Collapse and Expand Table of Contents in Kindle PaperWhite How to collapse and expand the Table of Contents from the "Go To" menu? Last night I accidentally discovered that the TOC can be expanded for quick jumping using the goto icon. I had hard time to find the way to collapse the expanded chapters/sections how ever I accidentally manage to collapse it by clicking random places (but I guess I clicked repeatedly on "Contents" tab) but not sure how exactly it is done.

Update

I forgot to mention that all the sub sections in TOC was auto expanded (I am sure I did not expanded individual section by clicking the triangle). I know that I can collapse it by clicking on the triangle again on individual section but there must be something to collapse and expand all at once.

There is a right-facing black triangle (▶) on each menu item that can be expanded, clicking on which the menu expands and the triangle becomes downward facing (▼) which again is clickable to collapse the sub-menu.

I see how easy it is to miss given the arrows are very small in size.


How to send library ebooks from Calibre to Nook Since I went from Vista to a new laptop and Windows 10, Adobe Digital Editions won't let me download books from my local library.  I have signed up with Calibre, but can't figure out how to transfer books from my local town library into the Calibre files to send to my Nook.  Anyone know how I can do this?

First, I assume that you are referring to "protected ebooks" which when checked out requires some kind of Digital Rights Management. If they are not protected ebooks, I imagine you could just transfer them by USB -- and wouldn't need to answer the question.

Second, I am assuming that you live inside the USA.

Does your library use the Overdrive app? (That is probably the most common ebook distributor for libraries).

If yes, and if you use one of the color Nooks (like NOOK HD, NOOK HD+, etc), you can download an Overdrive app onto your Nook http://company.overdrive.com/overdrive-app-for-nook-makes-library-ebook-borrowing-even-easier/

It is much easier to check out ebooks via the Overdrive app than to transfer the encrypted epub file to your Nook via USB.

On a related note, I think it's worth upgrading to a Kindle Fire or an android tablet or even one of the Kindle e-ink devices -- especially if you use Overdrive. Even if your library uses another service beside Overdrive, chances are that they have a reading app which you can download to make it easier to check ebooks out directly. Nook is probably behind on connecting with libraries.

Did you know btw, that some libraries let you connect your Kindle e-ink device directly to your library, so if you check out the ebook, Overdrive (or another distributor) will send it directly to your e-ink device and then manage the checkin as well. Kindle is light years ahead of Nook.

Just recently Overdrive released a much more user friendly app called Libby which is much more useful than the previous Overdrive. It is available as an app in the Apple, Android and MS store. https://meet.libbyapp.com/


Can't exit the font size screen on the Kindle 10th gen I really can't figure out why this is happening. Whenever I try to change the font size on the Kindle 10th gen (not paperwhite) by pinching the screen, the dialog box appears as usual showing me the levels of the font size that I can adjust. But once I'm done, I am not able to refresh the screen to continue reading the book. I am forced to restart the device. Can someone help me fix this issue? Thanks a lot!

P.S. : My device is running firmware version : Kindle 5.12.5-April 2020

This particular generation of kindle gets frozen quite often. Being on the charger seems to exacerbate the issue.
So first and foremost if it is plugged in unplug it. Then try to refresh. If it is still frozen hold your power button for 30 seconds it will give you the option to switch off your Kindle , do not remove your finger from The power button just keep holding it until it completely shuts  down ; wait for about 15 seconds or more and then power it back up. This is a hard reboot but it will not remove any of your information off or clear any of your caches or anything like that. It just resets and brings you back to the home screen.
When you go back into the book it should’ve saved the last setting that you placed which was making your font larger. If it did not save that last change you can try adjusting it again and this time it should allow you to adjust and exit out of the pop-up easily.


Whats the best program to use to make ebooks I've been using Sigil so far to make epubs but i was wondering if there's any better programs i could use, preferably free but doesn't have to be, that would be more efficient.
The bulk of the books i'll be making have a lot of footnotes, finding solutions to issues i have with Sigil is very difficult and time consuming so it would be useful to have something that's better known.
Thanks

I don't know a lot about sigil, but I have made a book with footnotes, and I have been using an xml editor with docbook to generate an epub with  footnotes. Works well.

Unless you're already fluent in docbook, I suspect you wouldn't want to learn that.

Adobe InDesign already has a functionality to convert footnotes into epub http://helpx.adobe.com/indesign/using/export-content-epub-cc.html#reflowable_export_options Indesign is a real bear, but the monthly rental rates for the software might make it a good option for you.


Is the  still needed in ePub 3? Suprised I haven't found this when searching the site under the parameters <guide> and when searching IDPF documentation for ePub 3 spec I didn't see an answer.  I was curious what does the <guide> do at the end of the OPF file in an ePub 3?  I did read the write up "Where do you start an ePUB and what is the  section of the .OPF file?" but this was published back in 2011 when ePub 2 was still common:

  “The guide element identifies fundamental structural components of
  the publication, to enable Reading Systems to provide convenient
  access to them.” So how does the  work? Essentially, it points
  to where particular pieces of the book can be found, allowing reading
  systems to go directly to that file or location.

For example:

    <guide>
        <reference href="foo.xhtml" type="cover" title="Cover"/>
        <reference href="bar.xhtml" type="text" title="Start"/>
    </guide>
</package>

I know traditionally ePub2 used the <guide> often and per Apple documentation I use <guide> in fixed layout but other then that is there still a need for the <guide> or is it only for legacy devices and reading engines?

It's now deprecated in epub3 in favor of the landmark NAV element.
http://www.idpf.org/epub/301/spec/epub-publications.html#sec-guide-elem

Because support for NAV is pretty much universal in reading systems, I see no reason why to include it now.


When an Amazon account contains more than 1023 purchased Kindle books, how do you access the books beyond the 1023rd book? When the Kindle Paperwhite is synced with the Amazon account, it never syncs beyond 1023 (2^10 - 1) books.

How do you access books beyond the 1023rd book in an Amazon account on a Kindle Paperwhite?

This sounds like a limitation of the software, so you probably won't be able to get around it from the device.

First, I recommend reporting this as a bug to Amazon. Don't expect them to fix it right away or anything, but it's always good to let the devs know when something doesn't behave as you as a user want. ;)

If your final goal is to get all your books to the Kindle somehow, the solution would be to download them from Amazon ("Your Content and Devices") and sideload them over the USB cable. (It's good to download the files as backups anyway and de-DRM them while you do that, IMO, but that's a different topic...)

EDIT - how to report a bug: I forgot that Amazon is one of those "don't bother us dirty mortal!" companies. The only way to report a Kindle bug I found is to use the form at /gp/help/support/contact-us (choose "Devices" from the buttons above) - and whow, that is one very well-buried page!


Are back-of-the-book indexes useful? Are back-of-the-book indexes useful in electronic texts? I'm aware that people can search for anything they want in an electronic text and be taken there at the press of a button. But indexes don't merely point to terms located in the text. They also create relationships between terms and concepts through cross-referencing and subentries.

You essentially already answer your own question: indexes are more than just a reference to the words in a text. Apart from creating relationships an index
can hide non-essential use of a word, and have definitions be different from normal use of a word. This requires interpretation by the author, something a search does not do.

I used LaTeX and its index generating capabilities when writing my thesis and the references to defining occurrences showed differently (italics) from the normal entries. Of course the software also helped by showing ranges of pages where a word was marked for indexing, which is also something a search engine seldom indicates (it might highlight all occurrences on a page, but that is not the same as knowing that a term is used in 10 consecutive pages).


Interior Image requirements for non-Kindle distributors & devices with retina displays? I am happy to see that the Kindle Formatting Guide is accepting high resolution image files for interior images and downconverting as needed.

I was wondering if other ebook distributors are doing something similar. Or do other distributors require some sort of media query for smaller and larger screens (with low resolution and high resolution image files included in the same epub file).

Is there any reference guide about image specifications for each vendor? Thanks.

UPDATE: I didn't find any answers to this question, but I realized that the question essentially boils down to how to make sure images work with retinal and non-retina displays.

Egad, I'm sorry that no one answered this very important question. I shall try to answer it by myself with what I've learned over the past week. I'm still testing and will add more information as needed.

The ipad Asset Guide 5.1 Revision 2:  https://itunesconnect.apple.com/docs/iBooksAssetGuide5.1Revision2.pdf

Images within the epub cannot exceed 3.2 million pixels. Apple recommends providing images that are at least 1.5 the intended viewing size.

For Kindle Formatting guide v 2015.2 (not my question, I realize, but still important to mention):  http://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf

3.62 Maximum size of an individual image file is 5MB. You will obtain the best results by optimizing your image to the highest quality possible within the file size limit before inputting your files into Kindlegen. If the automatic file conversion is unsatisfactory, try optimizing the images before feeding them to Kindlegen.
3.64. Make sure that input photos are at least 600x800 pixels in size unless you optimize them according to 3.62

The key here is using media queries to differentiate screens with retina display and screens without retina display because they render graphics differently. Also, if you have high enough resolution graphics to begin with, you don't need to worry about them looking like crap in in ibooks with retinal display. (In my case, my original graphics don't meet the minimal requirements listed above, so I am experiencing major problems trying to upconvert everything).

Resources that I found helpful:

Simulating retina display on chrome browser:
http://www.marksenff.com/front-end/you-already-have-a-retina-screen-emulator/

https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/media-queries-for-standard-devices/
media queries for various android and ipad devices

http://mydevice.io/devices/ screen resolutions

media queries specific to ebooks
https://medium.com/@sandersk/responsive-ebook-design-a-primer-8bba01328219

http://stephen.io/mediaqueries/ apple-specific media queries
how to target retina displays.

The key thing from the last link is the apple-specific nonstandard css:

 @media only screen
 and (min-device-width : 768px)  and
(max-device-width : 1024px) and
 (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2) {
> /* STYLES GO HERE */}

(I believe that other browsers have also nonstandard css  for specifying different pixel ratios. But I have no evidence that any of the ebook reading software supports them).

