How beneficial was the Baen Free Library to Baen publishing? Did Baen publishing ever release information that quantitatively illustrated whether their business approach of publishing older books for free in Baen Free Library resulted in increased revenue?

Karen Woodward wrote a blog on How To Use Permanently Free Books To Increase Sales. ONe topic her blog entry focuses on is how Lindsay Buroker used the power of perma-free and how it can increase awareness of your books to increase sales.

  What ended up working for Lindsay was making one of her books
  permanently free and distributing it as widely as possible. People
  loved her work, went looking for more, and when they found her other
  books they were happy to pay for them.

According to the Karen, Lindsay herself said (Lindsay's original blog entry here):

  What did make a difference for me, especially with Amazon UK and the
  international Apple stores, was having a book permanently free on
  those sites. I’ve talked a lot about this before, but I made my first
  Emperor’s Edge book (and eventually my first Flash Gold novella as
  well) free at Smashwords about a year ago. I had the freebies
  distributed through their partner sites, and Amazon eventually matched
  the price.

  What took longer, but did eventually happen, is that Amazon UK (and
  DE, ES, IT, etc.) price-matched the ebook to free as well. That’s when
  I started seeing sales of my other books in those stores. It was a
  similar process for iTunes. It’s taken a while for the free ebooks to
  percolate through, showing up in the international Apple stores, but
  I’m now selling books every month in Apple AUD, DKK, GBR, etc. and am
  making between $1,500 and $2,000/mo overall in overseas sales.

After this blog entry, she posted a follow-up blog entry. It covers the following:

Make The Ebook Version Free, Charge For The Paper Copy (examples with Seth Godin and David Gaughran)
Eric Flint and the Baen Free Library
Independent Author Robert J. Crane: Perma-Free Works

Quick Summary:

  In this post I want to look, first, at a variation on the idea of
  using permanently free electronic books to increase sales of your
  other work: make the ebook version of a book free and use it as
  advertising for the paper version. Then we'll look at another indie
  author--Robert J. Crane--who uses the technique of perma-free to sell
  books AND he has been so kind as to share his sales figures.

Here is the blurb about Robert J. Crane and using perma-free works to push sales:

  Indie author Robert J. Crane left a comment on my first post where he
  generously shared some of his sales figures. I have Robert's kind his
  permission to reproduce his comment here:

  I have two books set to perma-free, the results are thus:

  Released my first book [Defender] in June 2011. Between then and June
  2012 I never sold more than low double digits (best month was
  something like 25 sales across 3 novels and 2 short stories).

  Set my first series book free in my high fantasy series in July 2012,
  my urban fantasy series first book [Alone] permafree in September
  2012.

  July 2012: 169 sales Aug 2012: 319 sales Sep 2012: 1759 sales Oct
  2012: 2727 sales Nov 1st to 20th: 3008 sales

  Most of these are at $4.99 or their foreign equivalent. Hope this
  helps give a little inspiration or data to make a decision off of, at
  least.

  Needless to say, I highly recommend perma-free.  Wow! Look at that
  jump between August and September in terms of sales: 1,590 units more.
  That's over 5 times better than any of the previous months. And at 70%
  of $4.99 that's over $5,000.*

So evidence (though it may not be hard facts) does suggest that using free books/ebooks can increase revenue.

NOTE: I have sent Karen a message to ensure she is ok with excerpts from her blog post to be copied here.


Can the sleep timeout be adjusted on Kindle devices? The seemingly fixed screen timeout on all my Kindle devices has never been an issue for normal reading. If it goes off on me it is usually because I fell asleep myself, so one cannot blame a device for following suit. However I have also been using my device for some venues in lieu of printed speaking notes. I email the outline of my talk to my device and it makes for very convenient review and works for most venues to speak from. Usually I move through notes fast enough for the timeout not to be a problem, but occasionally I'll be long winded on an issue and come back looking for my next cue to find the Kindle has gone to sleep. Getting it back doesn't take that long but it is awkward in some venues, esp if you forgot where you were going. Was I going to ask something here? Oh ya...

Is there any way to extend the screen timeout on recent Kindle devices. Even if it involved some level of hackery, that might me acceptable.

From the tags on this questions, I'll guess that you're talking about a Kindle Paperwhite. I know it's possible to do this on a Kindle Fire as well; it's in Settings > More > Display > Screen Timeout there (screenshots here).

On the paperwhite, and apparently many of the other Touch devices, there are commands that you can input in the search bar to do all kinds of interesting things. Entering ~ds will cause the screensaver to never show. A full list of commands is available at http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle_Touch_Hacking#Search_Bar_Shortcuts

EDIT: According to this forum post (same thread you linked in the comment, actually), it sounds like restarting the device is required to get the screensaver working again; the ~ds switch is apparently not a toggle. As far as power consumption goes, eInk only uses power to change the image, not to display it. This means that removing the screensaver may in fact extend the battery life, rather than draining it more quickly.


best e-reader for pdfs I've read that kindle can be dodgy when trying to download files that were NOT purchased from Amazon?   I have downloaded thousands of pdf books

The built-in Kindle pdf reading app is very limited and not suitable for academic papers or text books, because it doesn't have an smart reflow option.

If you're on a budget and like the Amazon ecosystem, you could buy an older model, jail-break it and install the free KOReader app, which offers better PDF display options. (Note that this will work only with the first generation Kindle Paperwhite model and other older Kindle models.)

There are some large screen eInk readers suitable for reading .pdf files, however, they tend to be more expensive than more powerful tablets with same screen size.

IMHO, the best e-readers for .pdf files are tablets with a screen size of at least 10".


Is regex available in Sigil clip editor? I see that the Sigil Clip Editor has some basic regex (e.g., the first numbered group \1 matches the entire selected text in the replace text and \U recalls the text with the entire selected text in uppercase), but I don't see any specification of the syntax for the Clip Editor. Does anyone know what the full range of regex available to the Clip Editor?
Specifically, I am wondering if I can easily parse the selected text using regex pattern and replace it with some other text using the Clips functionality.

No, Sigil Clip Editor cannot use replace patterns. The way that Sigil Clips works is you highlight text, and then you apply the Clip.

Your highlighted text will be grouped into:

\1

So let's say you highlight:

This is text I |want in italics|.

Clip: \1

This is text I want in italics.

Clips are designed more as a one-button-push for redundant stuff (like pasting in template code for a figure with caption, etc. etc.)

For example, mobileread user Tex2002ans created this Sigil Clip for himself:

and then he can easily just insert the needed info/images.

To do more advanced Search/Replace using Regex, you use Tools > Saved Searches.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3808345#post3808345


My Amazon book does not have links from ToC to chapters, why? I recently wrote a book.  The book is published.  When I looked over the result, I found out that the Table of Contents does not have links going to the individual chapters (and sections within chapters.)  This is really annoying.

The work was written in LibreOffice and I made sure that I had a ToC created at the beginning (and everything was linked together correctly.)  Now those links are not there.  This is the last hurdle that I have when it comes to being done with this book.

P.S.: Furthermore, turning the ODT file into a MOBI file using Calibre did not solve my problem either.

Piece of advice. When troubleshooting, I would make your output an epub file to make it easier to see what is wrong. An epub can be unzipped (you have to change the file extension --- so you can examine the resulting HTML files). You can always convert from epub to mobi later if you need to.

First, when using calibre to create an epub/mobi from an odt file, it has to generate html files which when zipped or processed can have a toc. It  assumes that you have formatted your .odt file in a way which allows calibre to guess the chapter headings. For help, see: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/conversion.html#table-of-contents Generally the safest thing to do is to use the h1 tag or to Heading 1 style within LibreOffice or MS Office; generally Calibre can detect that. (You may need to tweak the conversion settings from the Convert options ).

A epub TOC can mean 2 different things in the context of a epub/kindle file: 1)an html page which appears at the front of the ebook or a 2)TOC when you press the TOC icon in the reading system. In your reading app, check the TOC icon to make sure that nothing appears when you press it. If it doesn't, then that is the source of your problem.

(The first kind of html TOC  can be autogenerated using a Calibre conversion option: Force use of auto-generated TOC).

There is a tab for MOBI OUTPUT/EPUB Output options in Calibre: make sure the right things are checked or unchecked:

Do not add TOC to book (make sure this is not checked!)

(generally the defaults are good, you shouldn't have to mess around with them).

In my experience, generating epubs and mobis from calibre is often buggy. I find that using calibre to convert from docx is slightly better than to convert .odt. So you might try converting to docx just to see if it converts properly.

The key thing though is making sure that the .odt/.docx file is properly formatted and styled. You have to use the STYLES provided by ODT/MS Office for the TOC to be created properly. You can't just manually style the headings.

Hope this points you to a solution.

Further Thoughts: I think Calibre is a great application, but I would never rely on it for a published book (I run an indie ebook publishing company).

Instead, you should create a high quality epub (by whatever means), and then use Kindle Previewer to convert from epub to .mobi Important: Download the BETA version of this Kindle Previewer software -- the link is on the right side of that URL.


How to sync mp3 audiobook to mobi ebook on Kindle for Android? I installed Kindle for Android in my phone.
I have ebook in mobi format and mp3. The mp3 is an audiobook for the ebook.
I have put the mobi and mp3 in the Kindle folder. The ebook can read but how do I play the mp3 together and sync with the text?

If you would like to have the audio match the text then you would have to create a read aloud ebook using EPUB 3.  You can learn more about this at this link

https://www.albertopettarin.it/blog/2014/08/02/how-to-create-epub-3-read-aloud-ebooks.html


Security risks when the Kindle(Paperwhite) is plugged into a PC Are there any security risks to plug a Kindle Paperwhite in a PC (imagine infected with viruses PC)? I mean for both the software of the Kindle and the PC?

TL;DR: Yes, there are some risks.

