How is an ebook made? What kind of software and hardware are used?

For general purposes, Ebooks are simple websites, contained inside of a predictable folder.  This folder is composed mostly of the content of the ebook itself which is the form xhtml and css.  The other files are files which declare exactly what contents are in the ebook folder.  Each xhtml page, stylesheet, image, font, etc. is listed in one of these files so the folder understands what it is composed of.  By following the rules listed on the governing body of the EPUB standard http://idpf.org/ you can write one of these files yourself.  The other files can also be written on basically any front end developing software, Dreamweaver, Coda, etc.  So, in theory, while it would be tedious, you could create an ebook with just a simple text editor.

That being said, mostly everyone is developing stream-lined way to create EPUBs as an export from a WYSIWYG application, including newer versions of InDesign.  This way you would layout the ebook the way you want, with formatting styles for paragraphs, headers, etc.  and simply hit an export button and voila, you have your ebook.

I hope this answers your question. :)


What information does B&N collect about my Nook Usage?

The Barnes & Noble Mobile Privacy Supplement addresses the following questions as they relate to Devices and Retail Apps:

  What personal information do we collect?
  How do we collect personal information?
  How do we use personal information?
  With whom do we share personal information?
  What else about Barnes & Noble’s Mobile Privacy Supplement would I want to know?

In section 2b, the information automatically collected is detailed:

  (b) Information automatically collected

  When you use a Device or Retail App, we may automatically collect
  information from your Device or Retail App when it is connected to the
  Internet. For example, we may receive and collect information
  concerning your Device or Retail App registration, settings, usage,
  firmware version, signal strength, search queries, network
  interaction, the name of the network from which you access the
  Internet, the Internet Protocol address of the device you are using,
  downloads, sideloaded content, configuration, service, or information
  related to any malfunction of the Device or Retail App. In addition,
  when your Device or Retail App connects to wireless networks operated
  by Barnes & Noble (e.g., within Barnes & Noble locations) we may
  collect information concerning your location when it makes such a
  connection.


Publishing blog posts as an ebook at Smashwords

I can't speak for Smashwords, and this isn't legal advice, but I will say that none of the terms that you quote above seem to prohibit what you are describing.  I'm actually not sure what parts concern you.

They require a complete work; that doesn't mean you have to publish a complete copy of a blog's archives. They seem to be worried mostly about books that end with an upsell, like "Thanks for reading; to find out what happens to Joe and Susie, buy my other book for $99!"

None of the terms that you quoted prohibit publishing a book of material that you wrote that is available elsewhere.

If the purpose of the blog posts selected for inclusion is advertising for your site, then 9b above is a problem. But if the posts are substantive in their own right, 9b doesn't indicate to me that you can never publish anything if it might interest the reader in other stuff that you've written.

As for nonfiction, the Smashwords homepage has an entire category of nonfiction works. They clearly allow nonfiction as well as fiction.

If you are concerned about it, you can always just email them and ask. If you are really concerned about it, get a California lawyer to review the terms and give you their thoughts (the terms are subject to California law, under paragraph 15b).


Some Kindle books on my pc do not appear on my Android

OK, I've solved my own question!

It seems that all three books were free downloads.
So I've downloaded them again to my tablet, at zero cost.

I still think they should have appeared in the library automatically  ......


Go to the original statement. This includes

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

and

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

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

So, yes, they are DRM-free.

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


EpubCheck in Calibre gives errors with epub:type and aside

epub:type attributes can only be used in epub3 books. You'll need to select Polish books > Upgrade book internals to convert your epub2 book to an epub3 book.


According to Kovid Goyal ( creator of Calibre) you need to convert to azw3 instead of mobi.


How to avoid sporadic page breaks in epub when using page markers?

I cleaned up the code by deleting the excess id tags (these were added by inDesign when exporting to epub and were unnecessary), and that fixed it. Still no idea why this specific paragraph had issues and not others, which also contained excess id tags. Turns out, inDesign had added some nice little code to the CSS for the class "_idGenParaOverride-1" to ALWAYS page break after. So I guess the only lesson here is beware of the inDesign-created stylesheet...


Cannot find books added from PC onto Kindle

I am unclear if this is two separate questions, or the same question asked twice. The first question appears to be a question pertaining to locating 2 books transferred from a computer to a Kindle via USB, and the second appears to refer to 2 books from Kindle Unlimited that were also transferred from a computer to a Kindle via USB. As both Kindle and Kindle Paperwhite are tagged, I will address both as they are not the same.

Whether it is a book you own or a Kindle Unlimited book, transfers are the same. Just remember that you don't own the KU books and there is a cap on how many titles you can have at once. Hopefully, I can be of some help, though.

Paperwhite Instructions:

After downloading the books to your computer you can transfer the files via USB from your computer to the Kindle's Documents folder, then click on "My Library" at the top left of your screen and your files should appear in the "Downloaded" tab.

Kindle Fire Instructions:

After downloading the books to your computer you can transfer the files via USB from your computer to the Kindle's "Books" folder. Then, on your Kindle Fire, tap the Books content library from the top of your screen, choose the "Device" tab, and your Kindle content should show up.

Just remember that EPUB, Mobi and DRM-protected files are not supported file formats, and not all Kindle content can be transferred. If you do have unsupported files you want to place on your Kindle, you can easily convert those files to AZW or PDF for free using http://ebook.online-convert.com/convert-to-azw3. I use this exclusively for my business and there is nothing to install, no pop-ups or malware, and it's much quicker than Calibre, which you have to download.


Which major eBook reading applications support JavaScript?

I don't believe any reader 'fully' supports EPUB3, in part because the EPUB3 and its satellite specs (e.g. annotation, distributable objects, widgets) are so broad that it's not viable for any one reader to implement it all.

On Windows, your best options may be Adobe Digital Editions and Calibre. More detail below.

The Readium project is an open attempt to provide a framework for reader developers with the widest possible support. The Readium Chrome app is a Readium EPUB3 reader, but now that Google has deprecated Chrome Apps it is no longer maintained.

There are readers that support a large proportion of Javascript, though not everything. And this support is poorly documented and hard to debug:

iBooks supports Javascript on "iBooks 1.5 or later and iOS 5.0 or later; macOS X Mavericks 10.9 or later". This internal Apple document has details on JS support. It's also possible to enable dev tools (aka Web Inspector) in iBooks.
The R2 Reader, which is essentially Readium, is available for iOS and Android. Readium uses the operating system's default browser engine, and as such supports a lot of Javascript.
Adobe Digital Editions uses a derivative of Readium SDK for its rendering engine. So it supports Javascript in a similar way. ADE is flawed in many ways (I find its CSS support very patchy).
Calibre is an open-source ereader and ebook-management app for Windows, Mac and Linux. It has a complex interface, because it can do so much, so it's not for everyone. It seems to support Javascript and CSS well.
The AZARDI reader from Infogrid Pacific supports Javascript. I find its UI confusing and its CSS support patchy, too.
Microsoft's Edge browser once opened epubs and, in theory, supported Javascript. However, Edge's EPUB reader's built-in Javascript heavily restructured the DOM of an epub document, which often breaks any Javascript in the epub itself. Microsoft removed epub support from Edge in October 2019. It's unlikely that epub support will return in future when Edge switches its rendering engine to Chromium.

At the moment, Google Play Books documentation says it does not support any Javascript:

  Google Play Books doesn't support non-standard audio or video tags, or interactive functionality such as that enabled by JavaScript code.

FYI, this Ebooks question from a few years ago is similar.

UPDATE Jiminy Panoz maintains the excellent Blitz framework, and he says the following ereaders support Javascript. I've not tested these myself.

