German TTS for kindle PC Is it possible to listen an ebook with another language then english ?
If yes, how can I switch to german for example ?

The German Amazon (Amazon.de) is a good source for (German) Kindle audio books.  Die website wird www.amazon.de, dann verwenden Sie den Suchbegriff (auf Deutsch) "Kindle-Shop" --> "hörbücher kindle".

Ich hoffe, dies wird Ihnen helfen -- wenn du einen Kindle hast!


How to OCR tables of contents to proper outputs? Usually when OCR an table of content the columns are separated by a large space, so the outputs are not properly order. For example, for an table like this:

The output would be:

The Rank Function
Permutations of Atoms
Pure Set Theory and Axiom System ZF
3.5
3.6
3.7

I'd like it to be:

3.5 The Rank Function\112
3.6 Permutations of Atoms\116
3.7 Pure Set Theory and Axiom System ZF\118

But different TOCs has different the output patterns, so there is no way to build a regex script to automatically fix every book. The best approach is to fix it at the first place. But how?

Define what is: "fix it at the first place".

If you want to fix wrong output from OCR analysis, a simple solution on an infinite set of TOCs you will never make.
You will never apply all variations. You would have to create a machine learning algorithm that would analyze each TOC variant.

Or count substrings of the same characteristics (in simple TOC).

Chapter number
Chapter number
Chapter number
Chapter number
Chapter number
...

= 5

Chapter title
Chapter title
Chapter title
Chapter title
Chapter title
...

= 5

If you want to fix OCR analysis, it's a good to answer:
What OCR tool do you use?

For example, in Tesseract you can set, that text is processed by rows instead of columns.

Not really answer the question, but some books in Google Books have TOC:


How to convert Kindle format (.mobi or .azw) with annotations to PDF? I'm looking for a way to convert a Kindle book, with several annotations in it, to PDF format, so that my annotations are also saved in the PDF file.

Converting from .mobi or .azw to PDF seems pretty easy with Calibre, but is it possible to retain the annotations as well?

EDIT: How can I find Kindle locations in a PDF with the same text of the Kindle file? That is, how many characters or words are one location number? If this can be answered, I might be able to write a script to pass the annotations to the PDF file.

Thanks!

This might be helpful. http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/02/21/how-to-download-your-kindle-notes-and-highlights-and-export-them/

My guess is that because PDF is ultimately a fixed layout format, the annotations from Kindle won't mean anything in PDF because they would need to be placed in certain positions on the PDF. But ebook formats aren't really about positions but flexible reflowable text.

If it's possible to convert to PDF, it might be possible to build a calibre plugin to position the annotations as well... But someone would have to do it...

You should definitely try Installing Caliber on your desktop. It has options to convert ebooks from one format to another with ease . Your requirement will be efficiently handled by Caliber.


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

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

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

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

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

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

  no discernible increase in piracy on any of our titles

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

No advantages at all.

DRM don't block piracy but can increase it.

Customers who buy DRM protected books can have (and they have) problems with many e-readers and app.


What text format is least likely to clash with ebook formats? There are several different software products for collecting and formatting the electronic written word. Microsoft & Google, are two big names offering products, there are also many others.

Looking at some of the questions here on ebooks, it is obvious that all software is not created equal and some formats translate to other formats better than others.

If I want to write and save my work, with basic formatting. Only modifying; italics, bold & font size for chapter headers.  What software and/or file type, will be the most consistent when converting to ebook formats?

I want to be able to write, edit and provide basic formatting to my book, and not have to worry about doing a complete edit review for each ebook format I convert to.

TL;DR; In order not to worry about the output, you have to be sure of the input and the translation process into an ebook. The input has to show you everything that is there and hide nothing, and the translation process must be deterministic.

If you only need basic formatting and want it to be consistently converted, the best you can do is use a mark-up language like reStructured Text, markdown or DocBook.

The reason for this is that common word processors like Word¹ are what-you-see-is-all-you've-got: you often have no idea what the internal structure of a document is even though it shows "right" on the screen.

This happens e.g. when you have three words in italics, and select the middle one and set italics again. Is the internal structure such that italics ends after the first word and begins at the third; or does it end at the beginning of the second word (after the space) and start at the end of the second before the space; or is the second word just italics and does italics within italics mean: display non-italics? And what happens to this structure when you then deleted the second word?²

With a mark-up language the mark-up is explicit and you see what you do: where things start, where things end. The translation of mark-up gets you the same result every time, and that makes it predictable. And predictable means you know what you get as an end-result and you don't have to check it. At least it should not be a result after the first time using some construct ;-).

The preceeding isn't necessarily true for two documents that look the same in Word: they might have different internal structures, which translate to different output in an ebook.

For many people this is not a problem, as to how this differs depends on the the target ebook format. Formats that do less rendering of structure (such as image based ebook formats like DjVu, or typesetting oriented formats like PDF and DVI (LaTeX output)) are similar to output to a printer. Word has control over this, and makes it look the same whether it renders to screen, to the printer or to PDF. That is why you normally have no visual difference directly printing from Word, or generating a PDF and printing that.

This can be different  if your input text is translated in another mark-up, as in ebooks in EPUB, MOBI, etc. format. In that case knowing exactly what structure you started with is important as that may influence the output rendering. And that is where Word could get a different output for similar looking input, because there might be hidden elements, but something in a mark-up language will be the same if it looks the same, because there is nothing that is hidden.

The aforementioned example, which looks the same in Word could translate in one of the following HTML pieces (there are more possibilities, and this might be an oversimplification, but the I hope it conveys the principle):

abc def ghi → abc def ghi
abc def ghi → abc def ghi
abc def ghi → abc def ghi

If the output was to be LaTeX instead of HTML (where italics in italics switches back to non-italics) the third would look the same as the first two, and the inter-word spacing would differ after italics ends (it might be different in HTML rendering by Firefox as well, I just can't see it).

The conversion process should be deterministic, and it probably is for your purposes. However Knuth did do the calculation in TeX in integers because he argued that the floating point units in computers (at that time) where not deterministic enough because of rounding differences. IIRC this was to get the same result on different computers, so this is—hopefully—only an example of to what extremes people go to control the repeatability of their output.

For conversion of mark-up, have a look at Sphinx or pandoc. The former can generate output in PDF without having to install LaTeX, the latter has more in- and output formats. Both can generate HTML which you might use as a basis for MOBI as I have not seen any direct generation towards that of mark-up languages (but since I don't have a MOBI device, I have not really looked for that).

