How should you include illustrations in Kindle ebooks?

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

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

If vector:

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

If images:

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

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


If you have a Kindle Paperwhite 3G, free web browsing in 3G mode is limited. You can access only the Amazon website and Wikipedia via 3G wireless. For accessing other websites, you need to use a Wi-Fi connection. source
For a very update-to-date answer, I suggest to ask amazon support for further info.


How to fix Calibre Author amalgamations?

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

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

 David Mack and Marco Palmieri and Dayton Ward and Kevin Dilmore

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

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

and your book will be under M


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


How to know if this book (The Hero With A Thousand Face) is free of rights?

as @rgchris pointed out, copyright laws in Europe state that an opus goes in the public domain 70 years after the death of its author... and Campbell died in 1987. I think you should contact the Campbell Foundation.


How can I turn my hardcover book into a digital copy?

If you do not plan to distribute the copies, there is a better solution to just re-type everything - especially if there is more than 1 book.

Scan book page by page.
OCR the resulting images.
Sister only makes correction where it is needed - or not at all, if mistakes can be "corrected" in the mind, while reading.

Depending on the choices for step 2, you need to slightly adjust step 1.

There are even solution for the smartphones - take picture with smartphone, get text. I did a lot of scans for personal purposes, but I do not have much experience with OCR. Try a search on the net for first steps to OCR.

Discussion - Convert paper book to ebook

OCR = Optical Character Recognition


Why are there so few color e-ink devices on the market in 2014?

I guess it is because having colors reduces resolution.

The Triton eink that is used in the JetBook referred to is basically a black and white eink display with a color filter on top. So for each 2x2 square of pixels there is one pixel each tinted red, green and blue and one staying in black and white. So effectively you have a resolution of 800x600 with the costs of a 1600x1200 display (plus the costs for the filter).

I think most people use eink devices to read pure text (without many images) and therefore prefer sharper text over colors. Of course this may change if there are more colored ebook devices and subsequently more colorful ebooks offered. It will be a recursive process.

So far it only makes sense to read colored textbooks on colored ink devices. I guess this is why it the new JetBook is manufactured with a 9.7" display. This may be too large for people who just want a reasonably small device for reading their novels. But the time of colored ebooks will surely come at some point in the future -- probably when the resolution improves further and the colors become more brilliant.


Increasing font size and spacing is a frequent problem for PDFs, especially for tablets that are 6 inch. PDFs are supposed to be printable documents, and so font size and other things tend to be fixed proportionate to the document size.

Merely converting to .mobi will not solve this.

If your original book were .epub, this is less likely to be a problem because it is based on HTML which is reflowable.

My recommendation is to try to read the PDF on a mobile PDF app instead of doing another conversion. Also, the larger the tablet size, the easier the PDF will be to read anyway. I have a 9 inch device where PDFs are generally easy to read.

Another idea (if you are desperate) is to try to copy the text in the PDF to a MS Word file, and then do the conversion from MS Word. Those kinds of conversions tend to produce significantly better results in Calibre.


How to OCR tables of contents to proper outputs?

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.


ebook-edit in calibre automation with python

You are better off noting that Calibre is a python app. First look at its command line options. Then if that is not enough create an addin or just code that uses calibre python code.

One way might be to zip the HTML files together and pass that as the input file to ebook-convert see calibre documentation https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/generated/en/ebook-convert.html#recipe-input-options


Why are ebooks priced lower than their physical counterparts?

There are three main factors why the price can be lower. One is transportation costs. The second is the 'cutting out the middleman'. The third is the cost of producing the physical book.

The physical transport costs and the need for human handling fall away if a book is transferred electronically. This is both the case when buying in a bookstore or from an online shop.

Physical books often go through distributors to stores and smaller online retailers. Ebooks cut out these distribution channels and their profits. Some publishers even have their own ebook sites, eliminating the profits of the ebook stores as well.

I hope the diminished cost of not having to kill and process a tree to make an ebook is clear.

I actually assume (but have no proof) that electronic books are artificially expensive compared to their physical counterparts, based on the percentages of physical book prices I have heard that authors receive.


Is there any way to get a discounted ebook if I already have the book?

This would depend on the publisher, and as you mention, it's difficult to prove that you bought the book unless you bought it directly from the publisher and they have a record of it. Many publishers will offer discounts if you're buying both the ebook version and the print version, so it doesn't hurt to ask if you've bought directly from a publisher, but if it's from a retailer it's less likely.


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.


You need to download it to your pc. Kobo does not seem to have a Web viewer unlike amazon.

The easiest way is to get the kobo app from the kobo site from the apps and ereaders menu.


how to secure documents with personal DRM

You can encrypt the documents with a public key (e.g. from gpg) of the specific person. That will result in a document readable only by that specific person after decoding with her matching private key (only she possesses).


Can I store my Kobo library on a PC to prevent lengthy download times

Absolutely.

Download & install Adobe Digital Editions (http://www.adobe.com/solutions/ebook/digital-editions/download.html).
Follow the instructions here


No. To remove the special offer, you have to login to Amazon and chat with its support.

Step 1

Change the account owner to your friend. I don't have my kindle around, but you can find this option by navigating through the buttons in kindle.

Step 2

Ask them to negotiate with Amazon. They are supposed to take away the special offer for free. They did try to charge, but backed off after I insist.


Security risks when the Kindle(Paperwhite) is plugged into a PC

TL;DR: Yes, there are some risks.

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

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

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


images of footnotes are not appearing in pop up window in epub

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


How do I filter out read items in a collection in Kindle?

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

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

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


How to convert an HTML5 and JQuery featured E-book to an Executable file(exe), having inbuilt browser?

You actually want to build HTML5-based standalone desktop apps. You should try:

App.js (http://appjs.com/)
Tide SDK (http://www.tidesdk.org/)
Node webkit (https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit)

I don't know how well they play together with JQuery, or with already written eBooks, but you can make a try.

Actually many times the point with this packages is that you can develop multi-platform (i.e not exporting in EXE is the end all be all)


Check out Document Viewer (fork of the now defunct EBookDroid). It's also on the Google Play store.


difference between Calibre's metadata.opf and content.opf

Calibre's metadata.opf is only used for Calibre purposes. If you change metadata entries with Calibre, the epub isn't immediately updated. IMHO, this is a major bug, but Kovid Goyal apparently considers it a feature.

If you want to apply the changes to the book, you'll have to select Save to Disk and save the book to a new folder.
Alternatively, install the Modify Epub Calibre plugin and select Metadata > Update Metadata.


Upgrade Kindle 4 system from 4.1.3 to 5.6

The firmware update page of Kindle does not list Kindle 4th generation notouch. Accoring to this answer and Amazon, your kindle is listed under 5th generation.

The latest firmware version number for the Kindle 5th generation is 4.1.3 so you cannot update it to 5.6.0.


Epub read-along, Highlighting is not working

You need to include the following line in your content.opf file:

<meta property="media:active-class">-epub-media-overlay-active</meta>

Further information and examples can be found on the IDPF's site.


What happens if I have used 2 different fonts in mobi/epub and user changes the font in the devise?

There isn't much you can do, if the device allows to change the fonts and the user is willing to use that option, he will do it.

If you use different fonts not just for aestethics, but with a functional purpose (i.e. to display code with a fixed width font, or to differentiate quotes from default paragraphs, and so on), your best option, IMHO, is to insert a disclaimer where you explain this to the end user.


How can I personalize each copy of a PDF to add the reader's name or email address to each page?

Create a watermark pdf which contains the footer using imagemagick:

convert -background none -geometry +0+0 -fill \#000000 -pointsize 12 label:"From the library of..." -set label '' -page A4 watermark.pdf

It creates a simple pdf ( size: A4 ) with the text From the library of... at the bottom left corner. You might change the font, the position of the text, the size of the text...

This watermark.pdf can be added to ( all pages of ) a pdf file using pdftk:

pdftk input.pdf stamp watermark.pdf output output.pdf

I've used stamp instead of watermark because it overlays on top of the input pdf.


How can I determine the translator of a wikisource work?

First, the work on wikisource is labeled BY-SA. So essentially you are not required to list the translator if republishing.