  Kobo on iOS and Android
  Readium-based apps in general e.g. CloudShelf Reader, Bookari, Helicon, Lis-a, LEA reader, Infinity Reader.
  Lektz, Gitden on Android/iOS
  Reasily on Android
  Vitalsource Bookshelf on desktop
  Bookworm on Linux

For more information on various aspects of reader support, see his support data here.


Convert an Android app which is actually an ebook to a pdf file?

Neither of the apps that you linked to are ebooks, in the description for LeetCode Cracker it even states that it is reading the data from GitHub which is why it requires an internet connection to view the content. The second app links to the GitHub repository that the problems and solutions are based on, https://github.com/FreeTymeKiyan/LeetCode-Sol-Res .

These are not ebooks, they are collections of content put together in an app that may present themselves as something that resembles a book. To convert them to ebooks you would be best off taking the content from the GitHub repositories and making an EPUB or PDF out of them.

The other option is to get a Chrome Book (or other device running ChromeOS) so that you can run Android applications like these from a laptop. Google has more information about running Android apps on ChromeOS here.


It looks like the anchor tags were put in the wrong place. If you unzip the .epub, you'll see that the link for Part 1

is at the end of the first (navigational TOC) file, 1250-h-0.htm.html rather than the file for Part 1, 1250-h-1.htm.html.

If you move each of those links to the beginning of the correct file (right after the  tag and before the
 would be a good place) then that should fix your problem.


How to load large mobi files on a Kindle e-reader?

Usually a .mobi file actually includes a couple copies of the book in different formats. Is the .mobi file much larger (like, multiple times) than the epub file? This is the giveaway. The KindleStrip plugin (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=96903) might help you remove that excess content to bring the file down to a manageable size.


Can I use a TV or Monitor for a larger screen with my Kindle?

Although you cannot stream from any Kindle directly (except for the Kindle Fire HD), you can download any of your Kindle books to a PC or laptop and read them using the PC Kindle App, and you would be able to stream that.


Fix spelling errors in epub file via rtf of same book?

Yes, you can modify epub files with an epub editor.

Two free options are Sigil and Calibre.


How to download from Amazon cloud to Kindle desktop?

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


For the record I wanted to add that the free software KOReader is adding Hebrew and Arabic support. See https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/5359


Possibility of converting a pdf containing equations to mobi

Try https://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/download/ or FineReader. You'll likely get a usable but bad result.


What rights do I have to eBooks I purchase in the U.S.A. as a U.S. citizen?

Ebooks are protected by the Digital Milenium Copyright Act (DMCA), so you are only legally able to do what the DRM allows. Most of it depends upon the company who sells the ebook, and the publisher.

If you are allowed to sign on to multiple readers with the same account.
As long as the terms of whoever the account is with allow you to share accounts.
Generally, no, because it would require stripping DRM.
It depends on the company -- Amazon, for example, only allows nontransferable accounts.

There is one exception: if you are legally unable to read books (blind), you can remove the DRM if it prevents screen reader use.

NOTICE: I am not a DMCA expert, nor a legal consultant. I found this information through internet research, so make sure to confirm it.


Is there a guide for copyright for countries other than the US?

Since this issue will be important to this group, I found a couple of resources that will explain copyright terms in different countries.

The data on the first site hasn't been updated in a while but it does include info on fair use.
Foreign Copyright Laws
Tree-view chart on Foreign Copyright Law

The good thing about the above site is that it is exhaustively cited so people can at least see where they can get started in researching their own copyright questions.

There is also good ol' wikipedia with a list of country's copyright lengths.
List of countries' copyright lengths

If you know of others, add them and we can build a useful resource.


How do I remove tiles from the Kobo home screen?

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

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

  The current functions of the plugin are:

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


I used to convert web pages to PDF, but on the Kindle it is much nicer to read mobi documents.

To convert web pages to mobi, I highly recommend the GrabMyBooks firefox extension. It is the one piece of software that has dramatically improved my experience on my Kindle this year (and I already use great software such as Briss, Librerator and Kranf's Kindle Collection Manager).

GrabMyBooks lets you gradually build an ebook in a separate Firefox tab by selecting web pages or content as you go. You can add pages one by one by right-clicking on the page and selecting "Grab this Page". If you only want part of a page, you can also select text and grab it. And you can also select multiple links and grab them, which is very convenient if you are interested in multiple blog posts.

Usually, when you grab a web page for your ebook, there are many components of the page you do not want: the sidebars, the comments and so on. GrabMyBooks is pretty good at guessing which content you want, but it sometimes gets it wrong. In these cases, it's very useful to be able to select the text you want, right-click and choose "Grab selected text".

By default, GrabMyBooks creates an Epub. But in the Settings, you can tell it to create a mobi file. For GrabMyBooks to create mobi files, you must have Calibre installed. You then tell GrabMyBooks where Calibre is installed. This may sound like a lot of work, but configuring GrabMyBooks properly is well worth it if you want a luxury experience of creating ebooks from web content on the fly.

For instance, there is a setting where you specify the default save directory. Well, I have it save my ebooks directly to my Kindle's "documents" folder.

Also, there is an option where GrabMyBooks saves an Epub file in addition to the mobi file. This allows you to later load the Epub book in GrabMyBooks and edit it again, adding or deleting web pages. In the settings, you can set a directory where the software will save Epubs, since your default format will be mobi.

I recommend always editing the Metadata setting before grabbing your book so that it displays with a nice title and author name.

Hope you like it as much as I do.


When shopping for ebooks on Amazon how do I tell if they have DRM?

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


How beneficial was the Baen Free Library to Baen publishing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quick Summary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


What settings are the most energy efficient on a Nook Color?

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

Lower the brightness
Turn off Wifi and Bluetooth unless necessary

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


Can I force Calibre flow mode to ignore page breaks and never skip pages like paginated mode?

Well I use linux and I'm not sure if that's what you're after but there is a yellow icon representing a scroll at the top right of the viewer's window next to the find next - find prev vertical arrows. When you mouse over it says "Switch to scroll mode… etc." You click this and it should switch to scroll mode.


How do I make Calibre convert CBZ to EPUB without images shrinking or conversion?

Try Kindle Comic Converter.  Despite its name, it works for all types of readers, and can output EPUB.  Be sure to select the generic reader output, enable Color Mode, and select EPUB as the output format.


Taxes on money made publishing on Amazon by a non-US/UK resident

Where you "are" is normally not decisive on where you pay tax, it is your country of residence (which might be South Africa or any other country) which determines where you pay tax. Having a bank-account in another country doesn't influence that, although where things get paid might have influence to the applicability of VAT, c.q. sales tax, or not. IIRC in the USA sales tax doesn't apply to sales outside of the states where the company (Amazon) has no offices, in the UK VAT rate for books is 0%.

If you have to pay income tax in your country of residence (there are only a few countries that not seem to tax you), you should probably declare that as income, as you would have to if you had bank accounts in the USA or UK.

The USA should not tax this (although they might ask for proof that you pay your income tax in your country of residence. I used to get special forms for that after moving from the USA to Germany).

Ask your tax advisor, to prevent double payment of tax.


What is the difference between giving away my only print copy or my only electronic copy of a book?

