Are there any specific features that I should look for in an eBook reading application?

To add to already good answers:

NOTEs:

"[Phone]" marks features that have more impact and usefulness on a smartphone and may be less important on a tablet.
I won't delve into content management/library organization features (e.g. dealing with multiple books), as that warrants its own Q&A in my opinion, and was also mentioned as a bullet in Jason Down's answer. If Jason doesn't mind, I can expand in my answer.

Readability/UI.

Night reading mode
[Phone] Optionally hideable UI elements to free up screen (menus, navigation, buttons, Android notification bar).

Good design usually shows miniature clock and battery indicator in the corner, that way you can still see those 2 important notification bar info indicators while reading without the bar taking up space.

[Phone] Support for locking the reader in a landscape/portrait mode for when you accidentally flip your phone sideways - or vise versa, ability to choose the orientation of reading independent of OS.
(already noted in another answer, but so critical I have to mention here as well): Support for customized fonts, and if possible, colors.
Disable CSS (seems like a small deal, till you meet an ebooks where the publisher evidently fell in love with Geocities style of content design :)
Support for reading books aloud (Text-to-Speech)
Ability to select text, and copy it or share it to another Android app.

Navigation:

Ability to advance through the text by tapping large areas of the screen (typical good design does page up on clicking left 1/3 of the screen, page down on right 1/3 of the screen)
Easy random jumping (go to page #N, go to table of contents in single clicks)
Full text search!
Book progress indicator, ideally with 2 features: clicking on it in the middle lets you actually advance into the book to where you pointed; and being able to hide.
Bookmarks!
[Phone] Ability to page up/down by using volume up/down hardware keys. Critical for single-handed reading on a phone.
Autoscroll if you like that feature (personally, I never use it)

Supported content - probably most important!:

Support for varying e-book formats.

Your main reader app should at the very least support the major ones (ideally, most of: txt, html, epub, prc/Mobi, pdf).

Support for your main e-book format (e.g. if 90% of your ebooks are in Amazon Kindle format, it's important
Support for DRM on books you freqently use may be important for some.

If it's important for you, support for your preferred ebook vendor (Google Play Books; Kindle/Amazon book store, Apple, Samsung).
If you read ebooks in other languages, support for popular encodings for them (nothing more annoying than trying to read a Russian ebook and finding the app doesn't support KOI-8).
Support for network- or cloud-based libraries
Related to the last one: ability to sync up the book positions/bookmarks between different devices running the same app (I know FBReader does that via a helper app, not sure if Kindle reader or Google Books does).
Ability to share a book via Android share menu, from within the reader.
Ability to manage book collections/libraries, if that's important to you

Reality check features

Price (and if the app has a free/paid version, which features are important and in the non-free version). For example, Calibre for Android is a paid app (Windows one is free)
Last but not the least speed of loading and speed of reading. On my old phone, Kindle App was absolutely horrendously slow, to the point of being unusable.

Less popular but occasionally cool:

Amazon X-Ray
On the fly translation. I know Google Books and FBReader support it, but seems more of a gimmic, IMHO.

If you don't plan on editing your eBooks on a PC, you may want to consider editing abilities of the app

Editing metadata
Editing content.


Managing Kindle Collections from a computer

Some options are:

There is Kindle Collection Manager (I didn't try that.) Here are some instructions. And here you can find the developer.
Calibre also has a Kindle Collection manager plugin, here is a howto, a semi-official forum.


Table of Contents just contains lots of "New Article N" entries

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

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

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


Is there a standard file format for distributing digital comic books?

First of all, the .CB* file format isn't a own file format at all, as it simply represents a standard archive file. That's also where the different endings come from:

.cbr for Rar files
.cbz for Zip files
.cbt for Tar files
.cb7 for 7z files

and so on...

Those are also the most widely used file formats for comics. But serveral publishers use PDF files along with their security features to sell comic books (as far as I observed, those PDFs are largely disliked by many comic fans)

So to speak for reaching the audience, .cb* should be the best option currently available although it unfortunately isn't a standard fully applied by the industry.


