect it to your computer using the USB cable.
    Drag and drop the new update file from your computer onto the Kindle drive.

Note: Do not drop the file into one of the folders within the Kindle drive.
Monitor file transfer and disconnect:
    After the file has transferred successfully, eject the Kindle to safely disconnect your Kindle from your computer.
    Disconnect the USB cable from your Kindle and your computer.
Start the software update:
    From Home, press the Menu button, and then select Settings.
    Press the Menu button, and then select Update Your Kindle. This option will be grayed out if the most recent update has already

  been installed or if the file transfer was not successful.
          Select OK to perform the update. Your Kindle will restart twice during the update. After the first update, you will see Your
  Kindle is Updating.

Obviously, the Kindle needs to be running to transfer files to it.  But it also needs to have the screen locked.  Yes?  Then, just put the file in the root directory which is available?

the K3 automounted fine:

thufir@dur:/media/thufir/Kindle$
thufir@dur:/media/thufir/Kindle$ ls -al
total 44
drwxr-xr-x  6 thufir thufir 8192 Dec 31  1969 .
drwxr-x---+ 4 root   root   4096 Dec 28 10:41 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 thufir thufir 8192 Nov 24 17:51 audible
drwxr-xr-x  2 thufir thufir 8192 Nov 24 17:51 documents
drwxr-xr-x  2 thufir thufir 8192 Nov 24 17:51 music
drwxr-xr-x  4 thufir thufir 8192 Dec 28 10:37 system
thufir@dur:/media/thufir/Kindle$
thufir@dur:/media/thufir/Kindle$ cp /home/thufir/Downloads/Update_kindle_3.4_3.4.2_B006.bin .
thufir@dur:/media/thufir/Kindle$
thufir@dur:/media/thufir/Kindle$ cd
thufir@dur:~$

Then I unmounted the K3.  But, there's no update option. Registration shows:

Registration
Wi-Fi
Voice Guide
Device Password
Device Info

then menu, select settings, then menu again for the update option.


Online ebooks opensource platform that can be hosted on a server I want to host an ebook website for students where they can find different PDF/PPT/TXT files. I want to provide them access to download these types of files for free.

Is there any software/online platform available as Open Source, so that I can host the files directly on my server?

Hosting the files is the easy part. Making sure that you don't violate any copyright laws in doing so is the hard part.

To host the files, all you need to do is copy the files into a folder on your web host. Then create a web page with links to those files. If you don't know how to do this, then you should check the resources offered by your web hosting service. They usually include free site builder tools that will help explain how to create a basic web site and link to different pages or files.

As for the copyright, that is a much more complex issue. Just because you own a particular book doesn't mean you have the right to give away copies of it, especially with e-books. You need to check each book carefully and look for the copyright notice to see if it grants you permission to redistribute. Also, if you can't find a copyright notice or a release, you should assume that the book is still protected under copyright. The safest way to ensure that you can do this legally would probably be to contact the author or publisher.


What are epub JSON links? I've spotted that there are some links within the epub using a format in line with JSON

<a href="{&quot;unit&quot;: &quot;U01&quot;, &quot;page&quot;: 24, &quot;exercise&quot;: [&quot;AB1&quot;]}">

the href look like this

{"unit": "U01", "page": 24, "exercise": ["AB1"]}

What are those links? are they described in the epub-3 specification? and how does the reader handle that kind of JSON href references?

The reader should just ignore it.

According to epub standard which says content should be valid XHTML or HTML5 and then  following the links through to the RFC 3987 for an URI section 2.2 a href begins with a scheme (e.g. http) and then a :

I would guess that there is a reader that preprocesses a file and this converts the JSON to a link.


How do I change login info on my kindle? I read from another question on here that Amazon will automatically register your user/kindle info when you order from them. If that's so, my husband bought me this as a gift and he has nothing on his kindle account. How can I change this to my account? Will I have to repurchase all books?

You can change the same from the settings option of you device. Go to the settings and update the information.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-manage-your-kindle-fire-hds-amazon-account.html

http://www.technipages.com/kindle-fire-how-to-change-stored-email-password

If you still face any issue, I would recommend to ask the Amazon customer care.


What book collection related features can be useful in an eBook reader app When choosing an eBook reader application, what are the features that a user should seek for managing a set of book / book collection?

Collection download and transfer

Ability to synchronize your collection between multiple devices
Ability to synchronize your collection with the cloud

As a subset of this, backing up and restoring your collection in the cloud

Ability to manually download books from your PC collection to mobile device without automated syncing
Ability to connect to eBook vendors of your choice, purchase ebooks from them and download (Amazon, Samsung, Apple, other web books stores...)
Ability to recognize the book (author/title) by reading the unknown book's content and matching it to special content database, the way music players can identify an MP3 file by the audio fingerprint. Not sure if any software today supports this.

Picking a specific book from a collection

Finding a book by file name substring
Finding a book by browsing the directory

Ideally, should let you sort within subdirectories by your choice (by date, by name, by size)

Tagging and searching by tag
Ability to read book metadata, including EPUB; and finding books by metadata
Finding a book by searching for a string in actual book text
If books support summary blurbs, ability to view a blurb before opening the book

For mobile devices, persistence of experience

Remember the last book you were reading, and open it immediately
Remember several of the last books you were reading for quick pick
Remember the last directory you opened the book from, and start browsing there
Remember a list of your past searches and let you re-do them

Social features

Rate books
Recommend books
Share books
For DRM books that support it, lend books


Will the ads on the Kindle with Special Offers affect my battery life? I am deciding whether or not to buy a Kindle with "special offers" to save money, or without. I am wondering if these decrease the battery life and how significant the decrease is.

For Kindles that use E Ink displays:

  E Ink's technology is commonly referred to as "bistable". What does this mean? Bistable means that the image on an E Ink screen will be retained even when all power sources are removed. In practice, this means that the display is consuming power only when something is changing. For example, when reading on an eReader, power is only needed when turning to a new page but no power is consumed by the display while reading the page. This is most noticeable when an eReader goes into sleep mode yet there is still an image being displayed. By contrast, with a traditional LCD, the display is needs to be refreshed around 30X per second, regardless of the whether anything new is being displayed. Bistability significantly reduces the power consumption of displays using E Ink and is a key reason eReaders have such long battery life.

The "Special Offers" do change the screen and therefore cost a small amount of battery when the Kindle goes to sleep.  But Kindles without the ads also change the screen when going to the lock screen.  Depending on the exact nature of the image, it might be more or less expensive in terms of battery than whatever ad you might have received.

For Kindle Fires, the ads are run on the lock screen and not when in sleep mode.  Again, the difference is just which image is displayed so the energy cost differential should be negligible.

New ads for both platforms must be downloaded occasionally to replace the outdated ones stored somewhere on the device.  But the device only checks for new ads when you sync up, so there's no extra network connections being made.  I've left my WiFi connection off for weeks at a time and the ads just age out and go to a generic screensaver.  As soon as I sync, I start seeing new ads.  The device does not turn on a wireless connection unless you command it to.

In sum, battery life shouldn't be a concern one way or another when deciding which configuration to buy.


Scan epub and pdf to ascertain absence of malware Is it possible to verify the absence of malware in epub and pdf files?.

I'm using a MacBook Air, macOS Catalina, and iPad mini iOS 13. What program can I use?

epub have an html format, is possible to insert malware inside. Any antivirus can check your ebooks and report you if some is infected.
By other side, if you bought it from a marketplace as Amazon, probably your ebook is virus free.
If you download it from "other sites"… well, you must assume that "can" be infected, so use any online antivirus to check your files


Kindlepreviewer Command Not Found Mac Os X I'm using some specialty software (Circular FLO) that requires use of the "kindlepreviewer" command in terminal, and any time it tries to do so, or if I try to do so myself, including "kindlepreviewer -help", it returns "command not found"
It' driving me absolutely bonkers, I can't seem to find this command anywhere on my computer manually either… my $PATH is returning /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin so that seems like it should be fine, but I searching any of those directories or the Kindle Previer 3 version 3.51.0 application package for the command turns up nothing.
Does anyone have any idea what could be going on here? Does anyone know where this command SHOULD be stored?
As alluded to above, I have Kindle Previewer 3 version 3.51.0 installed, and I'm running Mac OS Catalina. Any help at al would be much appreciated. Thank you!

Somehow my usr/local/bin folder didn't exist at ALL on my work computer (not sure how IT set it up, but my personal computer had the folder and kindlepreviewer was in it after an install of Kindle Previewer 3). Manually creating a bin folder and doing an uninstall/reinstall of Kindle Previewer 3 created the command in the folder.


How do I make the images larger for Paperwhite? I use pictures in my books. I try to keep it as simple as possible. No tricky formatting. To give you an idea, here's what it looks like in MS Word:

All of them look pretty decent when you look at them on Cloud (in black and white).

On Kindle Paperwhite, however, they look something like this:

What can I do to fix this?

I can only speak generally about how images are converted in Kindle. I have not used MS Word to do it (I make my ebooks in HTML), but I have lots of insights about images in kindle and have done a lot of testing.

Kindlegen will autoconvert images to the size/resolution appropriate for the device. BUT you need to make sure you start with a source image which is high resolution enough for it to be resized.

I realize that the HTML --> EPUB --> MOBI might be different from MSWORD --> MOBI, but according to the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines PDF they should be 300 dpi, RGB and should be able to display at 2x magnification across devices. Therefore, you really need to have the width be at least 1600 or 3200pixels at 300 dpi.