There are a couple of key legal differences between print books and ebooks:

First, ebooks generally are not purchased, they are licensed. If you "buy" an ebook from Amazon, you don't actually own it--you're just allowed to use it.
Second, there's the First Sale Doctrine. This is what allows owners to sell print books when they're done with them. At present, it's unclear whether the first sale doctrine applies to digital goods, but the courts seem to be leaning away from letting it, meaning that selling your ebooks when you're done with them is not likely to happen. There's a good writeup on this available here: https://library.osu.edu/blogs/copyright/2013/04/23/the-first-sale-doctrine-and-the-sale-of-digital-goods-in-light-of-kirtsaeng-and-redigi-inc/. A relevant excerpt (talking about reselling digital music files, but probably indicative of thoughts about ebooks as well) is:

  Capitol Records brought suit against ReDigi on the grounds of
  copyright infringement. The United States District Court for the
  Southern District of New York held that ReDigi’s website infringed
  Capitol Record’s rights of reproduction and distribution, and that the
  distribution of the digital music files was not covered by the first
  sale doctrine. The court reasoned that the process of creating a copy
  of the work on ReDigi’s cloud server was an unauthorized reproduction
  (the first sale doctrine applies only to lawfully made copies that are
  distributed, not reproduced) and that because an additional copy was
  made for the server, users did not distribute or sell the particular
  copy that they had originally purchased.

As much as we may think they are basically the same thing, ebooks and print books are quite different in a number of ways, and we're still all figuring out the nature of those differences, let alone how to deal with them. It may well be that the entire business model changes enough that the first sale doctrine becomes irrelevant to ebooks—if ebook subscription services become the primary method of distribution, for example.


Does a “one-fits-all” file format exist or should I offer multiple ebook formats?

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

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

This leaves you with two common formats:

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

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

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


what fonts to use for Adobe DE app on mobile devices?

I use ADE for basic testing for years and must say it is not the best tool on the market. The problem is its development is rather hectic and releases are often a bit unstable, full of tiny but annoying bugs. As for fonts, you are right with the default serif/sans-serif fonts. It depends on the rendering engine―try to display the same file from the ePub in IE, Safari and Firefox or Chrome and compare the results to the ADE defaults. It is always a good practice to choose what font to use in general, if not in particular, e.g. font-family: serif, Hoefler Text;.

UPDATE

If you are asking whether ADE has its own built in font, no, it hasn’t. ADE is installable for Mac and Win only, which means it uses default Win and Mac fonts according to default settings for its renderer. If you wish to know which font is used for which tag, the only one way is to test it or check the source code for the renderer.


Since I find scrolling and zooming on an ebook cumbersome, what I would do with a large image/map is divide it in smaller pieces, slightly smaller than my screen resolution (30 or so pixel less -> 15 on each side). After that generate separate HTML pages, for each image part, and put in hyper-links from page to page on the sides (alternatively I would investigate if I could make the image selectable using image maps).

If the map was divided in 9 pieces:

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9

Displaying number 5 would look like:

     2
 +-------+
 |       |
 |       |
 |       |
4|       |6
 |       |
 |       |
 |       |
 +-------+
     8

Selecting the numbers would get you to that piece of the map. You could extend this with numbers near the corners to go the diagonally linked image pieces.

As with maps printed in books (with numbers to the top and bottom of a page with the page numbers connecting map pieces), you could have a range of pixels overlap between the map-parts.

If you have many pieces, or this is not a one off, you should probably write a program that takes care of the division of the image, the HTML generation and combining in an EPUB.


How to choose where/which to buy ebook/book online?

Methods for estimating page count for ebooks  depend on a variety of things and don't really indicate anything.

Different ebook distributors use different ISBNs. It used to be that print publishers would have a single ISBN. Nowadays, when you publish on a distributor's platform they will tend to assign an ISBN specific to the store.

Google Play stores tend to have the same store for everybody, but Amazon has stores for each region or country. I would expect that Google Play Books to have more editions  -- especially for public domain titles.

With print editions, there are often different editions with different covers and prefaces and annotations. That is especially true with books for classrooms. Typically less developed countries may produce cheaper print editions and be priced accordingly.  With ebooks, there are not as many different editions unless the work is public domain. It can sometimes be different to tell the difference among them.

You may not realize this, but 1984 is in the public domain in certain countries (but not the USA).

If you are unsure, the best thing to do is to check the main website for the author and see what editions that the author's site links to.

Finally about Orwell's 1984 and Amazon, I see that various Kindle editions cost from $2  to $2.99 (for a collected novels). Also, translations have different prices. If you live in a country where the novel is in the public domain, you may see more editions (and a greater variety of prices).


How to automatically hyphenate before sending to a device?

Hyphenating a text that is not in a fixed presentation (page shape, or
ratio page size/ font size) makes little sense as the words may change
position on a line.  Hence, I am assuming that what you are asking is how
to automatically do soft hyphenation, so that the reader of the file can
modify the font size and still get proper hyphenation where needed.

Soft hyphenation consist in marking with a special character
(e.g. SHY) all the places in the text where a word can be hyphenated.
Then the displaying device does not have to know hyphenation rules,
which vary from language to language, and can simply use the markers to
cut words when needed, which may vary depending the fonts chosen by
the reader.

Can this be done by Calibre. I never had to do it myself, but Calibre
does have a plugin that will do it. It is called Hyphenate This!
and works for AZW3 and for EPUB. It is described in some details in
this article of the-ebook-reader.com(with a download address), and is also discussed on mobileread.com. It can also be downloaded from Softpedia.

From what I have seen in the files, the whole code is in Python, so it
is likely to be platform independent (Mac, Linux, Windows).

Now, if the question was whether soft hyphenation can be done without pushing an extra button, I cannot answer. But the OP does not seem very willing to add more details to his question.


What are the differences between the FireOS Kindle App and the Android Kindle App?

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

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

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


How do I add a cover (and other pictures) to my ePub?

Images in general should be added just as they would be in HTML, with an <img> tag. The image files themselves should then be included in the OEBPS folder or a subfolder (I generally use a subfolder, personally). Each image file will need to be declared in the <manifest> section of the content.opf file. As mentioned in the epub 3.0 specifications, the cover image in particular should also have the cover-image property assigned to it in the <manifest>, like so:

<item id="cover_jpg" properties="cover-image" href="images/cover.jpg" media-type="image/jpeg" />

The <manifest> entry for non-cover images is the same, just without the properties="cover-image" bit.

That's it for plain epub, but some retailers will also ask for a <meta> element in the <metadata> section of the content.opf file declaring the cover, like so (from Amazon's Kindle Publishing Guidelines):

<meta name="cover" content="images/cover.jpg" />

Note that Amazon in particular no longer requires the <meta> bit as long as the properties="cover-image" is correctly declared.


Is there a way to publish an eBook, distribute it and the push updates to the distributed eBooks?

Most online publishers have a method to allow for updates to published ebooks. The user generally is given way to identify that a book has an update, then the user is given the option to re-download the work.  I don't think any publisher has "push" to reader.

So yes there is way to redistribute the book, but it is dependent on user to perform some action to receive the update.


Does Amazon provide subscription service for magazines?

Yes, I subscribe to a few tech mags not available in our area via my Android Kindle app, so I assume it is available on all kindle related apps and devices.


is PDF not considered as an ebook format

It's pretty straightforward: ebook is a generic word that encompasses many different digitalized formats for reading.

So yes, that would make  a PDF a kind of ebook. But it all depends on how inclusive you want your definition of an ebook to be. I don't think there is any single definition.

The main complaint about pdfs is that you can't edit PDF files easily (it's usually  an output format) and that you can't resize the text in a responsive manner (You can only zoom in and zoom out the entire page). That limited its usefulness in smaller devices. In contrast, the epub format and others made it easily to navigate through tables of contents and change text size and global styles. In terms of responsive design, epub was a more flexible format (and indeed, it was constructed precisely for that purpose). PDFs were designed to be viewed and printed in a single size. You can change  size to allow it to be displayed on a larger or smaller screen, but it still was built primarily for rendering in one size.