It is surprising not to have a translator listed. One method may be to try to locate the actual translation to an actual edition. On Google Books, for example, you can browse here. https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwisyYXSwuTNAhWI4yYKHd2kCs8QPAgD#q=El+pr%C3%ADncipe+y+el+mendigo+mark+twain+book&hl=en&tbm=bks

Another possibility is to search on WorldCat for a physical copy of the book. Even if you don't try to obtain the book, WorldCat might give you metadata about the translator's name.

Some books simply aren't published with the translator's name. (I seem to recall that 1001 Arabian Nights has a public domain version without a translator's name).

For the record, Project Gutenberg doesn't list spanish translations of the book: https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/t#a53


How can I get an HTML input converted to PDF at 6x9" or otherwise for KDP paperback creation?

You could install Prince and the Calibre Prince plugin to generate the .pdf file. You can specify page sizes via CSS.


Break tags are allowed, but be sure you close the tag as required in XHTML: <br />.

Named entities such as &nbsp; are not allowed in epub3 (thus, iBooks). You can use the numeric value &#160; instead.


If you use Calibre, there are a couple of plugins that can convert your epub files to kepub (not just by renaming them). Then when you send them to your device, it will properly recognize the format. I always used this method and I think it's the quickest and better way to solve your problem.


I have a printed version of a book does it allow me to possess an electronic copy?

Just like buying a hardcover version doesn't let you also take a paperback from the store, no, having a print version does not entitle you to a complimentary ebook version, though some publishers will offer that when you buy from their websites.


Kindlepreviewer Command Not Found Mac Os X

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


Kindle Reader no longer syncing correctly

Hold the power button or slider for about 20–30 seconds. Release it then hold it for about 5 seconds or until you see something happen on screen. That does a power on reset. Obviously you’ll have to make sure it’s charged.
Alternatively you can start it as normal then:

From the Kindle Home screen, press Menu.
Select Settings.
Press Menu.
Select Reset to Factory Defaults.


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

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

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

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

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

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


Any way to increase font size in Moon reader when reading pdf?

No - pdf's are statically sized documents.  One of the benefits of different formats such as EPUB and amazon's MOBI files are that they are reflowable and built with html and css. This is what allows you to adjust font size in relation to the container.   The text then reflows throughout the container at the new font level.

However, you can zoom on pdf's and as long as the document isn't one big image the fonts should stay highly readable.


Differences and commonalities between publishing an ebook and a paper book

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

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

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

On the other side:

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


You didn't mention what Kindle platform you are aiming for, Kindle E-ink, tablet or app.

I created a sample epub file using Pandoc. The source in markdown is as follows:

---
author: Khalid
title: Malayalam Test
---

# ‘ദൃഷ്ടിച്ചാവേര്’

മലയാളത്തിലെ ആദ്യ ചെറുകഥ ഏത് എന്ന ചോദ്യത്തിന്
ഒറ്റ ഉത്തരമേയുള്ളു. അത് വേങ്ങയില്
കുഞ്ഞിരാമന്‍നായനാരുടെ
‘വാസനാവികൃതി’യാണ്.
1891 ല് രചിച്ച ആ ചെറുകഥ
പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ചിട്ട് ഇപ്പോള്
125 വര്‍ഷങ്ങള് പിന്നിടുകയാണ്.
വാസനാവികൃതിയുടെ 125 -ാം പിറന്നാള് വിപുലമായി
ആഘോഷിക്കാന് തീരുമാനിച്ചിരിക്കുകയാണ്
പ്രതിമാസ പുസ്തക ചര്‍ച്ചാവേദിയായ ഡി
സി റീഡേഴ്‌സ് ഫോറം.

# വാസനാവികൃതിയുടെ

ഡി സി ബുക്‌സ് കഥാഫെസ്റ്റ് പരമ്പരയില്
ഉള്‍പ്പെടുത്തി പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ച പി ജിംഷാറിന്റെ
പടച്ചോന്റെ ചിത്രപ്രദര്‍ശനം, ദേവദാസ് വി.എമ്മിന്റെ
അവനവന് തുരുത്ത്, വി എച്ച് നിഷാദിന്റെ ആതിരാ
സൈക്കിള്, കെ വി മണികണ്ഠന്റെ ബ്ലൂ ഈസ് ദ
വാമെസ്റ്റ് കളര്, അബിന് ജോസഫിന്റെ കല്യാശ്ശേരി
തീസിസ്, ലാസര് ഷൈന്റെ കൂ , ധന്യാരാജിന്റെ
പദപ്രശ്‌നം, കെ ഇ ഷീബയുടെ കനലെഴുത്ത് എന്നീ
പുസ്തകങ്ങളും എന് പ്രഭാകരന്റെ മനസ്സ് പോകുന്ന
വഴിയേ എന്ന കഥാസമാഹാരവുമാണ്
പരിചയപ്പെടുത്തുന്നത്.

I then converted the resultant epub file to mobi using Kindlegen. The Kindle Previewer has no problem rendering Malayalam:

On my Kindle Paperwhite 3, I get the following,


Publishing HTML to Kindle - Encoding problem

Most likely your source files aren't properly encoded. It's not sufficient to add utf-8 charset declarations, you'll need to actually save your source files as utf-8 files. (If you happen to use the old Mobipocket Creator, you'll also need to save all HTML files with a BOM (byte-order mark).

If your source file is an ePub, open and save it with Calibre Editor or Sigil. This'll re-save them with the proper encoding.

If you hand-crafted your book, open all HTML files with Notepad++, change the encoding to utf-8 and re-save them.


Rich e-book authoring, other than iBooks Author?

Well it is not entirely true. I have made some ePub3 eBooks with user interaction back in 2013. You can use JavaScript to do the job. Problem was than there are wasn't many readers which could use it. Now we have readium and ADE4 with ePub3 so things may be different. Still it was for ePub3 not kindle eBooks.


Is reading "What if?" by Randall Munroe on kindle satisfactory?

I think this depends on your requirement for font sizes.

Just download the free sample (can even be done from your Kindle device) and flip pages until you arrive at the first pictures. For me they are quite small, but large enough to read the text. You can also select the pictures to view them full screen.

Another way of reading this is not buying it at all, but converting the web pages. This can be done for example using the grabmybooks browser extension. Note that it relies on Calibre for the conversion from .epub to .mobi. The result looks similar to the book for me.

I may add that the latter way did not always work well. In the past I had problems with pictures missing or being black. Now it works, but I cannot say if this is due to bugfixes in grabmybooks or Calibre or if xkcd used another image format (or version) in the older articles.


I have checked the source code and it turns out that Calibre doesn't support non-latin script at all. The bug was filed here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1753533 the developer, however, refuses to use Unicode data to recognize alphabetic characters. Mkhedruli was added, but if you want other alphabets to be supported, you either need to manipulate the source code or file another bug.


Do epub 3.0 pagebreaks always require an id?

Pagebreaks are usually used in conjunction with nav document page-list sections and since you need an id to refer to pagebreak markers in the book it'd be rather pointless to use pagebreaks without ids and a corresponding page-list section.

You can find an IDPF-approved sample epub3 book with pagebreaks and a page-list nav section here.


Does deleting a book from a Kindle account delete it from Kindle devices?

By deleting an ebook I assume that it is a matter of a book that you have purchased and finished reading. In this case if you delete your book from the online library all Kindle synced devices that had the book will also delete it.

In case you are talking about a book that you have published, and then unpublished for editing, the previous version of the book that was published and bought by a reader will continue to survive on their Kindle devices. When you finish editing and upload the changes the new version of the book will then be synced to the kindle devices.


How to show all the books under a tag and its subtags?

Solution 1

tags:"=Classics.English" or tags:"=Classics.Russian" or tags:"=Classics"

can be reduced to

tags:"~^Classics"

It will show all the files whose tags start with "Classics"

Another variation is

tags:"~Classics"

If you omit the ^, then it will show those files too whose tags have "Classics" in them, but not necessarily in the beginning. For example

- Classics
 |__ Russian
 |__ English
- Children Classics
- Foreign Classics for University

Solution 2

When you click on tag icon

two times, it shows double plus sign. This happens only for tags that have subtags.