UPDATE: I ended up writing unique media queries at certain breakpoints. These breakpoints fit my need to make my graphics work. Your own graphics might require different breakpoints/thresholds. Please note that I did not use queries specific to android or ios and I did not need to specify device-pixel-ratio.

generic styles, for everybody (and for devices which don't detect
media queries)
phone media queries valid for both portrait and
    landscape: min-width 320px max-width: 767px
phone media queries valid only for landscape 768 to 1500 px
landscape (because we assume  2 columns, this is basically the same
as Phone/Portrait)
Landscape  over 1500px -- when 2 columns, this will look the same as
portrait 768-1024
768-1024 portrait -- this probably comprises about 60-70%   of the
devices
1025-up portrait -- future proofing, just in case

I probably will have 3 queries for Kindle: one for e-ink, one for Kf8, and one for 10 inch KF8. I haven't tested on them yet; maybe I need to add one more kindle query? I'm still working on that...


Resize readium document if content body has changed I have an interactive ebook that hides answers from the learner until he/she clicks a Show button.

The show function then toggles an div element between display:none and display:block. All answers are initialized with display:none.

This causes no issues in iBooks or Adobe DE, but in readium the scrollview that contains the html does not resize when the div is shown. The images below should explain a bit better.

The bottom of the page when the answer is hidden:

The bottom of the page when the answer is shown

Notice the extra content barely visible below the answer block, the scrollbar is at the bottom and cannot scroll down any further.
Once I manually resize redium, the scrollview is automatically fixed.

Is there a way for me to force the size update on the readium scrollview using JS?

I don't have much ability to answer your question (especially without seeing your code or knowing the required space in the viewport to hide or display).

I'm aware of and have occasionally tested things on Readium. But I never had a use case for supporting Readium for epubs.

If you support  ibooks and ADE, that's covering a lot of ground. I assume it means you have also tested on Google Play Books.

Update: I see that Bluefire has released an ios reader based on readium. So that counts for something. That is still a sliver of reading audience.

You said this is related to resizing. I have noticed that some apps have resizing flakiness. But resizing is something you usually do on a PC browser, not a mobile device. I would worry about whether this issue shows up on mobile devices.

Let me mention that Google Play Books also has  problems with regard to css related to page size. See my previous question here: How well does Google Play Books support page-oriented css? (i.e., page breaks) ).   If Readium is based on Chrome code base, I have to wonder if this issue is rooted in Chrome instead of Readium or GPB.


Do non-Windows devices have equivalent of ClearType for ebook font rendering? Cleartype is Microsoft's subpixel rendering technology for improving text clarity.

I recall it being used as a selling point for MS Reader and .lit format back when it was introduced.

Are similar technologies used in modern book readers (either in the reader app itself, or underlying OS)?

On devices that use eInk, there are no subpixels like the Red, Green and Blue subpixels that can be separately addressed on color screens. Hence there is no subpixel rendering as such on eInk devices (as stated by Sriram Peruvemba (chief Marketing Officer at  E-Ink Holdings).

3rd generation iPAD has subpixel rendering according to the same article, but it is not supported by every application.


Kindle eBook turns into two page layout in landscape I created a fixed layout ebook for Kindle which displays a single page in portrait and two pages in landscape.

I didn't use any special code for this behavior so, how can I avoid this?

Good day!
Please check spine in your .opf for page-spread-* properties.
If it is there, please remove and build your ebook again.


Is there an Android reading app that synchronizes across devices? I have been using Aldiko and Kindle for reading on my Android devices, but I find it annoying to always have to convert epub books to mobi format just so I can synchronize them across devices using Whispersync.

There is an Aldiko Sync app, but it requires root privileges and I have not rooted any of my devices and I don't want to.

Is there an app that can synchronize, especially reading progress, across devices? Even an open source project where I have to run something on my own server would be fine.

Moon+ Reader can do this, storing the data in Dropbox or in Google Drive.

(Note: I have not actually tried this functionality myself as I can't bear to use Moon+ due to its horrible UI and poor support for the ePub standard. But the feature is there in the settings, if you can find the right settings page...)

Google Play Books does so too - but it does not directly open files stored on the device (you have to let it upload them to Google's servers and then download them again...)


How to add my own ebooks in mobi format to be displayed in Kindle app on Android In older versions of Android/Kindle App, it used to be enough to drop any .mobi files into the 'kindle' folder on SD Card, but in latest version of Kindle app, they still don't show up as books on 'On Device'. Did that location change, or is this approach no longer possible at all? I also turned on 'enable personal documents stored on your data storage to appear in your kindle library' setting, but no effect.

Each Kindle device should have an email address where you email the books. Find system settings on your device to find that email address. Email the mobi file as an attachment to that email address.


Syncing kindle book annotations (non Amazon books) across kindle apps I buy Kindle Manning + O'Reilly books as they tend to be cheaper than the ones on Amazon. Can I sync annotations (e.g. notes, highlights) between Kindle apps (PC, tablet, etc.) ?

Amazon Support said (on 2019-05-24) that syncing personal documents is not supported.

Here is my chat:

► Amazon: I'm sorry, currently there is no option to see the highlights made in the personal documents.

► Me: Ok, you are saying that Amazon deleted the website that allowed viewing highlights made in personal documents. Then I still have the other 2 questions:
1) Should Whispersync work to keep my reading "location" up to date between devices when reading personal documents (or is that not supported anymore either)?

2) Should Whispersync work to keep my highlights identical between devices when reading personal documents (or is that not supported anymore either)?

► Amazon: I can understand your concern. Please allow me a moment to check this.
Thanks for waiting.
I'm sorry, the highlights will not sync through all the devices which are made on personal documents.

► Me: And I guess the current reading "location" / progress won't either?

► Amazon: Yes, exactly.


transfer ebooks protected by DRM to a new device -- how? Imagine I have put some protected by DRM ebooks into a computer; imagine this computer becomes old or breaks, so that I have to change it, but I have forgot the chosen ID; how can I read these ebooks in the new computer?

It probably would help to know which company's  DRM you are talking about.

First, with Adobe ID, there are ways to retrieve the password or even the ID if you have the correct email associated with the account.

In some cases (not often, thankfully), the ebook distributor might allow you to download an ebook only once and not let you download it again. In that case you are out of luck.

In other cases, the ebook distributor is out of business, so you cannot retrieve the password or login.

This is one advantage of choosing a DRM-free distributor like smashwords (instead of apple, Adobe, Kindle). You can keep backups -- and as long as it's a well-known format, you can read it in other reading systems.

On the other hand, distributors with DRM try to keep the ebooks available in the cloud so you you can read it in on different reading systems. This of course assumes that the distributor makes reading apps for different operating systems (as do Google and Kindle, but not Apple, for example).

It's possible that there are ways to break the DRM, but discussions about these things are not appropriate here (and it may be illegal in your country).


Table of Contents just contains lots of "New Article N" entries I'm using QuarkXPress 2017 to create a Kindle ebook based on a print layout that someone else has created for commercial printing. Everything's going fine apart from the Table of Contents; when I load the .mobi file into KDP and preview it the TOC just holds a load of entries saying "New Article N" where N ranges from 1 to 30 (though not every number in between, 25 in total).

I assume it's generated automatically from the titles of each article or story in the document, which were set to defaults when they were first created, but I can't see any way to rename them. I've searched through Help and Googled loads but I'm still none the wiser.

Same issue occurs when I generate an EPUB and open it as a ZIP - the nav.xhtml file has the same entries in it as I see on the preview of the .mobi file so I doubt it's an issue with the previewer.

Any ideas?

After a great deal more searching around, I found the answer in a manual for an earlier version of QuarkXPress.

You have to open the Reflow palette, where you get a list of all the articles making up the reflow layout - and the names matched the entries I was getting in the TOC. But to edit them you have to select them and click the edit button in the palette toolbar, there's no right click menu for this.

In any case, I never finished this as I decided it was easier to export the original PDF to Word, clean it up, define the TOC and upload that to Amazon instead...


container.xml could not be found Something weird happened to an epub I'm working on.

It still looks OK in Sigil, except no image displays when I click on the page cover.xhtml. When I click on the epub icon, it doesn't open in iBooks. So I drug it into Pagina, and got this error message:

File 'META-INF/container.xml' could not be found

I've Googled for help but haven't found anything useful yet. It appears to reference a distinct page named container.xml, but I can't find such a page in my working epubs. I did a search for the text container.xml in my working epubs and again drew a blank.

Does anyone know what this error message means and how I can fix it?

This sounds like a minor error. I have a META-INF/container.xml which I have never looked at until now. The entire file says:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
  <container xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container"
   version="1.0">
     <rootfiles>
        <rootfile full-path="OEBPS/package.opf" media-
         type="application/oebps-package+xml"/>
     </rootfiles>
 </container>

The specification for this file is here: http://www.idpf.org/epub/31/spec/epub-ocf.html#sec-container-metainf-container.xml

By the way, if you don't already do this, you should always use the epub validator to validate your epub file. (This error message sounds like the output of an epub validator).

(Let me add that my ebook production process generates the container.xml file automatically. Sigil should do the same. Perhaps you changed a setting or accidentally deleted this file?)


Calibre custom news source - How to set publication author(s) I have a few news downloads set up in Calibre (BBC, Guardian and a few custom ones as well).
I note that once they are downloaded that the 'Author(s)' column for the publication is set to 'calibre'.

Ideally, I would like this to reflect the actual publication, or, more generally, I'd like to be able to configure this myself. I have looked around in the docs, within the python script and generally on the net for answers but I can't see a way of doing this. I don't want to have to manually edit the metadata as this kind of defies the point of an automated download.

This was kind a hard nut to crack...
Regarding this issue this functionality is currently not available nor planned for the future.