I suspect that the source image you used was a crappy web image at 72dpi, and then even though you think it's resizing to acceptable quality levels, the low resolution computer monitor is not showing what it really looks like. That's why it looks small. I'm guessing that the  cloud previewer sees that it's a low quality image and it keeping it small because that will prevent pixilated rendering of images on some of its devices.

You don't need to have graphics good enough to print, but it needs to be significantly better than a 72 dpi web graphic.

(I Have cheated one time and increased a 300 dpi 600px wide graphic by opening it up in a separate graphics program and scaling it up to 1600, but that was a special case; the image detail was dense enough that it could be expanded without losing quality).

MS WOrd may not let you see properties of images. If so, You may need to remove it from MS Word and then edit it in a graphics editor (which allows you to bump up the dpi and scale the resolution up) I would guess that you need an image width 1600px at 300 dpi.

Part of the problem is that the MS WORD to MOBI method does not give you much freedom to tweak it. Amazon's instructions for these conversions are fairly superficial and lead to such issues as you have.

From the standpoint of production, you might want to consider using Calibre (free software) to do conversions from MS Word to .mobi and then open things up in the Kindle Beta Previewer 3
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1003018611

You're viewing the alleged ebook  in the cloud viewer. It's unlikely that what you are seeing in cloud viewer bears any resemblance to what you might see on a Kindle e-ink or Kindle tablet (especially on images).

I do things in HTML/EPUB, and I spend most of my time trying to troubleshoot Kindle's use of images. It's hard -- especially because things might look fine on one device and crappy on another. (Kindle for IOS is its separate kind of hell).

I test ebook images on  all my kindle files on Kindle previewer, Kindle app for Android, Kindle e-ink device and Kindle app for ios. (I don't have access to a kindle device -- though I have good reason to believe that Kindle app for android renders things similar to Kindle devices).

The key thing (to summarize) is to make the graphic as high quality as possible.


Automating Footnote Links I'm working with Dreamweaver, InDesign and BBEdit, so a solution that works with any of these programs would be great.

I'm converting a book that's in the public domain to an ebook. Each chapter has a series of superscript numbers that reference footnotes at the bottom of each page. I'm going to move all the footnotes to an appendix at the end of the book, then hyperlink the superscripts to the appropriate location.

Each chapter's footnotes begin with 1, 2, 3, etc. So I'll probably need to distinguish between chapters by linking to something like #1-1 and #2-1 for the first footnote in chapters 1 and 2, for example.

Anyway, I'd like to know if there's a way to automate the hyperlinking process. Some typical text would look like this:

Some authorities reported greater casualties 4, while at least one reported fewer 5.

After I finish linking to my footnotes, that text would probably look something like this:

Some authorities reported greater casualties 4, while at least one reported fewer 5.

I just wondered if anyone knows of a way to automate the linking process, using regular expressions, or one of the software programs I'm using. Each chapter is in a separate HTML file, and I can process one chapter at a time. I should also note that some footnotes are irregular, including letters (e.g. 14, 14a, 14b).

First, I don't think footnotes translate easily to HTML.  Endnotes are way easier and more appropriate.

The problem here is that HTML isn't semantically rich enough to do these things automatically. You need to manually do the numbering.

I use docbook XML to create citations and endnotes. Very easy to do. Then I use docbook XSLT to output everything in clean HTML. That is a powerful solution, especially if you are comfortable using XSLT. http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/Footnotes.html

Another out of the box solution is to edit source in Markdown language and then convert everything to HTML. I see that Pandoc has a footnote solution http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/authoring_pandoc_markdown.html#footnotes

It would be worth looking into what capabilities Adobe Indesign has for creating footnotes/endnotes. They have an Export-to-epub capability, and maybe the output renders the footnotes/endnotes in a  nonsucky way.

Failing that, regular expressions are the way to go. But you might look into this: https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/common-idioms.html#footnotes

At the risk of trying to simplify your need, a lot can be said for just doing it manually rather than trying to change your production process. This is true especially if you already know the number for each footnote -- like, are you just reproducing the footnote number from a public domain work? Maintaining under 100 citations manually might be less trouble than you think.


Buying an e-book for a friend in Canada I have tried to buy an e-book for a friend from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and two other sites that don't come to mind right now. I have failed using all four accounts (even after contacting their respected CS). I live in Canada; so does he.

Is there a site I can use to send him the book? He has an iPhone and is willing to download an app to be able to receive the book and read it. (Note that I don't own any iOS products)

Any suggestions or sites or apps?

In iTunes, there is an option to "Gift this book".

With the Mac version of iTunes, the "Buy Book" button that is directly below the cover art for the book in the upper left side of the page has a popup menu accessed by clicking on the down arrow on the far right of the button. "Gift this book" is the first option on that menu.

You would need an iTunes account to pay for the book, and your friend would probably need one to receive the book. He would then be able to access the book using Apple's iBook app.


JPG loses quality during ePUB to PDF conversion with calibre I have a ePUB with a bunch of formulas as JPG files.
In the ePUB they are super crisp, but during ePUB to PDF conversion with calibre all the images become blurry, I'd imagine they are JPG compressed.
How can this be fixed?

You should look for a Calibre option for JPG files that does not cause them to lose quality. Look through the manual.

I know Adobe Distiller has options to keep high-quality JPG files. Does Calibre call Distiller or does it have it's own PDF maker?


Is there any software that facilitates scanning of a paper book into an ebook? I have some old sci-fi novels that are out of print and the rights owners are not creating them in ebook form.  Is there any software that facilitates scanning and conversion of these paper books into ebook format?

Tesseract is an open source OCR engine that gives fairly good results. It's my understanding that Google use it for Google Books. OCRFeeder is a project for document layout analysis that works as a nice GUI for Tesseract.

Ocropus is another known open source OCR system.


Conversion of djvu file into pdf file without increasing file size Why does converting a djvu file to pdf increase the size of the file? How can we convert a djvu to a pdf without increasing the size?

The short answer is: PDF is not a good format for storing image data. The only reason that it is often used for doing so, is that it is one of the few formats (the other more well known ones are DjVu and TIFF), that allow you to store multiple (scanned) images in a single file.

The longer answer is that the possible storage of image data in PDF files is done in a less efficient way than is possible in the way DjVu does. So in general, unless the DjVu file is compressed inefficiently to start with, you will always get a bigger PDF file, or you get a much worse quality image.

The primary difference, apart from algorithms used for compression, is that an image in a DjVu file consists of multiple layers, each compressed separately, with optimized algorithms for the layer's data (monotone, color etc.), and recombined for display/printing. Especially on a page with characters (not selectable text associated with the characters) combined with images DjVu easily gets 20x smaller files at similar lossy quality.


Are there any solar-powered ebook reader? The power consumption of an e-ink ebook reader is quite low. An average user might need to charge it once a month. Even a very small solar panel should be able to generate enough power for it.

Are there any solar-powered ebook reader?

Following this article, it looks like one has been developed by LG already:

  Designed by LG Display, the sleek reader features a wafer-fin
  photovoltaic cell that provides it with a steady stream of solar
  energy.

  Read more: LG Unveils Solar Powered E-Book Reader | Inhabitat -
  Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

EDIT: Found after digging some more through Google

Biblio Leaf By Toshiba:

  Toshiba has decided to give their next gadget a green twist by
  announcing that their new eReader, the Biblio Leaf, will be solar
  powered

Solar panel cover for Kindle:

  SolarFocus Technology Company Ltd. has just unveiled one of the most
  ingenious and practical solar powered gadgets that we’ve seen in a
  long time — a sun-powered cover for the most popular e-reader on the
  market, the Amazon Kindle.

Links to articles about Solar powering the ebook reader


Transfer epub from Android phone to Kobo reader Is it possible to transfer an epub from an Android phone to a Kobo reader not using the Kobo app?

For links, getpocket provides a way: I send the link to add@getpocket.com where I registered my email address and then I can synchronise under Articles on my Kobo reader via wifi.

Another way could be to use a server app for Android I could share my epub with and I could get the file to my Kobo reader via wifi.

Is either of these -- or some other method -- doable between an Android phone and a Kobo reader?

Assuming the book(s) have no DRM, this is what I do:

Connect your phone to your computer and move the epub onto your
computer.
Import the epub into Calibre.
Connect your Kobo to your computer.
Use Calibre to load the epub onto your Kobo.

Done!


How to tell if a book from Kobo Store has DRM? When shopping from Kobo Store, how can one determine if a book is encumbered with DRM? And also to determine what kind of DRM is used?

I.E., there is an italian publisher called Newton & Compton that uses a watermark social DRM. For example, if you take the Sherlock Holmes Omnibus on their site, under the tab informazioni aggiuntive it is labeled as protected with watermark; on bookrepublic, another italian store, the same book is labelled as protected with Social DRM (the same thing as watermark); but on Kobo Books, I can't see the DRM specifications anywhere on the page.

Also, ebooks from LiberLiber (a site similar to Project Gutenberg but with a focus on italian works) are offered without any protection; it is reflected, in example, on bookrepublic, where ebooks are clearly labeled as DRM free. Again, on Kobo Store I can't get any information about this.

Is it possible to determine in some way what kind of protection have the books when shopping from Kobo Store without having to rely on other stores or publisher's sites?
And I am correct to assume that Kobo uses the same DRM restrictions of the original publisher (i.e. watermark for Newton & Compton and DRM-free for LiberLiber)? Or does it apply its own kind, without any notice to the end user?

If you look at the bottom of the page you linked:
http://store.kobobooks.com/it-IT/ebook/tutto-sherlock-holmes
you'll see:

As you can see, this book is listed as "Senza DRM" (DRM-Free on the English language site).