On the other hand, there are lots of tools for producing pdf files (much more than EPUB), and now 9 inch and 10 inch mobile devices are able to view many different sizes without too much pain. Typically though, the pdf tools are office applications and don't allow you to manipulate source code or its styles.

Practically speaking, publishers don't create pdfs except for print copies because amazon doesn't sell pdf ebooks. (But amazon does support fixed layout ebooks, which is similar). But practically speaking, even nontechnical people have access to an application which can read pdf files.

PDFs have been around forever -- and associated with Adobe -- though over time it has been accepted as an OpenFormat and an ISO standard (in contrast to MS Word, for example).

An interesting question (and a frequent subject of debate) is whether ebooks should have embedded fonts or should have the option not to (and use the device's defaults). I might be wrong, but the PDF standard requires the font to be embedded -- which means requiring a fairly sophisticated tool to do this. (Epub just requires the ability to edit HTML).


Are there studies that show whether reading ebooks on e-Ink, LCD, SLCD or AMOLED displays are better for eyes?

I don't know about any for those particular screentypes, but LCD vs E-ink has been researched by Siegenthaler, et al.

This study showed that the objective reading behaviour is little different between the two types, but strangely (to me) the subjective preference shifted over time from a small advantage by E-ink to a small advantage by LCD.


Scaling all pages in a PDF or DJVU file to the same size

There is a program called jPdftweak which will let you scale pdf pages to whatever size you would want. You can set the parameters for the conversion to the larger page size and jPdftweak will scale all the pages in the file in accordance with the settings you have made. jPdftweak is a cross-platform, free Java program.


Using Kindle for Windows 10 with NordVPN

Having the same problem. After several attempts to resolved I contacted NordVPN support. The proposed solution:

  Disable CyberSec feature in NordVPN application.
  Connect to US servers 1324, 1702, 1703, 1707, 1709 1829 (Provided by support; timing issue on one. Note: Others were not the fastest speed.)
  Enabled TCP protocol in NordVPN Advanced Settings if the issue will persist.
  However, it did not work. I set everything back and am awaiting their response.

Latest Update - Instructed to:
1) Please change your DNS servers to NordVPN DNS servers manually by following these steps:

2) Navigate to Control Panel -> Network and sharing center -> Change adapter settings

3) Locate your main Internet connection adapter. Please right click on it and select Properties.

Select IPv4 and Properties again and then please add these our DNS addresses: 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1

Latest - IT WORKED!


What does the extremely fragile glass do in Kindle3's pearl e-ink display?

E-ink displays have to be mounted on a surface. In this case I assume that was done on the glass. This keeps the E-ink nice and flat (good for equal visibility of all pixels) and for extra reflectiveness of ambient light, if the glass is part of a mirror (as it seems to be).

The display is actually a thin film transistor array and my guess is that if the supporting glass breaks, some of the circuitry of the thin film get ripped. A single rip across the width or height would make addressing the film as an array impossible.


Where is Kindle.exe so I can change Windows Defender Controlled Flolder Access to allow updates

Usually, kindle.exe is installed in the following folder:

C:\Users\User\AppData\Local\Amazon\Kindle\application

To display it:

Press +R to display the Run dialog box.
Copy and paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Amazon\Kindle\applicationand press Enter.


What is the most readable font for an ebook?

Generally speaking serif fonts are considered easier to read in long bodies of text, even if there are no definitive studies about why they should be preferred over sans-serif fonts.

Usually it is considered that serifs help the eye to go from a letter to another, creating something like a natural flow between words, but I personally think that this is a somewhat personal preference. In printed paper (books, newspapers, and so on) I have always seen serif fonts, while for web content (blog posts, forums, articles) sans serif seem to have the largest share.
Despite this, ebooks seem to largely follow the standards of printed paper, not of digital content: maybe because of something like a tradition, maybe because eink devices try to offer a look and feel resembling printed paper.

Anyway, any ereading device has at least some basic font customizing options, so in the end it is all in the hand of the single end users and their personal preferences.


We can integrate the gif format in epub3 packages say as a background to div container or another option would be convert gif to mp4 format.


Is it possible to make a Kindle ebook look exactly like my InDesign / PDF file?

Given the restriction of the book being viewable on the older eInk Kindles—no, you will not be able to replicate this layout perfectly. Particularly with images spanning page spreads, but also with precisely formatted blocks of floating text, your only real option for replication is a fixed layout ebook.

Fixed layout books, as you might expect from the name, lock the layout so that it cannot be changed. This allows for absolute positioning of page elements and precise control of positioning. Reflowable ebooks, on the other hand, are designed to be completely flexible, so that they can be viewed on devices of any size and so that users can change font size, typeface, margin, and any number of other display options.

Fixed layout books are largely limited to tablets; certainly, the older eInk Kindles do not support them. Instructions for creating fixed layout books are available in section 4 of the Kindle Publishing Guidelines. You may be able to use Amazon's InDesign plugin to create your file if you end up deciding to make a fixed layout ebook.

EDIT: Note that while it is theoretically possible to replicate your print book exactly by composing it entirely of screenshots of the book, Amazon mandates against this in section 3.6.7 of their guidelines: "Do not render large chunks of text as images. If an image contains whole paragraphs of text, it should not be an image. Instead, it should be HTML."


How to remove white margins from ePub in Google Play Books

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

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


How to download & transfer from Kindle or Amazon.com to PC

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

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

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


First, I don't think footnotes translate easily to HTML.  Endnotes are way easier and more appropriate.

The problem here is that HTML isn't semantically rich enough to do these things automatically. You need to manually do the numbering.

I use docbook XML to create citations and endnotes. Very easy to do. Then I use docbook XSLT to output everything in clean HTML. That is a powerful solution, especially if you are comfortable using XSLT. http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/Footnotes.html

Another out of the box solution is to edit source in Markdown language and then convert everything to HTML. I see that Pandoc has a footnote solution http://rmarkdown.rstudio.com/authoring_pandoc_markdown.html#footnotes

It would be worth looking into what capabilities Adobe Indesign has for creating footnotes/endnotes. They have an Export-to-epub capability, and maybe the output renders the footnotes/endnotes in a  nonsucky way.

Failing that, regular expressions are the way to go. But you might look into this: https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/common-idioms.html#footnotes

At the risk of trying to simplify your need, a lot can be said for just doing it manually rather than trying to change your production process. This is true especially if you already know the number for each footnote -- like, are you just reproducing the footnote number from a public domain work? Maintaining under 100 citations manually might be less trouble than you think.


How do I create a simple e-book with MobiPocket Creator on Windows?

Creating a simple e-book with MobiPocket Creator is relatively easy. The steps for doing this are as follows:

Grab the latest version from here: http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadsoft/DownloadCreator.asp
Complete the installation, paying particular attention to the page below where you are asked which edition you would like to use:

You will now have an icon on your desktop that you can use to launch MobiPocket Creator:

The start page looks something like this:

Under "Create New Publication", click "Blank publication". You will be presented with a wizard that asks you a few questions about your publication, including:

the name
location for storing the project files
character encoding (changing this to UTF-8 is highly recommended)

After completion, you can begin adding content to your book by dragging-and-dropping files into the window:

For example, you could create an HTML file like so:

<!DOCTYPE html>

The Beginning

This paragraph introduces the very beginning of your book.

...and then drag it into the window. It will be copied to your project folder.
Click the "Metadata" link on the left of the window to edit the title, author, etc.
When you are ready, click the Build button in the upper-right corner. Leave the settings at their defaults and click the Build button:

In my case, the tool produced a file with a .PRC extension. You can simply rename the file to .MOBI if you wish.