In fact there is a workaround to more or less solve this issue. There is a real master tool called 'Metadata Plugboards' hidden in the settings. This allows you to modify metadata when media is exported (save to disk, send per mail or upload to device etc. - this applies not when you simply convert to another format).

The tool gives you a lot of options - For this example I just chose any format -> any device. Then you can specify what should go to which metadata field. Select authors as target and enter the following template code

{authors:contains(calibre,{title},{authors})}

This replaces the author field with the title, if the author currently contains calibre, otherwise the authors field remains untouched.

More details on the template language are available at the calibre manual.


Kindle - single gesture / action to go "back" With touch screen E Ink Kindle devices, is there some way to trigger the back button / action without having to tap twice (i.e. once to trigger the top menu and then again to press the back button)?  I'm not referring to flipping back a page but rather the back button itself which is useful when jumping back to where you were before pressing a link.  I'm using the Voyage but I think if there is an answer it may apply to Paperwhite and the regular Kindle touch too.

No.  I have found no way of doing this with my Paperwhite (and I have tried quite a few things).  This would be very useful to have; perhaps if we suggest it to Amazon, it may become a feature?


Is there any advantage apart from more storage space when using a memory card in a book reader A lot of ebook readers have one or more slots for extra storage in the form of removable media: SD(HC) cards (micro of fullsize), memory sticks, etc.

Using an extra card for storage consumes some extra power, and it is probably slower than internal memory. On the positive side a card also usually can hold more data, and multiple libraries can be kept on different cards for easy organisation.

Is there any—not so obvious—advantage apart from extra storage space to store books on such cards?

There is one major advantage of using add on cards for storing books, and that is in case the device has problems with some of the newly added books. If you use a card you keep your devices internal memory clean.

Sometimes it happens that you have a faulty ebook, or a half-written one, that confuses the ebook-reader. It is not always possible for the ebook-reader to ignore or delete such files, which means you need to delete them using a PC connection. Because of the confusion, the ebook-reader might not be able to allow even that, which requires restarting or even reinitialisation of your reading device.

I have had this happen on my SONY PRS-700, as well as my BookEen. The latter prompted me:

An error occurred.
Pleas plug the device
to you computer via USB
to remove recently added files,
or press a key to retry.

(retrying did not help).

Storing books on removable media allows you to remove the card, remove any added—faulty—files using a card reader that is not confused by any ebook internal problems, and have a working device without restarting or reinitialisation.

Another, minor, advantage of using cards can be, that if you use an USB 3.0 card-reader for writing, you will probably have faster writing speeds than can be achieved via a wired connection via the ebook-reader (often USB 2). Given the small size of text only ebooks, this might not be notable too much unless you re-write your whole library.


Format and media of e-book delivery I am going to sell my e-book in delivering it to every buyer in several formats (HTML, PDF, .doc), suitable both for PC and for smartphones.

How should I deliver it: by email or by a temporary Web link? (Email is probably somehow easier to program for the programmer.)

Is it OK to send all files packed into a .zip file? I am afraid that some users (especially of smartphones) may not know how to unpack .zip.

Baen Books has an interface that I find works well (as a consumer).  When you buy a book -- or if it's one of their free books -- you get a download page with links for all the formats they support.  Here's an example from their free library (so this link should work for everybody).  The page is persistent; if I buy a book from them and download, say, the Kindle format, and later I want to read it on a Nook, I can just go back to the page and download that format.  This does mean that users have to create accounts (to track this), but (a) you can make that lightweight and (b) you might have done that to support the purchase anyway.

I would advise against sending all formats in a bundle.  For the phone case, in addition to the problem of users not knowing how to unpack it, you're sending several times the volume of data the person actually needed, which could annoy people with lower-usage data plans or frequent purchases.


Getting a separate page count per chapter With the ebooks I generate myself (using pandoc), I have a single page count for the entire book.

Ebooks that I purchase off the Kobo store have a separate page count for individual chapters, which is handy for books (should I carry on reading or just go to sleep?) and even more attractive for short story collections. It's an effect I'd like to replicate in my own ebooks.

I understand that Kobo uses its own custom 'kepub' format, an extension of epub 2. Is what I want possible with vanilla epub? Preferably in such a way as will work on a range of devices, and that will 'stick' when run through kindlegen.

Kobo ereaders have two different reading engines, one for .epub files, another for .kepub.epub files.
These two engines have some little differences, one is the way page count is displayed: for the entire book with .epub, for a single chapter with .kepub.epub.
If you want to use this feature the simplest way is to rename the file extension, but it is advisable to use Calibre instead. If you install the Advanced Kobo Driver plugin it will automatically convert .epub files in .kepub.epub when you send them to the device, while performing some optimizations that you won't have if you simply change the extension.
And, this is a feature of the reading device, not of the file itself: it's not coded in your ebook, it's the ereader that has it and use it when detects the file type: you won't get it in other devices even if you change the extension.


How do I remove pages from an ePub file? I have an eBook in .epub file format and I would like to remove the entire first and last pages of the book. How would I go about doing this?

Calibre has had a book editing feature, since version 1.15. If you manage your ebooks in Calibre, just right-click on the book and select "Edit Book".

If you have Calibre installed, but do not use it to manage your books, you can start the editor from the commandline with:

ebook-edit /path/to/your.ebook

One thing you should note however is that in an EPUB file a "page" depends on the rendering device, the font etc. A page-break can be "inserted", through page-break-* styles associated with an element, and seem to be enforced through splitting of the HTML within different .html files of the .epub as well.

If a section of HTML contains enough text to require rending in multiple pages, it is difficult to speak about something like "removing the first page", as what is exactly contained on the first page is not constant even if the EPUB doesn't change.


I want to build an e-book server for my class Our school has some ebooks.

We want to build a server, to allow our students to login and read those ebooks online; we also want our students to be able to highlight some text in order to comment and ask questions, so other students and teachers can review and answer.

Are there any solutions?

Calibre has a builtin server that can allow you to share your ebooks over the internet.
From the user manual:

  Start Content server: Starts calibre’s built-in web server. When
  started, your calibre library will be accessible via a web browser
  from the Internet (if you choose). You can configure how the web
  server is accessed by setting preferences at
  Preferences → Sharing → Sharing over the net

Also check this question.

Of course, you are responsible for every copyright issue that might arise, this is just a technical way to perform a task; it is your responsibility to check if you have the rights to share those books with other people.

This way, you can share the ebook files, that every user will have to download and read with his own device/software. A direct tighter collaboration like you are asking (i.e. shared annotations and comments) is not possible with this method, every user will be reading on his own device with a different copy of the ebook file, but you can use some free online tool like Google Keep, Simplenote, Trello, or something similar to set up a workspace to share notes and thoughts, if you take care to reference the ebook/chapter/section you are discussing about.

Another possible solution is to use a Social Network dedicated to books, like Goodreads, and create a private group to discuss


What are the advantages, risks and possible disadvantages of buying ebooks with DRM? What are the

advantages,
possible drawbacks or
potential risks

of buying ebooks with DRM (from the readers perspective, compared to non-DRM books)? Is DRM a good or a bad thing for readers? Does it matter at all?

The premise in your question's title does not seem to be accurate. E.g. Amazon's terms and conditions state that you don't own the ebook, you buy the right to view it on your Kindle.

  All content included in or made available through any Amazon Service, such as text, graphics, logos, button icons, images, audio clips, digital downloads, and data compilations is the property of Amazon or its content suppliers and protected by United States and international copyright laws. The compilation of all content included in or made available through any Amazon Service is the exclusive property of Amazon and protected by U.S. and international copyright laws.

Similar conditions apply to DRM-ed material from other suppliers (it probably has to—but don't quote me on that, I am no lawyer—as ownership would imply that you can do what you want with something (within legal bounds))

This forms no risk at all, as long as you are aware of this restriction. Unfortunately most people are not, and they speak about buying a DRM-ed ebook and are surprised if an ebook is removed from their device, even if that has happened to many before them (e.g. the erasure of books by George Orwell in 2009; a Kindle being wiped with no explanation).

The disadvantage, IMHO, compared to actually buying a non DRM-ed book is that you are dependent on some software setup to allow you to view material on a specific device. If that device breaks, you might not be able to "activate"
the content on a newly acquired device if the original provider is not available any more to allow this.


Can I transfer my Purchased Nook library to Kindle or other Service? I have a Nook account and library with over 100 purchased titles.  I really would like to take advantage of some of the features of the Kindle Fire but I do not want to give up my current library which I have spend several thousand dollars on.  Is there any way to migrate the books I purchased on Nook to a Kindle or DRM Free account?

Some authors and publishers require their books to be sold DRM free. Those books you can use on other reading platforms. Nook uses the ePub format which is used by just about everyone - Amazon being one of the exceptions. Depending on the specific reader, you might have to convert the file to a supported format. An ebook manager/converter program such as Calibre can help you with that.

Beyond that, your options will depend on the type of DRM used. A web search for Nook DRM found a document from 2009 describing the Nook DRM as a proprietary form of encryption using a credit card number as the key. Assuming that is correct, then your options will vary depending on where you live. In the US, you do not have any legal options under current law, as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) prohibits the removal of DRM, except under certain special circumstances, such as visually impaired readers wishing to use text-to-speech.


cloud-based epub reading system with offline reading AND collections -- what are my options? Google Play books is getting to be cumbersome on so many levels. Most importantly, the android app has no way to organize ebooks by collections or different shelves.

Yet Google Play Books is really the only cloud-based epub reader I know of -- and its epub support is  good.

I end up preferring to import files to the Kindle android app because  Kindle's collections are so easy to create and edit. Am I overlooking any other options?

In other words, are there any cloud-based epub reading systems which allow offline reading, importing your own epubs  and the ability to create collections? Having a store connected to it would be ideal, but I buy DRM-free epubs generally or get things from Project Gutenberg.

I am looking for a software solution (i.e., an app) rather than a device solution I realize that Kobo or ibook devices might have a cloud component, but I would prefer not to be locked into one hardware family. Thanks.

