How to manage translations when self-publishing (in-house translation)? I intend to publish a book in Kindle in both English and Japanese.  Right now, I have the English version written in a Microsoft Word document.  I would like to start translating the Japanese version soon (while the English version is still being worked on).

Is there any software or generally accepted method for managing this process?  I'll be doing the translation myself with the help of an editor, but I'm afraid that I'll start losing track of things when changes are made to the English version (i.e., such changes won't be reflected in the Japanese version).

One option would be to wait until the English version is 100% complete, but I'm wondering if there are any effective methods for translating while the "original" is still in development.

I recommend you consider to move to an explicit mark-up system (LaTeX, reST/Sphinx) that allow you to:

split the work in smaller files that are automatically combined
use revision control (Mercurial) on the files so you can see what changed between versions (roll-back of changes, easy differencing, have multiple people work on the same file with conflict resolution support)
have the possibility to include more extensive comments (that will never show up in a printed version).

You can continue to edit the files in word, you should just not use its What-You-See-Is-All-You've-Got features for layout and styling.

This might seem overhead if you never used tools like LaTeX/Sphinx. Having persistent predictable output is something that will be invaluable for anything serious (more than 10 pages I would say). I have seen academics trying to do their thesis in Word (and more recently LibreOffice) and be driven up-the-wall by documents breaking after a section or picture was moved around or missing hyphens while exporting to PDF.

Revision control systems like Mercurial allow you to save often, mark specific revision and compare those against the latest (or each other) and push your whole writing effort to a (private) remote copy of the full repository (with all the revisions) in an efficient way. This is much quicker than keeping track of revisions by hand ( e.g. saving as book_20131225.docx) or making off-site backups in any other way.

The people at TeX-LaTeX StackExchange are very helpful and for revision control you can ask on StackOverflow.


What ebook format works across platforms and is simple to translate to other formats? What ebook format works across platforms and devices?

Is there one that is simple to translate to other formats while still maintaining high quality?

Does this depend on the type of book (fiction, no pictures vs. mathematical text with symbols and graphs)?

The most flexible and most widely accepted format, as well as being the most advanced, would be HTML5. It is not specifically an e-book format, of course.

Most of the e-book formats simply re-package text marked up in HTML. The concerted promotion of the ePub format for the last 5 years probably makes it the single-file format most widely included among an e-reading system's options. EPub files without DRM are simply zip archives whose extensions are .epub instead of .zip, so they are easily dismantled and edited.

There are many disadvantages to the PDF format but it is not limited in terms of quality or availability on various platforms, and there are many commercial and free applications for editing and/or creating PDF files.


Are there technical advantages of one common format over another? Different e-reader devices support different ebook formats. The main two seem to be ePub and MOBI. I'm wondering why we have two commonly-used formats. Do they have different technical advantages, rendering each format more suitable for certain uses? Or is it a matter of device manufacturers each wanting to do things their own way?

Many of the ebook readers either have or have had their own format. Sony had the LRF format (more properly known as Broadband eBook), for example. Proprietary formats are designed for two reasons:

to take advantage of special features of the hardware and software
to lock users into the vendor's hardware and content ecosystem.

Currently, there are at least five commonly used formats that are specifically designed for eBooks (as opposed to PDF which has broader aspirations and use).

MOBI (Mobipocket)
AZW/KF8 (Kindle)
iBook (Apple)
LIT (Microsoft)
ePub (open standard)

All of these formats are based on HTML, but with special wrappers, extensions, and/or Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Of the five, ePub is the most open, and therefore preferred by technical consumers who don't like to be locked in to a particular company's hardware and/or software. This has lead most eBook hardware and software vendors to support ePub, as least for books acquired from other sources.

A detailed comparison of eBook formats is available on Wikipedia.


How to convert PDF's with footnotes for Kindle? I have a collection of PDF files which I'm looking to load onto a Kindle.  First, however, they need to be converted.
Experimentation gives sub-par results by selecting and converting to mobi through calibre.  Better results are achieved by copy/paste to a text file.  I haven't yet tried a bulk convert to text from calibre.
Some PDF's have very odd results, where what's visually and logically a paragraph of text is somehow "columns" either when copy/pasted or converted.  The result is a sort of interlace, but slightly out of sequence.  However, that's unusual.  For the most part/copy past gives excellent results.
These PDF's generally are all text, with footnotes.
It's a bit mystifying why copy/paste would be better than calibre converting to mobi.

PDFs are not designed to be converted from. They have no structure that allows Calibre to determine for sure how many columns of text it has or what's a footnote. The Calibre manual describes the topic in more depth.
I found that copying the text to a text editor, cleaning it up and then pasting it into the Calibre e-book editor gives the best results but it takes long and is boring.  I've written down my work-flow in a blog post. It describes how to make EPUBs, but I'm sure it can be adapted to mobi fairly easily, since it seems to use XHTML too.


How to convert a html ebook to a pdf file? Is there some program which can convert a html ebook (consisting of many html files located under different directories and linked to each other) to a pdf file?
For example, some shell scripting (e.g. in bash) which calls some program that does the conversion?

Additionally, if possible, can the resulting pdf file  have outlines/bookmarks for clicking and jumping, according to the structures of the html book?

An example of a html ebook can be downloaded from http://en.cppreference.com/w/Cppreference:Archives. Extract it, and there are several levels of subdirectories. At the root level, there is a file cppreference-doxygen-local.tag.xml which seems to list all the html files, and might be helpful for convertion to a pdf file.

Thanks.

Let me tell you the easiest way: you could paste the entire contents from the browser into a MS word/Libre Office file and then export to PDF. Both programs are fairly good at importing HTML -- they are just lousy at exporting to HTML. If you made sure that all H1 titles were mapped to a single style in the office program, you could either generate a TOC at the top or permit an outline view inside the PDF. It's unlikely that any of the original HTML links will work though.

There are other ways to do it -- using GUI tools like Calibre or Sigil. You could also try the open source WKHTMLTOPDF  (which I haven't tried yet).

UPDATE: I just looked at the content you are trying to store. This is structured technical reference material; probably not a good candidate for the cut and paste solution I recommended and not good viewing for PDF. You probably need to store the html files on your device so that an app like Android's Offline Browser can view it. I just tried viewing your web URL in Offline browser, and it probably is what you're looking for. It stores in offline mode on your android device the site, with lots of ways to configure it (depth of links, number of links, etc).


Do book prices tend to fluctuate with seasonality Do book prices tend to change with seasonality?  I'm especially interested in:

Do prices tend to increase, decrease, or stay the same during the holiday season (i.e. Christmas, Hanukkah, etc.)?
Is there a most expensive season for book prices?
Do eBook prices have different trends than paperback book prices?

For geographical context, this question is about books sales in the northeastern areas of the United States.  I mostly shop for books at Barnes & Noble, so I'd be most interested to know how their prices fluctuate.

Do prices tend to increase, decrease, or stay the same during the
  holiday season (i.e. Christmas, Hanukkah, etc.)?

From my experience, book prices tend to be reduced around the holiday season, September-January, to drive sales when some people buy tablets or mobile devices as gifts or even on Black Friday.  Depending on the e-retailer there are some programs you can sign-up for that will help drive a sell, such as package deals.  I've seen some publishers drive prices lower than usual when they have a feature series they are trying to push.

  Is there a most expensive season for book prices?

I wouldn't consider it a "most expensive" I would look at it as less discounts or specials in the transition from spring to summer but that's my experience.

  Do eBook prices have different trends than paperback book prices?

The only trend I would consider is the pricing model with printed books VS ebooks.  Some people think that it's OK to price retail for print when some people refuse to pay the same price for a physical item compared to a digital copy.  One of my dislikes with ebooks compared to print is the design around them. Some people think that as long as I take my well designed print book and copy all the text and drop it into a .doc file I can generate an .epub or .mobi file out of it then charge a bloated fee when you don't get the same quality as a printed or even own the rights to it.

  For geographical context, this question is about books sales in the
  northeastern areas of the United States.  I mostly shop for books at
  Barnes & Noble, so I'd be most interested to know how their prices
  fluctuate.

In regards to pricing e-retailer VS e-retailer you actually sign away your pricing rights, such as: Amazon mentions in their contract that if they find a cheaper price for your title they are allowed up to a 10% option for less and I believe Apple does it, too.  The downfall with many stores is the gouge to sell your title and that will play a factor on where you buy your book and the price.


How can I get free Microsoft word templates for poetry books? I am designing a poetry ebook with Microsoft word. Where can I find free templates that I can use? All the free templates I see online are for InDesign but I need one for Microsoft word.

Thanks.

It's complicated to format poetry. I'm not sure MS word would be the best way to do it. I've formatted 2 ebooks with a good amount of poetry and I did it purely with css.

EPUBSECRETS wrote a two part article on it: http://epubsecrets.com/well-hung-poetry-ebooks-and-indents-part-one.php and http://epubsecrets.com/well-hung-poetry-ebooks-and-indents-part-two.php

Derek Murphy has two videos about formatting poetry on MS Word: http://diybookformats.com/format-publish-market-book-poetry/ Murphy always has great ideas, but I'm skeptical about using MS Word for poetry.

My code about formatting verse is somewhere, I can't find it at the moment. Two hints: 1)make sure you test on BOTH  a small device (IE width less than 767 px) and a 10 inch tablet (1025px and above). 2)Make sure the page breaks where you want. The css properties page-break-before and page break-after are supposed to work; I can't remember if they work in Kindle. CHeck Paul Salvette's article http://www.paulsalvette.com/2012/04/adding-page-breaks-for-your-kindle.html

I use something like this:

blockquote.stanza {
     margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;

 }

 /* for verse lines. */

 p.line-verse {
    text-indent: -2em; padding-left: 3em;
    padding-right: 3em;
    line-height: 80%;

 }

Looking over this code, I realize that line-height was used mainly for a quotation of a longer verse passage in a prose chapter. You wouldn't need to use that.