Adobe does not support this. Adobe does sell (or its partners) have what is known as a Vendor ID that you could build an API around for use in your application.

They do not allow the programmatic creation of Adobe IDs though.


Continuous scroll for ePub reader in PWA

this.rendition = this.book.renderTo("book",{
        flow: "continuous-scrolled",
    });

works for each section except the first page. after calling this.rendition.next() from first page scroll works correctly. but I dont know how to fix it for all sections. I want all sections to scroll.


Only select from files on SD card in BookEen Odyssey

In the Folder View, you can select the folder view, which probably gives you Cybook/.../ etc. at the top. Then select the parent directory in the top-left corner of the display repeatedly until you see a Cybook and an SD icon. The top will read Library.

Select SD and after that navigate to the books in the (sub)folder on your SD card.

(If you happen to switch on folder view while reading a book from your SD card, you will already 'be' in a directory on your SD card, and you will  not have Cybook at the beginning of your directory path).

Also see the question Where can I see the books that are stored in my SD card?


There are a few things going on here. The spacing issue is likely being caused by the presence of block elements inside list elements—the headers are probably getting bumped onto their own line, apart from the start of the list item. If you're starting with the toc.xhtml of an epub file, you'll need to lose any elements inside the Table of Contents list (which must be in a ) other than , , or
. You've got a couple other minor problems that are probably from typing stuff in here, but to hit them quickly:

The closing  tags don't have a "/", making them opening tags
The first list item ends before the list inside it begins
The first  ends before the
 containing it ends

Try out the following:

Item

Sub-item

Sub-sub-item

Sub-sub-sub-item

Item

Item

Item

Item

Item

You could as easily give the class definition to each
, and then have the CSS point to ol.tier3 li { color: blue; } or whatever styling you want— might be easier to read the code that way.

Hope that's useful!


How to manage my e-book library across my devices

Ok, so here is my current solution, which is not perfect but that corresponds more or less with my current need.

PC with windows are using the portable version of Calibre. The library and the metadata are stored in a specific dir in  my filesystem that is synchronized with my local onedrive directory.
Android devices are using the Calibre Companion app ($4) and are configured to use my onedrive cloud account.
I'll probably change that in order to use a cloud synchroniser tool to mirror my cloud storage to the SDCard and point Calibre Companion to my local storage instead !
IOs: don't need it at the moment.

What needs to be improved:

possible conflict between metadata of pc version: I need to investigate if I can have a centralized version of calibre that can received updates from secondary devices. But right now I use the same machine for adding new stuff, so is is fine.
Need to find a way to push my ebooks with DRM to calibre. No really needed, because Kindle app is ubiquitous, but I would like to have one central place to organize my ebooks collection.


By itself I don't think book trailers accomplish very much; they have to be coordinated with other publicity/marketing methods.

On the other hand, Amazon and Smashwords allow book trailers (with Amazon, you have to create an account on Author Central). So it gives potential readers a different kind of medium which can justify the purchase decision.

I have created one book trailer and am working on another. I have also studied other book trailers and have reached the conclusion that lowtech works best. Many of the book trailers seem way too polished and marketing-ish to convince me of anything. On the other hand, I have seen some book trailers in sci fi genre which definitely made the book more appealing to me. But sci fi is a special category, and the graphics/presentation for these book trailers were top-notch -- and expensive if you had to pay someone to do it.

In my opinion, book trailers are fairly good at building an author brand. You could just have a 2-3 minute video of the author speaking about why he/she wrote the book. If the book is nonfiction, the author could talk about what led him or her to write the book (that is always interesting). Keep in mind that viewers tend to judge authors by appearances or  manner of talk or dress.  Some degree of mystery can be good for an author.

Update: I just checked the youtube page for my 1st book trailer, and I see that in 2 years the video received 164 views. That's not a lot of payoff; on the other hand, a lot of self-help, business gurus do youtube videos to accompany their book and get a good number of hits -- especially if they are peddling practical knowledge.