Aldiko book reader is a really good app that has the most of the features you require.


Known Issues with Amazon's Converter What are the known issues with converting various document types to ebooks with Kindle's online or offline converters? I am not asking for a technical run-down of all of the things that could go wrong with a file; I'm asking for a list of the top errors that authors new to e-publishing are most likely to make.

I know, for example, that Amazon publishes a guide called Building Your Book for Kindle, which covers much of this material. Topics from that would make good answers, particularly if you can shed additional light on potential problems with conversion.

Summary examples of helpful potential answers:

Stick to Word 2010 or text, not PDFs - PDFs lose lots of content and formatting, like spacing, tables.
Use indents to start paragraphs, not spaces.
If you need to create a table, do ....
Lists convert poorly. To get good formatting of lists, do ...

Kindle uses ISO-8859-1 format, not UTF-8. So there are a lot of characters not natively included in Amazon's format. I am Spanish and I find issues with characters like — (em dash) or € (euro currency). Fortunately, you can use their html entity code instead. For instance, the html entity code for em dash is & mdash ; and the html entity code for € is & euro ; (without spaces).

Here you are:

ISO-8859-1 entry in Wikipedia. Incomplete support to Hungarian characters is mentioned by November 3rd 2014.
List of html entity codes in the W3 Consortium.

Amazon published a list of ISO-8859-1 characters in a gif image. This is my first post on stackexchange, so I cannot publish more than two links. This is the image distributed by Amazon (you can google it if you want to access the info by yourself):


Is ePub3 backward compatible? I am planning to publish a book and I am wondering whether to distribute it as ePub3 or ePub4. My concern being that older eBook readers may still be out there and I do not wish to exclude them. I would prefer ePub3 if the older readers are able to read it.

I believe you are confusing ePub2.0 vs ePub 3.0.  If I recall ePub 4 is for Google only.  If you are worried about older devices I would focus on validating your .epub file with a 2.0 validation tool.

To answer your question if its backwards, yes, only if it validates across the board:

Example:

<File>
    <Name>foo.epub</Name>
    <ValidationReport elapsedTimeInMillis="230">
        <Version>3.0.0</Version>
        <Valid>yes</Valid>
        <Errors size="0"/>
        <Warnings size="0"/>
    </ValidationReport>
    <ValidationReport elapsedTimeInMillis="177">
        <Version>1.2.0</Version>
        <Valid>yes</Valid>
        <Errors size="0"/>
        <Warnings size="0"/>
    </ValidationReport>
    <ValidationReport elapsedTimeInMillis="149">
        <Version>1.1.0</Version>
        <Valid>yes</Valid>
        <Errors size="0"/>
        <Warnings size="0"/>
    </ValidationReport>
    <ValidationReport elapsedTimeInMillis="156">
        <Version>1.0.5</Version>
        <Valid>yes</Valid>
        <Errors size="0"/>
        <Warnings size="0"/>
    </ValidationReport>
    <ValidationReport elapsedTimeInMillis="201">
        <Version>1.0.4</Version>
        <Valid>yes</Valid>
        <Errors size="0"/>
        <Warnings size="0"/>
    </ValidationReport>
    <ValidationReport elapsedTimeInMillis="182">
        <Version>1.0.3</Version>
        <Valid>yes</Valid>
        <Errors size="0"/>
        <Warnings size="0"/>
    </ValidationReport>
    <ValidationReport elapsedTimeInMillis="193">
        <Version>1.0.2</Version>
        <Valid>yes</Valid>
        <Errors size="0"/>
        <Warnings size="0"/>
    </ValidationReport>
    <ValidationReport elapsedTimeInMillis="208">
        <Version>1.0.1</Version>
        <Valid>yes</Valid>
        <Errors size="0"/>
        <Warnings size="0"/>
    </ValidationReport>
</File>

The reason is because an .epub file can be accepted by some as a 3.0 valid ePub ONLY and it could still fail the ePub 2.0 validation.


eBook reader recommendation with a Japanese-English dictionary Short story:
I'm looking for a ebook reader that has the following:

E ink display
Supports English text and has English-English dictionary
Supports Japanese text and has a smart (can detect words based on the first character) Japanese-English dictionary
Allows me to load my own files (EPUB and\or some of the other popular formats)

Following features would also be welcome:

furigana support
tools to help me learn Japanese (stuff like turning selected words from book or dictionary search into flashcards;simple quiz base on those flashcards etc.)
PDF support
touchscreen
ability to load (zip compressed) sequences of images (*cough*comic books*cough*); for this to work properly the ability to zoom those images and decent screen resolution would probably be also required

Long story:
I've been using my cell phone to read ebooks for quite some time and while it's fine for reading books while commuting to work, reading on it for an extended period of time is a strain for the eyes. That's why I was thinking of buying an ebook reader. However I have some requirements and with so many devices on the market it's hard to find out (and decide) which one is suited for me.

I mostly read books in English. I can read them without a dictionary, but an English-English (or even English-Polish) dictionary is a plus.

Lately I also started to read Japanese webnovels and I it would be great if I could read them on this device (so it needs to have Japanese characters support).

My Japanese is still a bit lacking and I do need a dictionary for reading those novels, but thanks to tools such as Rikaichan and Rikaikun I can quickly look up the words I don't understand when I read them on my PC in a web browser. That's why I'd like the device to have a similar Japanese-English dictionary if possible. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the browser tool, you point the cursor at the first character of the word you don't understand, it than guesses the whole word (and also gives 5 alternative words) and provides translation for those. Assuming an ebook reader with similar working Japanese-English dictionary exists, it would probably be easier to use if the device has a touchscreen.

Japanese web novles are available for free on the internet and can even be downloaded. This said I have to convert them to EPUB myself, so it would be great if the device could allow me to load my own files and support EPUB format (I'd need that for most of my English books too, so this feature is rather mandatory).

I tried to find out if Kindle Paperwhite would do the job, but from what I understood, only the Japanese version has a Japanese dictionary (and a Japanese-Japanese one at that). I couldn't find out if the dictionary is smart enough to detect words and if it can deal with inflection.

I did some research and I found out that there is this Japanese-English dictionary for Kindle Paperwhite. However I'm not sure if I'll be able to buy it from Amazon.com if I live in Poland (and I'm not sure how to check that). If I will be able to buy this in my country, then I might consider buying Kindle Paperwhite. Too bad there is no legit way to buy Japanese novels if you don't live in Japan (registering on Amazon.jp with fake personal information doesn't sound very legitimate to me).

The two devices that are closest to me requirements are the Kindle Paperwhite and Onyx Boox T68. As far as meeting the requirements goes:

E ink display: both have one
Supports English text and has English-English dictionary: both have one or two (this condition was only to rule out Japanese ebook readers with poor English support); the one included on T68 is so so and the preinstalled apps have limited compatibility with other dictionaries
Supports Japanese text and has a smart Japanese-English dictionary: possible on Onyx Boox T68 using Jade Reader and should be possible on Kindle Paperwhite with this dictionary (you have to pay for it and it might be unavailable in some countries)
Allows me to load my own (EPUB) files: both, but Kindle doesn't support some formats and those files need to be converted first
Furigana support: might be partially supported on Kindle Paperwhite, but it appears that it interferes with the dictionary (not supporting furigana is not a big deal)
tools to help me learn Japanese: many apps are available on Onyx Boox T68 (you need to switch system font to Roboto as there is no japanese version of DroidSans on the device; some applications will render white text on white background which makes them unusable, but should be hackable); probably there is something on Kindle too (not a big deal either way)
PDF support: both support it
Touchscreen: both have it (it's a little wonky on the T68)
Ability to load (zip compressed) sequences of images: should work on both (see notes below)

Additionally:

Onyx Boox T68 has better resolution and it's slightly bigger
It also runs Android which should give me access to many useful apps (I can even make my own Apps should I need them)
Kindle Paperwhite is cheaper (even if you buy the dictionary) and with some trickery it might be possible to buy Japanese novels and manga
However both have relatively small screens, so reading comic books will probably be not very comfortable (still Onyx Boox T68 is likely to handle those better, due to size and resolution); verified, while doable on T68, the screen feels a bit too small for displaying whole pages (zooming in is slightly annoying due to slow response time of the e ink display)
Kindle Paperwhite 2nd generation has slightly better contrast than Onyx Boox T68 and is generally more responsive in terms of user input; tested Onyx Boox T68 and the contrast is decent
Onyx Boox T68 has audio output (you can use text 2 speech and listen to music) while Kindle Paperwhite does not support that

Details:
I checked if various ebook readers that are on the market can do the things that I want, but most of them can't. The one that is closest to my requirements is Kindle Paprwhite (if I install additional dictionary which I would have to buy, but which might be unavailable in my country), but unfortunately it doesn't support EPUB file (I would have to convert them to MOBI). The reason why most of the devices wont do what I want is because they run on a closed OS. This made me wonder why there are not ebook readers that run Android and...

I read the comment from Tom which put me on right track. Rather than google for ebook readers that do all that I want (which gives poor results), why not google for a E ink Android tablets. I did that right away and I found those two devices: Onyx Boox M96, Onyx Boox T68.

At first I was considering buying Onyx Boox M96, since the display is bigger. However lack of touchscreen (you have to use stylus) and high price turned me off. I'm probably going to buy the smaller Onyx Boox T68 (despite the higher resolution, the smaller screen will probably make reading comic books slightly annoying).

Jade Reader does exactly what I want in terms of Japanese text and it's actually compatible with the Onyx Boox T68. The app could use some improvements (splitting text into pages, the dictionary popup should take into account the position of selected text, now it can shows up always on the bottom of the screen and appear on top of the text you were reading).


Kindle Voyage does not show book transferred under Calibre I have a Kindle Voyage. I tried to transfer an AZW3 or MOBI book with 17MB size
to it using Calibre. This book was previously converted from EPUB.