Get error when I try to upload book to kindle I've just received a kindle. I bought a book on Google Play Book.

I downloaded the book from play book in .ascn, converted to PDF with the adobe program, removed the DRM.

Now I have a working PDF (I can see correctly on my macbook), but is bigger than 50MB, and I can't upload with send to kindle program. I compressed it and obtained a 28MB that I tried to upload to the kindle, but I didn't receive the book. I also tried with send to kindle through mail @kindle.com but I received an error response mail.

  Gentile Cliente,

  Non è stato possibile consegnare il seguente documento inviato in data
  05:57 PM alle ore gio, ott 13, 2016 GMT, al Kindle specificato:
  * ldm.pdf

  Con il Servizio Documenti Personali Kindle puoi convertire e inviare i
  seguenti formati di file: Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) Rich Text
  Format (.rtf) HTML (.htm, .html)  Documenti di testo (.txt)  Documenti
  archiviati (zip , x-zip) e documenti archiviati compressi Mobi

What can be the issue?

First, what type of Kindle do you have? Do you have e-ink device or a Kindle tablet (i.e, Kindle Fire)?

If you have a Kindle tablet, then I recommend that you view the file with a PDF reader app instead of using the Kindle app. If there is a cloud-based app, that is even better.

File size is another problem -- PDF readers can typically read larger PDF files, but it is still difficult to transfer to the device. Perhaps you can use dropbox or gmail to send it, but I'm guessing you can open it through the browser in your tablet.

You have highlighted a very important problem on Kindles. I believe Google Play Books (GPB) is the best reading system across platforms, and it's crazy that there is no GPB app on Kindle (ios has a GPB app which works great).

Some places on the Net suggest a way to install Google Play store on Kindle by sideloading, and that is good, but I don't think that is an effective way to get GPB on your kindle. (I recommend against it -- though I wish Google and Amazon.com can figure out a solution....)


Ebook content versus physical book content What are the differences between ebook content and physical book content in terms of readability and/or sales? For example, are there any studies regarding the differences between the content that is considered readable on e-readers and content that is considered readable in printed form? Is there anything on the mass appeal of ebooks versus physical books based on their contents? In other words, what do we know about the differences between ebook readers and readers of physical book?

Note: I am not asking about the obvious, like proper file conversion, making sure that chapter/section headings are not separated from the following text, etc.

They are actually two different questions :-)

In Europe, for example, sales are affected by the fact that (paper) books have a very low VAT on them (in Italy it's at 4%) while ebooks are taxed like most goods (in Italy it's 22%), so it may even happen that an ebook is more expensive than a book.

As for readability, my impression is that it heavily depends from the type of book. A novel, or in general a text with few if any pictures and which is read sequentially, is equally readable; for non-fiction books, where people tend to skim content, to return on a previous section, or to peruse the notes at the end of the book, a physical book is easier to read but an ebook is easier to search in; mathematics on an ebook is a complete mess, at least until epub3 will be deployed in full.

I read on Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think that Amazon actually collects statistics on how people read on their Kindles, but I don't think the results are public ;-)


Is reading ebooks in "Night" mode better for eye health? Many e-book reader programs (at least on Android) like Cool Reader or FFBReader offer the  "Night" reading mode - basically, reverting from usual dark-text-on-light-background to light-text-on-dark-background.

Are there any studies showing whether there are benefits or downsides to one's eye health when reading books in "night mode" vs "normal mode" at night (low light) or during day (plenty of light)?

Ideally it would cover different display types, but personally I'm especially interested in ~5" LCD and AMOLED displays as on recent flagship Android smartphones.

I found this article which explains how our body reacts to these LED devices (including ereaders). Near the end of the article, it says that programs that reduce the amount of blue light do actually aid you in getting a better nights sleep.

So, to summarize the article; blue light is what causes you to have a bad nights sleep after using a LED device (including ereaders). So, in order to reduce the blue light, you need to get rid of the bright colours. Programs for your computer, and night mode for your tablet do this effectively. Of course, this isn't a 100% solution, but it does help.


How does Project Gutenberg structure their epubs? I've started exploring some of the texts on Project Gutenberg and the first happens to be the Douay-Rheims bible. I'm looking at the Text section and just see a blob of documents not divided by any semantic order, seemingly just a linearly spaced indexing of the document into uniform chunks. Does anybody have any insight to their document creation approach? Is there some performance reasons to do the above? Each text seems to be about 1400 odd lines of html. I'm thinking about editing the subtexts to be ordered around the actual books of the Bible but wonder if I would be unwittingly breaking/violating something.

Looks like indeed this was created with some automatic tool. I was snooping around the file in the Miscellaneous folder and found content.opf which has a bunch of traces of this Split on p operation showing up in the comments along with a relatively uniform chunk size.

Furthermore I emailed them about an error in the table of contents and got this response...

David Widger via RT
7:05 AM (3 hours ago)
Hi jxramos,

I find that this was one of the early PG productions which were only in the
ASCII format and had no accompanying html file made by the producer of the text
file. The html file listed with this ebook was one autogenerated and these are
often quite unsatisfactory.

A much better PG edition is:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8300/8300-h/8300-h.htm

The html file was manually produced and the mobile viewer files appear
satisfactory.

I would refer you to PG #8300

Regards,

Project Gutenberg


Migration path for Sony PRS-650 notes I've a Sony PRS-650 with lots of notes (highlighted text in books). Is there any tool which can migrate these notes to other ebook readers' format or is there any other e-book reader which supports Sony's notes? (Is newer Sony Readers use the same format at all?)

What kind of device could I buy without losing my notes?

The Sony Reader software that came with the reader has an option to export notes as an RTF file. I'm not sure whether or not you can import the notes into another device though.

I'm not able to find a user manual and I don't have the software on this laptop (I do on my other one, so perhaps I can find the information later). However, I did find a blog that gives a basic step-by-step of how to export the notes:

  Export Notes and Highlights:

  Plug the Reader into your computer with
  the USB cable, open the Reader software if it doesn’t open
  automatically, navigate to the book with the notes/highlights using
  Sony’s Reader software, open it, and then click the green icon on the
  lower left to export the notes as an RTF file.


Are there libraries which lend ebooks to non residents? Here in Italy we have MediaLibraryOnLine which lends ebooks after someone physically go to a library and subscribes to the (free) service. But unfortunately they have not a lot of books in English.

Is there any (legal) way to subscribe to such a service in an English-speaking country?

I know this is an old question, but since no one else has answered it...

I did a quick Google search for "libraries for non-residents" and found a nice Wikipedia link that lists a number of libraries that you can access even as a non-resident.

The free sites that are mentioned are:

Digital Public Library of America
The Library of Congress
Open Library

Open Library is probably the closest thing to a real "library" of the three.  It actually has books--rather than allowing you to read manuscripts, etc.

The Wikipedia site also has a list of USA libraries that offer cards to non-residents, with each charging an annual fee.  The listed libraries are:

Brooklyn Public Library
Charlotte Mecklenburg County NC
Enoch Pratt Free Library, MD
Fairfax County, VA
The Free Library of Philadelphia, PA
New Orleans Public Library, LA
Orange County Library System, FL

All of the libraries in the last list use the Overdrive app, which you will have to download, but is a free app. I do almost all of my reading using the Overdrive app nowadays, and I love it.

If you do decide to pay for a library membership, make sure to look at the information on the wikipedia site, as it shows how many Overdrive titles are available at each library.  Please note that in my experience, certain genres are more likely than others to be part of a library's e-book catalog--frequently books I am interested in reading are not available or have a long waiting list.  Make sure to check out the options for putting yourself on a waiting list, or for requesting new books.  I have been really successful with both.

P.S.  I am sorry that I didn't include more links, but as a newbie to this stack exchange site, I don't have enough reputation.


Is it a good idea to minify code when coding ePubs? I typically minify my .css file because it's something I am used to when developing websites, but I have seen some people actually minify their .xml files (such as the .ncx, .opf, etc.). I have always wondered if anyone has seen a noticeable difference when viewing a minified .epub file on a device?

Personally, I never minify code in ebooks. A big part of the reason for that is that unlike many here, I don't use Sigil or Calibre to edit my epub files—I use either Notepad++ or Geany depending on the OS I'm working in. Because I'm always working with the code, it does nothing but make my life harder if I've minified the whole thing and the client comes back to us with two or three rounds of proofing corrections.

On top of that, many in the publishing world are starting to talk about using HTML5 as a base format for all their books. Since epub 3.0 content files are HTML 5, you're pretty much working directly with the source files when you're working with the epub, and the source files should be human-readable so that any problems that come up with them can be easily fixed.

Finally, the point of minifying code is to let files transfer across networks more quickly, which is a non-issue for ebooks where everything is local.


How can I keep a large number of EPUB files, managed in calibre, "polished" As described in this answer, you can manually polish EPUB files so they are updated with the metadata you added or changed in calibre, without converting the EPUB files.

At least on Linux there is a problem with this functionality if you have many files:

You cannot select all EPUB files (after searching for format:epub) and start the conversion of them all if there are more than 25-50 files.
You cannot find which files need polishing and which not, so if you lost track after updating several books, you need to start from scratch.
You cannot easily run ebook-polish from the commandline on all EPUB files,  using find. As files with name ...polished.epub might exists and because the output files cannot be specified and need to be renamed.

Is there a more easy way to polish all and only the EPUB files that need updating?

The short answer is yes, and I have ranted about this in parallelizing EPUB polishing.

The problem with some Linux systems (Ubuntu) is that there is a limit to the message popup queue. Since ebook polishing (using calibre) is done quicker than the time a message is displayed, this queue overflows and calibre cannot write messages to it any more, and (on last try at least) calibre did lock up.

If you look in any directory where calibre stores the EPUB, you can see that there is a metadata.opf file that contains the metadata for the corresponding ebook. You have to specify this file as argument for the ebook-polish program together (-o option), together with the corresponding EPUB file.