How do I easily convert and send PDFs to a Nook GlowLight or SimpleTouch's native format

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


According to this site This is due to geographical restrictions the Editor can impose into a book. BTW, this option is enabled in the Mexico site so it's not only on the US.


How do I get to the Bookeen Odyssey service mode?

You enter service mode by first switching the Odyssey off and then back on while also pressing left and right button (those on the sides of the Odyssey, normally used for page flipping).

I would select a different book than you are reading first, because it is easy to loose your current page if pressing both keys is not recognised. If only one is recognised, you start scrolling through your book and loose your last reading position.

Be careful what you try in the service menu, there are some menu entries that reset the internal memory, SD.

You can go through the menu by using the left button for up, right for down and front button for select. Go up (left button) all the way to the top for the parent menu entry.

(not sure why the poster of that video did not include this info on youtube)


Could you advise an Open Source method for creating an online library?

You should look at Calibre it does all that you want, and some more. It primarily manages your ebooks, but also allows for downloading over the internet, email dissemination of these books. As well as reading, converting and editing.


I understand it is possible to add new fonts without jailbreaking as follows:

Remove DRM from Kindle files and make them convertible
Convert Kindle eBooks to AZW3 file with Calibre and embed the font in the Kindle file
Transfer the converted files to Kindle

There's additional details at this article.  The article states that the method works with the current Kindle eReaders and the older ones that support KF8 format eBooks.  I believe this includes your 6th generation Kindle (aka Paperwhite 2)

I have not tried this method myself, so "your mileage may vary."


How to skip those hyphens while searching in acrobat

If I understand your question correctly, you are asking for a way to automatically double-check an OCR conversion from image to text. I'm afraid that is not possible: checking would require conversion from image to text via OCR, which I'm sure you can see is circular. If you want to proof an OCR conversion, you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. At least it's faster than typing the whole thing out (and then proofing it again)!


Can I disable Calibre from doing any conversion?

In Preferences - Adding Books in Adding Actions tab there is a preference Automatically convert added books to the current format You need to click that off. The default is off.


To do this, you will need to use Sections. Also, when you create a new section, make sure to disable the "Link to Previous" option so that the formatting starts where you want it to. Make sure your opening content is in one section, then start your first chapter in a second section. Add a footer to the first page of the chapter and insert your page number there. To get the rest of the page numbers to appear at the top, you will need to create a third section starting with the next page, then add a header with the page numbers in the header. When you start the second chapter, you will need a new section, and so on.

This behavior will vary depending on the version of Word you are using, so you may have to play with it some. This kind of formatting can be very frustrating with Word, and they certainly don't go out of their way to make it easy.


Yes, you can do that, .epub books are basically made of HTML and CSS, so if you have knowledge of these languages, in theory you can manually build an .epub from scratch (but the norm is to use specific GUI editors, that help you with this and many other tasks).

Anyway, like I said, it is just HTML, so you just need to set ID's and anchors:

  Example

  First, create a bookmark with the id attribute:

Chapter 4

  Then, add a link to the bookmark ("Jump to Chapter 4"), from within the same page:

  Jump to Chapter 4

  Or, add a link to the bookmark ("Jump to Chapter 4"), from another page:

  Jump to Chapter 4

  Source: HTML Links from W3 Schools


What can I do about Sigil breaking EPUB3 files

There is some hope on the horizon for the many users of EPUB3 files¹
masayoshi takahashi has presented a relatively small pull request with changes for the Sigil source base that does prevent Sigil from breaking the OPF file when saving EPUB 3.

Hopefully the next Sigil release will incorporate these. In the mean time you can of course compile your own Sigil to include these changes, try them out and report any issues if you encounter them.

¹ The style-sheet facilitates in EPUB 3 support the top-bottom written languages, most Japanese EPUB Ebooks are EPUB 3


How to check easily MD5 signatures for Humble-Bundle ebooks?

A download checker for Humble Bundle book bundles.

Since there seems to be no answer from this community regarding an application meeting the request in my question, I decided to make one myself.