¹ I use Word here, but this applies to OpenOffice writer and similar editors as well

² I fear too many of us have edited documents only to have new text at the cursor have some font or formatting that we did not expect and is a result of some program internal formatting lurking invisible.

All the technically-savvy answers are wrong.
This is a business question, not a technical question.
Ask your publisher.
If you're really self-publishing, then go with the technical advice.

Read this rant by a professional writer.

If you mess up, fix it with the pandoc conversion program.


Adobe digital edition I want to create website for ebook vendor sell own ebook, And i looking for method for protect ebook, and i found adobe digital edition which can solve this because reader have to identify device with adobe, so i spend more time on the internet for find how to convert pdf or image for adobe digital edition. Unfortunately i cannot find it. Please help me solve that. "Can i convert pdf or image for adobe digital edition with drm"

Yeah, finally i'm found the answer. You can use adobe content server service for store your ebook when you upload to the server you will get ascm file for download the ebook and the ascm file can open on Adobe digital edition which the reader can download adobe digital edition in free program and reader have to identified device with adobe, so you can limit your ebook for use in personal cannot pass them to another.


Are there any solutions available for managing a corporate library of ebooks? My employer maintains a small library of technical books for developers. If there's a book we think would be useful for us, we typically buy a number of copies and place them in the library, where the employees can borrow them.

This works well for paperbooks, but with more and more people wanting to use ereaders or tablets to read, we are looking for a solution that solves the same problem, but for ebooks.

Ideally, it would be a solution that works with books from any publisher, and with any ereader/reader-app.

I've seen that Overdrive offers a corporate library service, but from the description I was able to find on their site, it seems rather limited and a bad fit for our needs.

In case it's relevant to the answers, we are located in Norway, but will typically purchase books in english from the US or UK.

PS.
If we were to ignore legal issues, we could simply set up calibre on a machine with the web-interface running, and add books when purchased. However, I believe this would at the very least land us in some very grey areas legally speaking.

There aren’t many choices. The most simple is to have a cloud-like space/service or simply a shared intranet directory. The need for controlling readers requires much more and is typically dependent on a special app or DRM. This issue is typically a thing for bigger companies like publishers or libraries (Adobe Content Server, Azardi Online).

If it is simple, small library it would need simple and strict rules. Otherwise the solution would be expensive, complex and annoying for you.

You could also try: Personal Book Space but I have no experiences with it.

I review books for my blog and I offer my readers my library to get the copy of the book themselves if they so choose. I did this by going to Goodreadsand syncing my purchased amazon books then using the free widget to put my goodreads library onto my website. It is one easy option until you find a better.


How to make Epub look good? I would like to design an ebook in InDesign but I am struggling with the formatting. The book it looks bad in epub format. I did research and I understand that flowing text will not be perfect because it will be adjusted by the user.

But how can I keep the basics like a line break after the paragraphs?

How to make the contents page look good besides just the blue links?

Are iPad dimensions the way to start designing or it does not matter what size I will start with because it will reflow anyway?

It will be published on Kindle and other publishing pages online. If it is not possible to do anything about the styling is it even worth to do it in InDesign?

Add this css to Indesign (this should be a text file but I'm not going to go through it and add four spaces to each line)

/*
This document has been created with Marked.app http://markedapp.com, Copyright 2011 Brett Terpstra

Please leave this notice in place, along with any additional credits below.

Title:  Manuscript
Author:  Brett Terpstra
Description:  Courier, Double-spaced
*/
body {
  -webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased;
  font: normal 1em/2.5em "Courier", monospace;
  margin: 4em 1in 1in 4em;
  width: auto; }

html > body {
  font-size: 12pt; }

h1 {
  text-align: center;
  font-size: 2.2857em;
  margin: .6563em 0; }

h2 {
  font-size: 1.7143em;
  margin: .875em 0; }

h3 {
  text-align: center;
  font-size: 1.5em;
  margin: 1em 0; }

h4 {
  font-size: 1.2857em;
  margin: 1.1667em 0; }

h5 {
  font-size: 1.15em;
  margin: 1.3em 0; }

h6 {
  font-size: 1em;
  margin: 1.5em 0; }

body, p, td, div {
  color: #111111;
  font-family: "Courier", monospace;
  word-wrap: break-word; }

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
  color: #111111;
  font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  line-height: 1.5em; }

a {
  color: #0d6ea1;
  text-decoration: none;
  -webkit-transition: color 0.2s ease-in-out;
  -moz-transition: color 0.2s ease-in-out;
  -o-transition: color 0.2s ease-in-out;
  -ms-transition: color 0.2s ease-in-out;
  transition: color 0.2s ease-in-out; }
  a:hover {
    color: #3593d9; }

.footnote {
  color: #0d6ea1;
  font-size: .8em;
  vertical-align: super; }

wrapper img {

max-width: 100%;
  height: auto; }

dd {
  margin-bottom: 1em; }

li > p:first-child {
  margin: 0; }

ul ul, ul ol {
  margin-bottom: .4em; }

caption, col, colgroup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr {
  border-spacing: 0; }

table {
  border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25);
  border-collapse: collapse;
  display: table;
  empty-cells: hide;
  margin: -1px 0 23px;
  padding: 0;
  table-layout: fixed; }

caption {
  display: table-caption;
  font-weight: 700; }

col {
  display: table-column; }

colgroup {
  display: table-column-group; }

tbody {
  display: table-row-group; }

tfoot {
  display: table-footer-group; }

thead {
  display: table-header-group; }

td, th {
  display: table-cell; }

tr {
  display: table-row; }

table th, table td {
  padding: 0 1em; }

table thead {
  background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15);
  border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15);
  border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); }

table tbody {
  background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05); }

table tfoot {
  background: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15);
  border: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15);
  border-top: 1px solid rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); }

figure {
  display: inline-block;
  position: relative;
  margin: 1em 0 2em; }

figcaption {
  font-style: italic;
  text-align: center;
  background: white;
  color: #666666;
  position: absolute;
  left: 0;
  bottom: -24px;
  width: 98%;
  padding: 1%;
  -webkit-transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out;
  -moz-transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out;
  -o-transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out;
  -ms-transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out;
  transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out; }

figure:hover > figcaption {
  /* background: rgba(0,0,0,1) */ }

.poetry pre {
  display: block;
  font-family: Georgia, Garamond, serif !important;
  font-style: italic;
  margin-left: 1em; }
  .poetry pre code {
    font-family: Georgia, Garamond, serif !important;
    word-break: break-all;
    word-break: break-word;
    /* Non standard for webkit */
    -webkit-hyphens: auto;
    -moz-hyphens: auto;
    hyphens: auto;
    white-space: pre-wrap; }