When this double sign is on, Calibre shows all the books that are tagged with the tag or its subtags.

Solution 3

Use following search expression

tags:"=.<tag name>"

For example,

tags:"=.Fiction"


EPUB 3 CSS stylesheet ignored in some cases?

The first thing is: which reading system are you targeting? Edge is just a test environment, right? Or is this how people using Windows devices are reading ebooks these days? I always regard testing in browsers to be at best a preliminary approximation.

I regard Adobe DE and Readium on Chrome as my 2 most reliable testing platform on a Windows machine. Then I try Google Play Books, iBooks  and then test mobis on various kindle platforms.

I suspect that Edge uses a different rendering engine than the other browsers and might have different default settings for formatting. That might explain discrepancies. But the principles of responsive design dictate that you're not going to have pixel precision.
A quick look at your screenshot indicates that what renders in Edge looks pretty close to the other rendering.

You would need to give the CSS code and what features are different/missing for me to give any better information. It looks like your project is not commercial and maybe that's why you worry about Edge rendering because you think people might open it up in a browser.  But I test a lot of ebooks, and I don't think I've ever tested tested on Edge.


Upload & Read eBooks in Chrome (i.e. Maintain a Cloud Library)

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

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


In my impression, the main problem is that RSS is usually valid RSS, and the external full text isn't usually valid XHTML, so only browsers with complex parsing engines are able to make sense out of the latter. As most of web documents (websites, HTML) are seriously broken, it's quite hard to read them with a simple implementation. If you have a specific example, one might look into what the problem actually is.


Why "compress images using MRC" is always grey in ABBYY FineReader?

It seems to be disabled when the document color mode is set to black & white rather than full color.


If your work is going to be successful enough to make it cost effective to set up all the legal niceties of staying hidden.  There is no possible way to guarantee you will keep your anonymity.  The recent article JK Rowling lawyer fined over Robert Galbraith leak(BBC 2 January 2014) is but one example of failure.

If you are already an established author, your risk of exposure increases.

If you are not already an established author, your potential for recouping expenses is doubtful at best.

If anonymity is a significant concern, do not publish.

If anonymity is passing concern, then money is probably not a significant concern.  Publish all your works for free, or direct all incoming funds to a charitable concern without ever coming to you.

There is no anonymity on the internet, there is only presence or lack of common knowledge (assuming anyone cares enough to look).  As of this minute there are 277,316 published works on Smashwords Many of them published with pseudonyms.  The majority of them make such a little splash, that no one is drawn to search out the authors.  But if the right people, care enough to look hard enough, there no possibility of sure anonymity.


Recommend a new e-book reader, main need is highlight and add notes to my books

If you will only be using PDF files, then either the Sony DPT-RP1 or the smaller Sony DPT-CP1 will allow you to add notes and highlight directly on the PDF file itself. You can then transfer the modified file to your computer and share it however you want. Those readers will even allow you to take any type of handwritten notes. However, the only way these features work is with the use of the electronic pen that is included with the device. There is also the reMarkable which even allows you to transform your handwritten notes into typed text.


How to create markup template in word document?

MS Word lets you create HTML output, but it is very messy. There are several online tools for converting this "messy output" and some commercial tools as well.

I have used the free tool wordoff with some success
https://wordhtml.com/

As an alternative, you can cut/paste the formatted text into an HTML editor online (wordpress, etc). Maybe you can paste it into a desktop HTML editor and see if the source view has the tags you need. Often that can clean up your code and leave the italic and bold tags. But you still have to do some extra cleaning after.

You need to be more clear about why you need your source to be HTML. Is it going to be an epub file? Or some other format?

Generally, I avoid trying to use HTML output from MS Word. It is very messy. It sometimes is just easier to just copy the text into a decent  html editor and insert the tags yourself.


Wireless sync third-party ebooks from a cloud storage to iPad

Here's my two cents.

First, this may not be what you want, but it's fairly easy to stock an ipad/ibooks with epub files. You can either email them to the account owner's email account or put links to it on a web page and just access the files from a browser on the ipad.

An alternative to upload the kindle files to your Personal Documents feature so it appears in the Kindle app on the ipad. After you activate the app, the tablet will have an amazon.com email associated with it where you can email files. (Check the help on it on Amazon).

There's a very important caveat. In late 2013 when I dropped files to my Personal Documents so they can be synced on my ipad's kindle app, all the ebooks would render terribly. (I had an ipad 1). After I did some checking, I learned that there was a bug in the ipad Kindle app which caused this to happen---and the only way to resolve it was to sync via itunes to your laptop via usb. Yuck!

1 1/2 years have gone by and with later ipads and itunes, these issues may have been resolved. But the fact is that the Kindle app's native environment is in android, so you would expect there to be some translation problems for another operating system.

On the Kindle app for Android, when you sync to Amazon's Personal Documents, everything looks fine.

Also in Android, using the native "Play Books" app to sync ebook files works very well (I was impressed). You upload it into play books from your desktop (most of the time), and then it magically shows up on all devices sharing the same google account. Note that Play Books also renders PDFs well too.

So to summarize, in my experience, the two best syncing solutions are in Android, not ipad/ios, and I have a slight preference for Play Books.

Update: I just see that Google Play Books is available from the Apple app store. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-play-books/id400989007?mt=8 Because it's porting from android, I wouldn't expect its rendering on ios to be as flawless as it is on android, but it's updated often, and it's very easy to upload files to Google from any web browser on a desktop so that it renders on your ipad. That is probably what you want. I just downloaded the app and checked how it rendered ebooks. Looks great to me!


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


How can I listen to non-Audible audiobooks on my Kindle?

According to their FAQ section:

  Is Audiobooks.com mobile friendly?

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

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

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

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


Setting up margins in ePUB and Kindle ebooks and @page rule

Quite a few rendering engines are actually taking @page into account. Others like iBooks or Kindle are ignoring it and overriding the margins' values set for body with default values.

I can confirm @page works well in Adobe Digital Editions -- and some but not all apps + devices using Adobe's RMSDK.

To sum things up, you can use it to set a margin for each page/window/screen while top and bottom margins set for body are just applied to the first (top) and the last (bottom) page of every new (x)HTML file.

As regarding values, don't set them in em in this reflowable world of ours. The more you will increase the font-size, the more those margins will increase as well.

Px and pt will remain the same, whatever you do.

% will remain the same and be interpreted as % of screen, which is the most "reflowable-compliant" choice in theory. 3% of a phone screen < 3% of a tablet screen < 3% of a computer screen.


How can I merge multiple ebooks in a single file?

Is it possible to use a full fledged editor like Sigil. It works with .epub files, but if needed, before the editing, it's possible to use Calibre to convert the source ebook into .epub, then reconvert it after the job.

Anyway, for a faster and easier solution, Calibre has a very useful additional plugin called EpubMerge, that, as the name imply, can merge multiple epubs into a single one, also letting create a new table of contents and edit all relevant metadata of the new output file, while leaving unaltered the source ones. Also in this case, if another ebook format is needed, a conversion is required after the editing since the plugin only works with .epub files.


Your Kindle is unable to connect at this time

Amazon Device Support  › Fire & Kindle Software Updates› Kindle
  Keyboard Software Updates

  The latest software version for Kindle Keyboard is 3.4.2. This update
  automatically downloads and installs on your Kindle Keyboard when
  connected wirelessly; however, you can also manually download the
  software and transfer the update to your device via USB cable.

  The software update includes general bug fixes. Download Kindle
  Keyboard Software Updates

  Determine the current software version on your Kindle Keyboard before
  downloading and installing a software update. For more information, go
  to Determine Your Software Version.

  Depending on your current software update version, you may have to
  install a previous software update before installing the latest
  version. Select one of the links below to download the software update
  file directly to your computer.

  Important: If you copy multiple software update files to your device
  at the same time, the software update will not be successful. Please
  fully install one file, and then download and install the next file,
  as appropriate. If you have...    Do this...

  Kindle Keyboard Wi-Fi

  ...

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

source:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200529700


What should I consider when purchasing a solar charger for my Kindle?