You'll also see books with Adobe DRM such as "Mitologia classica"
https://store.kobobooks.com/it-IT/ebook/mitologia-classica

Bonus tip:
To the right of the Product Information you'll see the heading "Read This On" ("Leggilo su"):

If the device list includes Blackberry, you can download the file directly to your computer rather than loading it through the Kobo Desktop. If there is Adobe DRM, you'll still need to use ADE to get the file to your Kobo. There's a link to the device list directly under the "Add to cart" button.


Table headings that may repeat for several "pages" I'm writing with Sigil an ebook with several tables, different sizes and extensions.

Is there a code in HTML or CSS to have table headings row to repeat thru several "pages" (depending on how big is the font, the more or less pages there will be with table data)?

I would like to use the code with EPUB 2 standard, and it should be compatible with as many e-readers as possible.

Great question.

First, you should be making epub3 files because generally epub3 files work on epub2 reading systems. All epub2 readers can view epub3 files -- though perhaps not optimally.

My current book production method lets me show table headers across different pages, but only for printed books. So I know exactly what you're talking about. One idea is just to distribute it as a pdf instead of as an epub.

Here is what I have learned:

epub3 specification does not have any requirement for this kind of
feature. CSS does not appear to support it.
You may find information about how to accomplish the same thing by
checking accessibility guidelines. Unsighted people need a way to
navigate complex tables, and ideally a solution to address this
concern will also address your concern.
https://idpf.github.io/a11y-guidelines/content/xhtml/tables.html

  Tables are a problem that still need solving in reading systems, as most reading systems aren't able to provide extended horizontal or vertical scrolling to facilitate rendering. As a result, large tables get rendered in the available space – leaving rows and columns to spill across page views – compromising the quality of the ebook for sighted readers in trying to aid accessible devices.

Matt Garrish described this problem in his Epub3 Best Practices
        book. As of 2013 (the time he wrote the book), there wasn't a real
        solution. He suggested using the headers attribute, i.e.,  TD
        headers="batting-averages" to give extra information which an
        assistive technology could highlight. He wrote,

  There's also no reason why this functionality can't be equally useful to sighted readers, except that it's rarely made available. You've already seen the problem of visually rendering table data on small screens, and there's an obvious solution here to the problem a sighted reader will have of seeing perhaps only a few cells at a time and not having the visual context of what they're looking at. But whether mainstream devices begin taking advantage of this information to solve these problems remains to be seen.

From my own perspective, here are some possible ways to come close to solving the problem: 1)use CSS media queries to detect big vs. small devices and then change the styling accordingly. (maybe hide/reveal text?). 2)Use a fixed layout epub file rather than a responsive layout. (I don't recommend this, but it is a solution that works in kindle-land), 3)use typical clues to "remind" readers which columns go with what. For example, alternate columns can be colored, so it's easier for the reader to refer to headers on  a previous page. 4)You might be able to force page breaks with css and then simply create two separate tables with headings where the second table is a continuation of the first or 5)you might simply use redundant labels throughout the table to remind the reader what is what. 6)you might put a warning (best viewed on devices with resolution larger than .....)

This is definitely a problem, and in my opinion, it needs to be solved by the specification first, and then the reading systems need to implement it. As I mentioned before, I believe this problem is an accessibility problem, so I would stay on top of the accessibility guidelines and the readers with the best support for accessibility.


How to convert this chm file to pdf? I want to convert a chm file to a pdf file.
Calibre's command ebook-convert only converts the first 7 pages of the chm file into a pdf file, while the chm file has much more pages. How can I convert the whole chm file into a pdf file? Thanks.

Try converting the CHM to, say, EPUB, and then convert the EPUB to PDF.
The lame time-consuming method: open up the CHM, copy-paste the contents by hand in your favorite word processor of choice and then save it as PDF. If that's not possible, save as DOC and convert (or print) it to PDF.


What files to include in the toc.ncx I learned to format epubs working from samples that I opened up in the Oxygen XML editor ... as well as from the Elizabeth Castro and Paul Salvette books.

Both Castro and Salvette say that the toc.ncx should start with the cover, title page, copyright page, etc. and then go on to the actual chapters. It is noted that if you are going to convert to mobi/Kindle formats that you need to remove the coverpage from the toc.ncx and renumber the play-list and all the toc-anchors.

The samples I have, from another developer, start with the table of contents and go on to the chapters. I have been formatting that way, but all of a sudden I am wondering if this is correct.

I do know that, as a reader, I do not want to have to page through the cover, etc. once I have started reading the book. I want to go back to the contents page. So there is something to be said for formatting the toc.ncx that way. (The frontmatter shows up fine if I make sure that it is listed properly in the content.opf.) It is also nice not to have to re-do the toc.ncx and toc-anchors when converting to mobi.

But on the gripping hand, sometimes the contents html page shows up in Calibre's and ADE's left-hand-side content displays, and sometimes I get a no-such-page error message. I see a heading, Table of Contents, then a contents page to which the link is broken. I have not been able to figure out what triggers the broken link problem. Fixed that; I cannot include a toc-anchor on the contents.html h1 heading. Removed it and everything is fine.

Advice?

A few things here: for starters, I agree that not all the stuff that is front matter in print should be in the front for an ebook. We generally move the copyright page to the back, for example, as well as praise for the book and anything else that seems ancillary.

Bear in mind that ultimately it's the <spine> of the content.opf file that does the organizing of what goes where, not the table of contents. The <spine> is what reading systems will look to to see what comes next. The playOrder attribute in the ncx is not needed, and in fact in epub 3.0 they've done away with the ncx file entirely and replaced it with a toc.xhtml.

Finally, you can include the [guide][1] in your ncx file to indicate things like the cover, the start of the main content, and so on. Most reading systems will ignore most of that, but a number of them will default to opening on whatever you specify to be the start of the content—Kindle and iBooks will both do this, for example. Here's an example <guide> from the IDPF:

<guide>
        <reference type="toc" title="Table of Contents"
                 href="toc.html" />
        <reference type="loi" title="List Of Illustrations"
                 href="toc.html#figures" />
        <reference type="other.intro" title="Introduction"
                 href="intro.html" />
</guide>

Check the guidelines for the particular retailers you'll be using for more details about the <guide>; as I recall, Amazon only wants you to mark the start of the content and the cover.

EDIT: The above link doesn't seem to be showing up; here's the URL: http://www.idpf.org/epub/20/spec/OPF_2.0.1_draft.htm#Section2.6

Further Edit: You can get the <guide> functionality in epub 3.0 with <nav epub:type="landmarks">: http://www.idpf.org/accessibility/guidelines/content/nav/landmarks.php


Converting Kobo EPUB format to Kindle format How can I transfer/convert Kobo ebooks on my PC for my Kindle Paperwhite/Kindle PC app?  I'm not very computer literate so, if possible, please use the 'kiss principle' as much as possible.

You can download the program Calibre. This is an eBook management program (Windows, Mac and Linux) which can sync ebooks from your PC to Kindle. Also, it will convert most files so they are compatible with your Kindle.


damaged kindle- change lines per page? this is a long shot but I thought I would try:

My older Kindle (6", b&w, no backlight) has sustained some damage to the bottom (1/3" or less) of the screen - not visibly cracked just unresponsive.  Now it is still almost usable, however the bottom line or half line of every page (or every other page) gets cut off and I can't read it.  Is there any way, through either editing the MOBI file, or perhaps the Kindle settings ("jailbreaking??"), that I can force a page break or make it display one line less on every page?
Any suggestions appreciated.

You can increase the value of the HORIZONTAL_MARGIN parameter in the reader.pref configuration file (in the system directory). You can find more details here or here.


How to best read a PDF on Kindle? Interested in reliable ways of converting, specifically, PDF files for reading on a Kindle.  See also:

https://stackoverflow.com/q/5429242/262852

Not looking for a steep learning curve, something pretty idiot (me) proof.

The simplest way seems to be send an e-mail to Kindle:

Reading PDFs on Kindle device

Or is that perhaps not even necessary?  Plain PDF is perfectly readable as-is?

The Kindle pdf app only works well with plain .pdf files, however, the user experience isn't that great, because the pdf app doesn't have a reflow option.

If you haven't updated your firmware to the latest firmware version, you might be able to jailbreak your Kindle and to install KOReader, which has a much better PDF reader. BTW, you can also read epub2 books with KOReader, as long as they don't contain RTL text (e.g., Arabic books or Japanese Mangas).


How to generate Kindle AZK on the command line from mobi/epub? I'm trying to generate an AZK file from the command line.

I need an AZK file because I need to test my Kindle books on iOS devices. These books are in Japanese, which currently is not supported for Enhanced Typesetting, so I need to sideload an AZK file. It's a pain to generate this in Kindle Previewer each time, so I want to automate the process.

The source file is an epub.

I convert the epub with Kindle Previewer 3 via the command line:

kindlepreviewer myfile.epub -convert -showpreview

This will create a mobi from the epub and then launch Kindle Previewer.  From Kindle Previewer, I can then go to File->Export and output an AZK-- this is the part I want to automate.

It seems there was a tool called Gozak for doing this but it's not available anymore.

I tried running azkcreator via the path in MacOS but it just segfaults:

➜  ~ /Applications/Kindle\ Previewer\ 3.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/azkcreator
[1]    18208 segmentation fault  /Applications/Kindle\ Previewer\ 3.app/Contents/MacOS/lib/azkcreator

So, my guess is that there is no way to create an AZK file from the command line at the moment-- but I hope someone can prove me wrong!