blockquote p {
  text-indent: 0;
  font-style: italic; }

sup, sub, a.footnote {
  font-size: 1.4ex;
  height: 0;
  line-height: 1;
  position: relative;
  vertical-align: super; }

sub {
  vertical-align: sub;
  top: -1px; }

blockquote+p {
  margin: 0;
  text-indent: 0;
  }

h2+p {
  margin: 0;
  text-indent: 0;
  }

p, h5 {
  margin: 0;
  text-indent: 1.5em;
  }

dt, th {
  font-weight: 700; }

table tr:nth-child(odd), table th:nth-child(odd), table td:nth-child(odd) {
  background: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.06); }

table tr:nth-child(even), table td:nth-child(even) {
  background: rgba(200, 200, 200, 0.25); }

@media print {
  body {
    overflow: auto; }

img, pre, blockquote, table, figure {
    page-break-inside: avoid; }

p {
    page-break-inside: auto; }

#wrapper {
    background: white;
    color: #303030;
    padding: 10px;
    position: relative;
    text-indent: 0; } }
@media screen {
  .inverted {
    background: #252a2a; }
    .inverted #wrapper {
      background: #252a2a; }
    .inverted hr {
      border-color: #333f40 !important; }
    .inverted p, .inverted td, .inverted li, .inverted h1, .inverted h2, .inverted h3, .inverted h4, .inverted h5, .inverted h6, .inverted pre, .inverted code, .inverted th, .inverted .math, .inverted caption, .inverted dt, .inverted dd {
      color: #eeeeee; }
    .inverted table {
      background: none; }
      .inverted table tr:nth-child(odd), .inverted table td:nth-child(odd) {
        background: none; }
    .inverted a {
      color: #acd1d5; }

::selection {
    background: rgba(157, 193, 200, 0.5); }

h1::selection {
    background-color: rgba(45, 156, 208, 0.3); }

h2::selection {
    background-color: rgba(90, 182, 224, 0.3); }

h3::selection, h4::selection, h5::selection, h6::selection, li::selection, ol::selection {
    background-color: rgba(133, 201, 232, 0.3); }

code::selection {
    background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7);
    color: #eee; }

code span::selection {
    background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.7) !important;
    color: #eee !important; }

a::selection {
    background-color: rgba(255, 230, 102, 0.2); }

.inverted a::selection {
    background-color: rgba(255, 230, 102, 0.6); }

td::selection, th::selection, caption::selection {
    background-color: rgba(180, 237, 95, 0.5); } }

The main advantage of Indesign is that it lets you publish a print version which can also be exported to an ebook format.

For ebook design you must deal with the limitations of reading systems --especially that of Kindle.

As a first step, it might help to have direct access to the devices you want to design for which you can use for testing. For me, I use  a 3 year old Kindle, a recent iphone, an older iPad, an android tablet (and various reading software on these devices).

I have used CSS media queries to adapt my style sheets to various dimensions. If you are trying to use a design-heavy book, you may find it easier just to declare that this ebook is best viewed on a tablet like the iPad (or certain dimensions).

Another option is to create a fixed layout ebook (Check the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines  for information about that).

Formatting a picture-heavy book can pose challenges. Try to make it as simple as possible.

I have avoided InDesign for various reasons, but I know that many ID fans hang out  here. http://epubsecrets.com/ You might find this listing of available fonts for each device to be useful:


How do I crop out an image from a pdf file? I have an android phone and use Adobe Reader to read pdf files.

I have a pdf file that has some images that I want to crop out. I have not found a way to do this using Adobe Reader on Android.

Is there a way to use adobe reader to select and save images? or is there any other software I can use?

This is not possible using only Adobe Reader unless you either take a screenshot with another tool or use the Edit > Take a Snapshot feature of Adobe Reader (may be version specific... I don't have an Android device to confirm, or know which version of Adobe Reader you are using). Doing the latter will require you to paste it from the clipboard.

Another option is to look into using different software. A google search (or Google Play search) reveals many. For example, you may want to look into the PDF Utility - Lite. The description for this software says specifically:

-Extract Images from pdf

Just hold power and volume down simultaneously to capture screenshot of image. Will be saved to gallery.


What is a good software for reading ebooks out loud? I enjoy having the ebooks read out loud. My previous solution has always been to highlight the chapters I want to read and then turn on voiceover in Adobe Reader on my Mac. The advantage is that I can select from all sorts of voices and control the pitch and speed. The disadvantage is that it sometimes takes quite a bit of time to highlight things and subtitles and page numbers often get read out as well, interrupting my reading.

I just tried iBooks and although .epub files read marvellously, it doesn't read .pdf files.

Is there any software that is available that can read ebooks out loud, preferably one that works for pdf files and lets me control pitch and speed? I would like to have books read aloud to me on my (google) tablet, especially as most of the books I'm reading are textbooks and don't have audiobook versions.

There are several screen readers available, these are high end products used by totally blind and visually impaired user to operator a computer.  JAWS is preferred by all the blind computer users I know.  According to this there is a version designed specifically for tablets.

Be aware, the creators of PDF documents, often do so without consideration for screen readers.  PDF is used to create fixed format document for the a sighted reader to look at.  Even if there is text for a screen reader to read it is often difficult for a screen reader to translate it in to a helpful format.

If the PDF file is actually a scanned image of a printed page, Jaws will not be able to read it.  There is software called OCR that is able to "read" pictures of words and convert them to a text layer that JAWS, or MS word, etc can consume.

Lastly if the PDF is laid out with lots of columns, boxes, images, cute little conversation bubbles, etc, it will be extremely difficult for any program to translated it into something meaningful to you.

Calibre has an option that will convert PDF to most ebook formats, there is a listing here of some of the issue you may encounter.

Try Infinity Reader from Google Play
The reader supports Text-to-speech, audio, video, scripts and all EPUB3 features. The reader comes with a free book, which contains youtube video.
You can download a lot of free books from the reader.


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

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

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

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

This is really the nature of the beast. PDF is a rendered format, so is MOBI. Converting from one rendered format to another is going to introduce these imperfections.

As I see it, you have two options: 1)convert the PDF to MS WORD (and fix all the formatting errors), then run it through Calibre and 2)read it only in a PDF reader on a mobile device.