I've worked quite a bit with solar chargers for Kindles. The main Kindle models I've powered are Kindle 4/5's and Kindle Keyboards (3rd edition). Let me try to answer your specific questions first, then I'll go into more background in case it's useful to you and others:

e-ink Kindles need somewhere between 500mA and 700mA to charge effectively @ 5v DC. They have a battery of roughly 2000mAh depending on the model, so charging can take several hours. Most integrated solar chargers include some or all of:

a solar panel :) These range from milli-watts fitted to the battery case, to several watts where the battery is often separate from the panel (but may be stored at the back of the panel).
voltage regulators and convertors between the panel and the battery and the battery and the device it's charging
a Li-Ion battery, similar to those fitted to mobile phones. Some with larger capacities include several batteries.

There are various options available, depending on your budget and what you need.

Solarmio provide integrated covers with an inbuilt solar panel on the front and light inside the cover. These are available for the Touch and the Kindle 4 http://www.solarmio.com/en/4712389290168.aspx (for the Kindle 4 model). I have 2 of these currently and they seem to work very well with no complaints from the end-users (schools in Kenya). Similarly, http://www.worldreader.org have used lots of these cases and they are reliable in use.

I also use 3 watt panels which I connect to a generic USB battery-backed recharger. The battery stores the charge from the solar panel. From my testing of using 3 watt panels to charge Kindles directly (without an intermediate battery) caused the Kindles to hang and need rebooting, the charging didn't deliver consistent voltage (5v DC needed by the Kindle). For more info here's a blog post I wrote about some of the challenges http://kusaidiamwalimu.org/musings-on-solar-power-and-usb-batteries/

Picking suitable panels and batteries can be a challenge to find ones that are reliable yet cost-effective:
- Many integrated small battery-based units with small built-in solar panels don't generate enough charge to be usable (I've tested them in various countries including Kenya near the equator in peak sunshine).
- Similarly, most of the models I've bought have failed with the Lithium-Ion batteries swelling sufficiently to explode the case. These tend to be delivered from China or Hong-Kong, via eBay. I deliberately bought various no-name units to test their viability for my e-reader projects where I provide Kindles to schools in Kenya, etc.

The 2 models of batteries I've found useful include a 5000mAh unit, I pay around £10 per unit on eBay.co.uk, and small 1800mAh batteries from Volt http://getvolt.dk/en/ (they don't currently sell them to end users, I happened to meet one of the founders and eventually obtained several to support my e-reader projects in Kenya). Here's a recent blog post about using the Volt batteries in Kenya http://kusaidiamwalimu.org/solar-powered-kindles-with-e-volt-batteries-at-nyabondo-school-oyugis-kenya/

I'd love to learn more about how other people fare with solar charging of their e-ink devices. FYI: I'm also going to be creating larger solar charging systems to charge tablet-based ereaders and devices e.g. such as Nexus 7 and iPads.


is it allowed to print a freely available ebook for own usage

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

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

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


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


How to hide/delete/ignore a specfic span type

If you have an html editor which supports wild card or RegEx search and replace like Adobe Dreamweaver you could delete these out of the source code very quickly.  See image below-

Also you can go to RegEx tester sites like these to form the most effective search expression for your needs. http://regex101.com/


cover size issue with pandoc (markdown to epub) (when viewing on Kobo)

Unless I am mistaken I hacked a fix for this at some point by (1) unzipping the epub and (2) running a sed one-liner that edited the html to embed the image in an adhoc <svg> tag so it automatically resized to the size of the screen and (3) zipped back the epub. Doesn't matter any more in any case because shortly afterwards I opened a ticket with pandoc-discuss asking the developers to add this enhancement to pandoc's next release … Which they did! Since this was over a year ago IIRC… current stable pandoc release should have it…


How much of the power does the screen of e-Ink device consume?

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

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

  E Ink's technology is commonly referred to as "bistable". What does this mean? Bistable means that the image on an E Ink screen will be retained even when all power sources are removed. In practice, this means that the display is consuming power only when something is changing. For example, when reading on an eReader, power is only needed when turning to a new page but no power is consumed by the display while reading the page. - See more at: http://www.eink.com/technology.html

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

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


Can I connect to eduroam using a non-touch Kindle?

You need to jailbreak your Kindle 4 NT and have usbnetwork installed. The following hack worked for me:

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kindle4NTHacking#Connecting_to_eduroam


Do you see this as in this picture when you're trying to edit an eBook?

You can only edit EPUB and AZW3 formats!

Here's the tutorial with pictures how to proceed when editing eBook in Calibre.

As an alternative, you can use Sigil to create and/or edit EPUB format.


How does Kindle know my login at first boot?

From the manual, it tells you that if you purchased the device through Amazon then they use your Amazon account information and register the product to you before they ship the device.  Definitely not mining your wireless AP :)

  Registering your Kindle
  If you bought your Kindle online using your Amazon account, it is already registered to you.
  To verify, tap the Home button and look for your Amazon user name in the upper left corner
  of the Home screen. If it says My Kindle or shows the name of a previous owner instead of
  your own Amazon account name, you'll need to register it. See Setting up your Kindle
  Paperwhite in this chapter for instructions on setting up and registering your Kindle.

Here is a link to the userguide:
http://kindle.s3.amazonaws.com/UserGuide/Paperwhite_V2/Kindle_Paperwhite_V2_UserGuide_US.pdf
:)


How to handle formatted text examples in book content?

The Kindle formatting Guide (downloadable PDF) is a good source of information. Google it.

Using Images to display text is a NO! NO! (Explaining why would take several paragraphs).

It sounds as though you don't have a lot of experience with using CSS with HTML. That might be a problem. This isn't something you could do easily with a MS Word to epub conversion.

I would recommend Paul Salvette's ebook The eBook Design and Development Guide about doing these kinds of things. A little out of date, but still good information.  (Liz Castro's book is also great, but it was written early on and she had to create lots of kludgy workarounds to make things work. You no longer need those things).

Here's his tutorial about formatting/indenting/paragraphing
http://www.paulsalvette.com/2012/04/indents-margins-and-alignment-for.html

You probably want to look at some boilerplate css for ebooks.

Here's Salvette's http://bbebooksthailand.com/bb-CSS-boilerplate.html


How do I start over and create a new Calibre library?

Select Calibre Library > Switch/Create Library > Create an empty library... > Choose location for new Calibre library and re-import all your books.


kindle users guide requires registration to read?

You can download user guides for all Kindle models from Amazon.


How to convert PDF's with footnotes for Kindle?

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


Converting pdf with table of content to Kindle format

A few quick thoughts.

First, if you are using a Kindle Fire tablet, there is no need to do a conversion. just download a PDF Reader app from the app store and read the file that way.

If you are using an eink Kindle, I would suggest sending the PDF to the Kindle Personal Document Service which will do the conversion for you. (It's free and a cool feature in your kindle account):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_pdoc_main_short_us?nodeId=200767340

I haven't really looked at PDF conversions from the PDS; I'm guessing it will look really ugly. But I suspect the Kindle conversions to PDF are better than calibre's (although calibre might let you fine tune it). Using Kindle eink to read PDFs is usually a disappointing experience unless the document is short and very simple.

I glanced at the document. (I have made similar kinds of documents using Docbook XML). This document was optimized for PDF; you will lose a lot of formatting by trying to convert it -- though ironically it's pretty easy to convert it from Docbook XML to epub files.

To answer your question, the .opf is a file that stores epub metadata; apparently calibre needs to convert the PDF first to epub, and then reconvert it to the kindle .mobi format. That's why the end result is so horrifying.

Also: If you have access to an android tablet, you could upload the file to Google Play Books website and then read the PDF perfectly in the Google Play Books app on your device.


What is the technology behind e-Ink and why is it mostly used in e-readers?

e-Ink is, generally, a synonym of electronic paper. The form used in most e-readers is E Ink (proprietary and trademarked), produced by the E Ink Corporation. The technology basically uses microcapsules filled with white and black charged particles. The charged particles are manipulated by electrodes at the top and bottom of the capsule. When the top contains only white particles, the pixel is white. As more black particles are added, the pixel becomes darker until it becomes completely black.