  Important Note

  MobiPocket Creator is licensed exclusively for non-commercial use only so you will need to get in touch with them if you want to actually publish content with it.


Referencing cover, title, and dedication pages in ePub navigational TOC

I really know little about InDesign and less about desktop ebook readers for Macs.

But I know ibooks, and I'm guessing that the page numbers are calculated by the program. The TOC comes from the toc.ncx file inside the epub zip. Indesign probably auto-generates that from chapter titles.

On my title page I often link to parts inside the ebook, and even though it's theoretically possible for me to link back to it, I can't think of a situation where i would need to.

On most ebook reading platforms, the cover page is not listed in the TOC but if you go Page Back from the first page (or the title page), you can usually get to there easily.


How well is SVG (being a "pixel image" alternative) supported?

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

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

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

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


How to tell if a book from Kobo Store has DRM?

If you look at the bottom of the page you linked:
http://store.kobobooks.com/it-IT/ebook/tutto-sherlock-holmes
you'll see:

As you can see, this book is listed as "Senza DRM" (DRM-Free on the English language site).

You'll also see books with Adobe DRM such as "Mitologia classica"
https://store.kobobooks.com/it-IT/ebook/mitologia-classica

Bonus tip:
To the right of the Product Information you'll see the heading "Read This On" ("Leggilo su"):

If the device list includes Blackberry, you can download the file directly to your computer rather than loading it through the Kobo Desktop. If there is Adobe DRM, you'll still need to use ADE to get the file to your Kobo. There's a link to the device list directly under the "Add to cart" button.


First, we need to define our terms more precisely.

EPUB 2 uses the toc.ncx file to produce a machine-processed table of contents. It is not human readable but automatically appears in most ebook reading platforms.

EPUB 3 allows the use of toc.ncx (for back compatibility reasons) but also allows a (human readable) "navigation document", which is an  HTML5 file including  this  tag:

    <nav epub:type="toc" id="toc">

(See this example: http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EPub_3#Navigation )

According to the latest Kindle Formatting guide and iBooksAssetGuide, Apple and Kindle both support the NAV tag in an HTML navigation document rather than using a toc.ncx

Finally, you can create a TOC MANUALLY  using simple human-readable HTML. (In the Kindle Formatting Guide, this is referred to as a "logical TOC"). This does not replace the HTML5 navigation document or the (EPUB 2 friendly) tox.ncx file.  In fact, Kindle requires a logical TOC  in addition to a navigation document. You can create as many logical TOCs as you want, but Kindle strongly requires one or more.

Using EPUB3 navigation documents (instead of toc.ncx), Kindle only supports three different guide items: cover, TOC and start reading location. iBooks is practically the same. If you do the NAV tag (i.e., the epub3 way), you do it by adding something called a LANDMARK http://www.idpf.org/epub/301/spec/epub-contentdocs.html#sec-xhtml-nav-def-types-landmarks but right now the only one it recognizes is a landmark to denote where the ebook begins. So that does not help you now. LANDMARKS are very dependent on the reading system.

However, there is another option. You could create an alternate "logical TOC" and keep this file "hidden" from the navigation document. There are two ways you can do this:

If you are using toc.ncx (the epub2 way), you would add the attribute linear="no".

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

alternate-toc would not appear in the reading system's table of contents. BTW, you see that for the first itemred, linear is also NO because Amazon doesn't want it to be in the table of contents.

If you are using an HTML5 navigation document, you can do this with the "hidden" attribute

http://www.idpf.org/epub/301/spec/epub-contentdocs.html#sec-xhtml-nav-def-hidden

To summarize: you can include as many "manual TOCs" as you want (and use some methods to hide them from the ebook system's builtin TOC navigation system).

Finally I would recommend Matt Garish's book EPUB 3 Best Practices. It came out in 2013, but is still very current. It has a great section on epub3 navigation. (I just re-read it). Also, it explained how to make LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS and LIST OF TABLES which is sort of what you are looking for.


There's a pretty lengthy write-up on HuffPo.
Short version:

For one week each year, Rita Toews, 61, a soft-spoken mother of two and grandmother of one, sits at the center of the ebook universe.
Operating from a spare bedroom in her home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada with her cat Lola by her side ("Every author needs a cat," she says), Ms. Toews is the creator and chief ringmaster of Read an Ebook Week, an annual international celebration of ebooks....
For the one week only, publishers and authors offer thousands of original ebooks for free and at deep discounts to encourage book lovers around the globe to give ebooks a try.

It apparently dates to 2004. The domain in the article, ebookweek.com, now redirects to Valor eBooks. Not sure of the relation there.


What is the hidden file .adobe-digital-editions on my Kobo?

Kobo's devices are compatible with Adobe Digital Editions. If you have books with DRM, you will need that feature, otherwise you can simply ignore it exists.

More Detail on Kobo + ADE on their Website


Why does Google Play Books not allow search for uploaded books?

Dear Sir / Madam & Citizens of the Internet,

I find that, with the current version of Play Books on android (version 5.7.5, as of 09/02/2020), if one launches the app connected to Wi-Fi or the internet via. mobile-data, then the search option is "disappeared", i.e. it simply doesn't show up.
But, if one disconects from the internet (i.e. turns off Wi-Fi & Mobile data) then the search option suddenly appears. I also found, once the search option appears, then wi-fi and mobile-data can be turned back on again.

I hope this is useful to someone. I was annoyed and perplexed by this, but didn't know for quite some time that the "fix" was so simple. I hope Google doesn't see this and patch it out.

Take care,

G. Ward.


How can I prevent a widowed/orphaned header?

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

Here is an excerpt from the said article:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


How much does Amazon make on Royalties earned but not paid?

I don't believe there is any way that anyone outside of Amazon could truly answer this. The best anyone could hope for would be to guess or speculate, and that's not what this site is about.

As for your comment that "authors selling books in multiple countries could have hundreds of dollars due them", that is simply not correct. The threshold you mention is only applied to authors who choose to be paid by check, and the threshold is only $100. If an author is selling any books in foreign markets, I can guarantee they aren't counting on those sales to pay the bills. Those who are fortunate enough to sell really well in foreign markets will likely have no problem at all meeting that threshold.

Furthermore, if an author chooses to use Electronic Funds Transfers (EFT), then there is no threshold, regardless of where the sales occur. That reason alone is why the vast majority of authors use EFT. If there are any authors who ARE losing "hundreds of dollars", then they can easily resolve this by doing the same.


CircularFLO doesn't apply styles for live text

Please contact help@circularsoftware.com for free support.

The fonts used in your InDesign documents for live text must be TrueType or OpenType and must be active across the entire Mac and not just for InDesign.


How to make images scale with text size on an Amazon Kindle?

First, I don't know the specifics of using Calibre for images, but here is the css code I use to make images work in epubs which will be converted by kindlegen to Kindle.

https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/a/6515/417

Generally I upload d a high resolution image and then specify the width for certain sizes. Kindlegen will downconvert the images as needed.

From my example, I said that width was 95%, but you can make it 30%, 50%, whatever.

I don't know why you're using ex as units -- especially because you dealing with images of text rather than actual fonts as text. I'm guessing you're looking at autogenerated code from MS Word or Indesign?

For more background about formatting images for kindles, see their publishing guidelines. http://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf

Eventually I imagine you could use MathML instead of a graphic, but that's not supported yet in Kindle.


How to build an epub starting from a bunch of HTML files?

I assume you don't write the HTML directly, but use something like MarkDown or reST. But even if you do, you should look at Pandoc.