But it does not appear in my Kindle Voyage. I have tried both hard and soft restart.
I checked the file folder, the book does exist. Currently I have around ~750books in my Kindle Voyage.

Other book has no problem appearing in my Kindle.

How can I resolve this issue?

One of the reasons this can happen is if the Calibre "convert to MOBI" preferences form has the Personal Dog tag set to [PDOC]. Then it will not show up in some versions of Kindle in the list of "Books", but it will still appear under "Documents".

Is not possible to change this tag using Calibre. A workaround is to convert it back to EPUB and then again to MOBI, this time making sure that the Personal Dog tag is set to [EBOK] or not set at all.

This thread has a nice discussion of the issue.


looking for an easy way to look up possible values for Dublin Core Metadata Element Set etc I'm looking for an easy way to look up possible values for Dublin Core Metadata Element Set elements and so on.
For example, a metadata element (sorry if my terminology is wrong here) might be:

<dc:language>en-US</dc:language>

.  How do I find out if, for example, an accepted alternative value here is en-AU or something else, i.e.:

<dc:language>en-AU</dc:language>

I've looked here: http://wiki.dublincore.org/index.php/User_Guide/Publishing_Metadata#dc:language ( and here http://www.idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-publications.html).

Thanks for any help.

Sigil (freeware) will automatically insert the proper metadata entries for epub3 (and epub2) books.

(You'll have to delete the default dc:language en entry.
Then click Add Metadata, OK and select the language.)

AFAIK, it supports all metadata entries listed in the epub3 and epub2 specs.


Which distributor do authors prefer I purchase from? I own a Kindle Paperwhite, and until now I've unthinkingly bought all my ebooks from Amazon.

It recently occurred to me that since ebook distributors take on no risk when making a book available, it doesn't seem fair that they should be earning a percentage of the author's profits (rather than a small monthly flat rate for hosting content and making it available).

I'm curious which site pays authors the highest royalties for ebooks.  I'd much rather support the author with my ebook purchases than the distributor.

I always buy from an author's website directly if he or she has one. Then there is no distributor or retailer fee paid by the publisher and author. Not many authors have this I know!


I only see the download links for DRMed ebooks on my Kobo Library Am I not allowed to download copies of DRM-free books? Do I have to use the app to view them?

So I messaged Kobo's customer service and got this response

  Thank you for contacting Kobo Customer Care. We are more than happy to
  assist you.

  The book(s) you have purchased have been released by the publisher in
  the new ePub3 format, which can only be synced through the Kobo cloud.
  If you are not using a Kobo device or application, you will not be
  able to add this book manually. Additionally, ePub3 books are not
  compatible with some of our older Kobo devices such as the Original,
  Wifi, and Vox, nor the Kobo app on a Blackberry device.

  We apologize for this inconvenience and would be happy to offer you a
  store credit or refund. Please reply to this email and let us know
  which you would prefer.

I thought ePub3 is a standard? But I guess that's another issue entirely. At least now I know why those download links were missing.


Under what conditions should I apply for ISBN numbers for digital works? An organization I work with has a few (non English) original works that I will be helping them to publish online and in eBook format. We do hold the publishing rights for these as they are basically compilations of works written in-house (or in one case a translation with modification of public domain material).

Does it make sense to apply for ISBN numbers for works that are compiled into a book format if they will only be published in digital format and self distributed rather than published in a store?

Note the following -

A print book ISBN cannot be reused for the eBook
Separate ISBN for each type of format. Kindle, ePub, audio, print (paperback, hard cover), etc. are separate formats and each requires its own ISBN.
If we change the book beyond typos and we need a new ISBN.
We do not need an ISBN (its not mandatory) to publish using Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Apple or Kobo. Each stores assigns its own code
Unless we are making minor changes like fixing typos, we need to assign a new ISBN. Adding more information or changing information requires a new ISBN.
Make sure that complete information for each ISBN assignment is given to your ISBN Authority. This is very important! The data is shared with book industry databases such as libraries and other retailers. Without it, they won’t know the book exists should someone ask for it.
Author can put all the numbers together on the copyright page or add the appropriate ISBN to the file type we are publishing.
For example:
ISBN 13: 978-0-9999999-9-9 (Paperback edition)
ISBN 13: 978-0-9999999-9-9 (Kindle edition)
ISBN 13: 978-0-9999999-9-9 (ePub edition)

Source: http://www.sellbox.com/isbn-essentials-an-faq-for-ebook-publishers/ & Internet


Calibre - switching title and series column I have a problem with Calibre. I have imported many ebooks and the metadata were taken from the file name. In most cases the file name was author - title.epub. All went well, the metadata were imported correctly to Calibre.

The problem is: For books which are part of a series, Calibre added the title of the book to the series column whereas the name of the series is in the title column. (Therefore searching for metadata e.g. comments on the net is not working because Calibre does not know that the title is found in the series column.)

Example: Author: Agatha Christie - Series: Hercule Poirot Mystery - Title: Death on the Nile. "Death on the Nile" would be in the series column, "Hercule Poirot Mystery" in the title column.

Is there a one-click solution to switch the title and series columns for several books? Or is there a specific setting that has to be used during the metadata downloading process that tells Calibre that the book title is in the series column?

P.S.: Reimporting the books is not an option for me for I don't have the files anymore.

No, there isn't a one click solution for swapping series and title. You can only swap title and author (in bulk metadata edit mode). If you want to automate this you have to write a (small) program that reads the metadata file (which is XML), does the swap for you, and feed it the offending files.

Not helpful for the files you already imported but maybe useful to know for new ones, is that you can change the regular expression ( Preferences -> Adding Books) that tries to extract metadata from the filename. The default there however does not put something in the series field, so you might already have changed that.

Biggest problem IMO is that Calibre uses the filename to guess the author/title etc, even if you add a file which has correct metadata available. I normally don't use Calibre's drag and drop feature, instead relying on programmatically adding files with the metadata extracted from the file internal data (for PDF/Epub etc) when available.


How insert the outline (the bookmarks) into DjVu How insert the outline (the bookmarks) into DjVu file for easier browsing in a document using the DjVuLibre library?

With such a structure:

"TOC" level 1 => link to pageNumber
"Chapter name" level 1 => link to pageNumber

"Chapter name" level 2 => link to pageNumber

"Chapter name" level 1 => link to pageNumber

"Chapter name" level 2 => link to pageNumber

"Chapter name" level 3 => link to pageNumber

"Chapter name" level 1 => link to pageNumber
...

First, create your desired structure in a text editor.

On the first line will be placed keyword bookmarks in round brackets as a root.

Behind the chapter titles are located page numbers or page names (with a suffix .djvu). Before the number must be symbol sharp #. All parameters are enclosed in quotation marks "".

Lower order chapters are created by embedding additional round brackets behind higher order chapter.

Sample with page numbers:

(bookmarks
    ("TOC" "#3")
    ("Chapter 1 - Blabla" "#7"
        ("Subchapter 1.1 - Blabla" "#11")
    )
    ("Chapter 2 - Blabla" "#15"
        ("Subchapter 2.1 - Blabla" "#17"
            ("Subchapter 2.1.1 - Blabla" "#20")
        )
    )
    ("Chapter 3 - Blabla" "#25")
)

Sample with page names (with a suffix .djvu):

(bookmarks
    ("TOC" "#page_0003.djvu")
    ("Chapter 1 - Blabla" "#page_0007.djvu"
        ("Subchapter 1.1 - Blabla" "#page_00011.djvu")
    )
    ("Chapter 2 - Blabla" "#page_00015.djvu"
        ("Subchapter 2.1 - Blabla" "#page_00017.djvu"
            ("Subchapter 2.1.1 - Blabla" "#page_00020.djvu")
        )
    )
    ("Chapter 3 - Blabla" "#page_00025.djvu")
)

Caution: Save the file in UTF-8.

Second, paste the created outline text file into the selected DjVu file.

Install the DjVuLibre library (if you do not already have it).
From the library we use djvused tool.

At the command prompt, type:

path\djvused path\book.djvu -e "set-outline path\outline.txt" -s

Instead path parameter substitute your location on the disk.
Parameter -e is the exec (system call) of the set-outline command with the filename parameter.
Parameter -s is save command.

Press Enter...


What settings are the most energy efficient on a Nook Color? I have seen some touch screen readers that have a gray on black background scheme that helps to reduce the power consumption and increase battery life. But those settings do not really exist on the Nook Color that I can find.  What setting is more efficient, and does it save any significant amount of battery life? Is there any way to do a custom color set?

Generally, the best way to save battery on a NOOK Color (or any device) is to:

Lower the brightness
Turn off Wifi and Bluetooth unless necessary

These two steps can more than double your battery life on some devices.


How can I make my highlights span multiple pages in Google Play? I highlight my books a lot. When I come to a real articulate statement that spans multiple pages sometimes I rotate the screen to reach the end of the text of interest. However even that technique fails at times. How can I select text across multiple pages?

2 possible solutions or workarounds.

First, if viewing GPB in a web browser, it is easier to highlight text on more than one page. (I was able to do it).

Second, one workaround on a device might be to reduce text size to the smallest possible size, so that the maximum amount of text is on one book page.


Can I view books scanned to PDF on Kindle Classic? I have many books scanned to PDF (the content are the graphic images, no OCR processing). Will Kindle Classic be able to view such PDFs? Aren't they too heavy? Acrobat Reader on my old smartphone crashes when trying to open them.

The kindle device is generally able to open PDF containing pages scanned to graphic images.

My Kindle Classic generally loads them without any problem, but if they are scanned to too high resolution or contain high resolution graphics, it crashes, so such heavy PDFs will be an issue. Maybe newest devices, such as Kindle Paperwhite, having more processing power, will handle them better.

Note also that 2-pages scans will be very high to read. On Kindle Classic you can display them as fit-to-page, which may be impossible/too hard to read, or you can use zoom, which is very uncomfortable to work with.

So I'd answer, yes, as long you have single-page scans scanned to moderate resolution.