I’m not sure you can generate an AZK from the command line. From https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/KindleGen

  Note that Kindle Previewer is currently the only way to generate AZK files for iOS use.

Not the answer you seek, but an answer.


How does the kindle define how many "book size dots" to display? You ever notice how the lot dots on the Kindle that indicate how big the work is are not really all that helpful? I think there are like 4 sizes, but all the little dots make you think there are more accurate. I loaded a bunch of short works from smashwords and some of them took like 5 minutes to read, and some like 30 minutes and they all show 4 or 5 dots....

I found the following on Amazon help, but it really just says they exist.

  Kindle Books: Books are shown by title and author. Below the book title are a series of dots which give you an approximation of how long the book is. Bold dots within the series indicate how far along you are in the book based on the last page you viewed.

it is accurate. i found at least 10 sizes for 15 plain text book's (azw3 with no  pictures or complicating formatting), according to there reading time.

"approximation of how long the book is." means: how big is the file. not how many syllables characters or words there are (that's why it says "approximation"). book's with pictures charts or other formatting, or PDF's will have more dots.


How to fix Calibre Author amalgamations? Somehow I have managed to have several 'authors' that are an amalgamation of different names. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get them split up to how they are supposed to be.

When I browse the Authors, it will just have a couple of entries like:

  David Mack, Keith R. A. Decandido

  David Mack, Marco Palmieri, Dayton Ward, Kevin Dilmore

listed under the D, whereas I obviously expect the former to be two separate authors, and four authors for the latter.

I have tried removing second author completely from the books that had the former author, but the moment I re-add them it becomes its own unique category yet again. I have tried this through grid editing and the individual metadata screen with no result.

How do I convince Calibre to treat these authors right?

Note that I use the default author split settings, which should be capable of splitting those author strings just fine.

The comma (,) can be part of the name  (e.g. in names having the suffix , Jr), but also when they are in reverse order: Mack, David.
So you cannot use that to separate names and because of the second use, if a comma is already there the name doesn't get split and reordered, as Calibre thinks that has already been done.

I use the word and between names, but IIRC you can also use the ampersand (&), to separate the names:

 David Mack and Marco Palmieri and Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore

If you put that in Calibre's Authors field and click the right arrow next to it the resulting Author sort field will be:

Mack, David & Palmieri, Marco & Ward, Dayton & Dilmore, Kevin

and your book will be under M


How do I ensure my Hebrew displays correctly in the Kindle apps and EPUB readers? I've got text which is in English and Hebrew with vowels. This needs to display correctly, i.e. English left to right and Hebrew right to left with the correct placement of vowels in the iOS and Android apps.

Which application is best to compile all of this from a source text?
Are there any Hebrew font specific steps I need to take?

I'd advise wrapping Hebrew-in-English in spans with the dir attribute set to rtl. I'd also advise following each span with the lrm element.

See http://www.w3.org/International/articles/inline-bidi-markup/

As for fonts, pointed Hebrew support is now surprisingly good in the default fonts on a variety of platforms: Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle for Mac, Kindle for PC, Kindle for iPad, iBooks for Mac, and iBooks for iPad.

One platform completely lacking Hebrew support in the default fonts is Nook GlowLight.

So, see if the platforms you care about have okay Hebrew support and, if they do, consider just letting the default font be used rather than providing your own font. Providing your own font has its pluses and minuses.

For more detailed help, I am available professionally: http://bdenckla.github.io/efs/.

P.S. I consulted Meta Stack Exchange about self-promotion,

https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/57497/limits-for-self-promotion-in-answers,

and I hope I understood correctly that it seems it is within community standards to have promoted myself as I have done above.


How to convert epub/mobi to PDF without image distortion? I've used Calibre to convert Mobi/Epub to PDF. The overall output is good, however, the image is always not in good shape. For example,

How image shows in Kindle reader (Android app)

How image shows after conversion in PDF (w/ Calibre)

How can I keep the image not distorted when converted to PDF?

Thanks!

Converting from mobi to pdf is almost always going to be a problem. Both are rendered formats. The problem could come from anywhere. Two ideas:

First, try to obtain an epub copy instead of a mobi file. It's easier to convert from epub to pdf than from mobi to pdf.

Try decompiling the mobi file (go to mobileread to find a tool that can do so).

Possibly there is a setting in Calibre to preserve the image ratios. But really, this is asking calibre to do the impossible.


What is the minimum required content for a valid ePub? I would like to create my own ePub documents from scratch without a tool so that I have full control over the final result.

What is the absolute minimum set of required files to have a valid ePub file? Or, to put it in programming terms, what would an ePub "Hello, world." file look like?

Here's an epub 3.0 file that validates with epubcheck 3.0.1 (the current version at the time of writing). There's plenty more info that can (and should) go in there, of course, but you asked for minimums. We'll start with file structure:  in the root directory, there's one mimetype file and two folders--the OEBPS and the META-INF. Here's the mimetype file contents:

application/epub+zip

be sure not to have any return/line break characters in there.
In the META-INF folder, there's one file, the container.xml:

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

In the OEBPS folder, things get slightly more complex. First is the content.opf file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<package xmlns="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" unique-identifier="db-id" version="3.0">

<metadata>
    <dc:title id="t1">Title</dc:title>
    <dc:identifier id="db-id">isbn</dc:identifier>
    <meta property="dcterms:modified">2014-03-27T09:14:09Z</meta>
    <dc:language>en</dc:language>
</metadata>

<manifest>
    <item id="toc" properties="nav" href="toc.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml" />
    <item id="ncx" href="toc.ncx" media-type="application/x-dtbncx+xml" />
    <item id="template_css" href="template.css" media-type="text/css" />
    <item id="hello" href="1_hello.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml" />
</manifest>

<spine toc="ncx">
    <itemref idref="hello" />
</spine>

</package>

Then comes the toc.xhtml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<title>toc.xhtml</title>
<link href="template.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Table of Contents

Hello

And finally we have the content of the ebook itself, in this case 1_hello.xhtml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<title>1_hello.xhtml</title>
<link href="template.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Hello World!

As a bonus, there's a toc.ncx file. This is not required to be valid, but it's required if you want the book to have a working Table of Contents on epub 2.0.1 devices (which is pretty much all of them):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<ncx version="2005-1" xml:lang="en" xmlns="http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/ncx/">

    <meta name="dtb:uid" content="isbn"/>
    <meta name="dtb:depth" content="1"/>

<docTitle>
    <text></text>
</docTitle>

<navMap>
    <navPoint id="hello" playOrder="1">
        <navLabel><text>cover</text></navLabel>
        <content src="1_hello.xhtml" />
    </navPoint>
</navMap>

</ncx>

And there's also the template.css in there, which is just a CSS stylesheet. In this case, it looks like this:

h1 {
  text-align: center;
}

And that's it! For more complex stuff, there are a number of free epub 3 samples available at https://code.google.com/p/epub-samples/.


Are there studies on whether reading in landscape or portrait mode is better on smartphone size screen? Are there studies on the whether it's better to read ebooks in landscape or portrait mode on typical smartphone screen? "Ebook" here implies that the text fills up most of the page with free reflow (e.g. not a PDF that has the same characters on each line in both modes), many pages read one after another; and the font size remains identical between portrait and landscape.

Screen sizes I care about are of typical smartphones, e.g. around 4.5"-5.5", typically circa 16:9 or 16:10 factor.

The measurements defining "better" can be (at least those I can think of) either reading speed, the content retention, eye tiredness, or mental tiredness.

Some where (I can't find it right now), I read that 72 characters per line was best for reading comprehension. When there was less than this the end of line moving your eye to the begging of the next line slowed you down, and when there was more than this following lines become more difficult, because you have to move your head which makes eye tracking more difficult.

The study did not take into account dyslexia.

So I guess it depends on your font size.


Can I split chapters with CSS? I'm learning to create epubs with InDesign. If you want a particular element inside a chapter (e.g. a subheading) to appear at the top of the next page, you can assign it a CSS style that has been designated for that purpose.

However, the CSS is really just a gimmick; the file is literally split, with the text you want to appear at the top of the next page beginning the new file.

I have separate files for each of my chapters. But imagine a chapter that has several subheadings that are supposed to appear at the top of different pages. I don't want to create a separate file for each subheading.

So is there a CSS style that will remove an element from the normal flow and force it to appear at the top of the next page, so I don't have to literally split my file into separate files?

It can be accomplished with the page-break-after (link) or page-break-before (link) CSS properties. Pretty obviously, these create a page break after or before the element that they are applied on.

Here are a couple of examples of their use:

page-break-after

CSS style

.newpage {
    page-break-after:always;
}

HTML code

This text is on a page. The text will be split after this paragraph.

This text is on the following page, after the split.

page-break-before

CSS style

.newpage {
    page-break-before;
}

HTML code

This text is on a page. The text will be split after this paragraph.

This text is on the following page, after the split.

As you can see, they accomplish the same thing with a small difference (where you should put the property itself); depending on the situation, one could be more appropriate than the other.

I tested it with Calibre internal reader and on a Kobo Glo device, and it works in both of them.


How to alternate row colors of tables in ePub files Can anyone tell me how to create tables with alternating row colors in an epub? For example, I might want the default background color to be white, but every other row would have a light blue background.

Is there a good way to do that using a basic epub software program like Sigil, or by hand coding the HTML?

You can use the following CSS rules to style respectively even or odd table rows (See the Example on W3schools):

tr:nth-child(even) {
    background-color: #f2f2f2
}

tr:nth-child(odd) {
    background-color: #f2f2f2
}


Does Bootstrap work with epubs? Can Bootstrap be used in an epub? If so, can anyone point me to a good reference or tutorial?