When you buy a bundle from Humble Bundle, whether books or games, they send you a web link to a HTML page (which I call here the download page).. You can then click on various buttons on the page to download the files composing your bundle. This page can also display on request the MD5 checksums (or signatures) for each of the files, which may be very large for comics and audio-books (and for games).

I wish to check mechanically with a single command that all files have been downloaded, and that the MD5 signature of downloaded files is identical to the MD5 signature specified in the download page provided by Humble Bundle.

The next section describes the rather simple script wrote to achieve my purpose. Given the doubts expressed in a comment to my initial question, it is worth noting that, while applying this script to my own purchases from Humble Bundle, both to check my downloads and to debug the script, I discovered a variety of problems, some related to mixed up MD5 specifications
(not really critical) and others related to various problems that must have occurred during download, that actually required action on my part. So the work was worth my effort.

As usual, this program is doing thing that were not initially intended by its author.

The download checker

The obvious first step is to have a command that will extract from the HTML source of the download page the names of the files together with the corresponding MD5. Here is such a command which is called humblemd5. It takes a single argument which is a file containing the HTML source code of the download page. This HTML source code can be downloaded with your browser.
The output is the list of names of the files to be dowloaded, each preceded by its MD5 signature. This is the standard format of the Linux command md5sum for computing the MD5 of a bunch of files, probably chosen for readability reasons.

Here is such a command written in Perl, developed on Linux, but hopefully working on other platforms. I have also a version written in Linux command line language BASH, since some users seem to have a liking for the command line, which I can add if requested.

#!/usr/bin/perl
# USAGE:  humblemd5 <local download page>

# Attribution : This code was written by Babou and is licensed as
#               Creative Commons By-SA or GNU GPL. Live long and prosper.

# This script "humblemd5" is intended to extract MD5 signatures of
# Humble-Bundle files books to be downloaded, from the HTML download page
# that provides the hyperlinks to the files.

# The only argument <local download page> is the path to a local copy
# of the download page.
# The standard output contains one line for each file, containing
# first the MD5 signature, followed by 2 spaces, followed by the file name.

# This is the format used by the command "md5sum" in Linux (probably
# also in other Unices).

use strict;
use warnings;

my $file= $ARGV[0];

my $pattmd5='^ *(
)?
$';

my $pattname='^      <a class="a" (download="" )?href="https://dl.humble.com/(.*)[?]gamekey=.*" data-web="https://dl.humble.com/\2[?]gamekey=.*$';

my $md5sig;

open my $fh, '<', $file or die "unable to open file '$file' for reading : $!";
while(my $line=<$fh>) {
    if ($line =~ s/$pattmd5/${2}/) {
      $md5sig = $line;
      chomp $md5sig
    } elsif ($line =~ s/$pattname/$2/) {
      print  $md5sig.'  '.$line
    }
}
close($fh);

The next step is to compute the MD5 signature of all downloaded files and check that they correspond to the list of names and md5 computed by this humblemd5 command from the download page.

The proper Unix/Linux way would be to have a standard command that checks whether a given bunch of files meet a specification defined by a list of file names preceded by MD5 signatures. I do not know whether such a command exists. Combined with the previous command, it would solve my question.

Instead, since the local topic is not programming but ebooks, I designed a command humblecheck that can be used directly to check downloads. This command is written in the BASH command language of Linux, which I think runs only on Unix systems. The reason is that my knowledge of Perl is getting very rusty, and that I am not sure I could write properly in a system independent way, given that I have no Windows or Mac for testing.

Hopefully the use of this command humblecheck is self explanatory. Its first argument is the download page, as for the previous command, and the second argument is the name of a directory supposed to contain the downloaded files.

#!/bin/bash
# USAGE: humblecheck <local download page> <books directory>

# Attribution : This code was written by Babou and is licensed as
#               Creative Commons By-SA or GNU GPL. Live long and prosper.

# This script "humblecheck" is intended to check MD5 signatures for
# book files downloaded from humblebundle.com. It probably works as
# well for other files, such as games, but I have not tried it.