The ereader could transmit a virus from the PC to another PC, if you plug it into another PC. It could receive an infected file from the PC, then reinfect the PC the next time you plug it in, even after you clean up the PC. Or a virus on the computer could damage the ereader somehow. I have never heard of any of these things happening so far. But it's only a matter of time; there is malware for platforms like iOS and Android already, so there's no reason to think ereaders are not also targets.

Theoretically, connecting any device to any other device always poses some risks. For example, the United States National Security Agency (NSA) has developed various tracking devices, keystroke loggers, and so on that can be hidden inside an otherwise normal USB cable. Unless you build the computer, ereader, and cable from raw metals and plastics, wrote all of the software yourself, and so on, there are always unknown risks in using any electronic device. That's life, and you can't reinvent the wheel just so you can read a book, so the question is: what's the safest bet?

The safe bet here is: never plug any of your devices into a device you can't trust 100%. If you have control over the computer, disinfect it thoroughly with a good virus scanner before plugging in any other devices. If you don't control the computer and don't have confidence that the owner has a good antivirus scanner and maintains the computer properly, don't plug in your device.


Epub cover does not display properly in Kobo app I formatted an epub for an indie author. The author tells me that the cover displays properly on the Kindle and the Nook; I checked it in ADE and Calibre. It passed the IDPF epub validator.  However, it is not displaying properly in the Kobo app on the author's iPad. There is a blank page after the cover. I consulted a colleague, who checked some of her covers in the Kobo app. Two covers of the same size, with the same svg coding—one had the blank page and one didn't.

My colleague suspects that the problem covers are being displayed on two pages, with a hairline of color on the top of the blank page. Is the app setting margins that bump the cover down? She tried inserting code to set margins to 0 and that didn't work.

Does anyone have any ideas as to the source of the problem and how to fix it?

I should perhaps add that I work in Oxygen XML editor, which does not like the code for the cover page. It flags it as invalid. All the other files are fine.

However the cover page passes the IDPF validator and displays properly (in most cases :) ).

I tried posting my cover page code here, but it did not display; I could not figure out how to escape it. If anyone can tell me how to escape the code, I can post it and y'all can pick it apart. (Yeah, I'm a duffer coder; it's been a long time since I took programming classes.)

Use a dedicated epub editor instead of a generic xml one, you will have you work greatly improved with a lot of specific optimizations for ebooks.

With Sigil and the Calibre internal editor I've never had this kind of problem, and I use a Kobo ereader regularly.


How do you make paragraphs break in iBooks or Nook? I have just finished the long and arduous task of typesetting a book using quarkXpress2015. While everything is beautiful on-screen and as a PDF, things get ugly when exporting as ePub for ebooks. I've been at it for a few days, going between quark and Calibre and editing the html and such to try to get it to look as beautiful on ereaders. When I open it on an ipad using ibooks it looks fair, but there is one annoying problem I can't seem to fix. The paragraphs don't break. So if I have a long paragraph that wouldn't fit entirely onto the end of one page, it'll push the whole paragraph to the next page, leaving a huge gap on the previous page. If anyone can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it!

Are there paragraph tags in your HTML? <p> to begin and </p> to end are needed for ebooks. I corrected these for a customer recently who had exported epub from QX.


How much of the power does the screen of e-Ink device consume? On Android smartphones, when you look into Power settings, it shows a neat usage graph, which usually looks like this (my phone has very similar #s right now):

================ 40%+  Screen

==== 10% OS

==== 8% System

== Y% (Next largest program)

Is there any similar data showing how much battery is eaten by the screen of e-Ink devices, as % of overall power consumption?

Clearly not ~40%, since the whole point of eInk is that it uses a lot less battery. But did anyone quantify it? Plenty of eInk devices run Android so the data ought to be there.

UPDATE: To address clarifications requested:

I'm mostly interested in the consumption of power during active reading. But I was greatly amazed to learn that eInk draws no power for displaying unchanging page, so that's a great answer even if unanticipated one :)
Rate of page turning shouldn't be a major factor, since I'm only interested in % of consumption (unless device drains battery a lot when displaying a static page?). So any reasonable rate (2-4 pages a minute?) is OK
Backlighting should be off or discounted, since I'm interested in eIink consumption, not backlight one.
I don't really care about make and model, mostly because for ballpark ranges they should all rate similarly - on smartphones, the screen usage of ~40% seems pretty consistent across devices/models. But we can take some standard eInk Kindle model if necessary to narrow things down; whichever one there's data for.

But an ideal answer would draw from a study across different eInk devices.

I beleive you are asking "can the power usage of an eink screen be quantified?"

As long as you don't change the page/image it is not using anypower.

  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. - See more at: http://www.eink.com/technology.html

To quantify a value for usage while reading you would need to define;

The make and model of your device
If you are using device lighting and if so at what level
The rate of page turning


If a book doesn't have DRM does that mean it is OK to give a copy to my friend to read? I downloaded a book that does not have DRM (Digital rights management), I did not have to pay anything for it.  Does this mean it is OK to give a copy of the book to my friend?

Note: This question is not a request for legal professional advice, and no answer to this question should be reguarded as legal advice. This question is a request for general advice about legal and ethical principles that cross jurisdictional boundaries.

NO!

Every eBook is released under a licence.  Even if there is no licence specifically identified then it is covered under the general copyright law.  If you purchased the book and it was not released under a licence that permits redistribution then you should assume that giving away copies to friends is forbidden.

Generally you can find the licence that the book was released under listed in the first few pages of the book, usually before any of the main content.  There are some licences that permit redistribution either for a fee or not.  Most licencing restricts distribution to those people who have a specific distribution licence and pay the appropriate royalties and fees to the publisher and author.

There is some question about older books that are public domain.  The content of the book(the text) is the only thing that is public domain.  The Ebook has added markup and is covered under copyright laws as a new creation.  You can still use the public domain content as permitted, but the markup and any images included that are not public domain images are covered.

Also just because you are in a country that may not enforce copyright and licencing from the country of origin, does not mean that the copyright does not exist. In real world terms, think of it as an analogy to walking down a street and seeing a house that has no door lock. Is it OK to enter the house and take anything in it, just because there's no door lock preventing you from doing so? No.  And even if the police will not arrest you that does not mean that it is acceptable to do so.


How well is SVG (being a "pixel image" alternative) supported? I didn't mention it in my previous question because it's an image format made of vectors, but would SVG provide a usable alternative for non-pixel images like illustrations?

If, how well is SVG supported by the mass of ebook readers… and is that support dependent on specific ebook formats? (Not including TXT as it's obvious you can't embed SVG into that.)

As Donald points out in his answer, (new) devices would have to support SVG 'images' as support for SVG is specified in the EPUB 3.0 standard.

For line drawings, but also for zoomable images (maps come to mind), this is a vastly superior format over any pixel based file format.

How soon that adaptation will happen will be influenced by how easy it is to adapt the various rendering engines used in the devices. Some of the features of 3.0 require more processing power, potentially reducing battery life even if not actively used.

Conversion to non-EPUB formats of EPUB 3.0 with SVG is going to be more difficult, some will not support it at all (which would require rendering in some pixel based format at some resolution), conversion to others formats (PDF) would become more complex than the current text and image conversion.


Pages do not always break in the same place, why? I have been reading a Kindle book (Code Complete 2 on the Kindle Paperwhite 7) and sometimes the following happens:

When I turn the page, some of the content from the last page is repeated on the next page. It is as if I turned half a page. Then if I turn back one page, the end of the page is not in the same place in the book as it was before.

This seems strange to me. I am taking many notes when reading books and don't want to risk that the notes will become scrambled or corrupt in some other way. I want to trust my Kindle.

Therefor, I feel the need to know: why are page breaks not always in the same place in the book? Is this a bug? Can I stop it from happening?

I have experienced these kinds of problems several times on both e-ink devices and kindle apps on mobile devices. It has to do with the device's screen rendering and is probably separate from note-taking.

This is a normal kind of "confusion" for reading kindle devices. I usually encounter these kinds of scrambled pages issue when first reading an ebook. But as  I go through the book, the kind of scrambling usually  disappears.

It may have to do with memory limits or just that kindle is slow in rendering things properly. Sometimes complex formatting or unsupported CSS can cause this problem. But as I said, this thing usually disappears after you page back and forth once or twice.

The epub standard specifically allows reflowable ebooks -- so it is not guaranteed that the end of the page will be the same. If you change font size for example, the position of the page end will have to change. This is normal.

By the way, as an ebook publisher I can hard-code page breaks in the style sheets so that they are consistently on the same page. Also, fixed format ebooks will keep the same pagination (but there are disadvantages to doing this). Unless this happens for only one book or on several devices for the same book, I would not be worried about this.


What was the first commercially available eBook reader? Today there a number of eBook readers.  What was the first device marketed as a device primarily for reading eBooks?  When did it become available?

I think NuvoMedia's Rocket eBook was the first e-reading device. IIRC it was released in 1998. SoftBook also made a pre-1999 e-reader; it was the confluence of two competing technologies (plus Microsoft's software reader) that led to the formation of the Open eBook Foundation and the creation of a single, open e-book format.


How do I permanently change the font size in HAN Software's ePub Reader? I know I can easily zoom in or zoom out in HAN Software's ePub Reader but if I do this, whenever I re-open my ePub, I have to zoom in again.

Is there a way I can set a static font size for ePub Reader?

Are you using the latest version, as I can see that there is a new release on the 6th of January. You shouldn't have to change the size of the text when you open the eBook back up, as many eReaders save it as a preference. The original size of the text is marked in the CSS.

May I also suggest using different ePub readers, such as Calibre as it is used more widely by the eBook community, and no reports of the issue with having to modify your size settings.

If you are thinking of purchasing DRM eBooks in the future, I suggest using Adobe Digital Editions, as you can still read non DRM eBooks in the software, and it too is more widely known to the community.

Regards,

Phill


How do I remove a book from my Sony Reader? I have lots of space left on my Sony Reader (a PRS-T1), but I also have a few books on there that I don't want to read again (or at all). I am trying to figure out how to remove them from the reader using the software that came with it, but I seem to be missing some vital bit of explanation, because I can't seem to take books off of the reader.