Actually there is another option: use Amazon's Personal Docs/Content server (which will convert automatically from PDF to its mobi format). https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_pdoc_main_short_us?nodeId=200767340  I have no idea whether Amazon's conversions are any better than Calibre; probably not, but it's worth a shot.

MS Word poses other conversion challenges, but at least it's something which can be processed more easily than PDF.


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

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

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

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

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

amazon kindle provides you support for PDF as well as their .azw format. If we go in detail:

support by them is for : Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, PMP through conversion.  amazon comes with less memory expansion.

However, they are for DRM protected files. So, You can buy other e-book readers if you want more support. I use barnes and nobles Nook reader. However, it is also somewhat like amazon when it comes to pdf it fails to load some scanned pdfs. for epub files its best.Nook comes with 32gb memory expansion.

I would still prefer amazon over nook. as most of my files are in PDF format. however, whatever device you get, do download format converter softwar


How to download & transfer from Kindle or Amazon.com to PC How can I download & transfer an eBook from Kindle or www.amazon.com to PC? I have the Kindle for PC and Kindle for Android apps. I can't find an option to do it in the apps.

For the web browser on www.amazon.com, under Account > (Manage) Your Content and Devices, clicking the Download & transfer via USB action for the eBook brings up the below prompt. The options in the drop down menu are the aforementioned apps, neither of which are selectable. Must I possess Kindle or Fire hardware to enable the download option?

The documented way is to use the Kindle PC app and download the book inside that. The file will end up on your PC and only readable in the Kindle. The current versions download the book as a .kfx file that allows Kindle apps to do more with the data. Older versions downloaded the file as a .azw file.

The USB option does need Kindle hardware. The hardware will show in the web drop down box and the file is downloaded as a .azw file to the PC.

Non DRM files can be loaded inmto apps like calibre and converted to other ebook formats.

You can't, that's part of the Amazon security, they don't want you making copies. And it's illegal to make unauthorized copies of a book with copyrights.

If you want to search around on the Kindle itself, connect your Kindle to a PC and it should appear as a drive. Look for a bunch of MOBI or AZW files. Those are your books. Except each book does not have the real title in the filename. Each filename is a bunch of garbled letters and numbers.


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

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

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

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

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

  Is there a most expensive season for book prices?

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

  Do eBook prices have different trends than paperback book prices?

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

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

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

Every publishing company and author have ideas about how to price well.

I don't have anything to add except:

with print books, initial prices are high and then they fall -- and are eventually remaindered. (I realize that print on demand is another story though).

With ebooks, initial prices are low and then they gradually settle on a fixed price -- at which they stay. To the early bird comes the worm.

Finally, I should mention that old print books more than 5 years old are often sold used for less than a dollar plus shipping. The Dirty little secret of pricing ebook versions of these books is that used print books are often cheaper than their ebook price.

I track a lot of prices on ereaderiq and I plan prices on my company's own ebooks. And I should say that there's less discounting than you'd expect, with the exception of maybe the first two months and KDP Select books going free once every 2 months.


Can Amazon know about the books I upload to my Kindle device? One user can upload her/his own ebook files onto a Kindle device .

I'd want to know if Amazon is able to know what you are uploading on the device or not.

While it is possible, it is improbable as long as you ensure all data capabilities of the device are always off. If they are ever turned on, there would be nothing stopping Amazon from snooping what's on your device. Furthermore, if it's 3G enabled, you have no guarantee that it doesn't switch on data without your knowledge and snoops your files.

If you are side loading an ebook onto kindle device, there is no way for Amazon to identify this transfer.

If you are purchasing from Amazon store, the purchased ebooks can be downloaded only in your registered kindle device.


Is it possible to sell PDF as Kindle books on Amazon? I have a book that has a fixed layout, so it's not really easy to transfer it to ePub format (no one can manage to do that).  I'm thinking of selling it as a PDF.

Is it possible to sell it as a Kindle book if it's just a PDF file?

No, Amazon does not sell PDFs on their site. If you submit a PDF to them via KDP, it will be auto-converted to mobi format for sale to Kindles. (As an aside, the fact that no major retailers sell PDFs in their stores is my primary argument for not calling PDFs "ebooks").

I personally think that it's possible. When you upload your PDF file onto Amazon website, they do the conversion into the supported format for an eBook. And for Books, of course Createspace allows you to upload a PDF file and which is converted as Print. I have done that with eBooks ever since I found out that it was possible now a year.

Source : Selling PDF on Amazon


Can you suggest an advanced ereader application for textbooks? I need an ereader application that can be effectively used with textbooks; it should support features like note taking, searching, highlighting, and organizing books of any format (EPUB, PDF).

What are my alternatives?

Assuming you are interested in Android apps (you don't specify your OS), I can suggest you Moon+ Reader and Aldiko Reader.

Both of these apps have the features you need.

Goodreader for iOS doesn't have epub support.


How does DRM impact the sales of eBooks? DRM (Digital rights management) is a somewhat controversial anti-piracy measure.  There are strong arguments on both sides of the debate, this question is not about the should/shouldn't debate.  It just about sales, does DRM have any impact on sales?

Are there any studies indicating an impact on sales based on the presence or absence of DRM on ebooks?

There was a study1 done by Laurina Zhang about the effects of DRM on music sales. In her conclusion1 she states:

  My analysis in this paper, based on a large representative sample of
  albums from all four major record companies, sheds light on this
  question. I find that the removal of DRM increases digital sales by
  10%.

While this does not directly address the eBook industry, it does suggest that DRM may also have a negative impact on sales of Ebooks.

1Warning: Links directly to pdf.

I am a bibliophil. I can easily spend a couple hundred dollars in a book store, and have done so many times. I often buy books online that I can not find locally, again hundreds of dollars. I also have e-reader and have lots of e-books. Not one has drm. If it has drm I won't buy it. Kris longknife, great books, but I couldn't find them without drm, so I bought paperbacks. Same thing over and over again great books with drm get bought as paperbacks, If I can find them. I spent years searching used bookstores for Dave Duncan's The Reluctant Swordsman and you would not believe how happy I was when I found out Baen was reissuing it (I bought the ebook and both sequels, even if I liked the original cover art better). There also have been times where I would hear about a story that looked interesting, but only was published as kindle only, that the only thing I remember was wasting a day or two looking for another vendor. I can't remember the title or author, because I didn't feel it was wort wasting 75 cents for a book I couldn't read. Was it one of yours? If so you lost a sale.