# The first argument is the path to a downloaded local copy of HTML
# page used to download the book files, for example (this is a fake):
#   https://www.humblebundle.com/downloads?key=kabjr3jkj5&guard=JGUDEOP7

# The second argument is the path to a directory that contains the
# downloaded book files.

downpage="$1"
downdir="$2"
currentdir=`pwd`
tmpdir=/tmp/hb-md5check
rm -rf $tmpdir
mkdir $tmpdir

[ -s "$downpage" ] || { cat << END-text
First argument file $downpage does not exist or is empty. ABORT.
END-text
                     exit; }

[ -d "$downdir" ] || { cat << END-text
Second argument $downdir is not a directory. ABORT.
END-text
                     exit; }

[ "$(ls -A "$downdir"|head -1)" ] || { cat << END-text
Directory $downdir is empty. ABORT.
END-text
                     exit; }

cat << END-text
The files to be downloaded are accessed from a download page on the
Humble Bundle web site. This html page is copied locally in the file:
   $downpage
It contains the names of the files to be downloaded and the corresponding
MD5 signatures.

The files are supposed to have been downloaded in the download directory:
   $downdir

This script will now check that all files have been downloaded, and
that they have the correct MD5 signature.

It will also list files found in the download directory that are not
specified in the download page.

---  ---  ---

END-text

(cd "$downdir"; md5sum *) > $tmpdir/copysig
humblemd5 "$downpage" > $tmpdir/srcsig
cd $tmpdir

# We sort the lines of the two files in order to compare them.
# However, it seem more logical to sort with respect to file names in
# order to have a readable result, since it is the usual order of
# files. Hence, we have to exchange the order of MD5 and name on each
# line, before we compare the two files with "diff".

# However, we will change back the lines of the "diff" result, if any,
# to display the MD5 before the file name.

sed -e 's|^\([0-9,a-f]\{32\}\)  \(.*\)$|\2  \1|g' srcsig > srcsig-r
sort srcsig-r > srcsig-rs

sed -e 's|^\([0-9,a-f]\{32\}\)  \(.*\)$|\2  \1|g' copysig > copysig-r
sort copysig-r > copysig-rs

diff srcsig-rs copysig-rs > diff-r

sed -e 's|^\([<,>] \)\(.*\)  \([0-9,a-f]\{32\}\)$|\1\3  \2|g' diff-r > diffmd5

grep '^< \([0-9,a-f]\{32\}\)  ' diffmd5 > missing
grep '^> \([0-9,a-f]\{32\}\)  ' diffmd5 > extra

sed -e 's|^< \([0-9,a-f]\{32\}  .*\)$|\1|g' missing >  MISSING
sed -e 's|^> \([0-9,a-f]\{32\}  .*\)$|\1|g' extra >  EXTRA

if [ -s MISSING ]
then
   cat << END-text
The following files, specified in the download page, are missing in
the download directory, or contains errors (wrong MD5 signature).

`cat MISSING`

END-text
else
   cat << END-text
All files specified in the download page have been correctly downloaded
in the download directory.

END-text
fi

if [ -s EXTRA ]
then
   cat << END-text
The following files, not specified in the download page, or downloaded with
an error (wrong MD5), are found in the download directory:

`cat EXTRA`

END-text
else
   cat << END-text
All files found in the download directory are correct dowload of files
specified in the download page.

END-text
fi

 ( [ -s MISSING ] || [ -s EXTRA ] ) &&   cat << END-text
All file names listed are preceded by their MD5 signature.
It is the MD5 of the intended file in the download page, or of the actual
file found in the download directory.

END-text


Kobo Pocket stopped working for specific sites

Nothing needs to change on your Kobo for this to stop working. The only thing that needs to happen is that the site where you get your pages from changes from providing whole pages to partial ones that read the rest of the content using JavaScript that the Kobo doesn't (correctly) interpret.

You can check that the above is the case, by going to the pages with JavaScript switched off in your normal browser. The pages most likely will be incomplete.
If this is indeed the case, a remedy is available, but not simple: you have to automatically retrieve the pages with a fully functional browser (with JavaScript turned on), wait until you assume the page is fully rendered (there is no way to be 100% sure about that) and then save the rendered page to a location on a server where you Kobo can read it. Once that is set up, update the URLs on your Kobo to the location where you save it.