Some of the books I want to remove are expired library loans, and some are actual books I have bought and paid for, if that makes any difference. Ideally, I'd like a way to remove multiple titles at once, but if not, one at a time will work too.

If you want to remove files from the PRS-T1 you can connect the reader via its USB cable to a computer and have the internal memory available as a USB drive. The TRS-1 shows itself as two USB devices, one named SETTINGS, the other READER.
The books are normally under READER/BOOKS.

You can just search for, and delete the books with your OS' file browser.

The device will rebuild the database of available books after disconnecting it from the computer.
Make sure to properly remove the device, do not just unplug it.


Screen Rendering only 2/3 of eBook - Troubleshooting Ideas? I like my Kindle DX.

Yesterday, I turned it on and found it like this.

It's fully charged and I reset it but it didn't help.
I chatted with Amazon and they provided 'service fee replacement' option with which I can buy Paperwhite at reduced price.
However, I already have Paperwhite and I like my DX.

Is there a way to fix this?

Simple answer is no unless you have access to this model e-ink screen. Scratches on display suggests that something or someone just broke the screen. It is not software issue - it is hardware.


Problems with ePub for iPad I am formatting an ebook for a client who is quite particular about how it looks and displays on the device he uses, a newer iPad with Retina display. One of which I, unfortunately, do not have.

The current version of the ePub seems to display correctly in Calibre and ADE, my test apps, and it validates in my XML editor and the IDPF ePub validator. However, there are two glitches that show up only on the iPad: an extra blank page or two before a new chapter (sometimes but not always) and a cover image that works as a cover but is not picked up by the thumbnail-generating software. The book shows up on his iBook shelf with a generic cover.

One formatter over at Mobileread insists that he has tried many schemes to get rid of the blank pages and has given up. I think I give up too. I don't see what in my code, in the page-break-before:always that is part of the chapter .css, should be problematic. The client is willing to accept that the iPad just does that but ...

He wants the cover to be resized for a thumbnail. He sent me an InDesign epub that he said displayed properly as a thumbnail and a cover. So far as I can tell, my code is the same, save that I use a .jpeg file extension rather than .jpg for the image. The .jpg would not pass the IDPF validator. Also, I kept my cover .jpeg rather modest. It's 689x1000; his is 1890x2775. I think that is much larger than generally recommended.

(Peeve: ebook cover size recommendations are all over the place. I cannot figure out who to trust on this. I do not want to craft for one device and mess up the cover for other devices.)

I would appreciate hearing from someone else who has run into these problems, or at least one of them, and has come up with solution(s).

For iBooks issues, your best bet is to go straight to the iBooks Asset Guide, which is available when you log in to your iTunes Connect account. As far as cover size goes, the guide says:

  The book’s cover art must use RGB color mode and should be at least
  1400 pixels along the shorter axis. For best results, a good rule of
  thumb is to use an image that is a minimum of 300 dpi.

This applies to the cover art that is submitted along with the book, not the cover in the book itself. For the cover in the book (and for any other image in the book, for that matter):

  Images (within the EPUB) cannot exceed 3.2 million pixels. Apple
  recommends providing images that are at least 1.5 times the intended
  viewing size up to a maximum of 3.2 million pixels. You can calculate
  whether an image inside the book file exceeds 3.2 million pixels by
  multiplying the height of the image with the width.

Assuming that you're creating an epub 3.0 file, if you add properties="cover-image" to the <manifest> entry for the cover image file, the cover will show up in iTunes.

As far as extra blank pages go: you shouldn't need any page-break-before: always statements to break your chapters, assuming that you've followed best practices and broken the content into one xhtml file per chapter. iBooks and all other reading systems I've seen will automatically break pages for each new file.

What errors specifically did you get that went away when you changed the extension of the cover image? Without seeing anything, my guess would be that there was a difference between how the file was named and what it was called in the <manifest>.

Finally: if you're going to be doing ebook conversions, you really need to have the devices you're converting for—every reading system has strange quirks, and you're doing your clients a disservice if you don't test, particularly on devices that you know they're really interested in.


Phonetic IPA sounds problem to transfer to ePub format I have the problem to transfer text with IPA symbols without losing them to ePub format. After formatting as ePub the symbols are not present. See the images:  the others are just normal fonts and not identified ones
Is there a way for that to work?
Should I use different IPA font in original file? Now I use SilDouos ipa9.

You might want to try to embed a different font. Free fonts with good IPA coverage are:

Charis SIL

Source Sans Pro

If embedding a different font didn't solve your problem, it was most likely caused by the epub converter that you used.
What's the source file format and what tool did you use to convert it to an epub file?


How to add a calibre bookmark txt to manifest I converted my docx into a epub file using Calibre but Smashwords is saying that the META-INF/calibre_bookmarks.txt file is not listed in the manifest.

Below is their full explanation. Does anyone know how to easily add this?

File 'META-INF/calibre_bookmarks.txt' in EPUB not listed in manifest!
Your .epub file is missing one or more elements in its manifest. A complete manifest is required for distribution to Apple. Here's how Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB) defines "Manifest":"The manifest element lists all the files contained in the package. Each file is represented by an item element, and has the attributes id, href, media-type. All XHTML (content documents), stylesheets, images or other media, embedded fonts, and the NCX file should be listed here."

Just hit this myself trying to put a book on Smashwaords. It seems that browsing a book with Calibre adds an extra file called 'calibre_bookmarks.txt'. (Smashwords spots it, but the IDPF's Epub Validator doesn't!)

The solution's simple enough:

Change the book's extension from .epub to .zip. (Eg: mybook.epub ->
mybook.zip)
Open the .zip file.
Delete the 'calibre_bookmarks.txt' file.
Save and close the .zip.
Rename it back to .epub.

Alternative method: Don't open your books in Calibre ;-)


How to call a plugin from command line? How to, lets say, hyphen an ebook with Hyphenate This! plugin from command line?

How to work with the Calibre command line can be found in this manual.

Use this command to show what you can do with plugins:

calibre-customize -h

I'm afraid Hyphenate This! is just a GUI plugin without a command line interface.

(For more advanced work with plugins, look at API documentation.)


How can I print an image-only ebook as a physical book? The Shabara Bhashya is an important text of Hindu philosophy, containing the traditional proof that Hinduism is true, but unfortunately it's out of print. It's in the public domain and available on archive.org, but I'd like a physical copy of it. My question is, how do I print a single physical copy of this ebook?

I've found sites where you can print a single copy of a book if you upload a text PDF of the book, but in this case the PDF consists of image scans, not text. (And OCR would produce a garbled mess, as there are a lot of Indian words in the book.) So is there any way to print a public-domain book if you have scanned images?

You can print the file easily with lulu.com as a printed book. I believe they have a manufacturing facility in the U.S. and the U.K. and can ship globally. The fact that your pdf is an image file makes no difference. Keep in mind that if your book is in manuscript format you will have to do a bit of tweaking if you want it printed in common stock book sizes. But if you have an a4-size manuscript and you're satisfied with an a4-sized book, you will have no problem.

The text you are interested in can be downloaded in pdf format. Download that file, then use Adobe Reader (free) to get the width and height of the book. When you start a private print project with Lulu, you will be asked if you want to make the file available in the Lulu bookstore. Since you just want a copy for yourself, answer "no." You will be given a choice of standard print sizes. If there is a match between the file dimensions as reflected in Adobe Reader and the print sizes offered by Lulu, you are in luck. Upload the file and you will be asked to submit or create a cover. Lulu's cover creator takes care of this process for you. Input the title and author. If you are so moved to upload a graphic, remember that it should be 300 dpi in the CMYK colorspace. Otherwise, choose one of the preformatted cover designs.

If the size of your book does not match, or if you want to squeeze the size up or down to match a stock size, use a program like jpdftweak (free) to change the file dimensions.

After the cover is created, you can place an order for the printed book.


Is Markdown a viable source format for writing ebooks? I've for some time enjoyed using Markdown to handle straightforward text formatting, image presentation and the like, which I use for keeping notes, or drafting blog content. I'm aware that different file formats can be used as sources for ebooks, but given that Markdown doesn't have as many formatting capabilities as, say, Word, can it be used for laying out and formatting ebook content?

The answer is yes. You can use John MacFarlane's Pandoc to directly generate EPUB 2 or EPUB 3 from markdown.


What are the differences between the FireOS Kindle App and the Android Kindle App? I've recently been working on an ebook that I intend to self-publish.  I was testing it using the Kindle Previewer application on my Mac, but when I tested the book on actual iOS devices (iPad and iPhone), I realized there were many problems that I had to fix.

So, I want to test on an Android device too, but I don't own one at present.  I was thinking of buying a FireHD because it's a cheap tablet and I will only use this to test my book, but I know FireOS and Android are originally based off the same code but not exactly the same.

My question is: Are the FireOS Kindle and Android Kindle apps similar enough that I can test on one and be reasonably sure that my book will display about the same on the other?

To the best of my knowledge, the Kindle apps on both stock Android and FireOS are very similar. So you should have no bother with how your ebook is displayed within the application on those operating systems.

One additional point to add - You can get an Android emulator on your PC/Laptop and test out your ebook within the Kindle app on this emulated version of android.
The link below shows off several Android emulators that you can pick from, have a read and see if any of those options are helpful to you :)

https://www.androidauthority.com/best-android-emulators-for-pc-655308/


How to avoid "orphaned" paragraph breaks in Scrivener? I am using Scrivener to edit my book and publish it to Kindle. Right now, when a paragraph flows past the end of the page, sometimes only one line of this paragraph is shown on the next paragraph. Does anybody know if it's possible to avoid this with special formatting?