What you therefore need to do is make list of 'outdated' EPUB files (outdated compared to the metadata.opf files in the same directory), and then call:

ebook-polish -o path/to/metadata.opf path/to/book.epub

and rename the output (path/to/book_polished.epub) to path/to/book.epub.

The script referred to in the above rant does exactly that. As prerequisite you need to have GNU parallel installed¹.

With the script I was able to process 1329 polishes in 3m25. Searching and updating 4 changed files in 2400+ item database with 1600+ books now takes less than 2 seconds². Of course files in the calibre database that are not supported by ebook-publish (such as PDF) are completely skipped.

¹ In case you wonder, yes the script, via parallel, calls itself for each file to callebook-polish and rename the output
² Fast enought to always try and polish the EPUB files before I synchronise the selected files with the reader devices


SD Cards with Unusual File Types Background: My dad died last year and I inherited sd cards (not micro) in plastic cases. These cards have several directories that all end in .RES

Each directory has about 30 files in it.
Two of the 30 files in each directory have extensions: one is DATA.FRK and the other is RSRC.INF
The other 28 files are each 4 letters long of random looking strings with no extension. Most of the files have a date from 2006

I was able to open the RSRC.INF file and it looks to be an author's name and the title of a book? article? something.

Questions:

Can you tell me what is on these sd cards?
Is there a windows software/opensource software that could read these
files?
Should I be looking for an old piece of ebook hardware or just
reformat the cards and use them with an older model camera?

This sounds like IMP format. The IMP file is a container for other directories files, namely (1) directories ending in .RES and (2) files ending in .FRK and .INF. From mobileread.com (no affiliation):

  IMP is an intermediate file format used to store eBook content for several eBook Readers, most notably the eBookwise-1150 and the REB 1200. These devices are end user names for products called the ETI-2 and ETI-1 respectively from http://ebooktechnologies.com/ (no longer available) The Wayback machine displays the last time this site was available Jun 20, 2010. Site downloads are still available from http://www.ebooksystem.net/support_download.htm

You can find a list of compatible software here.


Can I use a Youtube still image in my ebook Here is another copyright question. Can I use a still image (which I will further modify, such as convert to black/white and apply filters from graphic software) from a standard youtube licensed video in my ebook? Can I use a CC licensed image?

The ebook is to be published in German language. I like it to be available in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

This answer does not present any legal advice.
In fact your post contains two questions.
Speaking of the youtube license part you should definetly add information about the country you want to publish the eBook.

CC licenses come with different characteristics, regulating the rights and responsibilities.
The use of CC licensed images may be limited in terms of content derivation, derived licenses, commercial use and all diverse combinations of those. The exact license versions can be found at creativecommons.org


Do Kindles get firmware updates? Hello =) The title says it all: do Kindles ever get firmware updates? I've had issues on my Kindle that went away on their own and a friend suggested it might be due to a firmware / software (not sure what the correct term is?) update that introduced a bug that was removed in the next update. But that would only be possible if there are updates to begin with =)
I have a 4th gen basic Kindle if that's relevant.
Thank you ^^

Yes, they do!

In fact at this page you can find the update for your kindle (if it's not a kindle touch, then it's called kindle 5th generation), with the following information (bold is supplied):

  We have a new, free software update available for your Kindle (5th Generation). This update automatically downloads and installs on your Kindle when connected wirelessly; however, you can also manually download the software and transfer the update to your device via USB cable.

This means that, yes, it is possible that your Kindle automatically updated itself downloading the new firmware online.


History of my book's bestseller ranking on Amazon? Can I see the history of my book's ranking on the bestsellers list on Amazon?

You might find a third party tool to do this:  https://www.quora.com/Which-is-the-best-Amazon-rank-tracker


How to fit the size of a font to fit a PDF fillable box More of a pdf editing question.
A lot of PDF forms restrict you to put 1 letter in each box when filling them
Something like this:

Has anyone found a way to fill these forms via computer ? Very hard to try to change the font size to fit these

I wasn't aware of that, but apparently Adobe Acrobat reader (free) has this feature and it works amazingly well.
Open the document, then click "Fill and Sign" and hover over the boxed input element, it will fill it automatically within the borders


How to add read status column in calibre? I want to sync my read status in caliber with my Kobo Auro H2O(Koreader) but it is not supported yet so the advice here is to create a read status column then sync the data to it.

Can anyone explain how to do it?

Caliber has the option to add custom columns.
The option is available trough Preferences -> Add your own columns -> Add custom column.
The complete procedure is explained in this article: does it fit for you?


Convert epub to kepub from command-line I’m trying to convert epubs to the kepub format, but would like to automate the process by doing it via CLI.

So far, I had no luck in finding a tool that would allow it. Closest I found was a KePub Output plugin for Calibre, but it fails to work on the command-line, and won’t be fixed for a long while.

Is there a tool I’m missing?

This might not be the exact answer to your question, but you can select multiple files on your calibre library, right click, select convert > group convert, and on the following window select kepub as the output format (provided that you have installed the corresponding plugin).
If your concern was to convert multiple files at once, this could be a solution.

Another thing that you might want to try, is to go to the program settings, go in the Add books section, and check the second tab Automatic adding: here you can specify a folder where Calibre will look for books to be automatically imported in your library, and optionally convert them to a format of your liking; again, this could be a solution to your issue.

If you wanted to include the conversion process in a script, however, these tricks won't be useful; I'm not very knowledgeable of Calibre CLI interface, so I can't help you further.

Please Note that I'm using Calibre with the italian interface, so the previous menu entries can be a little different from what I've written, they are just what I've translated on-the-fly.


How to bulk renaming ebooks Is there a simple way for renaming a lot of ebooks, getting the relevant information from their metadata? Of course I can open the ebook, copy the data and renaming one file at a time, but since the information is always in the same place it should not be difficult to have a program or an app where I can specify a format (like for example "%a-%t-%i") and ending up with titles like "Terry Pratchett-Going Postal-9780060502935.epub"

since nobody answered, I did a search and found ebook-tools. Probably organize-ebooks.sh would have been the best choice, but I tried rename-calibre-library.sh and after a long sed script I ended up with the result I needed.


Personal screensaver random from a set on Bookeen Cybook Odyssey In this answer it describes how to set a screensaver image (that shows when the book-reader is switched off/standby).

If you deselect the screensaver the Odyssey shows one of series of (5 or so) images at random. I have not found these pictures as files on the book reader internal memory.

I would like to have my own set of images from which my bookreader would choose, not just the one I can select as with the aforementioned answer.

How can I achieve this? Or alternatively, where do the 'default' images come from (as I think I can figure out how to replace them once I know where they come from)?

It is not possible. Right now, you can either select only one image from your own documents, or the random set of Bookeen images, which reside on the partition not accessible by the user.


Kindle Keyboard shortcut for returning to last "page" I have a Kindle Keyboard, and sometimes, while reading a book, if I press on the left/right key, it will throw me off to the previous/next chapter's first page.
(the nearby up/down keys invoke the dictionary, so this does happen...)

Does anyone know of any shortcut that can be used to go back to my original place? Even after the throw-off, there's a little cursor on the "progress bar" at the bottom that shows where I've previously been, so I suspect such shortcut exists.

The back button gives you back to your original place.


Are there Perl modules recommended for reading and creating epub files? Are there any Perl modules that support the full epub format reading and writing? Ideally something that is maintained, so it includes or will include epub 3 compatibility.

EPUB::Parser is available and supports epub3 only.


How to view book summary on Kindle reader When I open a book for the first time on my Kindle reader it no longer shows me the book summary (about this book).
How do I get it to show?

I have tried everything on reading options but I can't find the setting.

Not exactly what you are looking for but maybe this will be sufficient. When you are in the library on your Kindle, to the right of the title there are three little dots. Click/touch that and then select the option that shows the book in the Amazon store. That gets you to the Amazon page with the description, reviews, etc. I just figured this out myself. I wish it was easier than that -- just gives us the "back cover" of the book.


Is there a fair price for an ebook? What is the cost of an ebook? What criteria should I use to decide a
fair price when the price is left up to me. How can I be fair to the
seller and to myself?

Several sites offers ebooks, often as bundles, at a low price, or at a
price to be chosen by the buyer, usually above a minimum threshold.
Examples I have seen include Humble Bundle and similar sites, or
Phoenix Pick.  Phoenix Pick also sells individual books, many of which
are classic (more or less old), but seems to be mostly established
authors, with significant price variations.

Then you have sites like Smashwords, more oriented towards indies
(independent authors) who self publish. These are usually recent
books, with little quality filtering (but is there much with some
other publishers). Some books are free, others vary significantly in
price, and prices vary in time. Here again, some books  are sold for
the price the buyer will give.

Thus I often wonder how much I should pay for an ebook, which is fair
to the seller and to myself. (The problem is compounded in the case of
bundles with the fact that one may be interested in only some books of
the bundle.)

Hence I wonder what is the cost of an ebook, independently of the
content value, which is the subjective part.

AFAIK, and I did look into some actual figures, most of the price of a
paper book goes into its more material aspects. More than 50% is due
to printing, storing, transportation, bookstore costs, not to mention
the destruction of unsold copies. Hence, the cost of an ebook should
not exceed half the paperback cost, without penalizing the author or
the publisher. This does not seem to fit what I observe.

There is the cost of digital formating, but from looking at the ebooks
available at the Internet Archive, it seem that many have been epub
formatted mechanically. The result does leave much room for
improvement, but it shows that digital formatting remains a quite
tractable task.

Then, I am aware that contents matter. But still, what should be
considered a reasonable payment for, say, the equivalent of 300 pages in
paperback.

To give a bundle example, Humble Bundle asked for a minimum of $15 for a
rather good selection of 20 books, while Phoenix Pick asks a minimum
of $7 for a selection of 4 books, a lower limit in both cases.