The program can read HTML and generate EPUB 2 or EPUB 3 (among others).


how to properly declare metadata in epub3

The difference between the suggestions from the source you pointed at is how you define the target element. You should be aware that a lot of the metadata options available in an EPUB 3 can have multiple occurrences.
E.g. 1
<metadata ...>
    ...
    <dc:creator id="author">John Doe</dc:creator>
    <dc:creator id="author1">Jane Doe</dc:creator>
    <meta property="dccreator:file-as">Something</meta>
    ...
</metadata>

The above example is problematic because the meta element is trying to work on the dc:creator element, except there are two of them. Which one does it go for?
E.g 1 - Solution
<metadata ...>
    ...
    <dc:creator id="author">John Doe</dc:creator>
    <dc:creator id="author1">Jane Doe</dc:creator>
    <meta refines="#author" property="file-as">Doe, John</meta>
    <meta refines="#author1" property="file-as">Doe, Jane</meta>
    ...
</metadata>

You should use the refines attribute and the simplified version of the property attribute (e.g. 'file-as') when there is more than one occurrence of the target metadata element. The refines attribute allows you to specify by the id attribute of the target element (which according to specs must be unique).
If you do not specify a refines attribute, and the property attribute doesn't refer specifically to a reserved list of EPUB 3 spec metadata (Dublin Core), then the meta element is deemed to be working on the publication as a whole.
Other Examples
// We only have a single dc:title in our metadata so we can use the extended property attribute in the meta element
<metadata ...>
    ...
    <dc:title id="title">My Book</dc:title>
    <meta property="dctitle:file-as">Book, My</meta>
    ...
</metadata>

// This is only hypothetical, as I'm not sure whether the publication itself would require a 'Metadata Authority' definition.
<metadata ...>
    ...
    <dc:title id="title">My Book</dc:title>
    <meta property="meta-auth">Awesome EPUB Organization</meta>
    ...
</metadata>

EDIT: In regard to what meta::property values are allowed have a look here: Archived from the original on epubzone.org here
Also, the latest official IDPF specifications for EPUB Open Container Format may be found here: https://www.w3.org/publishing/epub3/epub-spec.html#sec-core-media-types


How do I make the images larger for Paperwhite?

I can only speak generally about how images are converted in Kindle. I have not used MS Word to do it (I make my ebooks in HTML), but I have lots of insights about images in kindle and have done a lot of testing.

Kindlegen will autoconvert images to the size/resolution appropriate for the device. BUT you need to make sure you start with a source image which is high resolution enough for it to be resized.

I realize that the HTML --> EPUB --> MOBI might be different from MSWORD --> MOBI, but according to the Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines PDF they should be 300 dpi, RGB and should be able to display at 2x magnification across devices. Therefore, you really need to have the width be at least 1600 or 3200pixels at 300 dpi.

I suspect that the source image you used was a crappy web image at 72dpi, and then even though you think it's resizing to acceptable quality levels, the low resolution computer monitor is not showing what it really looks like. That's why it looks small. I'm guessing that the  cloud previewer sees that it's a low quality image and it keeping it small because that will prevent pixilated rendering of images on some of its devices.

You don't need to have graphics good enough to print, but it needs to be significantly better than a 72 dpi web graphic.

(I Have cheated one time and increased a 300 dpi 600px wide graphic by opening it up in a separate graphics program and scaling it up to 1600, but that was a special case; the image detail was dense enough that it could be expanded without losing quality).

MS WOrd may not let you see properties of images. If so, You may need to remove it from MS Word and then edit it in a graphics editor (which allows you to bump up the dpi and scale the resolution up) I would guess that you need an image width 1600px at 300 dpi.

Part of the problem is that the MS WORD to MOBI method does not give you much freedom to tweak it. Amazon's instructions for these conversions are fairly superficial and lead to such issues as you have.

From the standpoint of production, you might want to consider using Calibre (free software) to do conversions from MS Word to .mobi and then open things up in the Kindle Beta Previewer 3
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1003018611

You're viewing the alleged ebook  in the cloud viewer. It's unlikely that what you are seeing in cloud viewer bears any resemblance to what you might see on a Kindle e-ink or Kindle tablet (especially on images).

I do things in HTML/EPUB, and I spend most of my time trying to troubleshoot Kindle's use of images. It's hard -- especially because things might look fine on one device and crappy on another. (Kindle for IOS is its separate kind of hell).

I test ebook images on  all my kindle files on Kindle previewer, Kindle app for Android, Kindle e-ink device and Kindle app for ios. (I don't have access to a kindle device -- though I have good reason to believe that Kindle app for android renders things similar to Kindle devices).

The key thing (to summarize) is to make the graphic as high quality as possible.


Does un-registering a kindle device remove ebooks downloaded to the device?

For an Kindle Fire, no, all purchased content will be removed when you de-register. For an e-ink Kindle, ebooks that have been downloaded will remain on the device until they are removed. Note, however, that this will not necessarily be the case forever.


Support for actual page numbers is practically non-existent on almost all e-readers. You've tagged this epub3—I'll point out that epub3 support is also practically non-existent...

I don't think using non-integer values is going to cause issues on many readers, because I doubt many of them will care. I also don't think many of them will break on the page, unless you have explicit css to force a page break.


What is the best tool for Amazon Kindle book publishing?

I'm going to give the easiest answer -- though learning it can be hard.

Adobe Indesign lets you produce both pdfs and epub files (to convert into kindles).

If you want to do everything in one tool, then Indesign is your solution. (They charge a monthly fee for renting the software which is quite reasonable). Then you can convert the epub file to kindle .mobi file by using the Kindle Previewer.

Another solution is to pay a formatter or a publishing company to produce the book. Surprisingly, it is not particularly expensive (you can probably pay about $250-$500 for the job -- possibly less; I should know because that's the work I do). If you're not comfortable with technical stuff, paying for that might be easier.

Some more ebook options are discussed in the "Amazon Kindle Publishing Guidelines" (Version 2015.4) (For some reason, the URL is always changing; you may have to hunt a while on amazon.com to find it).

Finally there are several tools that I have not mentioned. For example, you can use MS Word to print a pretty awesome printed book. I have done this before using the MS templates specifically for books. (After googling  "book MS Word template" I found a great template from one book designer for less than $50-- it looked great).

For producing epubs, you can use calibre or sigil or something similar.

The key thing is downloading the Kindle Previewer program from the Amazon site to convert from epub to .mobi

I'm making the production process sound a lot easier than it really is. For example, testing and quality control is quite complicated and time-consuming. But this is the basic information you need.


Due to the nature of the content, flowable text is out of the question and thus all formats which depend on HTML and CSS in some form or another shouldn't be used.

The best choice for this use-case would be to use PDF, this would ensure the content is 'fixed'. The other limitation is that the content is not presentable using a single font, thus images have to be used; this is why fixed-layout ebook formats are not usable in this case as well.

I don't know of other ways of obtaining such a PDF file besides what you have already mentioned, so I decided to have a go at it myself with LaTeX.

Here's what I did:

1) Generate high-resolution PNG files of each page. You can use Quran.com's image generator found here. If you're on a Windows machine, you can use my fork found here.

2) Prepare a LaTeX document with settings specific to the geometry of your Kindle device.

3) Place each page image on a single PDF page and add page numbers and related footers/headers as you see fit.

I've tried creating a sample PDF with the first four pages, you can check the output in the comments (I don't have 10 reputation points yet).


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

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

Example:

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

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


What book collection related features can be useful in an eBook reader app

Collection download and transfer

Ability to synchronize your collection between multiple devices
Ability to synchronize your collection with the cloud

As a subset of this, backing up and restoring your collection in the cloud

Ability to manually download books from your PC collection to mobile device without automated syncing
Ability to connect to eBook vendors of your choice, purchase ebooks from them and download (Amazon, Samsung, Apple, other web books stores...)
Ability to recognize the book (author/title) by reading the unknown book's content and matching it to special content database, the way music players can identify an MP3 file by the audio fingerprint. Not sure if any software today supports this.