I tried Googling for information, but I most get pages describing epubs that feature Bootstrap as their topic.

I assume your question is:  can bootstrap be used to generate code for an epub file?

I don't really know anything about bootstrap, but I know that there is a blitz framework which uses  the  less preprocessor to generate responsive epub css.

You might find interesting the two tutorials and here by the guy who started this framework

(I have not tried it out myself, but like the idea of it).


Is there a way to make third party book (non-amazon) covers appear as screensavers on Kindle? So recently Amazon has introduced this feature which shows the cover of what you are currently reading on the lock screen of your Kindle reader (at least for Kindle Paperwhite 4 as far as I know).
As I have both Amazon and third party books on my Kindle Paperwhite, I have noticed that this new feature only works for Amazon books. Meaning, when I am reading some third party book and lock the screen, I do not see it's cover (some generic Kindle screensaver pops-up instead).
Has anyone else had this experience and are you aware of any practical ways to solve this?
P.s. two additional points worth mentioning:

I have reviewed the metadata of these third party books via Calibre and as far as I can tell, covers are present and are clearly identified as such within the metadata code;
These third party books are recognised as “Personal documents” by Kindle (as opposed to Amazon books, which are properly recognised as “Books”).

After running some experiments I have finally managed to solve this issue for my Paperwhite4.
For anyone having the same issue - follow this sequence:

Take a side loaded document of any format
Open it w Calibre
Right click on it and press “Edit metadata”
In a new window press the button “Download metadata” (it’s at the bottom of the screen)
Follow thru with a dialog window
Choose one of the book covers proposed by Calibre (do this step even in case you think your document already has a cover)
Finish by pressing “Ok”
Convert your document to mobi
Hook up your kindle via USB
Right click on the document in Calibre and choose “Send to device”
Choose “Send specific format to”
Choose “Main memory”
Select mobi file from the list

You are done. Your document’s cover will  display on the lock-screen.
Essentially it appears that three things were key:

downloading/ updating the file’s metadata and the cover via Calibre
converting the file to mobi
sending the file to kindle via USB (through Calibre as opposed to simple drag and drop using windows explorer)


What can I do about Sigil breaking EPUB3 files Sigil is an EPUB2 editor, but that doesn't prevent people from editing EPUB3 files, which end up with broken OPF when you save them.

Sigil development seems to have stalled, the last year has primarily seen bug fixes instead of development of new features and there seems no active development to support the latest version of the EPUB standard after the an assessment made in 2013.

Should I look for another editor that at least doesn't break my EPUB 3 files, even if not supporting all EPUB 3.0 features?

There is some hope on the horizon for the many users of EPUB3 files¹
masayoshi takahashi has presented a relatively small pull request with changes for the Sigil source base that does prevent Sigil from breaking the OPF file when saving EPUB 3.

Hopefully the next Sigil release will incorporate these. In the mean time you can of course compile your own Sigil to include these changes, try them out and report any issues if you encounter them.

¹ The style-sheet facilitates in EPUB 3 support the top-bottom written languages, most Japanese EPUB Ebooks are EPUB 3


EpubCheck in Calibre gives errors with epub:type and aside I get these two errors:

ERROR(RSC-005): Error while parsing file 'attribute "epub:type" not allowed here;

ERROR(RSC-005): Error while parsing file 'element "aside" not allowed anywhere;

How can I remove them? I want to use pop-up footnotes with epub3.

Regards Dan

epub:type attributes can only be used in epub3 books. You'll need to select Polish books > Upgrade book internals to convert your epub2 book to an epub3 book.


What software should I use to write books, which can be exported to Lulu and CreateSpace? I currently use PagePlus X6 to typeset books. It has the capability to export to .pdf files and .epub files. However, the generated files are being rejected by Lulu and CreateSpace.
Is there an alternative I can use which can prepare files for Lulu and CreateSpace easily?
Some sample error messages received from Lulu:

Your eBook has been rejected for improper capitalization. The first letter of all words in the title, subtitle and author name should be capitalized, except for the following words: a, an, and, for, from, of, or, the, to. The first and last word of the title and subtitle should always be capitalized.
Your title should be the very first line of your document, with no blank lines or images above it, styled as Heading 1, to replace the broken link in your NCX. Style text as Heading 1 by selecting the text, then clicking “Heading 1” in the style toolbar.

For CreateSpace you essentially need to provide a PDF and do the layout by combining your output with images in the form of PDF output. To conform to their formats, you would still need a template for the editing software that you use, that generates a PDF that can be merged with such templates (and not come into the margins as they warn you not to).

The CreateSpace forums give some, but IMHO not very much more helpful tips (e.g. here)

It looks like CreateSpace is more reader-customer oriented and not so much bookwriter-customer, I had more help from the publisher for the single book that I helped typeset that made the shelves, and I was the first generating electronic input (from LaTex) for them.


Is it possible to create anchors in the numbers of an  list? I need a clarification regarding the link creation for
 list in the HTML page.

Here is the example code for reference.

test

test

that gives this as output:

test
test

I need to create the links only on the numbers preceding the actual text. Is it possible?

Earlier in text:

Header 1

Header 2

further down...

item one

item two

If you're making an EPUB book, every tag must be closed, or self-closed.
idiotprogrammer had the syntax right, but the example did not work (for IDPF specs).


Is there a way to publish an eBook, distribute it and the push updates to the distributed eBooks? If I publish an eBook, distribute it and later I want to edit or add to the information, is there is a way to push those updates to the already distributed copies of the eBook?

Most online publishers have a method to allow for updates to published ebooks. The user generally is given way to identify that a book has an update, then the user is given the option to re-download the work.  I don't think any publisher has "push" to reader.

So yes there is way to redistribute the book, but it is dependent on user to perform some action to receive the update.


IPDF epub validator error says "File 'OEBPS/toc.ncx' could not be found" I'm stuck. IPDF validator error says "File 'OEBPS/toc.ncx' could not be found" but I have the file toc.ncx sitting in the OEBPS folder. Any ideas why the validator might not be recognizing it?

If I can find this error, my epub will validate (that is, if I don't create another in the process :))!

This sounds buggy or perhaps you are viewing your directory incorrectly.  First, are you using the latest validator? Are you validating the file as an epub2 file instead of an epub3? (You should make the files epub3 even if you are not using epub 3's advanced features).  FYI,  use of toc.ncx is  deprecated starting in epub3. Epub 3 validation shouldn't even care if the toc.ncx file is there or not.  (all it really cares about is that the assets in package.opf match what is in the directory).

See this FAQ:

  Why does EPUB 3 allow NCX files, and do I need to include one? The NCX
  file is allowed for forwards compatibility purposes only. An EPUB 2
  reading systems may open an EPUB 3 publication, but it will not be
  able to use the new navigation document format.

  You can ignore the NCX file if your book won't render properly as EPUB
  2 content, or if you aren't targeting cross-compatibility.

  Your publication may still open on EPUB 2 reading systems even without
  an NCX. Some reading systems, like Adobe Digital Editions, will not
  provide navigation by table of contents but will open the publication.

UPDATE: Here's how to know whether your file is epub2 or epub3.  Inside the unzipped epub file is a file called package.opf . Near the top you will see a declaration that looks like

<package xmlns="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf"
  xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
  xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
   version="3.0" xml:lang="en" unique-identifier="pub-identifier">

Here you will see that it says version="3.0". Here's what a 2.0 version looks like:

<package xmlns="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" version="2.0" unique-identifier="bookid">

(It doesn't have to look exactly like my package element for 3.0, but it should look similar).


How to repack an epub file from command line I unzipped an epub file to make some minor modifications. How can I repack it properly to be a valid epub file from command line on Linux?

zip -rX ../my.epub mimetype META-INF/ OEBPS/

Without -X you could get the following when validating it with EpubCheck:

ERROR: my.epub: Mimetype entry must not have an extra field in its ZIP header

If mimetype is not the first in the epub file EpubCheck prints the following:

ERROR: my.epub: Mimetype entry missing or not the first in archive


Can I factory reset a Kindle without interfering with another newer Kindle? Can you reset one kindle to factory reset, without it bothering a newer  kindle?

I would assume yes, because I can pick where to send my ebooks but I just want to be sure...

You assume correctly, resetting one kindle will not have an effect on your other kindle device :)


Images issue in iBooks 4.3 on ios 8 (iPad 2) I am using images with 1400 px width in the EPUB. While reviewing the file in iPAD with iOS 8.4 and iBooks 4.3, I have noticed that the images are automatically shrinked to its screensize with space above and below the images. But this is not the case in iBooks 3.2 App.

If anyone encountered similar issue and solution to this would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Senthil Kumar R

First, I don't know what your problem is. Is the problem that the images are shrunk or that there is space above or below the images?

The current trend is for ebook publishers to allow high resolution images and then to shrink them automatically or according to the percentages you specify.

I am working on a similar problem (and documented some of my helpful resources here: Interior Image requirements for non-Kindle distributors & devices with retina displays? ).
I haven't tested yet on the ibooks platforms, but I can speak about the kind of solution you are seeking. My guess is that the solution you want is similar to what I am doing.

First, you need to use css media queries. Second, you need to specify the width of the div containing the image. Here's an example to get you started. For HTML code:

Here would be the CSS code I am using.

@media only screen
  and (min-device-width: 320px)
  and  (max-device-width: 767px)
  {

div.image-replace-title  {
width: 94%;
  margin-left:  auto;
   margin-right:  auto;
}

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

    }

        @media only screen
  and (min-device-width: 768px)
  and (orientation: portrait)

  {
    div.image-replace-title  {
    width: 80%;
    max-width: 684px;
      margin-left:  auto;
       margin-right:  auto;
    }

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

        }

For the record, the first media query is for iphones, the second one is for ipads 1-4. I think I added one more media query for dimensions over 1200 pixels.