The main advantage of eInk displays are that they offer superb contrast even in bright light (try reading a cell phone on the beach while wearing sunglasses). The primary disadvantage is that these displays are very slow relative to LCD, which makes them unsuitable for high frame rate applications such as video and many games.

e-readers are one application where high contrast is useful and high frame rates are not necessary, and so they have become the primary use of electronic paper technologies.


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


Can I use Kindle to read research papers?

Hello and welcome to forum.

I am also mainly using kindle to read research papers. PDF files with two columns are running smoothly and fast on kindle (from the performance point of view). The problem is that, in 100% zoom level, the text is very small and somehow impossible to read. (If you want to simulate the real size of text on 100% zoom level in kindle, try to zoom out the PDF in your PC screen until it is approximately 6 inches.)

Possible solutions:

Don't forget you can make pinch and zoom to make text bigger. Zoom levels are predefined and you need to use your finder to navigate manually.
View the pdf in vertical(landscape) mode. Now the text is almost twice big and easy to read and navigate.
If you can view the full article in your browser, then you can use amazon extension, namely send to Chrome. Now you can read the text and have any deliberate zoom level. The only downside is Latex math formulas are not appearing sometimes.
Almost all academic papers are written in Latex format. You can convert the PDF to Latex then modify it to have better zoom level or even change the number of columns for kindle and then convert it back to PDF and finally send it to Kindle. For similar solutions and approaches, take a look here.
You can use wide range of other devices available with additional functionalities. I suggest to take a look at this great review.
If you can jailbreak the kindle, then you can use any sort of viewer.

Finally, if you want, send me an example and I can test it in my kindle.


How to create ePub with title page from LaTeX source using pandoc

I was able to work around the issue as follows:

$ pandoc -S -o mybook.markdown   mybook.tex
$ pandoc -S -o mybook.epub --epub-cover-image=images/my_cover.png  title.txt  mybook.markdown

By converting the LaTeX file to markdown, the second pandoc command was able to apply the Title, Author and Date information in title.txt to the epub file.


I'll post an answer which seems to be working for me.

I found relevant documentation here: http://www.idpf.org/epub/30/spec/epub30-publications.html#sec-package-documents

Using Ruby and Nokogiri, I decompressed the ePub file, read the package document as HTML, then used an XPath statement:

unzipped_file   = Zip::File.open(epub_file)
package_file    = unzipped_file.glob("*/package.opf").first
package_as_html = Nokogiri::HTML(package_file.get_input_stream.read)
package         = package_as_html.at_xpath("html/body/package")

nav_file_name   = package.
                    at_xpath("manifest/item[@properties='nav']").
                    attribute("href").
                    text


Is there a small easel or book butler for an ereader?

There are mini easels (like these from Amazon), I have seen them in all kinds of different sizes in shops catering for artists (in Germany).

Given that your ebook is rigid (all that I know are), you can easily make such a book butler by using a 20mm thick block of wood, the size of your ebook reader, and routing a slot slightly wider than your readers thickness about 2/3 deep.
If you don't have a router, you can use three 6mm pieces of wood, and from two cut off a 15mm strip and from the rest the thickness of your reader + plus a bit, then glue the 4 pieces so created on top of the full size base

###   #######################
###   #######################
#############################

You put the ebook with the front to the left, and the ebook leaning like this: /.

Make sure the "groove" is not to deep to cover any buttons that might be at the bottom of your reader. While it might be OK to take it out when you want to switch it off, doing so for every page turn is probably not what you want.


Can an ebook on essays sell good on amazon/kindle?

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


How do I switch "time left" between chapter and book in the iOS Kindle App?

Tap on the indicator to cycle through the options. For me (using Kindle for iPad version 4.4) it cycles through

Loc X of Y
X mins left in book
X minutes left in chapter
blank


Updating EPUB book author and title metadata

You can "polish" your ebooks with calibre since version 1.0. But you have to add the capability to the calibre interface:

  To use this tool, go to Preferences->Toolbar and add the Polish books tool to the main toolbar. Then simply select the books you want to be polished and click the Polish books button. Polishing, unlike conversion, does not change the internal structure/markup of your book, it performs only the minimal set of actions needed to achieve its goals. Note that book polishing only works in ebooks in the EPUB and AZW3 formats.

Once you have added the button to the toolbar, you select EPUB books and then the "Polish books" button:

If you only select "update metadata..." you should get what you want in the EPUB files.

If you are running on Linux with Gnome, the polishing of many (50+) books can overflow your notification application. This is because polishing is done faster than the time a notification is displayed.

To resolve that problem you can use the find based solution by Simon, but that always updates all epub files. The method described in this answer only updates those .epub files for which the metadata has been updated by Calibre.


What was the first book to be published electronically?

Even though you tried to specify it, the answer still depends a lot on your definition of "book" and "electronic device". Wikipedia has a whole section on History of Ebooks. The quoted term "talking books" most likely refers to something we would call "Audiobooks" today, which even preceded the invention of electronics. Wikipedia on Gramophone Records

On electronics: The thermionic triode was invented in 1906, the transistor was invented in 1925, and the first programmable computer (Zuse's Z3) was built in 1941. Anything that we would consider a "book" needs significant storage space - a single page of text is about 10000 bits of data. Early electronics were not capable of anything of that sort. So the "early 1900s" is not a reasonable assumption.

You also mention "to be published"... that is a different matter entirely. Project Gutenberg started in the 1971, commercial publishers followed later.


Is there any advantage apart from more storage space when using a memory card in a book reader

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

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

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

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

(retrying did not help).

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

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


Will the ads on the Kindle with Special Offers affect my battery life?

For Kindles that use E Ink displays:

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

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

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

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

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


What is support of source code files in Kindle?

No you cannot directly upload the files and use them. You would have to convert the file (with a syntax highlighter) to a format your kindle supports (EPUB,AZW3) and then upload those files.

I would not use PDF, I still have to come across a converter that correctly does whitespace (significant in e.g. Python) correctly. Although you might be indifferent wrt that.


Kindle app takes up entire screen on windows 10 and I don't know how to get out of it

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.


Is there an easier way to edit a .mobi file?

As far as I know .mobi files can't be edited directly, they have to be converted first to another editable format. So, no, you can't directly edit .mobi files in just one step. See this thread on MobileRead forums for further reference.

Anyway, I think that there is an easy a solution to your problem. Please note that in providing the following informations I have assumed that you are interested in using your eBook files with a Kindle device. If it is not the case, maybe not eveything will apply to tour particular situation.

Maybe you are already aware of this since you are a Calibre user, but it now has an integrated ebook editor that can work not only with .epub files but also with .azw3 ones (also known as KF8), which are used on Kindle devices. Here is a link to the Calibre manual page about this feature, where you can check if this is a tool that will do for you. It is rather similar to Sigil both in appearance and in functionalities, so you will have no problem to sort it out.

I know that strictly speaking an .azw3 is not a .mobi, but both these formats are mainly used on Kindle devices; moreover, as far as I know, for practical reasons (even if not for technical ones) the .azw3 format is considered to be a successor to .mobi; so, if you need to retouch your ebooks and have a rather recent Kindle device (or app), it should not make any great difference which one of these formats you will use on it.

Here are also some links to various resources that you may find useful:

Difference Between Kindle Content AZW, AZW3, PRC, Mobi, Topaz
Mobi format, on Wikipedia
Kindle formats, on Wikipedia
The pages about MOBI, AZW and KF8 (AZW3) formats on Mobileread wiki.
The subforum about Kindle formats on MobileRead (which is, in fact, one of the biggest and more useful online resources about everything related to ebooks)
A question here on this site about the various formats used by Kindle devices.


What was the first commercially available eBook reader?

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


Publishing in serveral formats: what CSS code to use?

First, it's important to keep in mind that css support on ebooks significantly lags behind css support on the major browsers. EPUB only supports a subset of css.
Among the many challenges of producing ebooks is that if you test the html first in browsers (as I do), the ebook reading system won't necessarily render it the same.

There used to be a matrix of CSS support for epub 3 reading systems, but it quickly became out of date and wasn't maintained properly. Indeed, I can't even find the URL for it anymore (maybe it's gone offline?) There's a mobileread wiki (I actually helped to create it a while back), but it's not well-organized or maintained.