What I'm talking about is something like this (the "selves" word on the page at right):

This is a consequence of ebooks being reflowable; to all practical purposes, it's unavoidable, and it has nothing to do with Scrivener. There is theoretically CSS support for eliminating both widows (like what you've shown) and orphans (the reverse, where there's a single line at the bottom of the page), but the majority of ebook reading systems do not support them.

If you'd like to give it a shot anyway, you'll have to edit the CSS file and add:

widows: 2
orphans: 2

The 2 represents the minimum number of new lines that should be left at the top/bottom of a page.


Convert fixed layout epub to fixed layout mobi I have one fixed layout epub and I would like to convert this epub in to fixed layout mobi file. What code do I need to remove from epub and what steps do I need to follow.

This is a very broad question; I'll try to give you some general guidelines, but feel free to post more specific questions if anything in particular comes up while you're doing the conversion.

If you have an epub 3.0 fixed layout file, you should be able to run it through KindleGen and get a working mobi file. The Kindle Publishing Guidelines are pretty comprehensive as well, and should give you plenty of information if there are any particular stumbling blocks. If your fixed layout is a graphic novel, you might want to use the Kindle Comic Creator instead; it offers some interesting functionality specifically for content with panels.

If your epub is one of the old iBooks pre-epub 3.0 files, your first step will be to convert that into an epub 3.0 file and then go from there.


I have a dumb phone LG840G, is there an ebook reader available for it? I have Tracfone LG840G it is a dumb phone (as opposed to a smart phone). I looked around at Tracfone, and did not find an ebook reader app (but I might not have looked hard enough).  When I do a web search I find some sites claiming to sell ebook readers for my phone, but they don't look reliable/legitimate.

I have Calibre to convert easily to any common format, so I don't care what format the reader uses.  But would prefer not to have a subscription based app, something I can get for free or pay for once would be best.

Is there an application or down load I can get for my phone, that will let me read ebooks on a Tracfone LG840G?

You should be able to use the browser or UC Browser/Opera Mini to read HTML files from an SD card, that is the best chance to get something usable.

An alternative would be to render the ebook to PNG images and browse the image on the phone, but this takes much more memory.

You can also open plain text files from your SD card using the build in File Browser and read them in the viewer (there might be limitations on the file size).


How can I prevent a widowed/orphaned header? I have a chapter that has brief information for each of the 50 states. Each section begins with a state's name in a h4 tag.

When I preview my book, I sometimes see a header resting on the bottom of a page, with the following paragraph on the next page.

I tried wrapping the header and following paragraph in a div, like this...

Maine

This is a paragraph.

Then applying this style:

div.Widow { widows: 3; }

I also changed widows: 3 to orphans: 3, just to make sure I didn't have it backwards. But it doesn't work.

Can anyone suggest another strategy for gluing a paragraph to a header?

According to this blog article, you should use the display: inline-block property on  a div selector that encloses your header and paragraph.

Here is an excerpt from the said article:

  If you set the display property for a div to be inline-block,
  iBooks will display the contents of the entire div together on a
  single page, skipping to a new page if necessary, unless the entire
  div can't fit on a page by itself, in which case it will be divided
  across pages.

  It's simple and very powerful: div {display: inline-block}

  Here's a short document with no inline-block display. Notice how the
  header is separated from the paragraph that follows it, and even how a
  bit of the background bleeds through to the following page. Icks. The
  image and caption are likewise separated. Terrible!

  Here's the exact same document with one div enclosing the header and
  paragraph and second div enclosing the image and caption. Both
  divs were set to display:inline-block. The result? Goodbye widows
  and orphans:

  Where can you use this? As shown here, if you have a series of
  illustrations with captions, use inline-block to keep the caption
  right under the illustration.

  If you want a header to never appear alone at the bottom of the page,
  but always be followed by at least one paragraph, just enclose the
  header and the paragraph in an inline-block div.

The article that I have linked also contains two epub files that can be used as a reference for these examples.


ePub readers for Windows that support continous scrolling? I need to find an ePub reader application for Windows that support continuous page scrolling.

Thanks in advance for any help you are able to provide.

Try the calibre ebook viewer: open your book and enable "Switch to flow mode" (the button on the top right corner)


calibre - how to upload my highlights online? I'm using calibre to upload books to my kindle (via usb). So my amazon account is not aware of my books.

I want to be able to view my highlights and comments online somehow.
Since my books are not connected to my amazon account, they do not appear in the link https://read.amazon.com/notebook.

Is there any way to upload the notes and highlights automatically to some online service?

Or even not automatically? I've tried the Fetch Annotations in calibre, but it didn't work.

I found this site: https://my.clippings.io

It allows you to upload a file named my clippings which is downloadable through the fetch annotations button in calibre. I found this file in my library after performing the fetch.


Block quotes in numbered lists that don't interrupt numbering I am working on a book that has a long lists of paragraphs that are numbered as in a numbered list. Within several of the paragraphs are blockquotes, and one in particular has a blockquote followed by a resumptive paragraph (i.e. no indent, resuming after a quote).

When such breaks in paragraphs in the list occur, the numbering for my list starts over at 1. I should note that I am using ScribeNet to convert our books from marked up InDesign or Word documents, so you can't just put

 tags around things. Instead, what Scribe wants is for each paragraph to have a paragraph class specified in the CSS such as
 where nl is shorthand for numbered list and points to .nl in my CSS file.

I could probably just overcome this problem by using standard HTML list conventions, but I am uncertain if this is considered "best practice" within the e-book community. Is there a way to do this just using Scribe's format?

I found my answer. Several things were being done incorrectly.

First, ScribeNet's conversion process likes to close non-linking anchor tags with a /> instead of </a>. E-books read this with no problem, but the basic HTML gets squirrely and starts thinking there has been an interruption in the numbering of the list. Thus, any page breaks that occurred in my original print book and that were marked up in my HTML needed to be closed properly with </a>.

From there it was just a simple matter of setting <p class="nlf"> (or nl or nll where nlf represents "numbered list first", nl is "numbered list", and nll is "numbered list last") to have the appropriate margins and text indents in CSS (which you can sort out for yourself based on what format you'd like). But the clincher was to use:

display: list-item; list-style: decimal in my CSS for these 3 class elements. What this does is display a paragraph as if it were a list element, and then look to the list-style to determine how the list is marked, which is in this case with cardinal numbers followed by a period/full-stop.

You can mess around with various list styles such as disc, decimal, lower-roman', etc. But there are also two modifiers,insideandoutside`. You can call them like this:

list-style: lower-latin inside

What this will do is go through the Latin alphabet in cardinal order from a to z for each subsequent paragraph in the list, and then rather than inserting a large whitespace (equivalent to a 'tab') between the period/full-stop after the Latin letter and the start of the content of the paragraph, it will instead indent the list-marker and tuck it in closer to the text. This is nice if you are producing, for example, multiple-choice questions at the end of a chapter/unit of a text book. Very handy!


Which software should I use to manage all my books and collections in my Kindle? I have noticed that at times, when I am having too many books, I make up a mess. Also, I want to be able to easily add books which I have bought or downloaded from some other source.
Like, I may have books downloaded from Project Gutenberg as well as general books bought from the Kindle store, Kindle Unlimited or some PDFs too.

I like to use Calibre to manage and convert ebooks. You will need Kindle's software for PC in order to download the books, that you can then import on Calibre.

Beware that the books are DRM protected, so you won't be able to convert those.

It is free (both as in '..speech' and in '..beer') and actively maintained.


kindlegen dictionary creation Hi I am trying to create a dictionary for my kindle.
It is quite a large one, and I've splitted into 16 files each of them are around 20mb. While I am trying to generate the dictionary, kindlegen gives me the following error:

Error(prcgen):E21013: Two <idx:entry> tags cannot have the same id.
I have checked the script that is generating the dictionary entries and each file individually, there is simply no identical id fields. Plus it says that the error is found in third file, while Info(prcgen):I1003: Parsing file URL: shows the second file. I tried to put the xhtml files in a different directory as well and refer to them in metadata.opf but still I am having the same error

Here is the complete error message:

kindlegen metadata.opf -c2 -verbose -o blator.mobi

*************************************************************
 Amazon kindlegen(Linux) V2.9 build 1028-0897292
 A command line e-book compiler
 Copyright Amazon.com and its Affiliates 2014
*************************************************************

Info:I9007:option: -c2: Kindle Huffdic compression
Info:I9014:option: -verbose: Verbose output
Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Title        "My Book"
Info(prcgen):I1047: Added metadata dc:Creator      "Me and my crew"
Info(prcgen):I1002: Parsing files  0000143
Info(prcgen):I1003: Parsing file     URL: blat-0.xhtml
Warning(index build):W15008: language not supported. Using default phonetics for spellchecker: english.
Warning(parser8):W26001: Index not supported for enhanced mobi.
Info(prcgen):I1003: Parsing file     URL: blat-1.xhtml
Warning(index build):W15001: inflection rule or rule group too long (max=255). Discarded.
Error(prcgen):E21013: Two <idx:entry> tags cannot have the same id.

Any idea ?
Thanks in advance

I am not sure why my solution fixed the error message but I simply removed id attribute from idx:entry tag, but I left the id attribute alone in a under idx:entry.


Is it possible to send a book purchased from Amazon to all of my devices at once? When I purchase a book from the Kindle Store, it asks me which device I want it delivered to. I know I can send it to multiple devices by managing my library. Is there a setting to have every purchase automatically delivered to all registered Kindle devices instead of doing it one at a time?

According to the Kindle support forums, after purchasing a book, you will be presented with an option to send the book to additional Kindle devices. You will need to do this for each of the devices you would like to send the book to - there is no option to send it to all of them.

Also, keep in mind that most books limit the number of devices that they may be downloaded to - therefore sending a book to more Kindles than the book allows would be impossible anyway.


As a US citizen is it illegal to access an ebook from a country where it is PD, if it is not PD in the US? I am looking for US laws specifically identifying this scenario, I am not looking for interpretation of the law.  I am looking for law relating to personal use/reading only.