How is an epub structured internally? I know from sources I do not remember anymore, that an epub file is a valid zip file containing (among other files) chapters as *.xhtml files, a manifest file content.opf and a table of contents file toc.ncx.

What is the file and directory structure of an unpacked epub?
Which files must be there (with fixed names?) and are there optional files?
What information is stored in the single files?

I am asking for a very basic epub file, so the version should not matter, but assume epub2 in case it makes a difference for you.

PS: I will probably ask for the content and structure of those files later, but for now I only want to know about which files are mandatory or optional and an overview what they contain, to keep the question more specific and answers short.

EPUB is an open format so you can find the standard specifications online. Wikipedia has a good article on the EPUB format.

If you want a brief description of the characteristics you just mentioned you can find in this article here.

Directory structure:

EpubFolderYouWant
   META-INF
      container.xml
   mimetype
   content.opf
   toc.ncx

Needed files:

mimetype
container.xml
content.opf
toc.ncx

And which information is contained in each file is described in the above mentioned article.

An EPUB file is just a zip file. Copy mybook.epub to mybook.zip, and use your favorite zip tool to open the zip file. You should see some XHTML files and images somewhere in there, along with an OPF file, manifest, and some other control files. Windows 7+ natively treats zip files as a folder.

XHTML is similar to HTML but is more strict, and the bold and italic tags are different.

Below is a screen shot of a test2.epub I copied to test2.zip. The screenshot only shows the root dir of the epub.


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

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

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

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

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

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

any printer can do that, or any one with a printer for that matter there is no difference to a printer what the print matter is


I can't find the mobi format ebooks I copied from my computer to my kindle via usb, what should I do? Transferring ebooks in mobi file to my kindle used to be hassle free. I just drag it to the "documents" folder and voilà! They're there.

What happened yesterday was different. I tried to move mobi ebooks to my kindle. The books were  transferred fine, I can see them on my kindle drive on the computer. The problem was when I opened my Kindle to arrange the books I transferred, they weren't there. I tried reconnecting my kindle to the computer and the books are still there. I don't know what's wrong.

File size can be an issue. I've found that if the book's file size is greater than 50MB, the file will transfer to the documents folder on disk, but not appear on the kindle. In my case, I used Calibre to convert mobi to azw3, which reduced the file size, and the book then appeared on my kindle.

I have had this exact same problem, if you have a paperwhite go to your home page click on 'All Items' then click 'Documents' I found my books in there

On the latest Paperwhite select Home then all then downloaded and they will show up in your library. Also type author's name or book title in search for quick access if you have lots of books.


What does it mean that a pdf is "paginated"? I have quite often seen written somewhere that pdf is (or isn't) paginated. Maybe this term is used for other formats, too.

I thought that this is used to pdf where page numbering in the file corresponds to the page numbers in the actual document. (To explain in layman's terms, if it as book and the frontmatter is numbered as i-xiv and the rest of the book is numbered 1-400, then when I try to go to page number 1 in the viewer, it goes to the first page of the book, not the first page of the frontmatter.)

But I have also seen this post on another SE site. The answer given seems to indicate that non-paginated pdf would mean that it is a file which consists only of single very long page.

To clarify the things:

  What is the meaning of the term paginated pdf-file. If both usages mentioned above are correct, which of them is more common?

I have never heard it used to mean either of those things. In my experience, if someone says a PDF is paginated, they simply mean that there are page numbers on the PDF's pages. They may or may not correspond to some other publication, like a physical book. The point is simply that the pages have numbers on the pages themselves.

First use is incorrect.
Second use is correct.


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

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

Ocropus is another known open source OCR system.

I think Abby Fine reader is avery good software. I have used a localized version (Tamil OCR ) for land record digitization. The success is AS GOOD AS the scanning and conditions of documents. For printed text success is good.(more than 75% error free). Problem is mostly only English OCR is available. If you need languages of your choice you have to ask Abby.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bummer...

Buying an ebook is not the same as renting a car.  Buying means ownership. Renting means borrowing for a period of time.  Then if I am buying an ebook then I am going to remove the drm. The right of ownership is the buyer. An ebook is no different than a physical book. Yes you can legally remove the drm in Canada.


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).

If you want to rename the book itself instead of the epub, you have to find the toc.ncx file you can open it with a wordpad or notepad in your cp. Find the title of the book or whatever jargon text it was then change it to your liking.


Annotating/highlighting passages spanning page boundaries I frequently highlight or otherwise annotate selections in ebooks, and I've yet to run across a reader that supports highlighting a selection that runs into the next page--usually I must create two separate annotations, which has undesirable side effects on organization of notes. I've noticed this is a limitation of every application/device I've used for years. Has any vendor implemented a feature to support this requirement? The closest thing to a solution I've found is switching from page display to "scrolling" in iBooks, which is similar to a continuous PDF mode, but I'd prefer to have this feature working in a view of pages.

My Kobo Glo, updated to the 3.12.1 firmware version, can highlight and take notes on a multiple pages basis.

Anyway, I noticed that it only does it when using Kepub files and not with standard Epub books (Kobo ereaders have two different viewing engines for standard epub and their own slightly modified kepub).

If this is acceptable to you, you can use Calibre to transfer files to the ereader, there is a plugin that can optimise them to be used with the kepub viewer.

(Also take a look at an answer that I gave to another question https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/a/4676/136 )

On the Kobo Clara HD I can highlight on both epub and kepub, but I can only highlight across page boundaries on kepub books; on an epub, the ereader never flips to the next page.
On Calibre, the KoboTouchExtended plugin will do on-the-fly conversions to kepub when transferring books to the Kobo, which makes this painless. Otherwise, there is a command-line utility (I haven't used the command-line utility).


Kindle app takes up entire screen on windows 10 and I don't know how to get out of it I just downloaded the Kindle app for my Windows 10 PC. When I open a book, the app takes up the entire screen. I can't see any of my other apps, and I can't figure out how to close Kindle or switch to another app. If I hit ESC, it does nothing. The only way I can get out of the book is to hit the Windows key on my keyboard, but this doesn't seem like a useful solution.

If you're in full screen on Windows 10 and on a touchscreen device (2-in-1 devices) and detachable keyboard, you just touch the bottom middle of the page and a menu appears. Touch the X and you're out of full screen.

I was stuck at that too but figured out: It's F11! F11 toggles in and out of full screen. Jeez...