Since some users want to close this question as off-topic or opinion
based, I decided to give my own tentative answer, based on my own
thinking since I asked the question, and influenced by some of the comments.

I am well aware of cost issues in publishing, but I have little
experience as a customer where e-books are concerned. Having to fix my
own price as an e-book customer is a new experience to me, and I was
wondering how it is perceived and analyzed by other e-books customers
and sellers. This type of pricing is not usual where paper books are
concerned.

Is this off-topic on this site? I believe not. The topic page states:

  The main focus is on the processes involved in publishing and/or
    consuming ebooks (and related tools), rather than on the content of
    ebooks.

Though this does not explicitly include economic aspects, it does not
rule them out. A question such as pros and cons of  publishing in XYZ
format can typically have economic answers.

What is explicitly ruled out is questions about specific books or
sites, or discussing specific ebooks or ereader retailers, when it can
be shopping or opinion based, which does not rule out technical
questions.

My question is about pricing in the general sense, not specific items,
and it is an issue that is seriously analyzed by professionals and
economists. It is a technical and scientific issue.

Many documents do address this issue, for both traditional paper books
and more recently for ebooks.

It is true that many statements are opinion based, because all kinds
of people have an opinion to voice, with or without competence to
justify it (see Consumers Upset and Confused Over E-Book Pricing). Some people have also an interest in keeping this fuzzy,
so that their market is not understood or analyzed too closely,  especially by authors and consumers.

My own usual references on books cost are not in English.
However, I was  able to find rather quickly some new ones on the web,
such as
Book Cost Analysis – Cost of Physical Book Publishing
which does itself use several external references.

This article agrees that about 50% of the printed book cost comes
from distribution (10%) and retail (40%), to which one can add around
10% of printing costs. This is reduced to nearly nothing in the case
of e-books.

Clearly, ebooks have their own costs, but they are very unlikely to be
comparable to what is being saved (some more than 50%) on the material
aspects of printed books.

What is more likely is that market behavior changes significantly, because eproducts have no marginal cost
(it costs nearly nothing to make extra copies).
That is to be taken into account by both the producers and the
consumers of ebooks. One aspect of it is that the market is a lot more
competitive as more authors can enter it (I am currently reading a
very nice ebook that is available only for free).

Another consequence is that some sellers consider that letting the
customer fix his own price, possibly within limits, is a good way to
do business. Why do they do this? Fixing my own price as a customer,
in a way that is fair, also depends on my understanding of the
economics and of the economic analysis of the seller. There can be, as
always opinion based assessments of it: some people still have strange
opinions about well established scientific facts. But this is clearly
a matter for scientific and technical analysis.

The major point is that paper books both have fixed costs, independent
of the number of books sold, and marginal costs for each (additional)
book. They also have a high investment cost in the printing, since it
must be done in large numbers to be economically acceptable.

The ebooks business has a lesser up-front investment, because no mass
printing is needed, and no marginal costs (the more than 50% in
printing, distribution and retail. Once the book exist in epub, mobi,
or whaterver, it is essentially free for the publisher (except for
advertising possibly, but that is done only when return is expected).

What matters to the publisher is not the number of books sold, but the total
income it brings. Any addtional dollar is worth taking, since what is
given in exchange no longer costs anything.

That is probably the motivations for open pricing and bundle pricing.

Then, I would think that what matters for the producers of ebooks is
not to get a given price for a book or a bundle, but how much of my
money I will input in the book production system every month. Giving
me additional books, that I will probably not read all, cost them
nothing and may increase my inclination to buy.

So my conclusion is that there is no real fair price for each
individual buy. Rather one should spend monthly a global amount
proportional to one's means and one's amount of reading.

The role of the seller is to induce a consumer behavior that will
maximize the total income, rather than the profit per book sold.
One role of the consumer is to make sure the producers can make a
living (and keep producing), which does imply a level of spending, but
not necessarily a high cost per book.

This analysis may not be totally accurate, but it is fairly precise (in a qualitative way) and
can be disputed on objective facts and arguments, rather than opinions.


Kindle Touch Battery Replacement Can I replace the internal battery of my Kindle Touch. How do I go about this? What battery does it use? Where can I find a replacement?

Yes you can, this youtube video has the tutorial and the description has the link for the resource for a new battery.

And here you can find a proper hardware analysis of the device.

Battery info: 3.7V, 1,420mAh (5.25Wh) Li-ion Polymer Battery (Model: S2011-002-A)


Downscaled screenshots of HTML tables look blurry. Why? My EPUB contained many HTML tables, many of which would break on small screens. I therefore took screenshots of the tables and inserted the images into the EPUB in place of the HTML tables.

I just viewed my EPUB on Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) for PC. The table images look terrible! The text in the images is illegible.

The images become blurry only when ADE downscales them. If I expand the window and force ADE to upscale the images, they look better. At full size, they look crisp.

I have been looking for an answer to this problem ALL day. The best one so far is to create new images of the tables, this time using very bold text and thick lines. This works quite well. Most of the images become legible; however, they look very ugly, and some still look quite terrible.

Does anyone know how I can fix this issue?

I don't think that you can really "fix" this; representing text with a raster image and downscaling it means that it will be displayed with far less pixels that are required to provide a clean and readable image.

You can try by using an image format that is better suited for this task; I would suggest .png (avoid .jpg like the plague in these circumstances!), it can help but honestly I won't expect miracles if the text is going to be downscaled a lot.

Long story short: don't use images to display text.


Are there any open e-book file formats that support statistics gathering? Are there any open e-book file formats which support gathering of anonymous statistics (e.g. how many times an e-book has been opened) by the content creator?

By "support", include both the support in the file format itself, as well as support in at least one widely used e-book reader program/device that can read said format to actually send the statistics back to the creator.

Note that companies controlling both the devices/apps and the store (e.g., Amazon or Kobo) perform analytics routinely, exactly because they can gather info from the reading system (app or device firmware). They even share their findings with the publishers (to make them "optimize" their eBooks, so that they can sell more)

EDIT: see "/data lessons/", presentation by Tamblyn (Kobo) given at BiB12: http://youtu.be/eQfJ3NWiPmU

Some guys tried to build a company (Hiptype) around the concept of "google analytics" for eBooks, but they did not succeed and went out of money. Their solution was basically embedding JS code into EPUB eBooks. This type of solution is quite doomed, because if the reading system disallows network communication (e.g., iBooks does), the ebook cannot "phone home" the reading statistics. The same holds true for remotely-hosted images (like those used to log the visitors of a web page).

Finally, no ebook standard that I am aware of has explicit mechanisms to collect such statistics. And, even if they had, the actual availability of such a feature would be depending on the reading system implementer.


Is there an ebook format that stores annotations in the ebook file itself? I believe .epub and .mobi files both don't support annotations. Which is unfortunate since they are some of the most popular formats. It looks like Kindle supports adding notes to ebooks but they are stored separately from the ebook file itself and I'm a big believer in 'the truth is in the file'. PDFs allow annotations but they don't reflow like most ebook file formats.

This question is slightly different from the one I listed below in my comment because that question is asking about a note file format and I'm asking about an ebook file format.

Simple answer: NO

To annotate inside an ebook would require the file to be altered on the device side and some sites will not allow this due to the DRM they add.  That said this is why Kindle creates a secondary file instead of in the ebook itself.  This would also depend on the app you are using to view the ebook on.

Some apps that allow Annotation for books:

iAnnotate
Subtext
Mantano Ebook Reader
iBooks
Marvin


How can I automate the creation of EPUB files from series of existing JPEG photos? I have multiple sets of JPEG photos (not images/scans of books, but of e.g. my children), that I would like to turn into EPUB files, so I can take them along on my ebook-reader and view them.

Are there any command-line programs out there that allow me to automate this process?

Part of the program I wrote for scanning and EPUB-ing scanned images can be reused for this purpose. I tried to make a minimal version, the output was tested with calibre book reader and a BookEen reading device and passed
EpubCheck version 3.0.1 without errors.

The program requires you to provide a Title (--title) and one or more JPEG files, which are taken as is (not scaled or rotated). Some extra options allow for specifying an output file name (otherwise constructed from the title), author/creator and series/series-index (as used by Calibre):

jpeg2epub --title "My Photo Album" img*.jpg

will create a file My_Photo_Album.epub in the current directory.

The program works with Python 2.7 and standard libraries, but will not work without modification on Python 3.X. All processing is done in memory, the computers memory limits the size of your EPUB, but no intermediate files are written.