I stumbled across Planet eBook which along with several older classics is offering Nineteen Eighty-Four, Published in 1949 George Orwell.  The work is PD in several countries like Canada & Australia but it looks like it will not be PD in the US until 2044. It turns out that Planet eBook is located in Australia so like Wikilivres.ca it is PD in the country the server is located in.

Are there laws defining the legality of a US citizen, in the following scenarios?

Downloading a copy for personal use to an ebook device while in the US
Reading a copy of the ebook from a server in PD country without downloading (i.e. html only)
Opening a copy of the ebook from a server in PD country without reading

Assuming the US Citizen is in the US then almost always yes it is illegal.

  Downloading a copy for personal use to an ebook device while in the US

Yes the US copyright law prohibits the downloading of works that are protected by copyright in the US from foreign servers that do not have permission to distribute the copyright protected material in the US.  This is part of the Title I of the DMCA.

  Reading a copy of the ebook from a server in PD country without
  downloading (i.e. html only)

Technically you are still downloading the text.  The HTML Files are stored on your local computer in your Temporary Internet files. This would be in violation of the DCMA.  In theory if you remote in to a computer in another country and read it, they there would be no violation of the DCMA.  However if you are remoting into that server specifically to evade US law then you are in violation of other statues involving international crime.

  Opening a copy of the eBook from a server in PD country without reading

This is going to be dependent on if the text gets stored in non volatile memory on your computer.  If it creates temp files with the text on your hard drive then technically it would violate Copyright in the US under the DMCA.  If it is only putting the text into memory then it is not actually creating a copy of the document.  So it does not violate the DMCA unless there is a way to save the text on your local device in which case it would be a tool capable of circumventing Copyright.  In which case the use of the tool is a violation of DMCA even if it is not used in this manner.


How to download from Amazon cloud to Kindle desktop? For Kindle itself and Kindle for Android/iOS you can always see what documents you have in your library, and download them when necessary, even if you have already deleted them locally. All the documents I ever sent using "Send to Kindle" are there. However I don't see the option to download those documents on Kindle for OS X. You only seem to be able to download the books that you've bought plus the documents you have locally. Am I missing something?

If you right click on a listing you get the option to download.


Is it possible to transfer kindle books to my iPad and how to do it? I enjoyed my kindle books for 3 years, and want to transfer it to my iPad for reading when travelling. But have no idea how to move these kindle books to my iPad. Any tips?

Install the Kindle app from Apple's App Store.

The app will show the same library in Amazon as the kindle does.

If you have loaded books directly then these will have to be copied.


Can a Sony 700 cover be repaired? I use a Sony PRS-700 ereader while traveling (prefer old fashioned books). But after my last trip I noticed that the cover I bought along with the reader no longer holds it. The gray "clam" at the top that fits in the small hole near the spine of the 700 is bent. I have not been able to get it back and I am afraid to break it off completely. Anyone have experience with this? Is there some place I can buy the cover 2nd hand?

Before bending, warm the "clam" with an electric paint stripper (maybe a hairdryer is enough). I used a heat focusing cone for the stripper. Apply short shots from a short distance until the plastic is warm and stays in shape when moved. Keep in place until cooled. I did this more than one year ago and it still works.

Be very careful with bending when inserting PRS-700 back in. Do not overstretch the plastic again. Also, use tools to prevent burning your fingers.

Mine was broken at top, so not much strain on the plastic while reading.


Epub without a Table of Contents, is it possible? Ideally, I'd like to not have a ToC. But I understand that without one, an epub won't validate. Is there any way to create a ToC with no content, including no ToC header?

I'm guessing that you are asking the question in the wrong way: you actually want to hide the HTML entries from the TOC so that the TOC doesn't spoil any surprises. I have good news. In epub3 you can create a navigation page and hide all the entries in that TOC.

Let me explain some basics. The terminology can be confusing because initially Kindle required a "logical TOC" (which was an HTML file linking to all the chapters) in addition to a TOC in toc.ncx  The real TOC (which is machine-readable) was in toc.ncx for epub2  but inside the NAV element of the required navigation document in epub3.

In epub3 it is no longer necessary to have a toc.ncx file (and for future versions it will be deprecated). Instead you include a HTML navigation document (which you mark by using the NAV  element in that file). For epub3, writers of the standards wised up; they realized that rather than requiring two different kinds of TOCs, why not just put everything in one navigation HTML document, with proper tagging and then forget about toc.ncx?

Fortunately, it is relatively easy to hide TOC entries inside the NAV element of the epub3 navigation document.

Here's how you do it in epub3.  "The presence of the hidden attribute on the root indicates that the entire list is excluded from rendering in the content flow." (Source)

Table of Contents

Preface

 Requiem on the Rappahannock

Version History

I'm not 100% sure you can hide all the entries (I haven't tested that), but I'm pretty sure you can hide almost all the entries (maybe you are required to have at least 1 visible TOC item).

If you want to hide one or more entries in epub2, edit this in package.opf.

 <spine toc="ncx">
        <itemref idref="cover" linear="no"/>
        <itemref idref="htmltoc" linear="yes"/>
        <itemref idref="alternate-toc" linear="no"/>
         ...

Linear="no" means to exclude it from the TOC entries for epub2 reading systems. Importantly, note that if you have an epub3 file, the reading system will probably obey the  and ignore whatever you put in the package.opf file.

I am talking about epub and epub3. If I remember correctly, converting from epub3 to mobi produces the same effect.

The ability to hide TOC entries is important for certain kinds of books (the first thing that comes to mind are Choose-your-own adventure ebooks and other hypertexts).


Is it possible to set font-color to the background-color I want a , but of course, the background in nightmode will appear black (or something close to that). How can I set the css so the big 7 has the same font-color as the background no matter what the user has set

Let's analyze this question a little bit.

The 7; is it a background image or using some advanced css trick like this? https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15986216/how-can-i-add-a-large-faded-text-background-via-css

I haven't studied the issue in depth, but ebook reading systems generally don't support background images for pages. They generally are behind the curve of css which is supported in web browsers today.  Maybe in the next generation of e-readers (5-10 years from now), this will become possible.

If you used a Fixed Layout Book format (on kindle or Apple), maybe you might achieve this effect, but doing so would use a fixed display size  and generally disable user controls.

You're asking for the moon, bro....


what devices will be affected by deleting iPad Kindle app If I delete my ipad kindle app, will my books remain on my kindle device?  Will they remain in the ipad icloud storage?

Generally Amazon offers a cloud solution for your ebooks, so removing the purchased ebook from your app or removing the app entirely is very unlikely to cause a deletion on your cloud storage.

On my android device, I don't see any option to remove the ebook permanently -- which leads me to assume that you cannot delete it on all devices and your cloud from one device. (You probably can do a permanent deletion from the Amazon website under Manage Your Content and Devices so be careful.


Upload & Read eBooks in Chrome (i.e. Maintain a Cloud Library) For some reason I haven't been able to find anything - extension, app, website - that let's me take my ebook library to the cloud and read from it. There are two solutions I've been able to find, but they don't work quite as well as I want them to.

First, Google Play Books. I can upload books there, I can download them to my devices, sync reading progress, actually read them... but it only works for the EPUB (and PDF, but I don't read PDFs) format. No MOBI.

Alternatively, I've got a Calibre library set up in Google Drive, which is a really wonderful way to be able to access the hundreds of books I've got there, but while Calibre itself can open nearly any format out there, I can only use it on a computer, and only on a computer I can install it and Google Drive on. No browser or mobile app.

I guess what I am asking here is something with everything Play Books has, but also MOBI support. Has anyone seen such a tool?

Have you tried the Kindle Web Reader? Kindle supports MOBI and you can import personal documents into your Kindle Library via an email address that is attached to your Amazon/Kindle ID.

You can access your Kindle library through a web browser, and if you use Chrome, there is a Chrome App that supports Offline reading. I believe your personal documents will be synched across devices just like native Kindle books.


What are the most appropriate metadata to manage and search ebooks On an online platform for ebooks that you would use to search, sort, and save online entity of your books (like goodreads, scribd etc.), what meta data fields would be handy to have available for a book? Or it can be a comicbook, magazine, or audiobook.

author, title, upvotes, cover, published date, ISBN...

Equally important, what kind of metadata fields not to show in order to avoid complexity of website to the user, and to avoid irrelevancy or to avoid creating distance to actual reading experience?

If I understand correctly, you are asking a multi-faceted question; on how metadata hurts or helps your website and ebook content.

I apologize in advance- if some of this information is repetitive or overly descriptive. I'm providing as many descriptions, references and links as possible, in order to provide as thorough an answer as possible. Thanks.

Webpage Optimization

1. What is Metadata:

  Metadata is "data about data".[1] Two types of metadata exist:
  structural metadata and descriptive metadata. Structural metadata is
  data about the containers of data. Descriptive metadata uses
  individual instances of application data or the data content.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata

Your question concerning the platform or website metadata is in relation to the "descriptive" purpose of the metadata properties, so let us focus on that aspect for the website only and not the ebook for now.

Metadata "Web Page" Specific:

  Web pages often include metadata in the form of meta tags. Description
  and keywords in meta tags are commonly used to describe the Web page's
  content. Meta elements also specify page description, key words,
  authors of the document, and when the document was last modified.[5]
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata#Web_pages

Metadata Elements or "Tags"

  Meta elements are tags used in HTML or XHTML documents to provide
  structured metadata about a Web page. They are part of a web page's
  head section. Multiple Meta elements with different attributes can be
  used on the same page. Meta elements can be used to specify page
  description, keywords and any other metadata not provided through the
  other head elements and attributes.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_element

First Clue

The Metadata Web Page & Elements or Tags section, provides us a beginning to an answer.

  "...authors of the document, and when the document was last modified."

Second Clue

  "Meta elements can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and attributes."

Metadata for Webpages (Partial Answer)

So this tells us at a minimum, the metadata for a webpage should contain at least,

Descriptive elements for the specific page description
Keywords, that relate to that page or topic in general
Authors of the document
When the document was last modified

for full optimization.