Are Tor Ebooks DRM Free? Tor has made a few statements in the past about going DRM Free.
Does that carry through to downstream retailers?

If I buy a Tor book on Amazon (marketed as a Kindle book) or on Barnes and Noble (marketed it as a Nook book), can I be confident that it will have no DRM?
I know that I can use it on any device (in my case Sony Reader).

Does it depend on country?
Is there anything else I should consider?

I am having real trouble finding sites that clearly state: We are selling a DRM free Epub. Most use terms like Nook book and Kindle book etc. I found one site that was clear, and they don't sell to my country.

Go to the original statement. This includes

  Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor and Forge, is pleased to announce that all of their ebooks are now available DRM-free from Amazon, B&N, Apple, Kobo, Google, and most other major ebook retailers.

and

  The new DRM-free editions are available from the same retailers that have sold Tor e-books in the past. In addition, the company expects to begin selling titles through retailers that sell only DRM-free books.

I think I have seen comments on web sites etc where a book was not DRM-free and Tor then contacted the supplier to change it.

So, yes, they are DRM-free.

As for shop websites telling whether books have DRM see other questions here.


Can Nook Read Kobo Books and Vise Versa? I've been a Kindle user for years, but have had some frustration with Amazon lately and am thinking I want to diversify a bit by buying some other eReader. If I understand correctly, both Nook and Kobo use Adobe Digital Editions. If that is true, does that mean I should be able to load books bought from Barnes and Noble on a Kobo (or books bought from Kobo on a Nook)? Kobo seems to allude to this, especially since, unless I'm missing something, the Nook store and Kobo store are the only two major Adobe Digital Editions options. On the other hand, I haven't found anyone one specifically speaking to Kobo/Nook compatibility.

Both NOOK and Kobo have a variety of book formats in common, such EPUB and Adobe PDF. Kobo can use Adobe Digital Editions, but Barnes and Noble states, "NOOK Books from Barnes & Noble cannot be read on your Kobo eReader." However, B&N states the converse works, i.e., transferring ebooks from Kobo to NOOK. It is possible to read DRM NOOK books on Kobo by the legally-questionable removal of DRM.
That said, for books without DRM, such as the many public-domain offerings on Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, and publishers of copyright-protected, but not DRM locked, ebooks, such as Baen Books, texts can be transferred between devices using software such as the excellent Calibre application.
Using Calibre or other tool, it's also possible to change the format of a book, such as Kindle's MOBI to NOOK and Kobo EPUB, or vice-versa. (Note that PDF is somewhat a dead-end: while it is easy to convert documents to PDF, going from PDF to another format is not always successful.)


What is a good ebook for learning the English language? I need an ereader application or ebook that can help me learn the English language.

I think this is question that a simple search with Google can solve, as I did very easy: https://www.myenglishteacher.eu/blog/best-e-books-to-learn-english/

I suppose there are plenty of applications an Android store, sort of speaking.


How can I display 'word count' in Calibre while browsing my Library? I use Calibre, to manage my library of eBooks.  It is easy to include the size of the book, but with images and such that can be misleading.   I notice on Smashwords they often include a word count in the books in the description.  Is the word count an attribute that Calibre can display?  If so how?

This is not straightforward but there is a Calibre extension that you can install : Count Pages (it counts pages but it also counts words). It works only for MOBI and EPUB files so it won't be able to show the word count of books you have only in Amazon Kindle format for instance.

First you need to install Count Pages :

In Calibre Preferences window, go to Extensions, then click on Get new extension modules
Look for Count Pages and install it

You also have to create a custom column :

In the Preferences window, click on Add a custom column and then on the + button
Name the column "Words" for instance (the first field is used for advanced search and does not allow capitals so you can enter "words")
Select Integer as the column type
Create the column and apply changes
Check that the column now shows up in your library (but it is empty and you need to populate it)

Finally, use Count Pages to populate your new column :

You should have a new Count pages button in the main menu : Select Customize the extension module in the drop-down list
In the Word count options select your custom column
You don't need to bother with the other options but you could create a "page" count column too if you'd like
Select all the books you need counted and click on the Count pages main menu button
You might get an error message saying that it could not process x books because it did not find them in a supported format
It takes a while because the plugin needs to open and process each file
Your column finally gets updated.

Each time you add a new book in the library you will need to use that Count Pages button to fill in the column for this book.

Calibre will need to be restarted several times in the process. My Calibre is in French so the words I used in my answer might not exactly be the ones used in the English interface, sorry.


Within Calibre, is it possible to set a hierarchy on the series field? Calibre supports hierarchical tags, by placing a dot between the parent and the children tags, like, in example: History.Ancient History, History.Middle Ages, and so on.

In the navigator panel on the left, this is displayed like this:

History
|- Ancient History
|- Middle Ages

I'm trying to find out it it is possible to have this feature even to fields that are not marked as "tags", specifically to the "series" field, to categorize book series in to broader cycles (useful for book series like the Videssos Cycle by Harry Turtledove, where you have multiple series belonging to the same universe).

I've tried to use the dot like in the tags field, but it doesn't work.

Someone knows if it is possible to do that in some way?

According to the Calibre manual, the series field, amongst many other, supports a hierarchy by using a dot between the parent and children tag.

This behavior should be enabled in the options panel:


When shopping for ebooks on Amazon how do I tell if they have DRM? Some books sold on Amazon have DRM and some do not.  But "DRM" is not listed anyplace on the book descriptions that I have been able to find.  How can I know before I buy an ebook from Amazon if it has DRM?

Books that have "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited" listed under "Product Details" do not have DRM (Digital rights management). Those without this disclaimer have DRM.


How do I remove tiles from the Kobo home screen? With the newest update to my Kobo Glo, instead of the old tiles where I could just long press on something and get an option to remove it, I can't seem to do that anymore.

There's this "Take a Quick Tour" image/button that now takes up almost 1/4 of my screen on my home screen - I don't need to take the tour! I've had this device for a long time.

I tried taking the tour to see if that would disappear after, and it didn't. I tried long pressing on it to see if that would let me remove it like I could with the tiles in the old update, no option comes up.

Is there any way to get rid of this? It's frustrating, and I don't need it.

There is a plugin for Calibre called Kobo Utilities that can dismiss unwanted tiles from the Home screen.

  The Kobo Utilities Plugin adds extra function to calibre for working
  with Kobo WiFi, Touch, Glo, Mini, Aura, Aura HD, Aura H2O and Glo HD
  eReaders. This will allow changes on the eReaders that either cannot
  otherwise be made or will make them easier to do.

  The current functions of the plugin are:

  Set/Remove font settings for specific books.
  Dismiss tiles from tiled home screen.
  Update metadata directly to the database on the device.
  Change the reading status.
  Manage series info for books on the device. This is mainly for books not in the calibre library including kepubs.
  Store/record current reading position for ePubs. This can be done manually or automatically when the Kobo ereader is connected. Profiles
  can be used to manage the reading positions of multiple devices.
  Upload/Remove covers for all books in the library. This includes kepubs.
  A couple of annotations options that I'm not happy with.
  List the books missing from the device database. This only lists the books that calibre thinks should be in the database.
  Backup the device database.
  Run integrity check on the database. It doesn't fix anything, but it tells you if the database is OK or not.
  Clean up duplicate shelves.
  Remove annotations files.
  Set "Related books" for sideloaded books.


How can I add custom fonts to my Kobo ereader? Is it possible to add custom fonts to my Kobo ereader? How can I do that?

Yes, custom fonts are easily added to any ereader of the Kobo family. An article on MobileRead fully explain how.

  Fonts can be be very easily added to the Kobo family of eReaders. With
  the Kobo attached to your computer, create a new directory called
  fonts in the root directory of the device (the same location as the
  .kobo, .adobe-digital-editions and Digital Editions directories.

  Once this directory has been created, simply copy entire font families
  into it.

  A font family consists of four files; one each for Regular, Italic,
  Bold and BoldItalic.

  The font should be
  named the same as the system sees the font, so in the case of Linux
  Libertine, it's exactly that. You'll have 4 different font file, and
  you want to name each one in the style <Font Name>-<Font Weight>, so
  for Linux Libertine, you should have 4 files:

  Linux Libertine.ttf (or Linux Libertine-Regular.ttf)
  Linux Libertine-Italic.ttf
  Linux Libertine-Bold.ttf
  Linux Libertine-BoldItalic.ttf

  For many fonts, the name can simply be what you'd expect it to be, but
  for some, the actual font name is different than what seems obvious.
  And you are correct, all these files go into a folder called "fonts"
  on your Kobo.


Any way to find a lost Kindle inside a house? I left a Kindle Paperwhite with my mom a month ago and it disappeared in the house, probably in between books somewhere. I know it still connects to wifi and receives documents through the kindle email at least once a day, so it has some battery left.

Is there any call home, lost beep, or similar feature I could use to help focus the search?

At worst I thought of setting up some laptops/phones sniffing packages and broadcast strength coming from the kindle's mac address (it shows up every once in a while in the router logs) and triangulate that to have a gross estimation of the location. Any idea on which software would be the most appropriate for it (ideally for ubuntu/android/windows)?

Thank you for your answers before the battery runs out

The OP's solution is below. Adding as a community wiki Answer and removing the solution edits from the Question.

Found the Kindle using the sniffing technique described below. However I'd still like to know if there's a way to find it that's less overkill.

I discovered that the Kindle updates its contents daily while in deep sleep around 5:30-6:30AM. So I set up the delivery of a biggish pdf file through the kindle email so I'd ensure a long enough connection, end set up three laptops with a Kali Linux running live with airodump sniffing packages (modified from here: http://www.androidauthority.com/capture-data-open-wi-fi-726356/  )

The following procedure can be used to physically find any active wifi device connected to a network:

Three lines of code in the terminal in at least three Kali Linux running devices (2D location, at least 4 receivers out of plane for 3D):

To start monitor mode on a wifi card (in this case wlan0, check on iwconfig if needed):

airmon-ng start wlan0

Airmon usually changes the card name to wlan[n]mon after this. Check the wifi interface name on iwconfig and modify accordingly if the next line returns a related error.