I have done such trickery with a Python program and selenium running on my headless server co-located in a data center where I can easily get at the saved material. Other combinations of programming language and browser driving library might work as well.


Which does have the least glaring minimum-brightness backlight: backlit e-ink readers or tablets?

I don't know every single ereader on the market, but my Kobo Glo has a lighting that when set at its lowest level don't hurt my eyes at all.

Furthermore its screen is not backlit. Eink screens are different from LCDs, they are an entirely different technology and are not lighted from behind. Usually their lighting is provided by LEDs positioned on the side of the screen, so that the screen receive their light perpendicularly and not directly emits it. In fact, there are also ereaders without any lighting at all, it is a feature separated from the screen itself.

This way the light is pointing towards the screen and not directly into your eyes, resulting in a comfortable reading.


To factory reset your Kindle to wipe it clean of data:

From Home, tap the Menu (three dots) icon, and then tap Settings.
Tap the Device Options, and then tap Reset Device. Your Kindle will restart.


How to add a background image to each page of mobi or epub books?

You could try with standard CSS rules and see if the results work for you.

Example for the background:

body {
    background-image: url(../Images/image.jpg);
}

You can also try other background rules (reference).

Same thing for borders, you can try standard CSS rules:

body {
    border: 1px solid black;
}

(Reference
 for borders, margins, padding).

You should play around a bit with these rules to find something that will work for you and adapt it to your needs; keep in mind that printed books and fixed layout file formats like PDF can be considered layout-based,  meaning that you can insert the content inside a predefined and customized page layout, while epub and other reflowable-text formats, viceversa, are mainly content-based, they don't have "pages" in the common meaning, their core is the text content to which you apply a style afterward.

My personal suggestion, if you need to apply these styles, is to not abuse of them.
An image background if used should be very light and subtle to prevent it to render the text less readable, and about borders, keep in mind that the most common ereaders have an average display size of about 6 inches, applying a border and its relative margins and padding will reduce the (already few) space used by the text, something that many users might find annoying.
The golden rule is to test all your custom styles on an actual ereader and balance the aesthetics with usability.


Adding a language that Calibre does not recognize

Farsi

Speakers of Persian (and related languages) usually use Farsi in their native languages to refer to Persian in the same way a French speaker would use Français to refer to French. However, no French speaker would ask a software developer to use Français also in English GUIs.

If you want to have Farsi as a menu option, you'll need to change the UI language to Persian or a related language.

Hindavi

Since Calibre uses ISO language codes internally and there are no ISO codes for Hindavi/Hindustani, it's not possible to add a Hindavi menu option. You'll have to use Hindi.


bulk conversion of EPUB for Kindle (mobi)

In Calibre You can select several books at once, and hit convert. It is an old feature, described on the official blog:

  Bulk convert: Calibre allows you to convert books in bulk. You can
  select a set of books, all of which may or may not be in the same
  format, and convert them all in bulk to a different format. So say you
  have a kindle and you have a number of books in EPUB, RTF and PDF
  formats. You can select them all. Then click the "Convert books" icon
  or click the little arrow next to the "Convert books" icon and choose
  the option "Bulk convert". A new window  opens. At the top right
  corner of the window you can set the output format, which in this case
  would be MOBI.

If You are on Linux, You can also write a script to utilize Calibre's command line capabilities.


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

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

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


How to make a fixed layout epub file from an MS Word document?

Two solutions:

We used the old doc format. Converting it to the new docx worked.
If cannot convert to `docx, create a new InDesign document, then move the previously imported pages to the new document via the Pages panel.


Embed JavaScript in an e-book using an e-reader

JavaScript is an optional part of the epub 3.0 specification:

  EPUB Content Documents may contain scripting using the facilities
  defined for this in the respective underlying specifications ([HTML5]
  and [SVG]).