Metadata and Search Engine Optimization

This is where it gets tough and there is no one size fits all type of answer, because we are now asking "How do I research, find, and know which keywords to add", depending on if you are optimizing for Google, Bing, or Yahoo you may have different needs.

Search Engine Optimization

Learning about how each of these search engine services differ is important if you are trying to optimize your content. Personally, I'd recommend researching and learning about topics such as "How Predictive Keyword Searches Work", and similar SEO topics.

Here is an article to start learning about Google Predictive Keyword Search:
http://searchengineland.com/how-google-instant-autocomplete-suggestions-work-62592

Keyword Optimization Tools

Luckily there are optimization tools to help with this, one such example for finding keywords that people are searching in relation to your content is
http://ubersuggest.org/ to learn more you may view their website.

This becomes more complex, once you realize that you are now on the road to search engine optimization, yet you still have to optimize for the retail partners such as "Amazon", "Apple", "B&N", "Kobo", "Google Play", etc. and other third party platforms as you mentioned such as "goodreads, scribd".

And it may be helpful to dig into the metadata keywords and descriptions of these retailers for knowing how to optimize for each or possibly all.

As an example, looking at B&N's website source code gives us some insight to consider:

<meta name="HandheldFriendly" content="True">
<meta name="MobileOptimized" content="320">
<meta name="format-detection" content="telephone=no">
<meta name="author" content="Barnes &amp; Noble">
<title>Barnes & Noble | Barnes &amp; Noble</title>
<meta name="description" content="Lower Prices on Millions of Books, Movies and TV Show DVDs and Blu-ray, Music, Toys, and Games. Shop online for eBooks, NOOK, and textbooks. FREE Shipping on $25 orders!" />
<meta name="keywords" content="Books, Movies and TV, DVD, Blu-ray, Music, Toys, Games, eBooks, NOOK, textbooks" />
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary" />
<meta name="twitter:site" content="@BNBuzz" />
<meta property="og:title" content="Barnes & Noble"/>
<meta name="description" content="Lower Prices on Millions of Books, Movies and TV Show DVDs and Blu-ray, Music, Toys, and Games. Shop online for eBooks, NOOK, and textbooks. FREE Shipping on $25 orders!" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Lower Prices on Millions of Books, Movies and TV Show DVDs and Blu-ray, Music, Toys, and Games. Shop online for eBooks, NOOK, and textbooks. FREE Shipping on $25 orders!"/>
<meta property="og:type" content="product"/>
<meta property="og:url" content="http://www.barnesandnoble.com"/>
<meta property="og:image" content="http://dispatch.barnesandnoble.com/content/dam/ccr/social/BN_facebook_1200x630.jpg"/>
<meta property="og:site_name" content="Barnes &amp; Noble"/>

Author Metadata Description

<meta name="author" content="Barnes &amp; Noble">

Web Page Description

<meta name="description" content="Lower Prices on Millions of Books, Movies and TV Show DVDs and Blu-ray, Music, Toys, and Games. Shop online for eBooks, NOOK, and textbooks. FREE Shipping on $25 orders!" />

Web Page Keywords

<meta name="keywords" content="Books, Movies and TV, DVD, Blu-ray, Music, Toys, Games, eBooks, NOOK, textbooks" />

To view a websites source code, right-click on the webpage and choose, "View Page Source", or other similar wording depending on your browser.

I am using Chrome.  If you are using Chrome you can type this into the browser search bar:

view-source:http://www.website_name.com/

Another Clue or Partial Answer

Now we know B&N has keywords and descriptions we may use, that will help optimize our content for that particular retailer; such as, "Books", "eBooks", "textbooks", and "NOOK".

We should at the very least use those four keywords in our description and keyword metadata if we want our webpage to be optimized in relation to B&N.

How exactly does this work? (in simplified terms)

Google crawls website #1 with their web bots and based on the metadata and content, discerns how this website relates to the rest of the world wide web, and categorizes/ranks it accordingly.
Google crawls website #2 with their web bots and based on the metadata and content, finding the metadata and content similar to website #1, they will categorize and rank it in relation to website #1.

Once Google or other similar Search Engine starts putting it together that you are a piece of the ebook, publishing, network/puzzle per se on the WWW then it will further associate you with the search results related.

The further you research and find other keywords and phrases people are using to search for your content the better you can optimize.

This is one example but you would do this for each search engine, retailer, ebook, etc. depending on how much time and resources you wish to devote on getting your content more visible...

eBook Metadata Optimization

**
For all your industry standards this website should be viewed at the very least:

"Trade and Standards Organization for the Digital Publishing Industry"

International Digital Publishing Forum: http://idpf.org/

Onix-Editeur

http://www.editeur.org/2/About/ & http://www.editeur.org/8/ONIx/

  EDItEUR is the international group coordinating development of the standards infrastructure for electronic commerce in the book, e-book and serials sectors. EDItEUR provides its membership with research, standards and guidance in such diverse areas as:

  Bibliographic and product information for the book, e-book and serials sectors
  EDI and other e-commerce transaction standards
  The standards infrastructure for digital publishing
  Rights management and trading

Articles to read in relation to your Question

For ease of use and quick viewing, I've quoted what I perceive as most important to answering your question from each of these articles, but I highly recommend reading the full articles and even researching more for full comprehension on this subject since the subject is a whole industry in itself.

Digital Book World

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2015/using-metadata-to-go-beyond-the-ebook/

  Metadata is a term publishers love or hate but can’t avoid. As metadata expert Renée Register has explained in a recent series of Digital Book World webcasts and blog posts, metadata refers quite simply to what you want the world to know about your books and provides a structure for helping them come to know it.

  When you want to sell your book online, the metadata will not only give potential buyers technical information such as the specifications, publication date, ISBN and list price, it will also be the magic that enables your book to be discovered online by customers who search for it. And this is all the more important for digital editions that can’t be hand-sold in bookstores.

  So when publishers ask themselves what technical metadata essentials they need to know in order to give their titles the best chances of success, the question they’re really asking is how they want to sell them. After all, metadata isn’t just a formula to be rigorously followed; it’s a tool publishers can—and should—adapt more creatively in order to experiment with different approaches to online bookselling.

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/when-bad-ebook-metadata-is-good-or-not/

  Imagine hundreds or even thousands of crazed readers can’t wait for an ebook title to be available for sale. And when it finally is, they go to Amazon and other retailers to buy it. But they buy the wrong ebook instead.

  When you’re Stephen King, those lost sales on an ebook edition for your print-only novel Joyland (Hard Case Crime) doesn’t make or break you. But if you’re Emily Schultz, the Canadian author of the 2006 literary fiction novel Joyland (ECW), those sales can be a huge windfall. (King’s Joyland came out in print last June and as an ebook this past April.)

  In October of last year, Schultz’s Joyland ebook was seeing an unexpected bump in sales — some 200 copies the week the King book came out. Those and subsequent sales provided Schultz with a pile of pocket money and she’s chronicling how she is spending it at her new Tumblr blog stephenkingmoney.tumblr.com. So far, she has spent just over $400 on things like a fancy dinner, more books and a haircut for her husband. She wouldn’t tell me just how much she has made (but hinted that it would be revealed on the blog eventually) but her take may be higher than you expect — she has a 50% royalty on the ebook, roughly double the going rate when working with a publisher...

Further in the article

  ... While Schultz’s story is certainly atypical, it underscores the power and importance of metadata. Could better metadata, that is — keywords, descriptions, etc. — have saved at least some readers from finding or buying the wrong book, at least one or two of the disaffected ones who subsequently left negative reviews (residual metadata from this episode)? Is there something now that can be done in the metadata that will mitigate the effects of the negative reviews?

eBook Metadata Clues from above articles & quotes

Now we know at minimum what is important for eBook metadata:

Technical information such as the specifications
Publication Date
ISBN
List price

As the article states metadata is a tool and not a rigorous formula but it is instead to be used as needed.

See here at the Book Publishing company I work for we have over 180+ different nodes of metadata that we accept for ebook metadata because we provide service for all online ebook retailers each requiring different specifications.

So, I apologize that this answer cannot give you  2+2=4 straight forward approach, but as you can see there is a lot involved with the question you asked.

Other Related Articles

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/using-metadata-to-market-books-build-audience-and-control-your-future/
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/metadata-a-strong-business-advantage-in-bookselling/

Final Thoughts && Conclusion

Working in this industry for almost three years now has allowed me to see first hand how metadata effects sales and performance of titles at various retailers.

Metadata is very relevant, important and constantly growing more complex in this industry.

Metadata is an industry of it's own in this field.

Conclusion: If you follow all of this advice, I am certain it will help clarify the subject of metadata, will provide you the correct steps to take to perform the research and development needed; ultimately providing you a solution for your question.


Finding the home screen's most recent books on Linux Sony PRS-650 shows the three most recent books on its home screen. How can I modify this top three and how can I list the current ones when the device is connected to a PC running Linux?

Use the following shell command for listing the last three files:

find database/media/books -type f -exec stat --format '%Y :%y %n' {} \; \
    | sort -nr | cut -d: -f2- | head -3

For putting a book at the top of the list use touch:

touch database/media/books/mybook.epub


How can I cut down on superfluous Instapaper files on my Kindle? I regularly use the Instapaper service to send articles from my browser to my Kindle (Paperwhite if it matters). The settings allow for sending a new digest every time there are X new articles to be read. This works great if you regularly read and mark articles as archived before new ones collect. I don't. The resulting mess has always bothered me and I'd like a way to clean it up. There must be a better work flow; perhaps I'm missing something obvious.

Is there…

…a way to configure each digest sent out to only include articles not previously sent to my device?
…a way to have the new digests replace all old ones so that there is only ever the newest complete set of un-archived clips?
…some other way not to have duplicate articles in several digests on my device?