Picking a specific book from a collection

Finding a book by file name substring
Finding a book by browsing the directory

Ideally, should let you sort within subdirectories by your choice (by date, by name, by size)

Tagging and searching by tag
Ability to read book metadata, including EPUB; and finding books by metadata
Finding a book by searching for a string in actual book text
If books support summary blurbs, ability to view a blurb before opening the book

For mobile devices, persistence of experience

Remember the last book you were reading, and open it immediately
Remember several of the last books you were reading for quick pick
Remember the last directory you opened the book from, and start browsing there
Remember a list of your past searches and let you re-do them

Social features

Rate books
Recommend books
Share books
For DRM books that support it, lend books


From the User's guide:

  Understanding Kindle display technology

  Your Kindle uses a high-resolution display technology called electronic paper. The
  display is  reflective, which means you can read it clearly even in
  bright sunlight. Electronic paper uses  ink just like books and
  newspapers, but it displays the ink particles electronically.

  On occasion, your screen may seem to flash. This is part of the
  process of updating the  e-reader display. By default, your Kindle
  features fast, smooth page turns, minimizing the  number of flashes.
  To refresh the page with every page turn, from the Home screen tap the
  Menu button and select Settings. Tap Reading Options and use the Page
  Refresh setting to  set your preference. For manga refresh settings,
  tap the Menu button when reading a manga  book and select the Page
  Refresh On/Off setting.

So, I guess it's common for all devices. My Paperwhite 2 has it too.


Under what conditions should I apply for ISBN numbers for digital works?

Note the following -

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

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


I'm inferring a couple assumptions from what you're trying to do. It sound's like a fixed-layout book. Don't worry so much about screen size. Fixed layout books will resize automatically. Just make sure it's still readable on the smaller sizes without zooming.

Then, don't try to edit a fixed layout epub with software, they will never display it properly. You have to add the audio files to the epub package and then edit the .xhtml and .css files manually:

Unzip the .epub (try a free download called ePub Zip/Unzip)
Copy the audio files into the OEBPS folder
Open an .xhtml file with TextEdit (Mac) or other editor
Insert the code in the header, or wherever it needs to be to accomplish your goal for that particular page in the book.
Save and repeat for each of the files you need to add. You can test along the way by opening the .xhtml files in your web browser. Don't worry so much about the layout here, just test the audio.
Once you've linked all the audio files to the correct pages, rezip the epub and open it in iBooks to test.


What is the most paper-like display resolution for e-book?

There is no display resolution "where the text display is 100% indistinguishable to average human with 20/20 vision from a regular paper book." In fact, display resolution is not the most important factor in producing text as legible as a paper book. Notice I used legible, not indistinguishable.

Start by reading Wikipedia on font rasterization. Compare that to offset printing, the process that is used to produce most printed books. In offset printing, the quality of the paper affects how much the ink spreads as it is absorbed into the paper. There's no way to duplicate that effect in a digital display.

The perceived quality of text display on digital devices is affected by the font rendering technology (i.e. Freetype, Microsoft renderer, Adobe's, etc.), the text rendering technology (usually either an HTML/CSS engine like WebKit or a PDF renderer), the particular font, and the type of display (LCD, eInk, etc.). If all the other factors are executed correctly, the display resolution is only important at smaller type sizes. However, higher display resolution are almost always better because they give the various rendering technologies more resources to use.


I have never used Adobe Indesign, but I'm guessing that when they spit out html they use the italic and bold html tags. My guess is that in Adobe Indesign you are not seeing a separate font at all but a compound statement about font-style and font-family.

You can easily test this by outputting it epub/html and viewing the source.


What triggers the "adult" designation on Amazon Kindle books (romance genre)?

Check your product descriptions for certain trigger words. See this comment:
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/12/2013/amazon-is-making-it-harder-to-sell-bigfoot-porn-ebooks/#comment-155994


What design patterns exist for responsive web design of ebooks?

The problem with trying any really interesting design elements (like responsiveness) in ebooks is that the main reading systems out there are amazingly primitive by web standards. JavaScript support is more or less confined to iBooks at present, and the only system that uses media queries that I know of is Kindle, and they only support the amzn-mobi and amzn-kf8 selectors. A few reading systems will support some CSS 3 elements like border-radius, but mostly you're stuck with the older stuff. On top of that, many reading systems (like the nook) will by default ignore the publisher's CSS file completely and use their own stylesheet instead.

If what you're looking for from responsive design is the text conforming to the screen size, though, you can certainly achieve that through good markup and simple CSS. Make your markup as semantic as possible, and use semantic elements rather than styles, since many systems will ignore, for example, a style that bolds some text, but will happily bold anything in a <b> tag. If you're going for a wide array of devices, keep things as simple as possible. In general, think of the web circa 2000.

If you're targeting a specific device, you can do some more interesting stuff. The first lesson here is: know what specific devices and reading systems you're targeting.

If you have specific questions about any of the areas that you mentioned in your post, feel free to ask more questions!


Not trying to discourage you from trying this, but you might find that starting with a WORD document takes up MUCH more time than you thought due to the complexity of setting it up, which is why I write in Markdown and convert that directly to EPUB with software I wrote.You really should try Sigil (free) or Calibre (free), they are both free, can make an EPUB, which you can then upload to Amazon, Smashwords, or somewhere else.


Media queries to distinguish between Kindle e-inks vs non-e-inks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


How can I access a web browser on the Nook Simple Touch?

Perhaps this might help:
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-secret-nook-simple-touch-web-browser.html
Relevant quote:

  With the NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight and the original operating
  system, the process is a bit more complex: Connect to a WiFi network,
  use the Quick Nav Bar to go to Settings, and then choose Connect your
  Facebook, Twitter, and Google Accounts.

  Tap on the link to Google; you will be asked to “Link your Google
  Account,” but don’t bother. Instead, tap Forgot Password. Now look
  closely and locate the small Home button that has mysteriously
  appeared at the bottom of the page. Tap Home, and you will get to the
  Google search engine, and from there you can connect to most Web
  pages.

This page shows the same method with a video:
http://goodereader.com/blog/e-reader/how-to-access-the-hidden-internet-browser-on-the-nook-simple-touch-with-glowlight


What's the correct way for developers to edit PDF?

The "problem" is that PDF does not know anything about its contents and the structure of the document (unless structure has been added — maybe in order to make it accessible). That means that you will have to find other ways to recognize (in the case of a TOC) titles etc.

One possibility (and I think PDFpen is doing it that way) is enumerating all text elements, comparing them with the properties you defined to be "Title", stitching them together (note that a word in PDF may not correspond to what we see as "word"), making a list of titles, creating another page, and create the TOC, and finally establish links between the TOC and the corresponding targets.

Another thing to know is that it is way more complex to read a PDF than to write one. This is the reason why there are more libraries (and applications) to just write PDF than being able to read and write (and even fewer to understand PDF…).

Now, because creating a TOC is something which does not happen that frequently, and requires a visual check anyway, it would be reasonable instead of trying to create an application to do it, to seriously consider a plug-in for Acrobat. Acrobat's API for plug-ins is rather extensive, and reasonably well documented, and there is a community which provides support. AFAIK, this API is free to use, unless you want the plug-in work with Reader (in that case, you will need a license from Adobe). The advantage of this approach is that you can rely on Acrobat's capabilities to write a proper, good quality PDF.