What this means is that even a fully-compliant epub 3.0 device doesn't need to implement JavaScript support. The ones that do will generally be the "more bells and whistles" devices; the iPad, for example, supports JavaScript. The IDPF's epub Chrome extension Readium does as well.

Note that according to the epub 3.0 specification, the following criteria for reading systems that support JavaScript must be met:

  › It must support container-constrained scripting and may support
  spine-level scripting.

  › It may render Scripted Content Documents as an interactive, scripted
  User Agent according to [HTML5].

  › It must not allow a container-constrained script to modify the DOM
  of the parent Content Document or other contents in the EPUB
  Publication, and must not allow it to manipulate the size of its
  containing rectangle. (Note: Even if a script is not
  container-constrained, the Reading System may impose restrictions on
  modifications (see also the dom-manipulation feature).)

  › It may place additional limitations on the capabilities provided to
  scripts during execution (e.g., limiting networking).

  › It must implement the JavaScript navigator extension object
  epubReadingSystem defined in Appendix A, JavaScript epubReadingSystem
  Object . It also must support the dom-manipulation and layout-change
  features defined in Features in container-constrained scripting
  contexts.

  › It must regard the scripted [Publications301] property of the
  Package Document manifest item element as the authoritative definition
  of whether an EPUB Content Document includes scripting.

EDIT: Popup text and images are definitely possible using JavaScript in iBooks. For an example, check out Beneath The Ink.


What options do I have for reading eBooks on an Android tablet?

As DVK has commented, your question is a little broad, without specific requirements. However, if all you are looking for is an objective, feature comparison of Android ereader software, wikipedia is your friend.

There is a breakdown of the following (as of Dec-23-2013):

File formats supported
Navigation features
Display features
Edit-tool features
Book source management features
Other software e-book readers for Android
See also
References
External links


Unable to purchase from UK kindle store (2nd Gen)

First, did you update the firmware https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/20/11271880/amazon-kindle-emergency-update-unable-to-connect-at-this-time

Second, a second gen device is REALLY old (released in 2009). It's probably a good idea to upgrade to a reasonably new device. It's hard to service a model that is more than 8 years old, and sometimes Kindle disables features or won't fix bugs on older models.

You could probably buy a good used model that is 2 years old  (say the Paperwhite 2) from ebay or woot (which is owned by Amazon btw) for less than 100$ and probably get better support for these kind of syncing or global issues. Also, there were major changes made in 2013-4 which would improve the layout and design of the text (Bookerly font, support for KF8 format), not to mention performance.

Here's some FAQ about having a Kindle account in multiple countries.

https://www.ereader-palace.com/faq-different-countries-amazon-kindle-stores-accounts/


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

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

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

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


E_ADEPT_DOCUMENT_TYPE_UNKNOWN error in fulfilling a .acsm file

It happened to me with an .acsm file, but from a different store (it was Kobo); I managed to resolve this problem by downloading the file again, and Adobe Digital Editions was able to import it.
I don't really know what really happened in the background, maybe some error prevented the creation of a valid .acsm file; I can't guarantee that this will help you, but maybe it is a starting point.

Another possible suggestion, if you can't solve that way, is to get the refund from Google and buy the book from another store (I usually shop on Kobo and on IBS, the latter for the italian market is excellent)

Said that, I highly respect and tend to privilege publishers that avoid all this stupid and bothersome DRM procedure (as a Linux user, I don't have a native solution to run ADE...); a policy that create problems only to paying customers is crap.


fix spine order and file names based on toc.ncx

Possible solution (which worked for me):

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


Can I use a service like Scribd/Oyster with the Kindle eReader?

Yes, if you manage to download from somewhere an ePub file, then you can convert it to mobi format using a software as Calibre. This would allow you to read such books on a Kindle.


Are books on Wikisource "by definition" fair game for creating ebooks?

Practically speaking, the answer is that wikisource's texts have terms similar (and possibly identical) to the public domain, although it is not always identical to  public domain.

Sourcetext on wikisource is creative commons attribution share alike (BY-SA), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.es )  which means you can use any of it for commercial use.  BY-SA is definitely one of the most lenient licenses -- aside from the public domain (where there is no obligation to give attribution).