While Instapaper does not have the full capabilities you desire at this point in time, there is a way to cut down on the mess to get over 1/3 of what you want, mainly by eliminating any possibility for duplicate articles on your Kindle. Here's how:

Note that regular Instapaper users always get 10 articles sent to Kindle. On Instapaper's Kindle settings page of the web site, you may select how many new articles triggers sending to Kindle. Choose 10.

If you do all your reading on your Kindle and nowhere else (and you never archive any of the most recent 10 articles), then each Kindle digest will have exactly 10 new articles you've never seen before.

I personally do 5 because I only clip to Instapaper once every few days and I'd rather get a digest twice per month rather than once per month. So in my case, I know that I can read the 10 most recent articles, and if I want to go back further I'll have to skip the previous Kindle digest which will have 5 duplicate articles. By skipping one digest, I get to a digest which has no repeats.


How do I get an ISBN? Given that it is not necessary to have an ISBN if you plan to self-publish an ebook only via Amazon (they use their ASIN), which is the best way to get one, if someone plans to sell his/her book also in epub (or pdf) format?

I know that there national official bodies which manage ISBN space: for example Bowker for the US and isbn.it for Italy; and there are "sublicensers" which are a bit cheaper. But there are also firms which give you a ISBN for your book, but remain officially the publisher for the book. Which are advantages and disadvantages for these options?

The national official bodies that you mention are the only ways to get an ISBN in your name for your manuscript. If you go through, say, Smashwords to get your ISBN, then Smashwords will be on file at the ISBN agency as the publisher of the manuscript. When you get an ISBN from anywhere else, they are basically buying them from Bowker (or whoever) in bulk and reselling them for a markup. Here's some further info: https://savvybookwriters.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/author-beware-unauthorized-resellers-of-isbns/


Is it possible to convert Pocket articles into epub format? I'd like to know if there is an easy way to convert Pocket articles to .epub format.

For those that don't know Pocket, it is a service that let's you save articles from any website, blog, and so on, and read them whenever you want on your favourite device, providing also an improved formatting for mobile devices. Wikipedia explains all of this nicely.
As an example, I usually save articles from my phone when I don't have the time to read them (or when I want to keep them for future reference), and read the later on my Kobo ereader, that has this application embedded.

Since this service is available for a great number of devices, it is not a matter of accessibility; but if, for whatever reason, the contents should become inaccessible, I'd like to have a sort of backup ready to use; and I'm also interested about this "for the sake of science", so to say.

Is someone more informed than me about this?

There are several different possible solutions for your task. The approaches differ in terms of used tools and level of automation.

a technically very easy way is a special Google Chrome browser plugin which allows an epub export within the pocket website.
a rather automated solution is the use of pocket as custom news source for calibre.
And last but also as rather a complex way you could use IFTT and some mail forwarding procedures to automate the epub generation. This approach is covered in a blog article on the tech blog "Dancing in Technology"


How can I highlight visited anchors in an epub? Suppose I insert the following anchor in an epub...

The first horses in America . . .

Then I insert a link in the index...

Horse, in America, 23

Is there something I can do to make the anchored text somehow more visible if someone clicks the link? In other words, I don't want someone to click the link in the index, then spend several seconds trying to find whatever it is they're looking for.

I'd like anchored text to appear bold, red, underlined, with a background color, or something like that. I imagine I'd have to put INSIDE the span, like this...

The first horses in America . . .

My understanding is that Epub 2.0 is compatible with far more devices than Epub 3.0, so that's what I'm working with. However, I could upgrade to 3.0 if it's needed to activate some sort of CSS or JS needed to make this work.

You can use a couple CSS selectors to style links.

a:link will select and style all unvisited links, while a:visited, surprisingly enough, will do the same with visited ones.

Examples:

a:link {
    text-decoration: underline;
}

a:visited {
    background-color: grey;
}

Remember that epub files are often read on B&W e-ink devices, so you should consider this if you want to differentiate links by using colors; the result might not be as expected.


What prospect is there for foreign language look-up in Kindle for PC? Kindle for PC is currently ineligible for delivery of most dictionaries on the "Manage Your Content and Devices" page, and so cannot use them for word look-up.

Is this situation likely to change soon? Or is there some deep reason for it, which is likely to make it last a long time?

Is this situation likely to change soon? Or is there some deep reason for it, which is likely to make it last a long time?

IMHO, Amazon most likely hasn't updated the Kindle for Windows and OSX apps, because not enough readers demanded custom dictionary support. (BTW, Amazon-bought dictionaries can be sent to the Kindle for Android app.)
Until Amazon fixes this, you can outsmart the Kindle for PC/OSX/iOS apps by changing the ASIN number of your custom dictionary to the ASIN number of one of the default dictionaries and overwriting the default dictionary with your custom dictionary. This involves the following steps:

Remove the DRM from the custom dictionary that you want to use.

Download a dictionary that you won't use, e.g. the American English dictionary (B003ODIZL6_EBOK.azw).

Open your dictionary with Java Mobi Metadata
Editor, change the existing ASIN entries to B003ODIZL6, save
the file, rename it to B003ODIZL6_EBOK.azw and copy it to the My
Kindle Content folder. (If your dictionary doesn't have ASIN entries, click the (+) button and select 113 ASIN and 504 ASIN.)

Obviously, you'd use the ASIN number of the French monolingual dictionary, if you wanted to replace the default monolingual French dictionary with a bilingual dictionary etc.


Dual reading (for translation comparison) I have started using my tablet for reading epubs and I have found a lot of different versions of the same book.

So, is there any application that allows me to compare, i.e. to see both versions in a split screen?

I thought it would be easy to find this because it is such a useful utility!

I have tried the 10 most used application for reading epubs and no single one allows me to do this.

There's a special PC/Android app that for that: Aglona Reader.
It uses its own XML format, though.
I.e. you'd have write your own converter.


Can an ebook on essays sell good on amazon/kindle? I am a newbie writer, and I am thinking of writing an ebook on collection of essays, and i need to know whether such genre sell good on amazon/kindle?

If you plan to write, forget about making money. The return per hour, is dismal. If you want to write, write for it's own sake. If you want to earn money,do not write.


What guarantees that ebook/digital sellers are really paying authors per unit sold? Besides being possibly against their own interest, as less profit for the authors make them less likely to create new books/products, and therefore provide less things for sellers to sell.

But theoretically they could always sell some e-books/products hidden from the author and increase their profits in the long run, with the vast amount of content from many different authors.

Again, the best counter argument I can imagine is that it would be safer and simpler to just increase their rates "accordingly" and spread this "extra" profit all over, to avoid the risk of a programmer pulling off an "Assange" whistle-blowing move and damaging their credibility, possibly leading to legal action against them.

The more concrete way to be next to sure that nothing like that is happening would be if there were some sort of trustworthy third-party auditing of their mechanisms. Is there such a thing?

Ultimately this question is unanswerable because digital purchases involve an element of trust between content creator and distributor.

This is a real issue with the arts business, because fixed expenses by publishers  get tacked onto royalty calculations. Also, with creative content, budgets tend to be smaller, so there is less urgency for audits and confirmation. Smaller publishers also have less staff and infrastructure to do record keeping in a timely fashion.

But even with Amazon.com and similar kinds of companies, you can't really know. Amazon provides great reports of sales and royalties, but sometimes reporting is interrupted for some reason. Generally, though I have no reason to disbelieve Amazon's numbers. It's hard to imagine why a company like that would want to fudge the numbers -- though accounting software can be fallible or wrongly programmed.

Even with all the Amazon reports, it is rare that I as a small publisher have time to go over individual report.

I imagine that if you suspect foul play, an individual author can buy a number of ebook copies himself and compare against weekly sales reports. Obviously, that costs money, but ebooks are typically low-volume areas, so you probably could see sales jumps pretty easily.


EPUB 2 NCX How Should I Support pageList? My viewer has support for a TOC populated from NCX navMap entries.
However some books I have come across have some pages in the navMap section and some pages only in the pageList section.
e.g.

<navMap>
    <navPoint class="h1" id="ch1">
        <navLabel>
            <text>Title</text>
        </navLabel>
        <content src="title.html#ch_1"/>
        <navPoint class="h2" id="ch_1_1">
            <navLabel>
                <text>Title</text>
            </navLabel>
            <content src="title.html#ch_1_1"/>
        </navPoint>
    </navPoint>
</navMap>

<pageList>
    <pageTarget id="p1" type="normal" value="1">
        <navLabel><text>1</text></navLabel>
        <content src="pages.html#p1"/>
    </pageTarget>
    <pageTarget id="p2" type="normal" value="2">
        <navLabel><text>2</text></navLabel>
        <content src="pages.html#p2"/>
    </pageTarget>
</pageList>

I could just add pages after the navMap contents but I'm concerned that it's perfectly valid to populate both navigation types from the same source xhtml and I don't want parts of the book effectively appearing twice, once for the navMap and once for the pageList.
e.g.

<navMap>
    <navPoint class="h1" id="ch1">
        <navLabel>
            <text>Chapter 1</text>
        </navLabel>
        <content src="book.html#ch_1"/>
        <navPoint class="h2" id="ch_1_1">
            <navLabel>
                <text>Chapter 1</text>
            </navLabel>
            <content src="book.html#ch_1"/>
        </navPoint>
    </navPoint>
</navMap>

<pageList>
    <pageTarget id="p1" type="normal" value="1">
        <navLabel><text>1</text></navLabel>
        <content src="book.html#p1"/>
    </pageTarget>
    <pageTarget id="p2" type="normal" value="2">
        <navLabel><text>2</text></navLabel>
        <content src="book.html#p2"/>
    </pageTarget>
</pageList>

The specs seem vague on what to do. What is the recommended way to deal with this situation?

IMHO, you're mixing up the functions of the navMap and pageList sections. The navMap section is used for the TOC display and the pageList section is theoretically used for the display of the page numbers from the printed edition.

I'm saying theoretically, because I don't know of a single ePub2 app that actually uses this information.