Where to buy non-kindle-format (epub,azw) e-books which look like the printed books? If I want to buy e-copy of academic books, most of the publishers (Oxford, Cambridge, etc.) direct to amazon store or allow epub version. However, I do not want the e-pub or other formats (e.g. azw) as the ebook in this format does not have the actual pagination and format of the printed copy.
So, is there a store or place where I can buy the e-copy of the book (preferably in pdf format) which actually looks like the printed copy (having the actual page numbers and format/style of the printed copy)?
I am aware that some of the kindle books do come with both "locations" and "actual page numbers" to avoid the above problem. However, this is feature is not available for the majority of the books (as I open the sample version and check). Also, I miss the style/formatting of the printed book.

Among some of the major sources that note available formats, there is Google Books and ebooks.com. Since you mention academic publishers, ebooks.com is perhaps the overall best place.
https://www.ebooks.com/


Is it possible to transfer my Wattpad books to my Kindle? Kindle model:

6" Glare-Free Touchscreen Display, Wi-Fi

Amazon Link

I can also live with a workaround for downloading them locally as a pdf and sending them through send-to-kindle.

Some Wattpad files are epub format and other are jad format and the latter may be more of an issue though I did find a number of on-line converter claiming to be able to convert them - preferably to epub as I found that reading pdfs on the Kindle was hard work because they are not re-paginated or re-flowed to match your screen size.

Personally I would suggest using Calibre E-Book Manager for storing all & managing all of your ebooks.  If you store them in sensible formats like epub it can convert them to a number of formats including mobi for you and upload them to your Kindle and a large number of other devices via USB.


Is it more effective to apply CSS styles to  or  elements in an ePub? I'm hand formatting an ebook with Sigil for distribution through Amazon.  I've noticed that, while it's most common to place your Text-indent in the CSS of the <p> tag, it also works in the <body> tag.

The reason I'm asking is that I've noticed that an epub listing Text-intent in the <body> properties was the first and only ebook that ever displayed indented paragraphs in my default desktop ebook reader, SumatraPDF.  I'm sure that's a bug in the application, but it got me wondering if listing my Text-indent under <body> in the CSS Stylesheet even just as a backup to the <p> styling might be useful.

If you set properties for <body>, it will affect even elements like headers (<h1>...<h6>), lists (<ul>, <li>), and everything else, not just regular paragraphs (<p>).

This could be what you want to achieve, but in the most common scenarios, I think that it is better to style every element on its own. In example, text indent is not something that you usually want to see on titles/headers.

Applying styles to <body> is useful in all those cases where you want or need to apply some property to all of your text, in example to set the default font for your book, or to set the minimum margins of the text blocks from the ereader screen border, and so on.


How to sync non Amazon books from the iPad Kindle app to a PC or Mac I purchased a Kindle book from a 3rd party publisher on my iPad. I've read it, highlighted it, etc. and really want to transfer it to Amazon Cloud so it is available on my other devices. The "share" option is grayed out on the book.

I'm pretty sure that I can transfer it to Amazon Cloud via the send to device via email option if I can just figure out now to get the ebook off the iPad.

Where are non-Amazon Kindle books stored on the iPad and how can I pull them off or transfer them to another location?

Amazon went to significant trouble to make it practically impossible to extract a kindle file out of the Kindle app for ios.  (They even make it rather hard -- though not impossible to send files directly to the device app without using the cloud). You can use itunes to add a file into the IOS app (using the "File Sharing" function in itunes; connect the device, select the device --> Summary --> Apps --> (scroll down and select Kindle app and then choose Add file).

Maybe (hopefully) Calibre lets you add files to the ipad. But this is a one way street. Amazon wants to make it impossible for you to have direct access to the ios file system.

But you may appreciate my perspective.

The Kindle app for ios is a truly wretched app for rendering ebooks. As an ebook publisher and formatter, I spend a huge amount of my time trying to make the ebook look less-than-crappy on the Kindle app for ios. (by comparison, It's a breeze to format for Kindle on android or the Kindle devices). Most of my ebooks just look horrible on the kindle for ios. I make a lot of compromises.

The rule of thumb is to try to use whichever ebook reader  is native to the device. Ibooks is a best-of-class ebook reading software and certainly the best ebook reading app on ios. If you're buying from a third party (Smashwords?) you should have gotten an epub version and just emailed it and opened it in ibooks. It would look beautiful!

From a practical point of view, I sometimes read purchased ebooks from Amazon on my ipad app. That is unavoidable. But for reading third party stuff on your kindle app, you should be using the  Send-to-Kindle function to get into the cloud, then go to the website and choose the device you want to deliver it to.

Your question is seeking to break through the Kindle app's DRM. Besides being possibly illegal, it also will be technically hard to do. I realize that you probably obtained the ebook file legally. I am unclear what you mean by sharing function.

Perhaps you should log in to the Kindle Personal Documents service via computer, go to "Manage your content and devices" , for show, select Docs, select the file and click the Actions button and then choose Deliver from the popup. That's the primary way you share Kindle ebooks across devices.

Finally, a personal recommendation. Even though I have never bought an ebook from the Google Play store, their Play Books app is phenomenal and is the best share-across-devices-and-platforms solution. Works great on ios, Kindles, androids, Windows. They have an easy-to-use interface for uploading epub files to the cloud.


Can I use books from pdfdrive.com (legally) for my learning purpose? My title says it all. Since I found many books too pricey, but I found some of them available free of cost on pdfdrive.com can I use them for my learning purpose legally?

First, in USA pdfdrive is probably operating on the fringe of legality. They scrape the internet for free pdf files to make it available in their service. I see several books there which shouldn't be there, which means that someone made an unauthorized copy and then put it on their website. Then PDFDRIVE will locate this copy and store it until someone complains. PDFDRIVE will remove things upon request, but of course, many publishers are too busy to complain.

The legal consequences may differ depending on what country you in. Generally speaking though, the consequences are more severe for people who share or distribute copyrighted material without permission. If you download it for private use, you are unlikely to pay a penalty. I am speaking generally.

I would think of it in another way. What is the right thing to do? Is the ebook easily available in your country? Is the cost of trying to obtain a legal copy significantly higher than other books produced in your country?

Also: what is your status/economic level? Generally if you are a student or teacher, you face fewer legal consequences (if any). If your monthly income is $500, and the cost to buy a foreign-produced book in your country is $75, I would consider that price to be excessive. Academic textbooks in particular are expensive for people in developing countries (and many of these publishers  try to discount their prices for customers in that region).

One way to deal with this ethically is to try first, buy later. If you find an unauthorized copy of an ebook and end up using it a lot, perhaps you will feel a duty to buy it later.

Finally, there's a lot of free and low cost ebooks (and wikipedia). While certain well-known books may cost a lot, often there are low-cost books which are equivalent or better. It just takes a little more time to find them.


Centering images and text in ePUB and Kindle ebooks I am currently creating an ePUB3 file for converting it to Kindle format, and for it be compatible to other ereading devices that support epub.

For centering images and groups of text, I am using this block of css in ePUB

     margin: 15px auto;
     padding: 0;
     text-align: center;

I read while researching that putting the left and right margins as auto and using text-align: center property has the effect of centering block-level elements but that it doesn't work on ADE and other readers based on it due to their inability to properly interpret the auto property. However, in my case, its working, both in ePUB and Kindle devices. Is this something I should be concerned about? Is the way I've done an alright way to do it?

You will probably run into problems doing it that way, particularly on iBooks. The most reliable method I've found for centering is:

With css like this:

div.centered_image {
  width: 60%;
  margin: 1em 20%;
}
div.centered_image img {
  width: 100%;
}

On a very few reading systems (notably the nook), this can cause problems on some images due (I'm guessing) to rounding errors, so you may have to set the margins just a hair smaller (like 19% in the above example).


is it allowed to print a freely available ebook for own usage What are the things I should first check if I want to print a freely available ebook on internet for my own usage. I don't mean to just print using a home printer. I want to print it as a proper hardcover book (single copy as for my own use).

p.s. no this book is no where to be bought as a physical copy or electronically. It's sort of a lecture series, where author converted into free ebook years later.

If it's allowed what are some of the online services I can try for this ?

If the book is explicitly free, then you can print the book and use it for your your own purposes. Please note however that the owner to the book's rights has to say so (author, publisher), not just anybody who only put it up on the internet.

Be sure to provide evidence to the print service provider up front, that you have the right to print this book, as otherwise they might inform legal authorities of possible copyright infringement.

That a book is freely available doesn't necessarily mean you have the right to do print it for yourself. If that were true then music sharing programs/websites that make some piece of copyrighted music freely available would make the music implicitly free to share. And that is not the case. A copyright owner has to take some action to ensure his rights if they are infringed but they are not always aware (immediately) that this happens.


How to insert calculated page numbers based on word counting into an ePub file? I want to paginate an ePub file based on how many words are there per page, then to insert the "page numbers" into the ePub file. In this case, I will have the same page numbers while I read this file on different devices.

Is there a way to achieve this? Thanks!

It's not possible to dynamically change content in epub2 books, however, you could theoretically use JavaScript in an epub3 book to re-paginate a book, however, this would be overkill, since the epub3 standard supports page numbers.

Unfortunately, very few freeware apps besides iBooks (iOS, macOS) and Azardi (Windows, macOS, Linux) support epub3 page numbers.