Also, as Kindle became more dominant in the market, many people cared more about what is supported on Kindle. The Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines (PDF) is pretty much the main source of information for everybody, and it is updated several times a year. In the back is a table of supported css.  For example, on page 97 of this document, it clearly says that ::before is NOT supported on Kindle devices.

I think Apple publishes a similar guideline, but far less frequently and it's far less detailed.

You can always check the epub spec to see if this css must be supported, but whether it's supposed to be supported and whether it's actually supported on reading systems is another story. So it's still the wild wild west for ebooks...

For this reason, you probably have to do more testing than usual. Besides Kindle,  I usually test on one or two IOS devices, Google Play Books and Adobe Digital Editions (Windows edition).

Another thing is that css media queries were quickly supported by all the major platforms. So you could write queries to target different screen resolutions, and could have fallbacks in case the original css wasn't supported.

Postscript: It would be nice if  a wiki or a site like Can I use it were to have a section devoted to  ebook support. Unfortunately, the ebook world is significantly smaller than the web browser world and unusually dependent on the ability of  proprietary reading system's ability to support features.


What is the different compatible formats between Kindle Paperwhite and Kindle Fire?

The book in question is a "Print Replica" textbook.  See how it says Networks: An Introduction [Print Replica] [Kindle Edition]?

When we look up information about Print Replica:

Kindle Textbooks:

  Kindle Print Replica textbooks maintain the rich formatting and layout of their print editions while also offering many of the advantages of standard Kindle books.

  Each page in a Print Replica textbook displays words and images in the same position as the corresponding print edition, while adding Kindle features such as annotations and the ability to sync your last page read across multiple Fire and Kindle devices and Kindle reading apps. Kindle Print Replica textbooks also have most of the same features as PDF-formatted books, including advanced zoom and pan functions.

  Kindle Print Replica textbooks are supported on:

Kindle Fire
Kindle Fire HD
Kindle Fire HDX
Fire HD
Fire HDX
Kindle for PC
Kindle for Mac
Kindle for iPad
Kindle for iPhone
Kindle for iPod touch
Kindle for Android Tablet
Kindle for Android Phone
Kindle for Samsung Tablet

  Kindle Print Replica textbooks will have the words "Print Replica" next to the book title in the Kindle Store.

Also, with regard to the "Look Inside" preview having adjustable text sizing, note the little FYI at the top of the previewer:

  Just so you know... This view is of the Kindle edition (2010) from
  Oxford University Press, USA. The Kindle Edition edition (2010) from
  OUP Oxford that you originally viewed is the one you'll receive if you
  click "Buy With 1-Click" on the left.

So it looks like the preview is not of the same exact Kindle file that you'd be buying.

I also downloaded the sample of that book onto my K4iOS app, and it's totally fixed layout, with margins containing notes and illustrations and stuff, while keeping the text fully searchable.  This kind of thing generally isn't supported on an e-ink reader.


I met with same problem on my Pocketbook 912, and after some time I figured out how to solve it. BMP should be in indexed color mode and without compression. ImageMagick by default producing RLE compressed bmp.
For indexed palette I am using default logo image 1_st.912.bmp.

So if you have image with right resolution you can do this:

$ convert someimage.png \
    -background white \
    -alpha remove \
    -depth 8 \
    -colors 256 \
    -type grayscale \
    -remap 1_st.912.bmp \
    -dither FloydSteinberg \
    -compress none  BMP3:outlogo.912.bmp

Here's another example, how I converted OpenBSD's puffy to pocketbook logo.

$ wget -O Puffy.gif http://www.openbsd.org/art/puffy/puf800X689.gif # download image
$ convert Puffy.gif \
    -background white -gravity center -extent 825x1200  \
    -alpha remove -depth 8 -colors 256 -type grayscale \
    -remap 1_st.912.bmp -dither FloydSteinberg -compress none \
    BMP3:puffy.912.bmp

This command will resize canvas, center original image and convert it to supported by pocketbook bmp file. Note: since you have other resolution, you should change 825x1200 string to your device's resolution.


I can't find the mobi format ebooks I copied from my computer to my kindle via usb, what should I do?

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.


Changing reading speed from book to chapter in Kindle

Tap in the lower left corner on the reading speed indicator.


How to change text alignment with Calibre book editor

You can use a CSS style to apply this formatting to all your text:

body {
    text-align: left;
}

This rule will be applied to all your text, so it will affect both regular paragraphs (<p> and <div>) and headings (<h1>, <h2> and so on).

If you just want to format "regular" text you could try to apply this styling just to <p>'s and see if it is sufficient:

p {
    text-align: left;
}

Of course, if some custom style is already present for these elements, you can just add the CSS properties to the existing selectors.

You must place this code inside the CSS stylesheet. Usually it is named stylesheet.css (but it can be different) and you can find it on the left "File Browser" panel under the "Styles" voice


Readers that support EPUB 3 page numbers

You can display page numbers in iBooks. Just be sure to select the "Tap to show printed page numbers" option in the toc.


Delete all directly import/sent kindle books

It might be easier to go to the Manage Content page, select Your Devices tab, put a check in the box for the device you want, then in the popup look for the option, View Device Content.

Doing that should let you do a mass deletion of items on a device without having to worry about deleting it on the cloud. By the way, for my account, it looks like View Device Content has two listings for each device: one for audio recordings, another for ebooks. You will see the View Device Content option only in one of those two listings. This should do it.


Is it possible to get rid of the search button (magnifying glass) from the bottom bar?

The overflow menu is automatic and controlled by the OS (similar to the Action menu on devices based on the default Android experience). You can partly hide the whole Content Bar by making your app full screen but you can't hide it completely as it replaces the functionality of the home & back buttons on non-kindle android devices.

According to the Kindle Fire User Guide (on page 8, section “Content Bar“), the search button helps users search their content library, not search within the current app. Therefore, the search icon is fixed and it will take you to the platform search… unless you override it as described here (scroll to bottom).


Is there a difference in rendering between Paperwhite and Voyage?

Apparently the Voyage rendering system is similar to the Paperwhite, but not the same.

I (currently) know of one difference between the two; there is a rendering bug in the Voyage that the Paperwhite does not have, as described on the MobileRead forums:

  let's not forget that Voyage has that weirdo width bug, too, for
  images? Not the same, mind you...but not totally dissimilar, either.
  If you have an image that's <50% wide in Voyage, you're set; but if
  it's 51%, you're screwed, it blows up to full width. Now, again: this
  isn't the same as this wacky, "the image won't float unless it's SMALL
  enough, in iOS," but...I wonder if they are in some wild-ass way
  related? In some algo, somewhere?

  —Hitch

I'll try to update this with any further information I get.


how to convert a wikibook to e-pub or mobi?

One way is to use EpubPress to make an EPUB and then open it in Kindle Previewer and export it as a MOBI file.

An issue I found is that opening each page of the SQL book individually results in too many tabs for EpubPress to process. It can process the single-page version you get from one of the printable version links on the book's main page, but then the pages won't be listed individually in the EPUB's contents.


Is it possible to self-publish ebooks with DRM?

Per your comments I have read on EditionGuard that offers an extension for WordPress sites.  There is a fee associated with content but my understanding is you upload your content to them, you can sell through your CMS and they will send a DRM ePub.  I have not tested this yet, but I had planned to in the future when I had time.  Also, note this is for only .epub and .pdf files NOT .mobi files yet.


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

According to Wikipedia, there are four main ebook DRM schemes in common use today, one each from Amazon, Adobe, Apple, and the Marlin Trust Management Organization (MTMO).

Amazon's DRM is an adaption of the original Mobipocket encryption, and is applied to Amazon's Mobipocket, KF8 and Topaz format ebooks.
Adobe's Adept DRM is applied to ePubs and PDFs, and can be read by several third-party ebook readers, as well as Adobe Digital Editions software. Barnes & Noble uses a DRM technology provided by Adobe, and is applied to ePubs and the older Palm format ebooks.
Apple's Fairplay DRM is applied to ePubs, and can currently only be read by Apple's iBooks app on iOS devices.
The Marlin DRM was developed and is maintained in an open industry group known as the Marlin Developer Community (MDC) and is licensed by MTMO. (Marlin was founded by five companies, Intertrust, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung and Sony.) The Kno online textbook publisher uses Marlin to protect ebooks it sells in the ePub format. These books can be read on the Kno App for iOS and Android tablets.