#!/usr/bin/env python
# coding: utf-8
# jpeg2epub: copyright (C) 2013, RUAMEL bvba, A. van der Neut

import os
import sys
from io import open
from textwrap import dedent
from cStringIO import StringIO
import zipfile
import uuid
import datetime

class Jpeg2Epub(object):
    """simple epub creator for series of JPEG image files

    creates the file epub file in memory
    """
    version = 1  # class version when used a s library

    def __init__(self, title, file_name=None, creator=None, title_sort=None,
                 series=None, series_idx=None, verbose=0):
        self._output_name = file_name if file_name else \
            title.replace(' ', '_') + '.epub'
        self._files = None
        self._zip = None  # the in memory zip file
        self._zip_data = None
        self._content = []
        self._count = 0
        self._series = series
        self._series_idx = series_idx
        self.d = dict(
            title=title,
            title_sort=title_sort if title_sort else title,
            creator=creator if creator else 'Unknown',
            opf_name="c.opf",
            toc_name="toc.ncx",
            ncx_ns='http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/ncx/',
            opf_ns='http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf',
            xsi_ns='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance',
            dcterms_ns='http://purl.org/dc/terms/',
            dc_ns='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/',
            cal_ns='http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/2009/metadata',
            cont_urn='urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container',
            mt='application/oebps-package+xml',  # media-type
            style_sheet='stylesheet.css',
            uuid=None,
            nav_point=None,
            nav_uuid=None,
        )

    def __enter__(self):
        return self

    def __exit__(self, typ, value, traceback):
        if value is None:
            if isinstance(self._zip_data, basestring):
                return
            self._write_toc()
            self._write_content()
            self._zip.close()
            self._zip = None
            self.d['nav_point'] = None
            with open(self._output_name, 'wb') as ofp:
                ofp.write(self._zip_data.getvalue())
            # minimal test: listing contents of EPUB
            # os.system('unzip -lv ' + self._output_name)
            return True
        return False

    def add_image_file(self, file_name):
        self._add_image_file(file_name)
        self._count += 1

    def _write_toc(self):
        self._add_from_bytes(self.d['toc_name'], dedent("""\
        <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
        <ncx xmlns="{ncx_ns}" version="2005-1" xml:lang="eng">

            <meta content="{uuid}" name="dtb:uid"/>
            <meta content="2" name="dtb:depth"/>
            <meta content="ruamel.jpeg2epub (0.1)" name="dtb:generator"/>
            <meta content="0" name="dtb:totalPageCount"/>
            <meta content="0" name="dtb:maxPageNumber"/>

          <docTitle>
            <text>xx</text>
          </docTitle>
          <navMap>
            <navPoint id="{nav_uuid}" playOrder="1">
              <navLabel>
                <text>Start</text>
              </navLabel>
              <content src="{nav_point}"/>
            </navPoint>
          </navMap>
        </ncx>
        """).format(**self.d))
        self._content.append((self.d['toc_name'], 'ncx',
                              'application/x-dtbncx+xml'))

    def _write_content(self):
        d = self.d.copy()
        manifest = []
        spine = []
        d['manifest'] = ''
        d['spine'] = ''
        for f in self._content:
            manifest.append(
                '<item href="{}" id="{}" media-type="{}"/>'.format(*f))
            if f[1].startswith('html'):
                spine.append('<itemref idref="{}"/>'.format(f[1]))
        d['manifest'] = '\n    '.join(manifest)
        d['spine'] = '\n    '.join(spine)
        d['ts'] = datetime.datetime.utcnow().isoformat() + '+00:00'
        d['series'] = ''
        if self._series:
            d['series'] = \
                u'\n' \
                '<meta name="calibre:series" content="{}"/>' \
                '<meta name="calibre:series_index" content="{}"/>'.format(
                    self._series, self._series_idx)
        self._add_from_bytes(self.d["opf_name"], dedent(u"""\
        <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
        <package xmlns="{opf_ns}" unique-identifier="uuid_id" version="2.0">
          <metadata xmlns:xsi="{xsi_ns}" xmlns:opf="{opf_ns}"
                    xmlns:dcterms="{dcterms_ns}"
                    xmlns:calibre="{cal_ns}"
                    xmlns:dc="{dc_ns}">
            <dc:language>en</dc:language>
            <dc:creator>{creator}</dc:creator>
            <meta name="calibre:timestamp" content="{ts}"/>
            <meta name="calibre:title_sort" content="{title_sort}"/>
            <meta name="cover" content="cover"/>
            <dc:date>0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00</dc:date>
            <dc:title>{title}</dc:title>{series}
            <dc:identifier id="uuid_id" opf:scheme="uuid">{uuid}
            </dc:identifier>
            <dc:identifier opf:scheme="calibre">{uuid}</dc:identifier>
          </metadata>
          <manifest>
            {manifest}
          </manifest>
          <spine toc="ncx">
            {spine}
          </spine>
        </package>
        """).format(**d).encode('utf-8'))

    def _add_html(self, title):
        file_name = self._name(False)
        d = self.d.copy()
        d['title'] = title
        d['img_name'] = self._name()
        self._add_from_bytes(file_name, dedent(u"""\
        <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>

            <title>{title}</title>
            <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; \
        charset=utf-8"/>
          <link href="{style_sheet}" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/>

        """).format(**d).encode('utf-8'))
        self._content.append((file_name, 'html{}'.format(self._count),
                              'application/xhtml+xml'))
        if self.d['nav_point'] is None:
            self.d['nav_point'] = file_name
            self._write_style_sheet()

    def _write_style_sheet(self):
        file_name = self.d['style_sheet']
        self._add_from_bytes(file_name, dedent("""\
        .album {
            display: block;
            font-size: 1em;
            padding: 0;
            margin: 0;
        }
        .albumimg {
            height: auto;
            max-height: 100%;
            max-width: 100%;
            width: auto
        }
        """))
        self._content.append((file_name, 'css', 'text/css'))

    def _name(self, image=True):
        """no leading zero's necessary in zip internal filenames"""
        return '{}.{}'.format(self._count, 'jpg' if image else 'xhtml')

    def _add_image_file(self, file_name, width=None, height=None,
                        strip=None, max_strip_pixel=None, z=None):
        z = z if z else self.zip  # initializes if not done yet
        self._add_html(file_name)
        # you can compress JPEGs, but with little result (1-8%) and
        # more complex/slow decompression (zip then jpeg)
        # Gain 2.836 Mb -> 2.798 Mb ( ~ 1% difference )
        if width:
            im = EpubImage(file_name)
            z.writestr(self._name(), im.read(), zipfile.ZIP_STORED)
        else:
            z.write(file_name, self._name())
        self._content.append((self._name(), 'img{}'.format(self._count),
                              'image/jpeg'))

    @property
    def zip(self):
        if self._zip is not None:
            return self._zip
        self._zip_data = StringIO()
        # create zip with default compression
        #self._zip_data = '/var/tmp/epubtmp/yy.zip'
        self._zip = zipfile.ZipFile(self._zip_data, "a",
                                    zipfile.ZIP_DEFLATED, False)
        self.d['uuid'] = uuid.uuid4()
        self.d['nav_uuid'] = uuid.uuid4()
        self._add_mimetype()
        self._add_container()
        return self._zip

    def _add_from_bytes(self, file_name, data, no_compression=False):
        self._zip.writestr(
            file_name, data,
            compress_type=zipfile.ZIP_STORED if no_compression else None)

    def _add_mimetype(self):
        self._add_from_bytes('mimetype', dedent("""\
        application/epub+zip
        """).rstrip(), no_compression=True)

    def _add_container(self):
        self._add_from_bytes('META-INF/container.xml', dedent("""\
        <?xml version="1.0"?>
           <container version="1.0" xmlns="{cont_urn}">
          <rootfiles>
            <rootfile full-path="{opf_name}" media-type="{mt}"/>
          </rootfiles>
        </container>
        """).rstrip().format(**self.d))

def main():
    import argparse
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
    parser.add_argument("--title", "-t", required=True)
    parser.add_argument("--title-sort", help="alternative title for sorting")
    parser.add_argument(
        "--output", "-o",
        help="epub name if not specified, derived from title",
    )
    parser.add_argument("--series", help="series name")
    parser.add_argument("--index", help="series index")
    parser.add_argument("--creator", help="Creator/Author")
    parser.add_argument("file_names", nargs="+")
    args = parser.parse_args()
    with Jpeg2Epub(args.title, title_sort=args.title_sort,
                   file_name=args.output,
                   series=args.series, series_idx=args.index,
                   creator=args.creator,  verbose=0) as j2e:
        for file_name in args.file_names:
            j2e.add_image_file(file_name)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()


Converting a gmail email to kindle as readable document I have a kindle paperwhite. I have html formatted email I'd like to read on my kindle.
I tried several steps, but every time I try, I end with a document with pictures in it. Like pdf. Output is not formattable. The text has fixed size, I can pan or zoom over the pages.

I'd like to have same output as, for example, I send a page to the kindle via Send to Kindle extension.

I've sent the email to my kindle mail. The result was no text, just images bundled to the original email
I've downloaded the email as html, converted through calibre to azw3 format. The result was,that all document was converted to pictures. As if it was pdf.
I've opened the html with word and resaved it to docx. Conversion through calibre to azw3 or mobi resulted to same pdf-like output.
If I convert the email to text. I will get formattable result, in sense, that I can now change size of the font on kindle and whole document is formatted to the kindle page size, but I loose all original document formatting, pictures, titles, lists and so on.

The best solution is to use a PDF via Send to Kindle Email Address using the steps below in order to retain the functions you are asking for- variable size font, annotations, etc.

Open the Gmail email you want to transfer and click the print button
at the top right corner.
From the print screen, change the printer option to PDF and save.
You must have a Kindle
Send the PDF as an attachment to your Kindle Paperwhite via your Send to Kindle Email Address BUT you must put convert in the subject line. This automatically converts the PDF to Kindle format retaining the features mentioned above.

Just as a heads up, Amazon may limit how many documents you send and store through the Kindle Personal Document Service, so I would routinely delete old documents and make sure you have backups on your computer of any personal document you might want at a later date, just in case Amazon deletes them for any reason.

There is also a Kindle Convert app you can download from https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00K7HEGZ6


Nested menus in Mobi I've created an epub that works great.  It has daily meditations, for a total of 366.  In my epub, the TOC is nested, so if I want to go to October 15, I click on October, the dates expand out 1 - 31, then I click on 15.  When I converted it to Mobi, however, on my Kindle the TOC is like:

January
1
2
3
4
.
.
.
February
1
2
3
4
.
.
.
and so on to Dec 31.

How do I fix my menu to be nested like the epub?

So far everything else is looking fine on the mobi.

The Amazon Publishing Guidelines has sample code for making a nested html TOC.

It's on page 16

Section 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Subchapter 1

Subchapter 2

Chapter 4

Subchapter 1

Section 2

 ...

Now here's an alternate way to do the same thing:

Section 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Subchapter 1

Subchapter 2

Chapter 4

Subchapter 1

Section 2
 ...

I've never tried it, but I assume it will work.

Also, I found another working example for nested TOC in the book EPUB3 Best Practices by Matt Garrish and Markus Gylling. The code they used depending on very sophisticated CSS for the NAV element. I'm guessing that this is only an EPUB solution and wouldn't work for the Kindle.