If your book is a textbook, you might want to consider using a print-on-demand service provider.


Will Kindle 3 Touch cover case fit a Paperwhite? My Kindle 3 Touch device has broken, and I'm getting the new Paperwhite version.

Will the cover case I've already got for the Touch fit with the Paperwhite, or are the device designs different enough that that won't work?

As far as I know, there is no Kindle 3 Touch. Kindle 3 readers have a keyboard and are therefore larger. Their covers will be too large for a Paperwhite.

If you are talking about a Kindle Touch (4th generation): There are non-original covers that claim to fit for both, so your old cover should fit. On mobileread they do however claim that the Paperwhite is slightly smaller:

  The PW is 4.6" x 6.7".

  The K4 (non-touch) is 4.5" x 6.5".

  The K Touch is 4.7" x 6.8".

An advantage of buying a new (original) Paperwhite cover is that It has magnets inside. These will automatically switch your Kindle on and off if you open or close the cover.


What are advantages of publishing DRM-protected books for an author? What are advantages of publishing DRM-protected books for an author?

Clearly some authors think that there are advantages of using DRM since they publish DRM-protected books, when they have an option of forgoing DRM.

Please note that I'm looking for hard data, not opinions.

"DRM reduces piracy" is an opinion. "Switching from non-DRM to DRM raised sales by 30% for author XYZ" is a fact. "A survey of XYZ large sample of users confirmed that only 10% won't buy DRM-protected books, whereas a study ABC showed that there are more than 10% books obtained without paying" is a fact.

"DRM reduces your reading audience" is an opinion. "Combined sales of non-DRM sales points are 120% more than DRM-supporting ones" is a fact.

Answering the opposite question, Tor books switched from DRM to non-DRM, and they commented (no figures available) that they saw

  no discernible increase in piracy on any of our titles

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/tor-books-uk-drm-free-one-year-later


Convert an Android app which is actually an ebook to a pdf file? I found some Android apps which are actually some kind of ebooks, for example,

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.zhujiaqi.leetcode.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.freetymekiyan.apas

I want to read them on my laptop as well, so I wonder how to convert them into pdf files?

The app in the first example seems to have an additional issue. I can't browse it offline.

Thanks.

Neither of the apps that you linked to are ebooks, in the description for LeetCode Cracker it even states that it is reading the data from GitHub which is why it requires an internet connection to view the content. The second app links to the GitHub repository that the problems and solutions are based on, https://github.com/FreeTymeKiyan/LeetCode-Sol-Res .

These are not ebooks, they are collections of content put together in an app that may present themselves as something that resembles a book. To convert them to ebooks you would be best off taking the content from the GitHub repositories and making an EPUB or PDF out of them.

The other option is to get a Chrome Book (or other device running ChromeOS) so that you can run Android applications like these from a laptop. Google has more information about running Android apps on ChromeOS here.


Referencing cover, title, and dedication pages in ePub navigational TOC I am preparing a book for ePub conversion in Indesign CC 2014. I have noticed almost all professional ePub eBooks have their TOCs reference every single page starting with the cover page. In print, you would generally start referencing from the Preface page onward. My question is, how do I reference, say, the cover page in my TOC? For instance, here's a screen grab from an eBook opened in iBooks for Mac with the drop down TOC showing entries starting with "Title Page" whereas the page being referenced has just one single image and no text at all:

Ideally, one would use the page header's paragraph style in the TOC style dialog to create a corresponding TOC entry for that page. But on pages like cover and title, there's no text, let alone page title! So how would one reference those pages in the TOC in the absence of a paragraph style?

I really know little about InDesign and less about desktop ebook readers for Macs.

But I know ibooks, and I'm guessing that the page numbers are calculated by the program. The TOC comes from the toc.ncx file inside the epub zip. Indesign probably auto-generates that from chapter titles.

On my title page I often link to parts inside the ebook, and even though it's theoretically possible for me to link back to it, I can't think of a situation where i would need to.

On most ebook reading platforms, the cover page is not listed in the TOC but if you go Page Back from the first page (or the title page), you can usually get to there easily.


How do I get to the Bookeen Odyssey service mode? I did come across this video on YouTube where someone goes through service mode menus of the Odyssey.

How can I get to those menus?

You enter service mode by first switching the Odyssey off and then back on while also pressing left and right button (those on the sides of the Odyssey, normally used for page flipping).

I would select a different book than you are reading first, because it is easy to loose your current page if pressing both keys is not recognised. If only one is recognised, you start scrolling through your book and loose your last reading position.

Be careful what you try in the service menu, there are some menu entries that reset the internal memory, SD.

You can go through the menu by using the left button for up, right for down and front button for select. Go up (left button) all the way to the top for the parent menu entry.

(not sure why the poster of that video did not include this info on youtube)


How do I shop for only DRM free books on Amazon? I know how to tell if a book on Amazon is DRM free.  There are lots of ways to sort, and filter books to just ones I am interested in on Amazon.  I want to also be able to limit to books that I would purchase, which for me means DRM free.

How can I add a filter or sort so when I am browsing Amazon I only see books that are DRM free?

Since Amazon does not seem to let you search for this, you might want to use google:

site:www.amazon.com -forum "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited" SEARCH-TERM

Google for DRM-free thrillers


How to set metadata (title, author) of exported PDF documents in LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org I often create 'read only once and delete' PDF files with LibreOffice. How can I set their metadata (title, author) properly so my Sony Reader could show it on the Books screen?

Setting the title of the PDF:

File menu / Properties / Description tab, Title field.

Setting the author:

Tools menu / Options / LibreOffice / User Data tab, fill the First name and Last name fields,
File menu / Properties / General tab, tick the Apply user data checkbox,
press the Reset button (it's near to the Apply user data checkbox).

The Reset button refreshes the currently edited document's author field (based on the data given in the User Data field), when you press it the author is showed immediately on the same General Tab, near the Created label.


Alternative epub reader app for Android I'm looking for a epub reader app for Android 4.0 which is NOT one of the following:

OReader
FBReader
Cool Reader

Other requirements:

load EPUB files (my homemade ones are directly converted from HTML using Sigil and occasionally may contain some Japanese characters and internal # anchors; in short, the whole book is in a single HTML file inside the EPUB file); other formats (including HTML) are welcome
has popup English-English dictionary or is compatible with ColorDict (or similar dictionary app)
allows some adjustment of display (set font size, white background, turn off page turning animations etc.)
supports local (href="#chapter1") anchors for document navigation
it would be nice if the app was fast and\or lighweight

Some background:

I bought a Onyx Boox T68 ebook reader\tablet and I have a small problem with it. I can't install FBReader on it. The device comes with FBReader preinstalled (among other software1), but it's buggy and crashes on my homemade epub files (I had no problems with those in FBReader on my cell phone and on a cheap tablet that had very similar specs and same OS as Onyx Boox T68). The preinstalled dictionary takes the whole screen and is a little bit slow, so I would much prefer to be able to use ColorDict, however preinstalled FBReader (and it appears all of the preinstalled readers) is incompatible with ColorDict.

For a second I thought I can install regular FBReader on the device, but because there is already a version of FBReader installed, I can't do that. I can't uninstall any of the preinstalled apps either. The only way for me to uninstall those would be to root the device, but I don't want to do that because I'll lose the warranty.

I tried to rename and compile FBReader myself, but after spending 4 evenings on the problem I give up (finally I managed to build FBReader, but I wasn't able to rename the package for some reason).

1. There is OnyxReader, OReader, FBReader and Cool Reader. Of the 3 OReader appears to be the fastest and most stable (actually I haven't encountered any problems yet), but it isn't compatible with ColorDict (at least the preinstalled version isn't) and internal anchors don't appear to work.

Edit:

After a lot of trial and error I finally managed to rename and compile FBReader. While it has some minor issues of it's own (doesn't refresh eink screen, doesn't hide the non-standard top android bar, when zoomed chapter headers end up being too big in compare to regular text, no physical page turning button support) it's much more stable and does everything I required perfectly xD

And yes, ColorDict also works the way it should. Unlike in Moon+ where the dictionary popup took half of the screen for some reason, in FBReader it takes a small part of the screen and never ends up covering the selected text.

This said, other recommendations are welcome. Even if they don't help me out directly, they might help others with the same problem as I had.

Aldiko, though not perfect, is by far the best ebook reader available for Android. It has full support for all ePub features, plus PDF, and has a reasonably nice UI unlike all the other apps.

It has all the features you asked for, except built-in ColorDict support - however, you can "share" selected text using the Android sharing system, which allows you to share it to ColorDict. One extra tap, but it works.

UB Reader also works well - it has the best ePub formatting support of any reader I've tried. But it has a poor UI compared to Aldiko. It has some kind of dictionary system of its own built in, which I have not tried.

Regarding the other suggestions :

Google Play Books is not a good solution as it can not directly open files on your device, you have to upload them to Google.
Moon Reader has equal functionality to Aldiko in many respects, but (in my opinion) a horrible, outdated UI and much worse ePub formatting support.


Kobo Glo progress bar is confusing It's hard to tell what the Kobo Glo progress bar is actually trying to say: whether it represents progression through the chapter, or through the whole book. Does the progress bar represent progress through the book, or through a the current chapter?

It depends on the format of the ebook that you are currently reading (Kobo readers have different reading engines for different file formats).

When you are reading standard epub books, PDF's or comic book formats (i.e. CBZ), the number shown represent the total progress of the book.