To answer your second question. Yes, you can purchase DRM free ebooks (Wikipedia lists a few places here.). Whether or not a book is DRM free will depend on the publisher/seller. It is also possible to remove DRM from some books, as there is opposition to DRM.


Can EPUB 3.0 be viewed on EPUB 2 devices

The IDPF states the following in a thread about EPUB 3 Rendering in EPUB 2 reading systems

  Although EPUB 3 is not perfectly backwards compatible with EPUB 2, a goal of the recent revision was to ensure, as much as possible, a basic level of rendering when features overlap.

The thread particularly mentions that providing the NCX data is necessary, which has been superseded with EPUB Navigation Documents
as described in the EPUB 3 changes document

So, if some care is taken, EPUB 3 files can be made to render on EPUB 2 reading systems.


How can I create an ebook from existing HTML files?

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


Using K2pdfopt to prepare a document for printing

This is commonly called "2-up" page placement, and, no, k2pdfopt cannot do 2-up page placement by itself.  Sorry.  But you can run k2pdfopt in "fit-width" mode with the width and height of the output page set for normal portrait like so:

k2pdfopt -ds 2 -w 8.5in -h 11in -mode fw -ls- ...

This will strip the margins and create 8.5x11-inch pages.  (The -ds 2 scales up the source document so it will fit the full width of a portrait page.)  Then you can use CutePDF's print-to-PDF driver (free download) to print that 8.5x11-inch PDF 2-up by selecting 2 pages per sheet in the printer preferences.

Or you can use Coherent PDF's command-line tool (free for personal use).  In this case, I use cpdf's -twoup-stack option, so I want the k2pdfopt output pages to be exactly half the size of an 11x8.5 page.

k2pdfopt -w 5.5in -h 8.5in -mode fw -ls- myfile.pdf
cpdf -twoup-stack myfile_k2opt.pdf -o temp.pdf
cpdf -rotate 90 temp.pdf -o final.pdf

Examples here.


How to render asciidoc with latexmath macros?

Kind of an old question, but I just figured this out myself, so just in case you don't have the answer, here goes...

For the inline equation, I was able to compile using

latexmath:[$\(\mathbb{F}_p\)$]

The second one, you don't need to use \begin{equation}.  AsciiDoc takes care of that for you.  Instead just do

[latexmath]
+++++++++++++
\{K = k * G\}
+++++++++++++

That's if you actually want the curly braces.  See here for more details.

Also, if you want to use the equation environment to have your equation numbered, you can use [latex] instead of [latexmath].

[latex]
----------------------------------
\begin{equation}
.
.
.
\end{equation}
----------------------------------


For Kindle DX Graphite, how to quickly add books to different "Collections"?

If you add the books to folders in the document folder then you can use a software called Koll3ctions to create the same collections as the directory structure. I seem to remember it needs you to restart the kindle after using Koll3ctions, so I rarely use it for just one or two books.


How to tell whether a Google Play eBook is bootlegged/pirated?

It's very common for the listing for publisher to be the company that formatted and produced the ebook. I wouldn't read too much significance into that. Sometimes this conversion services just duplicate everything -- though it is peculiar that it doesn't include some identification on the title page.

Booksmart is the name of an application for blurb.com. It is not the name of a conversion company. (That is suspicious!) Also, note that the other items published by Booksmart all seem to be free. https://play.google.com/store/books/author?id=BookSmart

I see all sorts of discrepancies on prices between BN, Amazon and GPB, but generally GPB tends to have the highest prices of them all. That's why it sounds suspicious.

It's hard to believe that someone has got through the hoops to get ebooks listed on GPB. (I have published 10 ebooks and still can't figure out how to get listed on GPB easily). But someone has managed to do so.

As an aside, this is just a PDF of the original printed ebook. (That's why it's not listed on Kindle -- formatting it properly would have been too difficult.


What is the best way to scan paper books to digital ebooks?

It's probably not relevant to you at this point, but a service called Shelfie used to allow you to purchase heavily discounted digital versions of any physical book you already owned. You had to sign the title page and upload a photograph of it as evidence you owned it.

Very clever idea and addressed a need all of us have, but unfortunately the interface was cumbersome, some of the discounts were not that good and many publishers didn't jump on board to participate.

Unfortunately in January 2017 the company stopped offering this service and was sold to Kobo. (See this article: https://teleread.org/2017/01/31/shelfie-goes-out-of-business-tonight/ )  My guess is that at some point another company will offer this service, hopefully with more participation from publishers and more buy in from Amazon and other distributors. Even though this company did not exactly succeed, it acknowledged an urgent consumer need and I fully expect somebody to try it again.

As far as scanning the books manually and legally, that seems like a lot of wasted effort.

Even if you wanted to pirate ebooks (under the rationale that you already paid for the book once), it still isn't particularly easy to track down ebooks which aren't bestsellers (Harry Potter, etc).

The thing to keep in mind though is that often used copies of printed books are still much cheaper than digital versions, and that some books haven't even been digitalized yet.

Sometimes publishers can offer temporary price reductions for well-known ebooks (especially when they advertise on bookbub. Occasionally these titles can get as low as 99 cents or 1.99.  As a practical matter, it might be a good idea to set price alerts for books you want digital versions of. You can use a service like ereaderiq to do that.


Should a title have two ISBNs if one is fixed ePub and one is free flowing ePub

Yes, you should. The point of ISBNs is to identify distinct formats--in the world of print, a paperback and a hardcover would have different ISBNs. As Bowker (the US ISBN authority) says on their site:

  The ISBN identifies a specific title, edition, and format being made
  available for sale. You will need an ISBN for each unique version of
  your book. For example, if you plan to release a hardback edition,
  softbound edition, EPUB edition, MOBI edition, and PDF edition, then
  you will have 5 unique versions of your book.

One of the most important things that an ISBN will do for an ebook is ensure that the right version gets sold to people with the right devices, so that nobody ends up with a format that they can't use. Because fixed layout is not something that all reading systems support, you'll want a different ISBN for fixed layout than for reflowable.


Software recommendation for writing ebook and exporting to multiple formats

Pandoc is your friend here.

Pandoc can take your input file (LaTeX, markdown, other) and transform it to PDF, EPUB, HTML (and many more).

Pandoc is cross-platform and free under the GPL, although donations are appreciated.

With regards to formatting your code, both LaTeX and markdown have components that will help.  LaTeX has many more layout options.

I've used both LaTeX and markdown to produce ebook (ePub) files.  An example of using pandoc with LaTeX is shown in another ebooks.stackexchange.com question I posted.

It's great to have a range of options.


Is there an Android reading app that synchronizes across devices?

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

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

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


Is a refund for an eBook bought at Google Play possible if it has been downloaded as an ePub?

Yes, this is possible. Just now I went through exactly the process you describe in your question.


How convert multi-column PDF files to readable PDF in 6 inches display devices?

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


What is Premium SSL download service that required to download some ebooks

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

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

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


Is there a way to convert an ePub page flip direction to rtl automatically?

Create an epub3 book or convert your existing epub2 book to an epub3 book and add a page-progression-direction="rtl" attribute to the <spine> tag in the content.opf file.

You can convert epub2 books to epub3 books with Calibre. (Polish books ▶ Upgrade book internals.)


browser tools to test custom viewport sizes?

Once you're in the responsive design view, the handles on the right side and bottom right corner of the view let you drag to set a display size. The drop-down menu in the upper left corner shows the dimensions as you drag. Once it's at the size you want, you can click on the menu, select Add Preset at the end of the list, and save those dimensions with a name.

Here's a question that lists some resources for viewport dimensions: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5784485/how-to-figure-out-common-viewport-dimensions-not-screen-sizes-of-common-device


How can I get access to my personal documents on Amazon for my Kindle?

So I finally found it buried under out-dated UX unfriendly and super stealthy drop-down menu! Special thanks goes to Ed who inspired me to look for a drop-down.