To answer your (rather rhetoric) question why editing tools are so rare… Well, PDF is much more than a simple text file…


Cannot highlight text on my Kindle Paperwhite using a sample ebook

I think that's by design. Samples are basically marketing material and Amazon doesn't want to provide full functionality of a Kindle eBook with them, in hopes to give users another plus factor to buy the eBook.


To defragment a filesystem you need a software that does that.

All you have to do to defragment the memory of your Kindle Paperwhite is to connect it to a PC/Mac and run a defragmentation utility on that drive.

Edit: Being a flash drive though, as @Daniel suggests, it's actually not a good idea to defragment it, because there will not be any real benefit in terms of performance and actually doing it many times will shorten the life of the memory of your device.

There is always something to learn out there!


This is not legal advice, but the answer to your question is almost always no.

In general, it is illegal to sell a copy (physical or electronic) of a book if you are also keeping a copy. Say you own a physical copy of a book. You can sell that copy, but you generally cannot sell an electronic copy, regardless of whether you keep the physical copy. This is also generally true even if the buyer owns a physical or electronic copy of the book already. This is because copyright protects the copyright owner's exclusive right to make or distribute copies in the first place.

If you are even thinking of doing this, you absolutely must consult a copyright lawyer. There are very large potential penalties for copyright infringement, regardless of the amount of money changing hands. For example, one person was ordered to pay $1.5 million for sharing 24 mp3s.

So, the answer is: probably not. Tread with extreme care and consult a lawyer.


Help creating a toc.ncx file for compatibility with epub 2

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

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

That will give you more verbose and  actionable error messages.

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

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

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

But your .ncx file has an empty reference;

      <content src="" />

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

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

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


Most reading systems for epubs do not include JavaScript support at this time, so you're fairly safe. For those that do, the IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum; they're the folks who make the epub standard) has a section on security in the epub 3.0 spec. It pretty much lays the onus on the reading system developers to disable various avenues of attack. One thing of note is that all their points are phrased as "reading systems should" where "should" means:

  that there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to
  ignore a particular item, but the full implications must be
  understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different
  course.

So their security concerns may or may not be addressed by individual reading systems. It's a good bet that the major ones will play ball, though--particularly as most of them have someone in the IDPF.

As far as downloading stuff from random places on the web--well, run a virus scan on anything you get and you'll probably be okay, but that's always riskier than going through "official" channels.


Are there any ebook libraries in Germany

Most libraries in Germany are in my opinion joined with Onleihe. They have a website where you can see which library is connected by clicking on a map to select your Bundesland (Hessen, Bayern, etc.)

http://www.onleihe.net/ihre-onleihe-finden/onleihen-in-deutschland.html


What text format is least likely to clash with ebook formats?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


How can I compress this pdf file without losing readability?

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


How to effectively manage ebooks using Calibre?

As written in the Calibre manual you should use tags:

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

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


I have the Kindle app on two of my Mac computers.

Yes, the books will still appear within the Kindle app on the new computer, provided that you are signed in to your account.

I believe you can be signed in to the kindle app on up to 6 devices, removing one device will not affect the books you have purchased (you may just need to re-download them on to the new device).


how to extract specific tag using calibre

AFAIK, this can't be done automatically with Calibre. However, if it's possible to download parts of a website with a custom Recipe.

If you're familiar with Python, you could also use BeautifulSoup to scrape websites.

For more information, see How to scrape websites with Python and BeautifulSoup.


Can Kindle previewer preview older Kindles?

Yes, it can. In the Devices menu, select "Kindle e-ink", then from the tabs across the top select either "Kindle" or "Kindle DX" instead of "Kindle Paperwhite". This will show you the mobi (as opposed to the KF8) view, which is what the older devices use.


Within Calibre, is it possible to set a hierarchy on the series field?

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

This behavior should be enabled in the options panel:


To be honest there are high probabilities that your screen died when you dropped the keyboard on the kindle's screen.
My suggestion if you wanna keep it would be to remplace the entire screen by buying a brand new and following a tutorial like this one.

Otherwise taking into account that the release date of the kindle DX was on July 1, 2010. You may consider buying a newer model from Amazon Kindle or Rakuten Kobo.


How to reset Kobo web browser bookmarks on Kobo Mini

there should be an "x" ico next to each bookmark URL, and when pressed, a box should pop up and ask you if you would like to delete the bookmark. Simply press yes if you do and no to exit.


Are ebooks on Google Play always encumbered with DRM?

Google Play does supply non DRMed books.

I have bought ebooks from Google Play published by Baen who have never had DRM and I can downloaded them as .epub with no DRM.

It is up to the publisher and not the store to decide if the book is encumbered with DRM.

If a store says something is DRMed and it should not be ie the publisher says it is not then you should contact the publisher to giving the store details and the publisher will tell the store to change it.

In this case note the original publisher (Random House) of the English version of Artemis have asked for DRM. see here


How to sync non Amazon books from the iPad Kindle app to a PC or Mac

Amazon went to significant trouble to make it practically impossible to extract a kindle file out of the Kindle app for ios.  (They even make it rather hard -- though not impossible to send files directly to the device app without using the cloud). You can use itunes to add a file into the IOS app (using the "File Sharing" function in itunes; connect the device, select the device --> Summary --> Apps --> (scroll down and select Kindle app and then choose Add file).

Maybe (hopefully) Calibre lets you add files to the ipad. But this is a one way street. Amazon wants to make it impossible for you to have direct access to the ios file system.

But you may appreciate my perspective.

The Kindle app for ios is a truly wretched app for rendering ebooks. As an ebook publisher and formatter, I spend a huge amount of my time trying to make the ebook look less-than-crappy on the Kindle app for ios. (by comparison, It's a breeze to format for Kindle on android or the Kindle devices). Most of my ebooks just look horrible on the kindle for ios. I make a lot of compromises.

The rule of thumb is to try to use whichever ebook reader  is native to the device. Ibooks is a best-of-class ebook reading software and certainly the best ebook reading app on ios. If you're buying from a third party (Smashwords?) you should have gotten an epub version and just emailed it and opened it in ibooks. It would look beautiful!

From a practical point of view, I sometimes read purchased ebooks from Amazon on my ipad app. That is unavoidable. But for reading third party stuff on your kindle app, you should be using the  Send-to-Kindle function to get into the cloud, then go to the website and choose the device you want to deliver it to.

Your question is seeking to break through the Kindle app's DRM. Besides being possibly illegal, it also will be technically hard to do. I realize that you probably obtained the ebook file legally. I am unclear what you mean by sharing function.

Perhaps you should log in to the Kindle Personal Documents service via computer, go to "Manage your content and devices" , for show, select Docs, select the file and click the Actions button and then choose Deliver from the popup. That's the primary way you share Kindle ebooks across devices.

Finally, a personal recommendation. Even though I have never bought an ebook from the Google Play store, their Play Books app is phenomenal and is the best share-across-devices-and-platforms solution. Works great on ios, Kindles, androids, Windows. They have an easy-to-use interface for uploading epub files to the cloud.


Is there online eBook authoring tool which can produce ePub and PDF formats?

I have heard of 2epub but I have never used it nor would I believe you would get a good quality ebook.  I would suggest doing this with InDesign that will allow you to create .epub or .pdf files.

You can export as an .epub file:

Export to .pdf file:


Resize readium document if content body has changed

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

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

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

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

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

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


How does the kindle define how many "book size dots" to display?

it is accurate. i found at least 10 sizes for 15 plain text book's (azw3 with no  pictures or complicating formatting), according to there reading time.

"approximation of how long the book is." means: how big is the file. not how many syllables characters or words there are (that's why it says "approximation"). book's with pictures charts or other formatting, or PDF's will have more dots.