How to download ebooks from Kindle to PC? I'm am trying to download some Kindle eBooks that I have bought to my laptop. I tried connecting my Kindle to my PC via USB and then try to access the files from there, but I can't find the files that actually contain the book. I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, or if this just isn't possible. How can I download eBooks from my Kindle to my PC?

The Kindle is a Kindle Paperwhite and the laptop is an Ubuntu. Not sure if that matters, though.

Calibre, on the other hand allows one to edit epub books, convert between file types and generally maintain your ebook library on your computer. You can then send them to your various readers. Some of those features require removal of DRM to do but there are many public domain ebooks.

I've been using Calibre Library for windows as well as Ubuntu and just totally love it, Calibre for Ubuntu


eBook Portfolio / Resume Has anyone created an eBook portfolio to attract clients?  I have been working at a publishing house and have converted many titles (some complex and impressive) and am wondering what is the best way to display my work now that I am considering going freelance.

Of course, because I have been working for a publishing house, they own the rights to their titles and thus, copyright infringement could be a potential issue.  I obviously know how to strip my .epub file down to a few sample chapters but is this enough, legally speaking?

Please don't be afraid to answer if you know the technical part (where/how to display) but not the legal (posting work that belongs to my employer) or vice versa.

I definitely feel your pain. As a technical writer I've usually signed NDAs about things I've worked on, but I also need to show samples for potential employees.

I think everybody would be fine with doing a screenshot of a single page (or back to back pages)  to show off formatting. After all, most of the time, consumers can see these limited samples on Amazon.com or Google Play store anyway. Another option would be doing a screenshot of the sample page on Amazon or ibooks, etc and then storing it at your own website.

More important than the screenshots would be an accompanying narrative. What was the challenge in designing this page or template -- and how did you go about solving it?

Best case scenario is definitely putting dummy text inside your template, but this can be time-consuming and impractical.

You don't need to have chapters (it would be unwieldy to do anyway), but a few select screenshots would do the job (and your job opportunity requires an interview, you can definitely show things off on your tablet).

I'm a freelancer and I'm on NDA as well, but what I often do is to create blurred images. I would probably just design the cover and upload it.


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

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

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

I tried that google search, and got this page!lol! Far down the page I see the manual for Icecream reader that may work. Reading mode. Controls


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

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

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

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

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

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

Sample command using Pandoc to export to epub:

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

Kotobee Author is another Ebook publishing software that you can look into. https://www.kotobee.com/en/products/author


Reading PDFs on Kindle device I have many interesting books and documents in PDF format. Can I read PDFs on Kindle in comfortable way?

My concern is, that PDFs are adapted to the print page size and Kindle screen is much smaller. Would the PDF be readable?

It is possible, but will need prior processing for optimal results.

You can use the free tool k2pdfopt to optimize PDFs for your reader's display size.

It can handle up to four columns, works with "normal" (using actual stings in the PDF) as well as scanned text and will turn your input PDF into a PDF with more pages optimized for your screen's size. Newer versions of the program can even text. Text reflow preserves images and even mathematical formulas -- which is something that Sony's built-in text reflow cannot do.

Download the program, set the options for your reader on a Windows/Mac/Linux machine and generate a new PDF with only one column, cropped margins and possibly larger letters. The conversion progress is largely automatic, just give it a try.

If you do not mind jailbreaking your reader, there are also PDF viewers that include k2pdfopt and so you can change font size and other parameters on the fly. These also have the advantage that you can use the PDF's table of contents (something the official PDF viewer does not support). The readers are all forked from the same project and only differ in how you input your data. They are KOReader (for Kobos and Kindles with a touch screens), KindlePDFViewer (for Kindles with keyboard) and Librerator (for Kindles with neither touch nor keyboard).

A clear disadvantage is that these programs seem to drain more battery than the official PDF viewer, but on the other hand reading is more convenient, because you can still read in portrait mode and your pages are preprocessed in the background (turning pages feels faster in large PDFs with many images). And battery life is still several weeks.

Other than this you can of course read in landscape mode. This can be quite annoying with multicolumn documents or if you want to go back just one page to look something up (may feel slow). It is fine for texts you read without going back and it's still the way to go e.g. if you have large tables in your document. I used it for text books as well for years, so it is not too annoying.

Another option is converting the PDF to Mobi using Calibre or Amazon's mailing service. This will usually fail completely in multicolumn documents, will remove images and destroy mathematical formulas. It will also often lead to page numbers or chapter names (if it is written on top of every page) in between the text.

kindle has application named send to kindle.you can download it from amazon.it has an option to convert any file to kindle format


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

OReader
FBReader
Cool Reader

Other requirements:

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

Some background:

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

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

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

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

Edit:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Regarding the other suggestions :

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

The number one reader for me is Moon+ ... one of the few apps I have used money on!

It has a free version, so you can try it out or just go with the free one indefinitely (I found the adds popping up every time you close a book kind of annoying).

I found it by looking at this Wiki page, where it has "Yes" in all the places I wanted it to and then some:

Comparison of Android e-book reader software

The number one feature I would point out in supplement to all the other features, people have mentioned, is the fact that you can change color of text and background to your hearts desire ... I have mine set with lime green text on very dark green background (I happen to like green), which I find is easier on the eyes than black on white (even with the brightness turned down).


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

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

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

I think that PDFtk is the tool you need.

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

There is an online tool konwerter, which can be used to delete the selected pages you don't need from the PDF.


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

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

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

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

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

You can do by visiting the My Account section of Settings.


Is there a way to sync reading progress across multiple devices and platforms? I know you can already do this for the Kindle and between Android devices with say Moon+ reader installed. What I meant is for EPUBs and between platforms. I would like to read on my Android phone for example and then pick up where I left off on my desktop. Is this possible?

I'm looking for a solution that does not involve using Kobo or Amazon's apps.

As a general principle, no.  But most software vendors provide compatible apps for PC/Mac/Android. So if you will be happy using their reader app, you just install their apps and get synchronization across all platforms.

For instance, I don't own a Kindle, but I buy ebooks from Amazon and read them on both Kindle for PC and Kindle for Android

The same is true of Kobo.

What this doesn't do is let you sync sideloaded books, or any book not purchased from that particular vendor.

Google Play Books is currently the most widely supported cross-platform ereader application for sideloaded bookmark sync.
Be warned: Google has a history of dropping support for sideloaded content. Books could easily go the way of Music at any point.
Its Web app is limited in features (no dark mode), and Google refuses to make native GUI apps for desktop. But it's better than nothing.


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

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

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

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

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

This leaves you with two common formats:

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

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

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

There is no universal one-size-fits-all, but I would say that a PDF file would be one that most ereaders can handle, but you never know.