FURTHER THOUGHTS: It's not mentioned in the Amazon Publishing Guidelines, but I assume that all of this html is inside the  element (leading me to wonder why the elements here are all DIVs instead of LIs).


Online ebooks management system that can be hosted on a server Can you please suggest me an online book management system in PHP and MySQL, which I can host in my own Linux server? Preferably open source.

I do not intend to upload or store the ebooks but only the metadata. I want to store books details (as author, cover, genre, ISBN and description.. etc) in a database system(as mysql) to catalog, list and search them from a web platform(based on PHP for example).

If possible import details from Amazon or other sites. But this is optional.
I do not want a library management system, but a book management system. If such software doesn’t exist, can you please suggest any other alternatives?

I'm not looking for a specific website though; but something that can be hosted on a server.

Thank you in advance.

Edit: I apologize for any misunderstanding. But, English is not my mother language; So you'll probably find some mistakes.

I am not sure why you would need to run this on a web server; if it is just for backup reasons and distributed access I would just push the folder in one of the common online storage solutions like Dropbox or similar.

Calibre can be run as a server itself and offer the files in its library via a web interface. You can then access the files via the web browser of your reader. It works, but if you have access to a computer where you can use Calibre directly I think it is much more practical by several orders of magnitude.

But your specifications are not specific enough to tell if this solution fits your needs.

Google Play Books allows you to upload your own books so you could use this for synchronisation and distributed access also.


Help creating a toc.ncx file for compatibility with epub 2 I have created a toc.ncx file in EPUB3 for backwards compatibility with EPUB2 . I used that file in a DRM-free book (replacing the book's toc.ncx with my own) just to see if the code was okay, but when I try to open it in Adobe Digital Editions it opens up a dialog box with the following message :

Unable to open testing.epub
Errors were encountered in this item

Is it not possible to test my ncx file this way? A partial code for my .ncx (just for a few headings) is below . I am creating a three-tiered list using nested navpoint tags in it. Preface is one big heading. Then there is the next big heading titled 'Heading' with Chapter 1 and 2 as its sub-headings. Chapter 2 then has its sub-sub headings with the nested navpoint tags.

Could anyone please look at it and let me know if its okay?

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE ncx PUBLIC "-//NISO//DTD ncx 2005-1//EN" "http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/ncx-2005-1.dtd">
<ncx xmlns="http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/ncx/"  version="2005-1" xml:lang="en-US">
<head>
<meta name="dtb:uid" content="uid"/>
<meta name="dtb:depth" content="1"/>
<meta name="dtb:totalPageCount" content="0"/>
<meta name="dtb:maxPageNumber" content="0"/>
</head>
<docTitle><text>Book Title</text></docTitle>
<docAuthor><text>Anon, Anon</text></docAuthor>

<navMap>

        <navInfo>
            <text>THE CONTENTS</text>
        </navInfo>

        <navPoint class="preface" id="preface-id" playOrder="1">
         <navLabel><text>Preface</text></navLabel>
         <content src="" />
        </navPoint>

        <navPoint class="bk01" id="bk01-id" playOrder="2">
         <navLabel><text>Heading</text></navLabel>
         <content src="" />
              <navPoint class="sect01" id="sect01-id" playOrder="3">
               <navLabel><text>Chapter 1 (sub-heading of the above Heading)</text></navLabel>
               <content src="" />

              </navPoint>

              <navPoint class="sect02" id="sect02-id" playOrder="4">
               <navLabel><text>Chapter 2 </text></navLabel>
               <content src="" />

                   <navPoint class="sect02DTL" id="sect02DTL-id" playOrder="5">
                  <navLabel><text>sub-heading (of chapter 2 above) </text></navLabel>
                 <content src="" />

                   <navPoint class="sect02One" id="sect02One-id" playOrder="6">
                  <navLabel><text>sub-sub heading 1(is a direct link to the story text)</text></navLabel>
                 <content src="" />
                </navPoint>

                <navPoint class="sect02Two" id="sect02Two-id" playOrder="7">
                  <navLabel><text>sub-sub heading 2</text></navLabel>
                 <content src="" />
                </navPoint>

                </navPoint>

              </navPoint>

        </navPoint>

</navMap>

</ncx>

Also, there were a few things I wanted to ask about .ncx files in general that I couldn't find sufficiently explained on the internet.

What's the main function of the meta tags in the .ncx file ? For example the meta tags with Total Page Count and max Page Number, do they serve any role ? Could one potentially do without any of them, what would be their importance.
I noticed a tag named PageList with nested PageTarget and navList tags in the toc.ncx file of one of the EPUB books I was looking at for reference, do these work with Kindle ?

Instead of using Adobe DE (which isn't always reliable), you should use the epubcheck validator online on your epub file. http://validator.idpf.org/

You can download a copy of the validator tool on your own machine if you wish.

That will give you more verbose and  actionable error messages.

Here are some examples of error messages: https://github.com/IDPF/epubcheck/wiki/Errors (unfortunately this list doesn't seem to be complete or up to date).

My guess based on a cursory reading of your file is that there are no file references here. Here's an example from one of my own files:

   <navPoint id="d0e1652" playOrder="7">
            <navLabel>
                <text>The Silver Link</text>
            </navLabel>
            <content src="silver-link.xhtml"/>
        </navPoint>
        <navPoint id="d0e2128" playOrder="8">
            <navLabel>
                <text>Johnny Kinkaid</text>
            </navLabel>
            <content src="johnny-kinkaid.xhtml"/>

But your .ncx file has an empty reference;

      <content src="" />

As for your other questions, let me say that I have never had to worry about toc.ncx file problems before ... mainly because I auto-generate the file from Docbook.

The meta stuff you have is exactly what I have; IIRC, it had to do with accessibility and spoken books.

In my experience, kindlegen almost always produces a working file for kindle if you have given it a valid .epub file.


How can I compress this pdf file without losing readability? I have a large black and white pdf scan of a book. The book is 1700 pages, and is about 300MB. That is about 150-175kb per page. This strikes me as rather large. Two arbitrarily selected pages are attached to illustrate; they are each about 330kb. Running them through ImageMagick's compressor gives pages which are about 240kb, which I think is still too high. The best I've been able to get is about 33% smaller. Very good but still very bad in absolute terms.
I believe the book is simply a bunch of .png's stitched together with no more information than that. I have tried converting to a lower dpi, but it really decreases readability beyond 300. I am confident there is to be a way to convert these files to some kind of document (either .pdf or .djvu), but I don't know how to do this. I tried converting to .tif and that was very useful.
I have done some research and it seems that it might be helpful to run these images through some kind of OCR text recognition software, or otherwise construct "vectorized" text. Can anyone help me with a recommendation of an open source tool for this and some instructions on how to get started?

If you want to maintain the content integrity of your document, I advise against OCR. I think most OCR engines would have a lot of trouble vectorizing your content, due to the heavy use of symbols, mixed use of italics, bold and normal fonts, and complex formatting.
If you simply want to make the final PDF file smaller, you could always compress it using a simple file compression utility available on your computer. For example, within Windows, you could right-click on your file and select "Send to" --> "Compressed (zipped) folder". I've found that does a fairly good job of compressing PDFs. Of course, the downside is that you'll need to uncompress it when you want to read your PDF.


Centering images in ePub made with Apple Pages I am using Apple Pages to create an eBook (I know I should have used InDesign, I will use it for the next one!). All the text is there, I have used headings and I am very pleased with the result. However... When I export it to ePub, the images are not centered. They are centered when using PDF. Have a look at my image settings in Pages in the following screenshot:

The image (this is one example, but all +150 images are shown this way) is aligned in the center using the "Align" function you can see at the right, but when I select "Center", it does not move (because it is in the center already) and it switches back to Align. I am not sure whether this is good or bad.

As you can see, the image is aligned to the right when I export the book to ePub and open it with Mac iBooks. It looks exactly the same on my iPad / iPhone. The image is cutoff as well: look at the difference between the images shown in the screenshots I added in this post.

How can I get the ePub images to be centered?

The right alignment results from the margin-left:16.5528% in the span surrounding the image. I am not sure if you can change that in Apple Pages.
I would experiment with Position (at the bottom of your screen) essentially
there should be no position in cm associated to something centered, as you
cannot know (in an ePub) the width of the page up-front.

If you cannot switch that off, you can resort to cleaning the epub with a script, this seems easy enough to find (e.g. using CSS locater span > img and changing the style on the parent of that img)


which kindle supports remote factory reset? I have an old Paperwhite and I freak out every time I almost lose it.  Kindles are very personal.  Under my device options on Manage My Kindle I can only deregister it, which prevents people from buying books from it but, as I understand it, leaves all content on the device.  Does a Kindle e-reader model currently exist that allows for Remote Factory Reset?

Thank you

Currently is it not possible to remotely factory reset any Kindle device.

The best you can do is de-register the device that has been lost, as you've mentioned.

This Link outlines what you should do if you lose your device or if it is stolen, but again, it only suggests de-registering the device


Move image to top of the page (like LaTeX’s \begin{figure}[t]) Before I start, let me be clear about what I’m not trying to do:

I’m not trying to keep particular text on the same page as an image.
I’m not trying to force a page break before an image.

That said, I’m looking for the approximate equivalent of LaTeX’s \begin{figure}[ht]. Basically,

If there’s enough room on this page for the image, put it here.
Otherwise, put it on the top of next page—but don’t break the page here; put the next paragraphs of text here until the end of the page.

Can this be done with HTML+CSS? (The answer to Can I float an image to the top or the bottom of the screen? is not encouraging, but does not address this directly.)

My guess is no. You want the img (or the div container) to be a block element. At the same time, you want the image to act like an inline element -- adjusting to the display.

A block element by definition cannot switch order  with other elements depending on the display. In other words, you have to change the semantics to get what you want. But you still are not changing the order of elements.