Highlighted in blue circle is the hidden menu (almost like an easter-egg). From there simply navigate to:

And they lived happily ever after...until Amazon updated their website AGAIN! :-)


Maintain font color when changing background color in ebook

Amazon may have resolved this for us, or it's just one of those things that worked itself out. I haven't changed the CSS at all after posting the question, but I DID convert the book to KFX format using the plugin for Calibre, and the renamed the KFX file with a .mobi extension, opened it in Kindle for Mac, and viola the colors are sticking:

What you're seeing here is red font displayed in "night mode" - so I don't know if it's a factor of the "basic" mobi format (which would have changed this to white text) versus the KFX format (which is what Amazon delivers to a buyer through the Kindle store), but I would presume that this would be preserved through the KDP publishing process. Never a guarantee though.

PS sorry, I don't have time tonight to post how I went through the above process, but I can if someone needs it and leaves a comment.


Donald Knuth, inventor of TeX, writes on a related word:

A note on email versus e-mail
Newly coined nonce words of English are often spelled with a hyphen, but the hyphen disappears when the words become widely used. For example, people used to write "non-zero" and "soft-ware" instead of "nonzero" and "software"; the same trend has occurred for hundreds of other words. Thus it's high time for everybody to stop using the archaic spelling "e-mail'". Think of how many keystrokes you will save in your lifetime if you stop now! The form "email" has been well established in England for several years, so I am amazed to see Americans being overly conservative in this regard. (Of course, "email" has been a familiar word in France, Germany, and the Netherlands much longer than in England—but for an entirely different reason.)

Extending the principle, there is no question that "e-book" (and also "Ebook" and "eBook") will go out of style shortly.  The only real question is if "ebook" will stick or if we will end up on just "book".  It's instructive to note that if someone tells me to mail them a document, I will reach for my computer and not for a paper envelope.


How to view book summary on Kindle reader

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


This sounds like a problem with the CSS that Calibre is generating for the epub file. Without seeing the code, it's impossible to say for sure, but my guess is that it's got the width and height for images both set to 100%, which would distort the images in the way you're describing. The answer is to simply remove the height declaration, which will make the images full width of whatever height is appropriate given their aspect ratio.

I don't use Calire, so I can't tell you how to use that tool to do this, but if you're comfortable editing HTML and CSS, all you'll need to do is crack open the epub file (rename it from .epub to .zip, then unzip it), find the images being affected in the HTML, figure out which selectors the CSS is targeting them with, and go change the relevant CSS declarations.


How do I prevent Calibre from modifying EPUB files when I read them?

I hadn't looked before so I did a little investigating. With Calibre 4.23 on Linux, I found that it's not exactly Calibre, it's the Reader.
I don't know why this Reader (it's a newly re-written reader, but I don't know if the old one did this) is modifying the epub meta-data. There is no reason to do so that I'm aware of as bookmarks and other reading information is kept in the database.
With that in mind, I changed the EPUB file permission to remove write permission. As a Read-Only file, everything seems to continue working normally and the Reader is no longer capable of changing it.
So at this point I can only suggest:

Change all the epubs to read-only
Substitute a different reader
Send feedback to Calibre

additional info
I did a little more investigation and found that "ebook-viewer" is writing meta-data under "Miscellaneous" "calibre_bookmarks.txt" even though bookmarks are controlled via the database. Deleting this entire entry via "edit book" has no effect and the book marks are still present because they are in the DB.
The content written also includes: access time stamps, Book Title, and my User ID. It's written as JSON Base64.
This should not be happening!
I posted Bug #1894442
Calibre Response
Calibre says it's not a bug because most users prefer it this way. Nevertheless, it can be turned off by:

LTrun {sic} it off under the miscellaneous section of the viewer
preferences.

Open the Calibre viewer
Right-click the body of the book to bring up the controls
Select Preferences
Select Miscellaneous
Uncheck "Keep a copy of annotations/bookmarks in the e-book file, for easy sharing"

I verified that it worked (at least for one in a row).


Can't find Kindle book after download from amazon

found the location of the files in the tools menu.


If you are referring to this website: http://www.mobisystems.com/android/ub-reader/ for the UB reader app you mention in your question; then they state on their homepage that the:

Universal Book Reader is a stylish and user-friendly eBook reading app for Android.
UB Reader provides a comfortable reading experience for Android smartphones and tablets, allowing you to read EPUB and PDF files - DRM-protected and otherwise. An integrated file browser allows you to quickly add any eBook stored on your device, over email, or through the Feedbooks.com online store.

So if you have the content in an EPUB or PDF format you should be good.
From a professional production standpoint Calibre is not recommended, there are a lot of validation and poor coding standards used by Calibre.
Therefore converting it in InDesign or possibly professionally having the epub converted is advised.
InDesign should have no issues creating an ePub correctly. Be sure to export the fonts correctly though to avoid font licensing issues.


Is there a way to share my Amazon eBook collection with other family members?

You can lend Kindle books to others through the Kindle store:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200549320

"A Kindle book can only be loaned one time" and loans are limited to 14 days.


How to sync mp3 audiobook to mobi ebook on Kindle for Android?

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

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


Save reading percentage, bookmarks and highlights inside of epub file

ReadEra

Quick access to the reading settings, table of contents, bookmarks, text highlights, quotes, notes, page browsing history in a book and other eBook options. Navigate the book using the page pointer or the progress line. Footnote texts in Epub, Mobi, Docx, Fb2 formats are printed at the bottom of the page, as in a paper book. Displays the total number of pages of a book and separately pages of a reading chapter.

If you have books and papers deleted, moved, or downloaded again, ReadEra will automatically find where you left off.


Accessing Kindle Paperwhite With Shattered Screen

You can just connect it to PC and move files from document folder as backup. Later you can restore them to new device. Anyways you books bought from amazon will be available on cloud


Are there studies on whether reading in landscape or portrait mode is better on smartphone size screen?

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

The study did not take into account dyslexia.

So I guess it depends on your font size.


EPUB 2 NCX How Should I Support pageList?

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

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

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


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

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

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


Is it possible for a Book to have multiple ISSN?

A single book/journal/whatever will have a different ISBN for each edition and variation, except for reprints of such, where the reprint will have the same ISBN as the original.

A series of books can (and most probably, will) have separate ISSN for print (the p-ISSN)) version and electronic (the e-ISSN ) version. The series can also be assigned an unique L-ISSN, that is based on the ISSN of the first published version.

Thus, a book, when included as a part of different series (with different ISSN) will have a different ISBN, since it will be published as a separate edition of the book for each series, even if contents will be the same.
Only case I can think of, where the ISBN will be the same, is reprint of the whole series, but then again, most likely the ISSN of the reprint will be the same as original, too.

Sources:

ISBN Agency

Wikipedia entry on ISSN


If the rendering implementation supports this, You might want to wrap that string in a span tag and add the white-space: nowrap style.

You can see it here in action.


Indesign -> Kindlegen -> Kindle flattens TOC?

It seems that the NCX is limited to two levels of hierarchy. I tested the actual hardware for the Fire HDX, Kindle, and Kindle Paperwhite. They all had the same results. Kindle for PC only shows one level. Lastly, I realized that the multiple-levels displayed in Kindle for PC (in a separate author's book) worked because the author (apparently) submitted a PDF, not an EPUB.


Why won't Microsoft EDGE show EPUB ebooks?

Sorry, but Microsoft declared EDGE will no longer be able to show EPUB files, so when they get the KB4522355 patch into your system to kill that ability, it's gone forever.

As Microsoft stated, other EPUB reader apps are available, including the Open Source fbReader for Windows, as well as 12 others in the Microsoft Store.


Does a screensaver serve any purpose on eink displays?

Technically it isn't a screensaver since the images are static (unless of course the device cycles through images at regular intervals). Either way, e-ink doesn't suffer from burn-in, so it really isn't necessary.

What a screensaver (we'll call it that) does do is show that the device is sleeping, so it will not respond to commands (either via touchscreen or buttons, depending on the device).


Kindle Touch 4th Generation does not render published font correctly

I managed to solve this problem with help from mobileread forum. I am posting the link to answer here https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3849282&postcount=2