I would publish a EPUB version and a PDF version just for the convenience of your readers.


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

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

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

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

some chapters are linking same name or same id that's called an error.

for example:
 Chapter 1
 Chatper 2


images of footnotes are not appearing in pop up window in epub I am doing epub-3(With footnote pop-up option) and I have used images in footnote section. When I am checking with Ipad, the images are not appearing in the pop-up window. The following is the coding and screenshot of iPAD view.

Screenshot of an iPAD

What am I doing wrong?

Use "object" tag instead of "img" and image extension should be .svg.


Kindle paperwhite ver.5.7.2.1 - how to bring back one-click book open? I've recently upgraded (automatically) my PW2 to the specified software version and I just hate some of the new "features" of it. For example(the worst thing I found and could not fix yet), the book library. In my library (95% received via email feature) I have a lot of books that are read, multiple started and a gigantic amount of unread books, that are listed after every other mentioned type. Now, previously I just needed to scroll down to the right one, click on it and it opened. Now, I need to find it (on, for example, page 15), click on it, scroll back to the first page of the list and click again. Why? As it seems, the book gets "downloaded" again, for some reason, then since it's the last downloaded it appears the first one in the list and only after that I may open it. Why the hell did Amazon implement this - I can't even imagine, but maybe anyone knows how to always have them downloaded automatically now?

GO back to previous home screen menu following these steps:

Go to home screen and press menu button (It is on top right of screen)
Select settings
Select device options
Select personalize your kindle
Select advanced options
Turn off home screen view

and hopefully now you are back to your old screen view.

Let me know if it worked.

You have to click the 'downloaded' button in the upper left corner. It will solve your problem.


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

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

Can anyone help point me in the right direction?

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

No, Sorry, the light up screen kindle are all touch screens


How to effectively manage ebooks using Calibre? I started using Calibre and I'm unable to decide how to effectively use it to manage my ebooks.
I've a huge collection of ebooks organized by subject into folders like Political Science, History - World, History - US etc. Till using Calibre, these folders were synced across all of my devices (Android phone, tablet, desktop) using Cloud storage. In this way I could browse any subject anywhere using either browser or file explorer or in android phone.

But when I have added the collection to Calibre, it has destroyed this folder structure and made it one folder per author. If I'm syncing this library using cloud storage, I've no way to know which are History books and which are political science books.

What is the effective way to manage books using calibre?

As written in the Calibre manual you should use tags:

  But suppose you want to find all unread science fiction books. There’s no easy way to do this with this folder scheme, [...] In calibre, you would instead use tags to mark genre and read status and then just use a simple search query like tag:scifi and not tag:read.

It might take a while to get everything properly tagged, but after that it will be easy to find what you want.

According to some valuable feedbacks I modified my answer:

The Same Problem:

I had more than one Calibre libraries since I have imported the e-books' folders from my computer as libraries. I wanted to combine those libraries as one (merge) but I wanted to maintain the folders' hierarchy or at least I wanted to organize and see the e-books as if they are in the corresponding folders.

My Solution:

Create an empty library. Name it anything but this will be the one and only your Calibre Library. Of course you can rename it in Calibre later.
Create a custom column from "Preferences
-> Add your own columns -> Add custom column -> Comma separated text, like tags, shown in the tag browser" by adding lookup name and column heading. Column heading will be used to enter the name of the merging library (that is your folder name).
Copy your e-books in the existing library to the one created in 1. Let's call it main library or anything you want.
Without copying other library, select all the e-books and edit metadata. In the "edit metadata" window you will see a second tab "custom metadata" where your lookup name appears. Fill the blank as the corresponding library name (that is your folder name).
Now on the Calibre left column you will see your custom column and its subgroup as your added library (that is actually your exported folder name exported as library).
Repeat the same process for other libraries from number 3 to number 5.
You will now have your special column and all the different libraries as subgroups. You will have one Calibre library with different subgroups. This is powerful than using tags for this purpose since subgroups are your choice of organizing your e-books.
Since I had many Calibre library, I tried to merge them copying one by one. You may have many folders of e-books each organized in your way. You can add your e-books one folder by one folder using the process explained from 3 to 5.
At the end, you will have one Calibre library with different subgroups on the left panel. Subgroups will be anything you want, for example your e-books' folder hierarchy in your PC or Mac.

The original answer was:
"I wanted the same. I preferred the following solution;
https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/sub_groups.html"


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

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

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

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

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

Webpage Optimization

1. What is Metadata:

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

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

Metadata "Web Page" Specific:

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

Metadata Elements or "Tags"

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

First Clue

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

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

Second Clue

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

Metadata for Webpages (Partial Answer)

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

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

for full optimization.

Metadata and Search Engine Optimization

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

Search Engine Optimization

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

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

Keyword Optimization Tools

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

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

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

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

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

Author Metadata Description

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

Web Page Description

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

Web Page Keywords

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

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

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

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

Another Clue or Partial Answer

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

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

How exactly does this work? (in simplified terms)

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

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

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

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

eBook Metadata Optimization

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

"Trade and Standards Organization for the Digital Publishing Industry"

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

Onix-Editeur

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

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

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

Articles to read in relation to your Question

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

Digital Book World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further in the article

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

eBook Metadata Clues from above articles & quotes

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

Technical information such as the specifications
Publication Date
ISBN
List price

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

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

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

Other Related Articles

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

Final Thoughts && Conclusion

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

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

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

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

I'm referring to metadata available in EPUB books as an example. Websites distributing ebooks often read ebook metadata to be used for searching and display.

There are original publish dates, and digital publish dates. So when a
book is originally published in 1804, then Gutenberg digitizes it in
2014, you have 2 different dates.  Most users will want to search on the original publish date, not the digitized date.
There can be multiple author
fields in an EPUB too, along with multiple SUBJECT fields. Many
non-fiction books will have multiple subjects. So a history book on
WW2 might have these subjects: WW2, World War 2, history, war, Germany, America, Britain.
There is also a book description field.
There is also a copyright field which can be a whole paragraph of the type of copyright this book is under, if any.

It's important to include all authors because major book sellers, and library catalogs, read the EPUB metadata. I've seen studies with 20+ authors. If the study is in an EPUB and only author A is in the EPUB metadata, the study will not show up in search results if I search for author B.

The same applies to subjects. Library catalogs often have books under multiple but related subjects. See WW2 example above.