One thought is that you could use CSS media queries to conditionally change the img or div elements from block display to inline display depending on the device's screen dimensions.  That might help if you could boil your use cases to maybe two or three display sizes.

I am not a css expert, so I'd love to hear if there is a way that works. But my guess is currently no, and even if a method exists, it probably won't be supported on Kindles anytime soon.

I don't know much about Latex, but it can perform these conditional tricks because you are dealing with a fixed display size. With ebooks you are dealing with an endless variety of display sizes and devices.

UPDATE: I'm having second thoughts about the answer. CSS has some new mechanisms like flexbox and grid formatting to deal with these cases. I could easily see a time in the next 5 years where ebook readers can deal with positioning of an image on a fixed point in the page. Jimmy Panoz pointed out that because reading systems use browser rendering systems, eventually reading systems will allow you to use  CSS Feature Queries to try CSS  experimental features.


Calibre ebook viewer - Apply User Stylesheet to Full Screen Mode How do I apply styles to full screen mode only via the User Stylesheet?
Specifically, I would like to adjust the body style during full screen mode to adjust margin-left.

I would like to do this through the User Stylesheet so that changes are applied automatically and I don't have to edit them manually every time I open full screen view.

Currently, I can edit the body tag, but this is applied whether in full screen mode or not.

I feel like there should be some parent element for full screen view so a selector could be used such as fullscreen > body.

Ideas?

Update: It looks like the preferences for full screen options, which are limited to max width and max text height, uses javascript to manage the styling.

Any ideas for injecting a parent element that wraps all CSS while in_fullscreen_mode = True in documentview.py?

Paste the following in the 'User stylesheet', click ok. Then go to 'Theming' and save the style with whatever name you like. The e-book will display nicely in any screen mode and there are a couple of neat little extras you won't see with other user themes. As with all CSS it can be further altered and tweaked to suit.

html {
    background: #e6e9e9;
    background-image: linear-gradient(270deg, rgb(230, 233, 233) 0%, rgb(216, 221, 221) 100%);
    -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
}

body {
    background: #1f2326;
    box-shadow: 0 0 2px rgb(225, 225, 225);
    color: #d4d4d4;
    font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
    font-size: 16px;
    line-height: 1.5;
    margin: 0 auto;
    max-width: 800px;
    padding: 2em 2em 4em;
}

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
    color: #e4e7e7;
    font-weight: 600;
    line-height: 1.3;
}

h2 {
    margin-top: 1.3em;
}

a {
    color: #2196f3;
}

b, strong {
    font-weight: 600;
}

samp {
    display: none;
}

img {
    animation: colorize 2s cubic-bezier(0, 0, .78, .36) 1;
    background: transparent;
    border: 10px solid rgb(145, 143, 140);
    border-radius: 4px;
    display: block;
    margin: 1.3em auto;
    max-width: 95%;
}

@keyframes colorize {
    0% {
        -webkit-filter: grayscale(100%);
        filter: grayscale(100%);
    }
    100% {
        -webkit-filter: grayscale(0%);
        filter: grayscale(0%);
    }
}


Where can I find custom dictionaries for my Kobo Glo? I'd like to load some custom dictionaries on my Kobo Glo, since the preloaded ones sometimes lack many words.

The monolingual ones seems to be fairly complete, but I find the ones used for translation to be far from comprehensive.

I know that there is a tool called Penelope, aimed at converting between various dictionary formats, but the job seems especially tricky for Kobo ones, since it requires many dependencies.

If someone has successfully used it to create Kobo-compatible dictionaries, can please point out if there is some place where they can be downloaded?

Apologies for replying as an answer, I have no sufficient reputation to comment.

I am the creator of Penelope. I thought about this for a bit, but the main problem is that I am continuously asked to "convert" materials that are clearly pirated from copyrighted, commercial dictionaries --- which I always refuse --- and hosting them onto a public web site would yield to legal issues.

Probably the best option would be creating a thread in MobileRead, but clearly only for public domain or CC-licensed materials.

EDIT: I created such thread: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2755188

EDIT 2: I posted directions on how to install custom dictionaries on Kobo devices in the Penelope GitHub README: https://github.com/pettarin/penelope


How can I listen to non-Audible audiobooks on my Kindle? The Kindle has support for audible audiobooks. However, I am wondering if I can listen to audiobooks from other sources such as http://www.audiobooks.com/.

According to their FAQ section:

  Is Audiobooks.com mobile friendly?

  It sure is! You can stream or
  download your favorite books from Audiobooks.com on your iPhone or
  iPad (iOS4.0 or higher), or Android smartphone (running version 2.3 or
  higher), via our native apps.

  Thanks to our HTML5 web app, you can
  also listen to audio books using almost any other internet-enabled
  device, like laptops and tablets. We recommend that you check with
  your mobile provider to make sure you have a data plan.

So if your Kindle supports web browsing (and has an HTML5 compatible browser), then yes you can. Otherwise, you are forced to use one of their native apps for the devices mentioned.

Or another option as mentioned by DVK in the comments, you can turn your Kindle into a generic Android device. It's possible to do this because Kindle devices (and Nook for that matter) are using Android under the hood. Amazon (or Barnes and Knoble for the Nook) just design the stuff on top of Google's open-source operating system. Once you convert your device to a generic Android device, you can run the native Android app provided by audiobooks.com. As for how to change your device, if you choose that route, there are many tutorials out there. Here is one to get you started.


Can I keep a reading diary on my device? I have a Kobo Aura One. After finishing a book, I try to take some notes (something like a reading diary). Sometimes the notes become a review, sometimes I write something personal which few other people would benefit from reading.

At the moment, I write this as a review (i.e. select the option “Write a review” after the book is finished). I dislike this for two reasons:

I can’t get as personal as I sometimes want to
I can’t (as far as I know) store these reviews on my device

I’m aware that I could use annotations for this, but I prefer to keep that for specific passages in the book. Is there something else I can do?

You can not directly keep a diary on your device of your written reviews. If that is your question. You can indeed write your review on the device after finishing the book. And you can always find it online on the Kobo.com website.

What is maybe an option but rarely used, is to make a screenshot of your written review. This can be done by editing the code of your device a little bit. More of the explanation about that can be found in this question: Is it possible to take a screenshot from a Kobo ereader device?

If you can categorize your annotations that would also be an option to annotate your review stuff and divide it for annotations of the specific passages in the book and annotations for the review parts in the book.


How to remove an article from kindle and Amazon cloud permanently I have kindle paperwhite (firmware version 5.4.4.2). My view settings are:
On Device | My Items | Collection

Issue : After long press on article and selecting "Remove from device", article is still visible, though now in "grey". It is also still present on Amazon cloud.

Expected behavior :
Article is removed from device and cloud. It is nowhere to be seen. Nor device nor cloud.

My workaround :
After removing article, I move out to created "Deleted articles" collection. From time to time, I log into Amazon and manually delete articles from this collection. Last time I  had to done by groups of five as there was no option to delete them all. Very uncomfortable.

How do you add the articles to your device in the first place?

In my case, articles generally land up in my Kindle Paperwhite with the help of services like Amazon's own Send to Kindle or third party apps like Send to Kindle. Most of these services have a configurable option to send only to device but not to cloud.

If you use the former, just uncheck Save to Amazon Cloud Drive option at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/setup/. You may also want to choose which device should the content be sent to.


Copy Chapter Numbers And Titles from TOC to Individual Chapters All of the chapters in my EPUB contain only the text of the chapter and do not have the chapter number or the chapter title at the beginning of the body.

The Table of Contents file, (nav.xhtml) has the correct chapter numbers and titles along with hyperlinks to each of the different chapter files, (xhtml files).

How can I automate a process in which the chapter number and title for each chapter file is copied from the table of contents and pasted into the beginning of each corresponding chapter file?  I have and use Calibre, but I cannot figure out a process.

Thanks.

You're looking at the problem backwards.

My admittedly complex solution is to code in Docbook XML, and then the XML to XHTML transformation autogenerates the TOC with correct title. (Docbook XSLT autogenerates the epub nav document and all related material).

With most tools the nav.xhtml file is autogenerated by whatever is H1 in the particular chapter.

To give another example: You can create an epub very easily in LibreOffice or MS Word by putting everything in a single document and then styling the chapter headings with the  HEADING style (or something like that). You can run calibre on that -- and as long as the chapter heads have a heading style, it will autogenerate the navigation document from the headings.

My Docbook-based production method includes an autonumber feature -- but I generally turn it off because I'd rather hard code the chapter numbers. Perhaps MSOFFICe/LIBOFFICE let you do autonumbering in the heading element.

The navigation document is usually both human readable and machine readable. Unlike epub2/older Kindle ebooks (where you needed to create a logical TOC (html document) and a ncx file, today's navigation documents serve both purposes.

I have not used transformations on Calibre, but I'm guessing it is theoretically possible to autogenerate these things from within it with xpath/xslt.


TOC section scope is not included in the parent chapter:Table of Contents My epub files pass epubcheck, but Kindlegen refuses to generate mobi files. It seems that issue is caused by adding references ("colophon", "dedication", etc.) to pages.

I'm really hitting a wall here. I would really appreciate some EPUB

FILE + ERROR LOGS: https://we.tl/UtGqtAxbir

I had the same problem, was caused by repeated chapters.


fix spine order and file names based on toc.ncx I do have epub2 book with wrong spine (files in it are also in wrong order).
I was able semi-automatically to fix correct order and create correct toc.ncx.
Each file contains one or zero chapters linked from toc.ncx, they mostly have correct title tags
It would be very difficult to do reordering manually in Calibre or Sigil(book have a lot of files) so I'm looking to automated/semiautomated solution.
How to change spine (and, preferable,order of files in epub) to be in toc.ncx order?
How to at least rename chapter files from index_<random_digits> to their real titles so manual re-ordering would be easier?
If there is no existing tools - which python libraries can be used to get access to toc.ncx and to perform reordering?