When you are reading kepub files (it is basically a standard epub with a different extension and some optimizations made by Kobo), the default behaviour is to show the progress of the current chapter, not of the total book.
However, this can be changed in the settings of the ereader, so in the end you can make it behave like you want.


Not able to edit the html of an ebook file I have created an epub in Indesign. That ePub has been converted to a mobi file for kindle readers. Any ideas on how to edit the HTML/CSS of an epub or mobi file created in Indesign to make direct changes such as linking footers and making formatting changes to content?

If you want an easy way to do it, probably the easiest solution is to use the Calibre program. It lets you convert almost any format into an .epub file, which the (separate) Calibre editor can then edit. If desired, you can use Calibre to convert the edited .epub file back to the original format as a final step.

The .mobi format simply can't be edited in any meaningful way, so it's necessary to convert it to .epub, which seems to be the most flexible format of all.

One reason I'm particularly enthusiastic about .epub files is that the Calibre editor has so many tools to automate many functions of editing that type, making it fairly easy to make changes. And the Calibre developer guy is actively making improvements to it all the time.

The editor has a particularly nifty search-and-replace function, and even has a button for checking the .epub file for errors.

The thing to bear in mind is that Calibre is 2 programs, one is a manager program for organising your ebooks regardless of what format they are, and which can convert a book from one format to another (a huge range of different types); and then there's a second, separate program for editing .epub format files.

Calibre's philosophy is that you'll convert your ebook to .epub format, edit it in that format, then convert it back to the original format (though in fact you can choose any output format you favour, from a huge range of choices).

And Calibre's a free program!

It copes with almost any type of ebook, as long as it's not a locked (DRM) format.


Ereader that won't blur pdfs I have the 2015 Kindle Wi-fi Touch. It's great, although when I try to read PDFs on it, it blurs them.

I don't have a problem with small fonts, and I realise that ereaders are never going to be optimal for PDFs. But is there an ereader that, at least, will not blur PDFs?

Quality resolution for PDFs is awfully dependent on screen size. The bigger the display, the easier it is to read.

I don't have much experience working with Kindle's PDF converter/reader, but it's possible that this pdf uses formatting which the converter cannot process.

You might find interesting my answer on this topic. is PDF not considered as an ebook format


Where is Kindle.exe so I can change Windows Defender Controlled Flolder Access to allow updates Now I have to turn Controlled folder access off to get updates.
It's annoying.
Please help.

Usually, kindle.exe is installed in the following folder:

C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Amazon\Kindle\application

To display it:

Press +R to display the Run dialog box.
Copy and paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Amazon\Kindle\applicationand press Enter.


How convert multi-column PDF files to readable PDF in 6 inches display devices? What is the best way to convert multi-column PDF file into readable format in a 6 inch display devices like kindle?

I found PaperCrop a very useful and powerful tool. It is free and highly customizable so you can either relay to automatic detection of columns and sections by program or customize each page format.


Is isbn-us.com valid? I'm still debating whether I should get an ISBN for my first ebook. I've learned that you don't need an ISBN for selling through Amazon. Apple iBooks doesn't require one, either, though it's recommended.

To be on the safe side, I think it might be a good thing to have - but they aren't cheap.

However, I just found a website that offers ISBN's for ebooks at just $29. However, Bowker says that it's the only legitimate supplier of ISBN's.

Can anyone tell me if a ISBN from isbn.us.com is legitimate? I think I smell a scam, but for $29, it's worth checking out. ;)

The US government has given Bowker a sort of protected monopoly on ISBNs, so Bowker is the only authorized top-level distributor of ISBNs in the US.

Some companies have negotiated redistribution rights with Bowker, so they buy ISBNs in bulk and resell them at prices lower than what Bowker charges for their self-publishing packages. For example, Amazon Createspace sells a single ISBN to publishers who use their platform at a lower price than Bowker would charge for a single number.

It looks like the site you linked to is buying ISBNs under the imprint name of "Independent Publisher" and reselling them. Here are a few things to consider:

When you buy from Bowker you control your ISBN record directly and can make changes by yourself if necessary. If you buy from a reseller, you will have to request that they make changes for you and trust them to follow through.
When you buy from Bowker you can use your company name as the imprint name, if that matters to you. If you buy from a reseller, their imprint name will be listed on the record, whatever that may be ("Independent Publisher" in this case).

The reseller you linked to is being a bit deceptive in their wording. The recommendation is that you use a separate ISBN for each format, not each platform. So EPUB needs a different number from MOBI/KF8, and PDF needs yet another number, but your EPUB can use the same ISBN on iBooks, Nook, Kobo, etc.

Giving your ebook an ISBN allows distributors to report sales statistics about your ebook to industry lists. I'm not aware of much other practical benefit that an ISBN provides, as none of the major distribution channels require them. Personally, I currently only use ISBNs on print books.


Is there a kindle with a light up screen but NOT a touchscreen? I currently have a 3rd gen Kindle with physical buttons.  I love the physical buttons, but would also like to have a screen that lights up.  I've browsed the list of kindles here and didn't seem to find any that weren't touch screens but also light up.

I'm just looking for an ebook reader that has:
* Physical buttons (no touchscreen, don't like the idea of accidental clicks)
* Lights up
* Part of the Amazon ecosystem.

Can anyone help point me in the right direction?

No
All the  currently available Kindles have a touchscreen.
One solution would be to buy an old kindle lighted cover


What is Premium SSL download service that required to download some ebooks I was asked to get an ebook online from a specific company other than amazon with zero cost  expect you need to make a payment, its a simple payment for something called "Premium SSL download service".

Is this true, is their such paid services provided for some of the ebook or software companies in which the payment will go to secure download service not to the software company itself!.

There are several such services, where you pay for downloading material over secure connections (that is what SSL indicates), that means your provider cannot listen in on what you do while you visit such a site.

Although there might be exceptions, if you can download books that you have to pay for at Amazon, for a flat rate for the site usage somewhere else, you are paying for illegal distribution of material.

So it is true that there are such sites, but you shouldn't even think about using them.
Contact the police instead, tell them who asked you to investigate this, what ebook you were supposed to get, and that you suspect that you are being set-up to do something that is illegal by the person asking you to get the ebook.


Version control for writing ebooks When software such as Calibre is used to generate epub, what version control is available?  To my understanding, git can be made to work with word processors by jumping through hoops.  Perhaps there are similar options for ebooks?

See also:

https://stackoverflow.com/q/22583856/262852

Git can be used, but if you use with epub, or any other kind of archive files then you will not get a meaningful diff between versions, just store each version of the ebook. You can use Git wit literally everything, but if it is not like a simple text file, the diff will fail.

Also, you can set Git LFS for such kind of files as ebooks, it has the advantage that it will not download every version of the files when somebody clones it, just the latest version.


What is the most effective way to manage an overheated device? I've noticed that my Kindle Fire (fittingly, maybe) feels very hot when I am using it sometimes.  Obviously, common sense would dictate that picking the device up off of the surface it's sitting on is an effective way to have air flow over the surface of the rear of the device.

Even with this quick fix, I still worry about the device overheating.  Is there an active technique for cooling the device down so that it won't sustain damage? (I had thought about a laptop sized cooling mat, but this may be overkill)

Obviously, shutting down the system and walking away will help it to cool off, but I'm looking for something that works while the reader is in operation.

Stop playing game or using the device for a while may be the best solution.


How to remove and add certain pages from pdf file? There are PDF files which are very long and most of the pages don't provide any essential information. So I want to keep only those pages which are relevant and want to get rid of unnecessary material. I have found threads which provide information on how to edit an epub file but not pdf.

Most of you might feel that solution of this question is same as for "Merge PDF File". They are different in following aspects:

Merging and deletion are different and here I am asking for deletion not merging. If someone likes to give same solution then their answers are duplicate not my question.
The answers given for merging of PDF files doesn't provide solution how to add pages at specific location in a PDF file.
It also doesn't specify how to remove just few pages from a single PDF. Solutions given to "MERGE PDF FILES" just implies how to merge two PDF files using range specification method , in order to omit particular pages.

I think that PDFtk is the tool you need.

https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/


How to find duplicate IDs in epub? Chapter_1.xhtml:

Section 1

paragraph1, see fig 1

Fig. 1. Caption

paragraph2, see fig 2

paragraph3

Chapter_2.xhtml:

Section 1

paragraph1

paragraph2, see fig 2

Fig. 2. Caption

paragraph3

Chapter_3.xhtml:

Section 1

paragraph1

paragraph2

paragraph3

In above mentioned source file, All the IDs are same except
 ID.
In this case, how can i find the duplicates with different filenames (using perl, javascript or anything else).

If you have solution for this, please help.

Your best bet is to validate with EPUBCheck. That will catch dupe @ids and other errors. I use a command in Linux similar to:

java -jar /home/epubcheck.jar book.epub -out errors.xml

The errors.xml file will give you filename, line numbers, and error descriptions.

Or you can use an online validator at IDPF if you don't mind uploading your work.


Automatic creation of bookmarks from Table Of Content I've got this big problem: I have a PDF book with, say, 4 chapters and a bunch of paragraphs in each chapters. At the begenning of the book there is a non-clickable index with chapters, paragraphs and page numbers.

I need to create a bookmark for each paragraph but since I've been messing around with quite some books that have 10 (or more) chapters each, with plenty of paragraphs per chapter, it would take me a loooot of time to manually create the bookmarks.

Is there a way to automatically create bookmarks from the book index?

Thank in advance

Try using pyPdf library.

And use the parser above the ToC extracted area (your non-clickable index with chapters). If it's text.

If it's vector shapes that look like letters but do not have the information that they are letters. Then you must still use OCR to convert it to editable text.