How to upload my Malayalam book in Kindle? I have published books in Malayalam language through Creative Space.

Now I know that kindle is accepting Malayalam language books and when I try to upload the files (as per KDP they need docx file), Kindle is not accepting and rejects the book with an error. I have tried many times and received the same error which says: to check the file.

I think that the 'font' of my file is not accepted by Kindle.

What type of file format is required in Kindle?

I don't know the precise answer to your question and you probably have more experience formatting in your native language.

My guess is that doing a conversion from DOCX to Kindle or DOCX to epub will be horrible. MS Office will probably specify its own font, and then Kindle won't support it or allow it to be embedded.

Here is a better strategy. Focus on producing an epub file which validates as EPUB 3 http://validator.idpf.org/ If it validates, my guess is that it will also render easily on Kindle if you convert from epub to Kindle using Kindle Beta Previewer. https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1003018611

The work processes (and the necessary steps) for producing a kindle/epub file are a lot different for creating a Createspace printed book. What works in Createspace will probably not work for Kindle and vice versa.

To produce a good epub/kindle file, you should probably create the content using an HTML/epub editor. Try using either of these two (free) products:

Calibre's EPUB editor (which is different from the Calibre
conversion part). See https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/edit.html

or
sigil epub editor.

The one thing I do not know is if the included Kindle fonts include support for Malayam characters. If you have heard that they do, then it should be easy.

If not, then you will have to embed a special Malayam font yourself. This is not extremely difficult, but it is complicated. See https://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf Chapter 9 .

Good luck, and try to tell us what worked for you!

Try this:

Use Calibre to convert your books format to AZW3
Upload converted book to your Kindle.


Kindle "Time Left in Book" I have a Paperwhite, and I like to have 'percentage left' on the page as I am reading.  To switch this on, I have to go to Font size and select from a pull-down menu.  Once the Kindle switches off, I have to reset that when I start again.

Is there any way of making the 'percentage left' or 'time left in book' as a default?

When in a book, tapping in the very bottom left of the screen will rotate through LOC, Page, Time left in Chapter, Time left in Book, and off. When in any mode other than off, the percent completion will appear in the bottom right of the screen.

This is based on a 7th gen Paperwhite with firmware version 5.11.1.1.

You can tap on it to change it to display Time Left in the Chapter,Time left in the book & LOC.


Stretching an image to fit the screen I am converting a book for use on a Kindle 7. I want certain images to display as large as possible while keeping the original aspect ratio. I can get the images to display properly in EPUB format, but when I convert to MOBI, the image shrinks back to its original size.

HTML

CSS

div.span img {width: 100%;}

Both of these methods seem to work, but they do not survive the conversion to MOBI. Isn't there any way to force images to span the width of the screen?

Side by side for comparison http://imgur.com/aYKvxGc

unfortunately you can't make width:100%; in mobi files. Amazon just strip that away. You can try to set min-width:100%; instead but this is little different in behave so test are needed. More about which CSS kindle respect you can read in this documentation.

2017/06/27
Changes in KF8 format allow now using width css property

I can't answer your question directly, because I don't know. But you can break open your mobi file with Calibre and see what has become of your original css. Also, you can then view the files in a browser to determine whether it is the conversion or the reader that is at fault.


How can I left justify text on my Kindle? I can't stand reading full-justified text, yet none of my Kindles seem to give me anything else! They all attempt to justify text even when the font size is too large and causes huge gaps between words and other kerning issues. Worse yet  are languages like Turkish which I read in—the prevalence of very long words that it has no idea how to break into syllables makes the reading experience even more jarring.

Is there any way to read my books using left-aligned non-justified typesetting?

The justification is normally specified in the CSS included in your ebook.
Commercial ebooks often come 'justified', just like most traditional books (which generate less of a problem of large white space, through the combination of hyphenation and wider lines).

It might be that the Kindle overrides the ebooks default, but I doubt it. What you should try is change the CSS in an ebook, e.g. by convert the ebook with Calibre, while specifying Text Justification: Left Alignin the Look & Feel tab of the book conversion page.

Calibre has several add-ons from the shadier parts of the internet which strip various kinds of DRM easy as pie. Just Google "Calibre add-on strip kindle drm", install it, Lisa's your books from you kindle to your PC and it strips then in the background. Technically it violates the end user agreement but you get to left justify your text and since your not pirating the books in the first place you run no chance of displacing potentially sustenative income for the authors.


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

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

I have not found a way to do this without losing formatting or the formatting getting all munged.

No, you don't want to do it this way because, as you mentioned, formatting is not retained. Even when you follow DOC setup closely, like with Smashwords, you will still have problems. Starting an EBOOK in .DOC format is the worst, most time-consuming way to go. I've done it. What's more, using the DOC to EPUB method, the formatting will look different on different devices. It's an all around headache that's not worth the hassle.

So I wrote a Perl program where you write your book in MultiMarkdown and it creates an EPUB for you. It's MUCH easier that way. But you do have to install Perl to use it. (It's free.)


How do I easily convert and send PDFs to a Nook GlowLight or SimpleTouch's native format Amazon makes it easy to convert PDFs and send to Kindle in the Kindle's native format. How to do this (simply!) on a Nook?

I do know conversion is possible with tools such as Calibre but I was wondering if there is a way that is comparably simple to the Kindle's method of emailing the PDF to a conversion service.

The goal: In 3 steps or less, with an existing PDF from a computer, convert to the Nook native ePub format and appear on my e-Ink Nook device.

You could just plug it in with USB and move the PDF file, which is compatible with NOOK readers.

If you have a rooted Nook, you can always install Dropbox on it, so you can use its syncing feature.


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

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

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

Is someone more informed than me about this?

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

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

Save as PDF format, then convert PDF to ePub, how about this solution?


How do I have Calibre automatically create a cover image from a non-ebook file? I am an RPG publisher and use Calibre to maintain my research library (PDF, mostly) and my stock art library (various image files).

When I load a PDF, Calibre automatically creates a cover image using the first page of the PDF.

When I load image files, it cannot. I must assign the cover image explicitly. Is there a way to have Calibre automatically create a cover image from a 'book' that is a raster image (JPG or PNG format)?

I'm afraid this isn't the answer you need, and it's been a long time coming. Although I don't recall the method, be it via an add-on or whatever, I succeeded in using a jpg image of my own design (CS6) as a cover. It was available in the Calibre cover customization window, so applying title/author text in the usual way was no problem. So, yes, there's an easy to use method, and if I re-discover it before you do, I'll post the details.