Then run airodump to find your wifi network and its channel:

airodump-ng wlan0mon

Enter Ctrl-C to end the capture once you note the desired network's channel

Run the following line to run airodump again only at the specified channel and record the data to the "allthedata.csv" file in the terminal directory (usually the root for a live cd/usb if you didn't change it). Replace the square brackets by the channel number:

airodump-ng -c [channel number 1, 6 or 11 usually] -w allthedata wlan0mon

I started the pcs before going to sleep and as I woke up a bit past the usual update time, I hit ctrl-C to stop the capture and looked up the device on the allthedata.csv files by its MAC number which can be obtained at the router logs. There are in fact 4 allthedata files with different extensions per capture, and on the xml you can find the manufacturer of the device in the logs, so even if you don't know the mac address by looking up an Amazon branded device connected to your router you may find the Kindle entry.

At the Kindle entry, find the signal strength value and note it for all the receiver computers.
Then convert the values from dbm to mW using the following formula: mW=10^(dBm/10)*1000.

To triangulate the signal (for a 2D location), draw a chart with the position of the laptop wifi receivers and for every pair of receivers, draw a line perpendicular to the line going through the points in a point inversely proportional to the square root of the mW power values, as the signal drops of proportionally to the square of the distance (for 3D use at least 4 receivers and a surface between the points).

The lines should cross at the source of the emission - the Kindle was at a closet in this case. The margin of error was about 1m/3ft even with several concrete/brick walls in between the receivers and the emission.

Notes:

This simplified location approach is only possible if the emitter is located in between the receivers, that is, a three-set of receivers (2D) form a triangle that has the emitter inside it.
Different receivers might have different antenna gains and correcting for it will greatly increase accuracy. A quick and dirty way of doing so is positioning the receivers at the same position from a constant power emitter (wifi router, for example) and using the signal strength value difference between them as a calibration factor to be subtracted it from the signals received afterwards.


After I scanned(destructive) book: What are the steps to create a proper kindle ebook? I have a book that is not available in .mobi or .epub .
I want to convert it into ebook for Kindle.
I scanned all the pages.
What else should I do next?

I've done work for pgdp.net, which is Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreading. Here are the steps if you're not going through PGDP.

I'm assuming you scanned each page into a separate image. You might want to put all these images into a PDF file. You will probably have to cut  the pages out of the book so they lay perfectly flat on the scanner. A scan of a curved page is a huge source of OCR errors.
Use OCR to extract the text from the images and save book to a text file. Depending on the font, the smudges in the images, and other factors like straightness of lines of text, you might get 70-90% accuracy.
Proofread by hand every word.
Construct ebook in the format you want. I markup my text files with MultiMarkdown, and then I have a program which converts that to an EPUB. I just like MMD better than editing HTML.

Abbyy Finereader is one of the best OCR programs out there but pricey. Here is a site where you can OCR a few pages using their software, but there are limits.

If you have a PDF full of images (which is what much of the free books in Google Books is) try doing OCR at this site, again there may be limits to PDF file size you upload.

All in all, proofreading is a very time-consuming task.

EDIT: PGDP does not allow requests to digitize books. They have their own queue which they work on. However, Captcha is a way to crowd source digitizing books. They supposedly did many Google books, but I can't find that many there were actually edited. If you use Captcha to crowd source proofreading, it might cost you money. That depends if you use their service or if you are able to install the software yourself.

I found the Captcha concept to be fascinating, and the author/inventor even has a  TED talk.


If I buy a Kindle Paperwhite do I have to get books from Amazon? If I have a kindle paperwhite, am I limited to books from Amazon?  Can I purchase or download books from other sources/retailers?

Kindle devices allow you to load non-Amazon files onto them; you can copy them directly to your device using a micro-USB cable, or have them sent to your device wirelessly, through Amazon's Kindle Personal Documents service.

You are limited to the types of files supported on the Kindle: at present, these are .azw, .azw1, .txt, .mobi, and .prc. In addition, Kindle can read .pdf files (but these keep the pre-formatted paging and layout of the original file, rather than the dynamic/flowing text of an ebook.)

It is extremely easy to convert files into Kindle-supported formats from other popular formats -- such as .epub files, Word documents, and web pages. Amazon's Personal Documents Service can help you with transfer and conversion, and Calibre is an extremely popular tool for ebook-management which provides such conversions easily. PDF files which are mostly text are also quite easy to convert to a supported ebook format.

The one big wrinkle in the all-around compatibility I'm describing here is that books protected by DRM (a Digital Rights Management scheme), the DRM prevents it from being converted into different formats. So an ebook you buy at barnesandnoble.com, which is formatted and protected exclusively for the B&N Nook e-reader, cannot be easily converted for the Kindle.

Many major ebook retailers rely on DRM to help "lock you in" to their specific device, platform, and store. So basically, ebooks you get at non-Amazon stores are unlikely to be compatible with the Kindle (unless they specifically note that the ebook has no DRM), whereas ebooks from other sources (e.g. the out-of-copyright classics at Project Gutenberg, or ebooks you create yourself using a service like Instapaper) should present no difficulty.


How to rename epubs when the file name is a numeric string? I have a number of EPUB titles that need renaming, from the likes of "1631214659.epub" to "Moon's Napa and Sonoma" and so on. They load into Calibre under their actual titles, but I still need to rename the source file appropriately for archiving. I've tried copying each file's string of identifier numbers into Google after the search term EPUB, and that usually works, but then I have to copy the resulting title text string and paste it into the file name each time. I'm wondering if there's an app that "reads" the file and can display or even change the book title on the fly.

I know nothing about ebook conversion beyond what Calibre affords, so if the info is viewable that way, I've missed it.

I wrote a small python script to do that.
pip install epub
Install the epub library and run the below script with a sibling directory containing all your epub files to be renamed.
import os
import glob
import epub

dirName = "books" #the folder containing your epub files, should be in the
                  #directory which contains the script.

for File in glob.glob(dirName + "\\*.epub"):
    with epub.open_epub(File) as book:
        title = book.opf.metadata.titles[0][0]

    os.rename(File, dirName + "\\" + title + ".epub")

Note : The title should not be too long (not exceeding your os' filename limit).


convert mobi to epub Can somebody help me convert this mobi file into a different format, such as pdf/epub?

I've tried both online services and software, but it fails and even freezes in readers as the file is too many pages long; therefore dividing it into several smaller redable files would help

Here's the link to the file: aHR0cHM6Ly9hbm9ueW1vdXNmaWxlcy5pby9JQ0k5dHpCQy8=

Here's the error message that pops up when trying to convert it using Calibre in Windows 7
https://textsaver.flap.tv/lists/2ukh

Calibre (free, open source) can convert between various formats, including mobi to epub.

https://calibre-ebook.com/

The command-line ebook-convert is also a part of Calibre:

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/generated/en/ebook-convert.html

Also, there are third party tools to enable Calibre to remove DRM, if that is needed.

https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/


Overriding Device Styles On some epub devices, you can change the background color to black, with the font switching to white. My iBook program allows four distinct styles.

Is there a way to override these styles for particular elements? For example, I'm converting a book that's in the public domain to an epub. I'm adding a few notes, which I style (red text) to indicate those notes were written by me, not the original author.

But if I switch to dark mode, my styles are lost. If I insert a style directly into my text, like this...

Make me yellow!

...even that is overriden.

Is there a special CSS style that can override these custom backgrounds, or are the backgrounds controlled by JavaScript or some other programming language?

P.S. There is at least one workaround of sorts. Device styles don't appear to affect border colors. If I style a paragraph with a red border, for example, then the border remains red when I preview my epub. I haven't tested it in all devices, however.

Every device works in a different way, I don't think that there are standards regarding the programming of the software that they are equipped with.

Besides that, almost every e-reading device and software allow some form of user customization over the display of the text, and AFAIK, you can't prevent this by coding inside the ebook. If you use styles that serve some functional purpose and not just for aesthetics (like your example, to differentiate between different kind of notes), your best option is to add a disclaimer on the first pages stating that if the user chooses to apply his customization, the intended experience/functionality can be compromised.

Usually the ereader, to know how to display the text, looks for these things in this order:

User customization of the ereader
Styles as defined in the CSS inside the ebook
The default ereader settings

Furthermore, keep in mind that often ebooks are read on B&W eink devices that can't display colored text.

If you need to differentiate between, i.e., author's notes and editor's notes, I would use some kind of abbreviation like A.N. and E.N, or a different font style setting (i.e. normal and italic, a different font), and with a disclaimer like said before.


Can epub software be used to create an online web document? I would like to create an online web document consisting of HTML files, image files, and PDF files. I want the document to be directly viewable in browsers with no plugin or special server support.

I am wondering whether epub software, such as Sigil, could be a good way to create such a document. Sigil has good editing tools and can manage a collection of files, but I would need a way to export the files in a form suitable for use on a web server. I do not want to use anything complicated like a content management system.

Is this a feasible approach, and how can the epub file be converted to a file tree for the web server?

SIGIL is probably not your best tool for creating static HTML files although it's not impossible.

The main goal of sigil is to produce an epub file, and to read an epub in the browser, you'd need to install a special extension (Readium).

If you get down to it, epubs solve a navigation problem -- of flipping between chapters and of creating a TOC.

On the other hand, an epub is just a zip of html files and some extra navigation stuff.  I build my epub files in another way (Docbook XML --> static HTML --> EPUB) -- but when testing/editing, I view each chapter and the table of contents web page in a browser.

I don't know if Sigil has a button to turn your files into an epub file, but my guess is that at some point, the chapters and TOC exist as  HTML files. Even if they don't, you could simply rename the .epub to .zip and then unzip.

The file tree for epubs are fairly standard; here's what's generally inside.