I.e., you might as well omit the pageList section, unless you plan to convert your ePub2 books to ePub3 books with the optional Sigil ePub3 output plugin, which uses the pageList information for the generation of the ePub3 page-list nav section.


Are there ways to easily convert chapter-split books from popular fan-fiction sites into single e-book? Are there ways to easily convert chapter-split books from popular fan-fiction sites into single e-book?

Of course, one can either manually download every one of 50+ chapters of a large fic by hand and copy/paste them together, or write some Perl code to scrape the contents of the site.

But I'm hoping someone already came up with pre-packaged solution for at least the most popular sites like FanFiction (if the general question is too broad, we can restrict it to the latter)

You can use the GrabMyBooks Firefox extension. It can grab single web-pages and convert them to epub, or adding multiple pages as distinct chapters.

There is also a Calibre plugin called FanFictionDownloader, but I've never used it.


Did any other publisher follow Baen's approach of freely releasing older e-books (especially for series)? According to Eric Flint's Prime Palaver, publishing older books as free e-books as Baen did with Baen Free Library may be a good thing for business (I asked a related question to verify that claim).

As such, I would expect other publishers to also adopt a similar business model.

Has any big publisher done so? (So to avoid definition squabbles, I'll arbitrarily limit this question to houses that publish books for at least 20 authors and releas at least 100 books a year).

If not, did any of them state why they didn't?

For those who didn't read the link: this has nothing to do with digitizing random books. The idea is to take a series of an author you are already publishing; and release older books (published by you, so you already have a digital copy from having published it) and posting a free e-book of that book online, so as to hook in new readers into the series/author/publisher).

It has become very common for publishers to provide free copies of the first book in a series. So common that the ebook deal site BookBub has pages of links to free ebooks - some deals are ongoing and some just for a limited time.


Can eBooks deleted from Kindle Cloud be 'repurchased' for free? I recently permanently deleted my book from the Kindle Cloud and/or Content Library. I searched online and this is the information I read on the issue.

It says:

  Important: After you delete an item from Manage Your Content and
  Devices, you will no longer have access to re-download the item unless
  you purchase it again.

My question was, that since I have already paid for this book at some given point and yet have to repurchase it—will it be free the second time?

I could try it myself by repurchasing but did not want to charge myself and then hassle by requesting for a refund. Furthermore, knowing that you "own" these books even if a hacker maliciously deletes your Content Library would be comforting.

Since I have had a very good experience with the Amazon Customer Center, perhaps they'd give it for free regardless of stated policy.

It's probably rather late for this answer, but Amazon customer service reps do have the ability to get back books you've accidentally deleted.

In my case, I was deleting old personal docs, got prompted to log in again, and didn't notice that the dropdown had switched from "Docs" to "Books" until I'd clicked Select All and Delete and wiped out 200 books.

I immediately got on chat with an Amazon CS rep and explained the situation.  He clarified what was deleted and then said

  No worries, I will restore the deleted books from my end.

It took probably 15-20 minutes for him to finish restoring them, and then for them to all show up in my account again, and the "Acquired date" was changed from its original value to today's date.

But the important thing is that the books are back!


Testing a reader's EPUB 3.0 support Users have asked a few good questions about EPUB 3.0 support, like Which ereaders support the EPUB3 format?, Can EPUB 3.0 be viewed on EPUB 2 devices?, and a question about Epub reader limitations.  I was wondering: is there a way to test what EPUB 3.0 features a given reader, app, or platform supports?

There is; EPUBtest provides a detailed grid of supported features by reader, app, and platform, as well as an extensive test suite for conducting your own tests.

For example, as of January 31, 2014, Kindle for PC 1.10.6 on Windows 7 has very limited support:

Note: I have no affiliation with EPUBtest; I just thought it was a handy tool.


What are the differences between EPUB2 and EPUB3? What are the differences between EPUB2 and EPUB3? Which is most popular?

According to this page, EPUB3 adds, changes or improves:

Added HTML5 support
SVG documents can now appear in the spine in EPUB 3
Support for MathML
Semantic Inflection
Content switching has been simplified by having its processing model defined so that it does not require document preprocessing
Navigation
Linking
Scripting
Triggers
Bindings
Added modules from CSS3
EPUB 3 requires Reading Systems to support the OpenType and WOFF font formats for embedded fonts in conjunction with the CSS @font-face rules.
Audio and video
Media overlays
Publication Metadata and Identity
Resource Metadata
Text-to-speech
Manifest Fallbacks
Remote Resources
Whitespace in MIMETYPE file
Disallowed characters in OCF list has been extended

Things that have been removed:

DTBook
Out-of-Line XML Islands
Tours
Filesystem Container
Guide
NCX
2.0.1 meta element


The content of "My Clippings" file are not shown when in the book I have written some notes and highlighted some parts of one of my e-books on kindle. I can see those notes and highlights when I open the "My Clippings" file. But when I open the book, and try to see its notes and highlights via "Menu > View Notes & Marks", nothing is shown. I think this happened after I deregistered UserA, registered UserB, deregisterd UserB and registered UserA again. How can I see my notes when I am reading the book?

When you make a highlight or note, a copy is written to the My Clippings file. This is a one-time, one-way operation. Think of it as a record of the notes and highlights that you've made in the past. The file is only a text file, and you can open it on your computer and modify it any way you like, or even delete it, and it will have no effect on what you see when you read the book on your Kindle. Likewise, removing or changing a highlight or note in the Kindle book will not affect the original entry in My Clippings, although it may create a new entry.

The notes and highlights that are displayed in Kindle books are stored in a companion file on the Kindle. It used to have a .mbp suffix, but it may be different with the newer formats. What may have happened in your case is that you downloaded the book file but not the companion file. This can happen if you downloaded it to your computer and transfered to the Kindle with a USB cable, or if you just did not allow enough time for all the "extras" to be downloaded before turning off wireless.

One more possibility is that you deleted the book and/or deregistered it from the original account before the Kindle was able to back them up on Amazon's servers. Normally this happens in the background, but if you do not use wireless very often, it may not have happened. If that is the case, your notes may actually be gone, but as Debra said, you do at least still have the copy in the My Clippings file, and that can also be your guide if you want to put them back in the book as well.


How should you include illustrations in Kindle ebooks? What is the most effective method for including illustrations in a Kindle ebook? And what is the preferred DPI and file format?

DPI/PPI settings aren't used in the web and are based by pixel dimensions and several web images .png, .jpg, and .gif files sometimes do not include the settings in the internal data.

You also didnt mention how you are including the illustrations in the ebook.  Are these vector or scanned images?

If vector:

If you have built your illustration in either Illustrator or Inkscape I would use an .svg file format but that is a personal preference.  From my understanding, .svg format can be a less file size than exporting the illustration as .jpg or .png.

If images:

I would use .png files because they can be compressed and help reduce your file size.  A good compression tool is Tinypng.  If you're wanting a command line compression tool there is pngquant but I havent tested it yet.

To request what type of method is most effective would depend on how you tend for the ebook to be viewed.  It is common for illustrators to use fixed layout to control how the illustration is viewed.  This is common with children's books.


Word count of ebooks (acsm) Is there any way to extract a word count from .acsm (with DRM) eBooks? I can only view them in Adobe Digital Editions and this doesn't have a word count feature.

.acsm files contain only Adobe Content Server download instructions, not the actual ebook. If you want to generate word counts, you'll have to download the actual epub, remove the DRM and use Calibre.


Media queries to distinguish between Kindle e-inks vs non-e-inks I would like to separate styles (colors) for e-ink Kindles and the rest. It could be quite easy if monochrome or color queries worked. As far as I know, I have to use a workaround. It is said Kindle Previewer does not support queries properly, particularly more complex queries.

I would think these two could do that, however, I am not sure.

For non-e-inks:

@media not amzn-mobi,
       not amzn-kf8 and (device-height:1024px) and (device-width:758px),
       not amzn-kf8 and (device-height:758px) and (device-width:1024px),
       not amzn-kf8 and (device-height:800px) and (device-width:600px),
       not amzn-kf8 and (device-height:600px) and (device-width:800px),
       amzn-kf8 and (device-aspect-ratio:1280/800) {
       /* COLOR VERSION for any device except Kindle e-inks */

For e-inks:

@media amzn-mobi,
       amzn-kf8 and (device-height:1024px) and (device-width:758px),
       amzn-kf8 and (device-height:758px) and (device-width:1024px),
       amzn-kf8 and (device-height:800px) and (device-width:600px),
       amzn-kf8 and (device-height:600px) and (device-width:800px) {
       /* BW VERSION for e-ink-based Kindles */

Is it possible to do that this way? It does not seem to work.

I used these two sources: 1, 2.

The preferred solution (and the one I use) is to create default css outside of the media query breakpoints, and then this css will apply to e-ink devices (which don't support media queries -- even the amzn-mobi one, to my knowledge)

You should check the PDF of "Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines" on their website. Current version is 2015.4

I think your sample code is fine; my experience has been that it is unnecessary (and cumbersome) to use amzn-mobi in your media query. You can just use generic ones and you'll be fine.

My personal experience is that this breakpoint you listed is unnecessary:

 amzn-kf8 and (device-aspect-ratio:1280/800)

I don't have all the devices to test with, but some things I have learned is:

Kindle app for android and Kindle Fire devices render things very
similarly.
Older e-ink devices also do an admirable job for limited hardware.
The main thing you need to check is image size.  The trick is to use high
quality images (1000px or 1500px) in the epub/mobi file and then let
the Kindle website reduce its size accordingly. Don't try to figure
out the algorithm Kindle uses for shrinking images. I used to waste
a lot of brain cells on that. I actually posted my tips on formatting images for kindle devices here: https://kdp.amazon.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=291039&tstart=15
Kindle for  Ipad 1 and the for latest Ipads and Ipad Minis are
relatively similar for the purpose of testing (aside from screen
dimensions obviously).