Possible solution (which worked for me):

generate calibre's ToC(as html) from correct toc.ncx (if not arleady exist)
unpack epub
re-import only html toc,
convert result to epub
if order is incorrect yet again - check Calibre's HTML-ZIP importer depth-first/breadth first mode


what 's the alternative to paperwhite in my old kindle? I have bought Kindle touch 3g two years ago, it's a great device and I'm happy when reading books on it.

But I have a set of questions:

I read at night a lot so I miss the built in light and I have to open some source of light beside me !! should I buy the Kindle Paperwhite the newer version? but I will lose the audio feature in my kindle in addition to I get less storage!
If I don't need to buy Kindle Paperwhite, what can I do concerning reading at night without eye strain
My kindle has the audio feature but I don't know how to make it pronounce the word through the dictionary?!

The light used on Kindles is amazing since the light is projected down toward the screen rather than up in your eyes.  Amazon developed this technology and patented it (hopefully it will be sold to computer monitor makers one day), and it's basically equivalent to pointing a light bulb away from you rather than in your eyes.  This technology helps reduce eye strain (that burning feeling you may get if you stare at a screen for awhile), but it will still happen.

The Voyage has the same light technology as the paperwhite, however, they have added a sensor to adjust the amount of light projected based on the conditions of light around you.  This seems like a gimmick, but so far seems to be a great feature as most people don't change the light often, but when it's automatically done, it helps greatly, and allows for an even greater amount of time before you have eye strain.  The Voyage so far seems to be great, although there does appear to be a flaw in some of the screens (uneven yellowing of the page-you'll find lots of info from google), and of course there is a bit of a sticker shock associated with it.  Also, if you want a solution immediately, you'll have to wait with the Voyage as there is presently about a month wait if you order it today (11/4/14).

In regards to storage, if you're not putting mp3s on the kindle (something you would only do with the audio version of the kindle), then you should be fine.  I have over 600 books on my kindle with about 1/3 of the space left.  I notice that autobiography and non-fiction titles tend to take up more than fiction, so you may want to keep that in mind, but storage doesn't seem to be a ceiling that the average user, or even super user, hits.

In regards to your model and dictionary pronunciation, it's not possible.  The only way around it is to temporarily turn audio on, have it read that part of the book, then turn it back off.  The audio feature of a dictionary is incredibly amazing and important, but for some reason they didn't include that support in the kindle model you have (I had the same model).  I keep my phone near me when I read and use the dictionary.com app for pronunciation, hardly ideal, but it works.

As for light alternatives, I personally tried several clip-on book lights (name brands and cheap knock offs) and did not like any of them.  They added weight, got in the way, fell off easily, produced uneven light on the screen, and overall just made reading on the kindle clumsy and awkward.  I ended up buying a new bedside light as I was never able to find a nice mobile solution (until the voyage!).


What fraction of unrestricted ebooks originate with the top digitization projects? Although there are many sources of ebooks without use restrictions, it seems like most of them actually originate with a small handful of digitization projects. One of these is Project Gutenberg in concert with Distributed Proofreaders.

Is there any good source of information to show to what degree the top digitization projects are the source of the mass of unrestricted ebooks?

Forewords

I am assuming that the poster of the question calls
"unrestricted books" the books that have no DRM, i.e., no technical
devices intended tp prevent some uses, such as copy, search, or
adaptation to new reading devices. All books are born legally restricted by
copyright, at least today, until they enter the public domain. Very few rightsholders fully remove copyright
restrictions by providing adequate public licences.

Though I have read many papers on the topic, and written some, I doubt there is such a
document as requested in the question. The reason lies in the
diversity of objectives of the numerisation projects, on the lack of
standard definition of what a book is, on the wide variations
encountered on book counts in various studies (notably those concerned
with assessing the proportion of orphan books in various libraries).
The definition of a book depends on a variety of parameters, including
content and purpose, commercialization, relevance of distinct
editions, choice of illustrator, each of which may impact some numbers
by an order of magnitude. Does the Bible count for one, or for one
hundred thousands? What about Shakespeare's works, or Alice in
Wonderland? Does a single poem count as a book? What about a short story, a music score, a ship log, a catalog, a birth registry?  Recall that what figures may be available may have been
computed with different issues or purposes in mind, hence with different visions (often not explicited) of what counts as a book, and of what counts as two different books.   Hence, rather
than pointing on a specific document as requested, I try below to give a direct
answer, based on figures I may remember or retrieve. But a short crisp
answer would be misleading given the very fuzziness of available
information, and the fact that the question itself is thus
unwittingly very imprecise.

Global assessment

The production of unrestricted books by Project Gutenberg and similar
projects is tiny compared to raw digitization and OCR, as donne by
Google and large public and academic projects, for example by national libraries. It is on the order of
100 000 books, a magnitude order of 1/1000th of the total
number of books, that seems to range somewhere between 50 and 130
millions, depending on how books are counted. Large digitization
projects like those led by Google, National Libraries and large
institutions are about two orders of magnitude more productive, some producing several millions of digitized books, though
exact numbers are sometimes hard to assess.

However, if you consider quality digitization with proofread text and
structured formatting like the epub standard, efforts like the
Project Gutenberg seem significantly more productive, as large
digitization projects produce only a few thousands, unrestricted,
quality e-books (from what I have been able to check).

This is not surprising since large digitization projects are intended
mostly for preservation purposes, and for accessibility by the
research community (or for indexation purposes in the case of Google), while Project Gutenberg and its likes are intended for availability/accessibility purposes, i.e. to give convenient access to existing literature to a wider reading public.  Raw
digitization for conservation performed by large project is fairly
cheap and fast, while quality digitization require long and costly
human intervention (about one order of magnitude higher), that can be
well covered by crowd-proofreading and editing.

Another aspect is that, while the total number of books is very large,
only a small fraction is of interest to a wide audience. So the
relevant corpus for Project Gutenberg is probably much smaller than
the relevant corpus for large digitization project that have to deal
with all kinds of archives, inventories and the like. This is
compounded by the fact that the books that are of interest to a wide
audience are to a large extent still under copyright, hence much less
likely to be made available legally without restrictions, by any digitization project.

This actually stresses the importance in the book count of orphan
books, and more generally of books not cared for by rightholders, and
whether they can, or cannot, be made legally available, with or
without restrictions. This may represent on the order of half the
books in copyright. In the USA, it is an important aspect of the legal
battle around the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement, and it is
the object of a specific law in France.

So, I would tend to believe that cooperative projects like the
Project Gutenberg are the major source of unrestricted ebooks, if you
consider reading resources for a wide public. But, it makes little
sense to compare the output of two types of projects that have different
purposes, at least in the medium term.

Still, it should be noted that preservation is probably a more urgent
task than high quality digitization. It is rather sound that
preservation projects will avoid diverting much of their limited
resources on costly high quality output, other than for public
relation purposes. Also, the mass of documents
digitized by large projects provide a good source of raw material for
smaller projects (in size) that are aiming for quality output
that has a chance of attracting some readership.

We should also remember that digitization is not the only source of
ebooks. There are authors, publishers and institutions that produce a very significant number of
new books without DRM restrictions, though there may be legal
restrictions on use not enforced with DRM, as was the case before with
classical paper books.

Though I spent significant time analyzing the question and writing the
answer with some figures to substantiate it, it ended up being far too
long, and messed up by the heterogeneity of sources. Hence I decided
to cut it short here. If interested, you may read the rest in a
previous version from the history of this anwer, which contains some additional figures and references from various projects.

2 related questions:

What kinds of DRM are used in eBooks? Is it possible to purchase DRM free eBooks?

Some classic literature is available for free - but where?


Reading annotations in Calibre I have installed the Annotations plugin for Calibre.

I have added an annotated ebook from my Kobo Aura H2O device to my Calibre library. Then I imported annotations from the device and Calibre said that it had added them as comments.

How can I display these comments in Calibre's ebook reader pane?

Short answer, you can't see them in the reader pane.
You'll find the annotations at:
Edit Metadata > Custom medata tab > Annotations

(Presuming you created a custom column called 'Annotations', which is the default name suggested by the plugin.)


Hide a folder of ebooks on Kindle So I have this folder in the documets folder of my Kindle Paperwhite which contains books that are inappropriate ebooks for small children(my cousins).
I don't want to delete them and kids mode won't do.

I wanted to know if there is way I can hide all the ebooks stored in that folder from showing in my collection.

Note: These books are not on cloud I have transferred them from my computer.

Well, it's a bit of an involved solution, but you could access the "documents" folder on your kindle via miniUSB/USB data and charging cable with your computer, and compress the book (and remove the original). Kindle will not recognize the file anymore, though it still contains the same data.

NOTE, however, that if the file in question has a duplicate in the cloud, the duplicate will remain accessible.

For this purpose, I recommend Settings>Device Options>Parental Controls>Restrictions>Cloud (and an adequate password).

You may also want to restrict access to the Kindle Store? Just sayin'.

These steps will secure the files on your kindle, but inaccessible by kindle;
in your kindle cloud, but restricted to those with the password.

(Just tested on my Kindle 7th Gen.)


How to remove white margins from ePub in Google Play Books Google Play Books seems to put a default white margin in every ePub being reading. But this is bad for making responsive covers in the first page.

Even with margin set to zero in both html and body tags, the Google Play Books adds an extra margin to the page. I was able to overcome this problem with hacks using negative margins, absolute postition and so on, but this can mess the view with others ebook readers.

Is there a way to make hacks specific for Google Play Books in similar way that is webpages hacks for browsers? I couldn't find any documentation about it in Google Developers or IDPF.org.

You can use Sigil to change the margins and border by changing the style file.
If you have many files to change, you might be better of using Calibre's EPUB to EPUB conversion and setting the margins for the output file to your liking.

If you don't have access to these tools and know about CSS, you can also unzip the EPUB files, change the style sheet by hand and rezip the files back into an EPUB. (This sounds more complicated than it is.)