OEBPS

1.html
toc.html
2.html
my.css
images/

META-INF (navigation stuff and metadata inside)

You could just ftp the oepbs directory to your website and you'd have all the static pages there (you might need to rename the toc.html to index.html so that's the default view. An index file in ebook usually doesn't refer to the TOC but the subject index at the end of the book.

So SIGIL could probably get the job done (and is especially recommended if you are using internal links between web pages), but a simple html editor would work just as well. (Heck, even MS Word to HTML could do the job, although you'd have to live with ugly code).


Calibre changes font coverting AZW book to EPUB I'm trying to convert an azw book to epub. Calibre completes the conversion with no problem, but the font has changed (to something ugly). I know I can use the look and feel settings to fix this, but I'm curious why this is happening. When I look inside the resulting epub file, I find a number of .ttf files with names like 00001.ttf in the fonts folder, but when I try to open one, I get a message "invalid font file". The CSS refers to the font E B Garamond, which I don't have (though I do have Garamond).

I can use the look and feel settings to substitute the Garamond font, but why are invalid font files be written? Why does the CSS name a font not present in the file?

You are best served to ask this in the Calibre Support forum on MobileRead.com.  Calibre author Kovid Goyal is an active participant.  See https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=166

MobileRead is a privately funded site with free signup.  It's the single best site I am aware of for all things eBook.

(Disclaimer: I am on staff and a moderator, thus biased. :-) )


How do I return a borrowed Kindle book? A friend lent me a Kindle book and we both received a notification that the loan was for 14 days.  I've finished the book early, reading it on my Kindle Paperwhite, and would like to return it to the lender, but I don't see a way to do that.  I wasn't prompted about this when I got to the end of the book and the book menu doesn't have a "return" option.  If I remove it from my device does that return it, or would that just make it unavailable to both of us?  (I don't want to experiment.)

To return a loaned Kindle book:

Go to Manage Your Content and Devices.
Select the Actions button
next to the borrowed book, and then select Delete from library.
Click Yes to confirm the return.

source


Windows explorer - preview thumbnail of MOBI and AZW files I am able to preview epub thumbnail on windows explorer via CBX Shell. However, MOBI and AZW files didn't have a thumbnail. How to solve the problem? Should I convert to epub files?

If you have a Windows machine, MobiHandler should work for you.


Calibre for metadata scraping I'm looking for a way to do a very specific task in Calibre but maybe it's not the right software.

I know there are plugins/functionality to automatically collect metadata for existing ebooks and to get information for fields such as Author, Title, Year of publication, Tags, all based on information taken from the file's name.

Is there a plugin/way for Calibre to scrape a bit of the book and try to match it's contents with some book through some search engine? Basically I want it to automatically scrape metadata without being constrained to the file name.

Yes, a calibre plugin could do that. Does one?  Not that I know of!

You could look at the Extract ISBN plugin (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=126727) for an example of pulling data out of the ePub, and any of the metadata search plugins for how to then use the information you've found in a web search.


References in e-books and printed books: Common style for both? If so, which one fits both media? Preface

There are many styles to handle references to other books (or websites) in printed media. The style preference also seems to differ between e.g. science and humanities.

In e-books references can be styled in the same way as in printed books, just with a hyperlink below the short-name (or number) of the reference.

For an IT specialist publication planned to be published as printed book and as e-book, I intended to use the same style of references into the bibliography as I'm used from writing papers in computer science:

  As you can see in [foobar93], [fnord95] and [example.com], foo and bar …

And then in the bibliography at the end of the book:

  [foobar93] Interpretations of Something; Foo, Bar, et al.; 1993; Bla & Co Publishers

  [fnord95] Why Something is Wrong; Fnord; 1995; Blubble Pub

  [example.com] Example Website; http://www.example.com/

But my publisher was quite unhappy with that style and suggested to use footnotes instead as it would be better for e-books. From my point of view this is just the same, just with smaller hyperlinks to click and more work for the author as he won't have a central bibliography and multiply mentioned references would need to be written multiple times manually:

  As you can see in Interpretations of Something¹, Why Something is Wrong² and the Example Website³, foo and bar …

And then usually on the bottom of the same page (science), or at the end of the chapter (humanities):

  ¹ Interpretations of Something; Foo, Bar, et al.; 1993; Bla & Co Publishers

  ² Why Something is Wrong; Fnord; 1995; Blubble Pub

  ³ Example Website; http://www.example.com/

So from my point of view visually bigger tag-like links seem to be better suited for e-books than footnotes in tiny fonts.

If the reference is just a website, a direct link to it (maybe visually marked as external link somehow) would be best for e-books, but is completely unsuitable for printed books.

The Question

Should a book which is published in print as well as electronically have the same references style in both types of media?

If so, is there a reference style known to be especially suited for both media?
If not, is there a recommendation how to phrase texts so that references always can be rendered in different styles? (Notice the additional "the" in the second example.)

Are there implementations of such separate styles for AsciiDoc or Markdown?

Note: When talking about e-books I primarily think of the formats PDF and epub.

I don't think there is any reference style suitable for both print and ebook. Certainly footnotes look better in printed books, though I think EndNotes would be a better compromise solution for both medias.

One problem with ebooks is that the semantics can be different when you are trying to come up with something resembling footnotes.

In epub3 there is a solution called  which has been used by ibooks and kindle to present Notes popups. See my remarks on this question: How to handle footnotes when working with epub files  I don't know if book design software (like Indesign) can be configured to output these things as asides in epubs but footnotes in printed books.

I use a branch of XML (called Docbook XML) which allows for (printed) footnotes and (HTML) endnotes to be output from the same source. See http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/Footnotes.html Configuring this solution is not easy although I have done it..... To my knowledge Docbook xsl does not output footnotes into asides, although I will check on that.

As for styling, obviously you can do it easily in HTML/epub, while in software for printing book design you may have to apply the style manually.

The key problem is that print solution can't implement a footnote easily and cross platform. In the answer I gave before (see above URL) I recommended waiting until ASIDES were formally supported in KF8 before I start doing them. (although a popup note certainly sounds good in theory).


How is math displayed on Kindles? I'm guessing it's through MathML. MathML is a W3 standard technology for representing math as XML in documents. It's used on the web, and this thread seems to suggest support in Kindles.
I tried verifying it by visiting a webpage with MathML demo (note: Chrome doesn't support MathML, visit it on Firefox) and it didn't render well on Kindle. Though that may be a limitation of Kindle's experimental browsing rather than its ebook rendering
Does .mobi or any other file format supported by Kindle support math display?
If yes, then is it through MathML or some other technology?

I dont have the kindle device but i am using kindle app. Kindle app can not read mathematical notations.
Few months ago i bought the book Old and New Inequalitites Volume 2 by Vo Quoc Ba Can and Cosmin Pohoata. You can clearly see from the picture I understood nothing. Luckily i had an vietnamese version free so i understood it. I am also giving the pdf i converted from a kindle book to pdf. Here is the link below
Old and New Inequalitites Volume 2
you will see why i hate kindle


How do I filter out read items in a collection in Kindle? I read a lot of short material on my Kindle Oasis, which I add to a collection to remember reading them later. I want a way to get rid of read items in this collection.

At the risk of suggesting the obvious, why not create a collection called Already Read and move the item from your current collection to this one?

I realize that Oasis is e-ink, but on the Kindle app for android, moving things from one collection to another is relatively easy. The key thing is after you move it to this collection is (if you want this) to remove the ebook from that device. That allows the ebook to remain on the cloud while saving space on your device. ON my android app, book covers for files which are available on the Cloud but deleted on the device still show up -- so you never forget they are there.

If you are worried about making a mistake, you can move collections using the Content & Devices web page.


Differences and commonalities between publishing an ebook and a paper book Publishing a paper book, for example, requires paper, publishing an ebook usually requires an online store. Both require one or more writer(s). What are the (other) commonalities and differences in the publishing process (including especially those elements which influences the price)?

actually also publishing a paper book requires a store :-)

Off the top of my head, here there are some differences:

An ebook has no hard constraints in length: there is more freedom in deciding how long it would be.
Since an ebook is not printed, there is no minimum number of copies to prepare. Note that printing technologies differ wildly according to the number of copies printed; this means that you have to plan in advance the size of the run.
With an ebook you don't need place to store the printed copies.
An ebook is easier to search in for a specific passage.

On the other side:

With a paper book you have full control of the positioning of text in your pages. (True, if you publish your ebook as a pdf you would have the same control, but usually this defeats the advantages of having an ebook)
(for non-fiction) A paper book is easier to browse and to bookmark.


Do any CSS media queries work for Kindle ios app? In section 8.1.4 of the Kindle Formatting Guide, it provides an example of a css media query to target ipad devices. It looks like this:

@media (device-width: 768px) {}

But the example is unclear; is this a simple media query used when you upload epubs into the ibooks app? Or is this an actual query which is digested and followed  by the Kindle app on the ipad?

Are there any media queries which will be seen by Kindle for ios?

UPDATE: I've been investigating and testing some more. It seems that the heart of my question is how the Kindle app for ios handles collisions between "@media" and "@amzn-kf8" media queries. The Kindle documentation doesn't address this accurately. I'll post my findings soon.

Or is this an actual query which is digested and followed by the Kindle app on the ipad?

This is an actual media query that you can use in Kindle KF8 books.
For example, you could use the following code to display paragraphs in red if the orientation is changed to landscape.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
  "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">

  <title></title>

Media query test

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla ac tellus nunc.
  Phasellus imperdiet leo metus, et gravida lacus. Donec metus ligula, elementum at
  pellentesque pellentesque, suscipit ac nunc. Etiam lobortis, massa ac aliquam auctor,
  augue nisl sagittis urna, at dapibus tellus erat ullamcorper ligula.

Note that media queries only work with AZK (KF8) files. (Kindle Previewer will automatically generate an .azk file if you set the default device mode to Kindle for iPad/iPhone.)