For example, I publish a lot of my fiction under BY-SA, so people can make commercial use of my fiction (I don't care). The only condition is that it be labeled properly and that you identify the source of the text. If you take BY-SA content which is NOT public domain, then you are obligated to make clear that your product is also BY-SA.  This can raise an issue if you are selling something which consists of BY-SA stuff and maybe copyrighted images.

I have solved this incompatible license issue by mentioning in the credits that the text is BY-SA but the images are copyrighted (or some stricter version of the CC license).

From an editorial standpoint, it makes sense to disclose that you have made some small changes (or big ones, if that is the case).

Glancing quickly over the material so far, it looks like a LOT of the works there are not just BY-SA but are actual public domain. Generally the designation is on the bottom of a wiki page. Although you shouldn't trust the copyright labeling all the time (occasionally someone mislabels something), but stuff from Wikipedia is usually accurately-labeled -- they police themselves well.


Can I get an ebook from the library in the United States?

I can answer in regards to the Los Angeles City public libraries, and I suspect that many libraries in the United States use the same system. They have a dedicated page explaining the e-media options available to their members.

From this page it seems that there are quite a few companies/subcontracters that they use to handle the transfer of ebooks from the library to a subscriber's account/ereader  - Axis360, Overdrive and Hoopla, for example.

There are more options listed on their e-media page, as well as links to other free, public resources like Project Gutenberg, Bartleby, and the Alex catalog of public texts that don't require LAPL membership.


Ed, the answer more depends on your purpose. The literal answer is Scrivener does indeed create valid e-books and is well maintained. I've used Scrivener for Mac for years. I've occasionally compiled the document to kindle format to carry around. That process works just fine.

If your real purpose is to Write the Great Novel or some other large and complex effort, I can definitely recommend Scrivener as a great authoring tool. Their user forum over at Literature and Latte is helpful, knowledgeable, active. At the point of Becoming Published, you may need to switch to a different tool for the process of publishing. That would depend on your publishing route. Scrivener is very good at generating whatever format you need at that point, be it input to Microsoft Word, Calibre, various markup languages, whatever.

If you have already created that content, so that now your focus is on the publishing stage, not the writing stage, Scrivener is adequate to the task but probably not your best choice. You're probably better off with a universal conversion tool such as Calibre.

The key question is Where and How you intend to publish. If you're thinking of going through a traditional publisher, they have their own requirements, and that might dictate your choice of tool.

If you're intending to self-publish, e-books only, you again want to consider the big picture. Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Kobo, Smash Words, etc., all have their own requirements. To meet those varying requirements, we use a combination of Microsoft Word (yuck) and Calibre. Note that this is when focused on the publishing of something already written.

Self publishing is a moving target. What I'm suggesting here is that you consider the task of writing stuff separate from the task of getting it published. Scrivener is well designed as a writing tool. It's very good at producing output which becomes input to the publishing step.

To directly answer your question, Can scrivener reliably create e-books? Absolutely. If you intend to personally distribute your e-books and PDF files to your friends or colleagues, Scrivener makes that task extremely easy.

However, if you are thinking about self publishing via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., or via a traditional publisher (who might in turn publish to Amazon, etc.), use Scrivener for writing, and whatever the process demands for the publishing part.

EDIT:

As I re-read your question, I realized I missed a point. You ask about technical, formatting, and other hurdles. If you are self publishing via various outlets (Barnes & Noble, Amazon, etc.), each has different formatting requirements. "Doing the rounds" is a matter of continuously reformatting the completed work, fixing rejections and resubmitting, and so on. I can assure you that you will have countless technical, formatting, and other hurdles as you travel that route, but that fact has nothing to do with Scrivener.

In other words, Scrivener for Mac is straightforward and easy to use. It's designed for authors creating their works, and that's where it shines.

Here's a concrete example. One destination will require a table of contents linked a certain way, whereas another might allow it to be at the back of the document. Scrivener is not your best tool for this constant reformatting of content to meet publisher requirements. Scrivener is an excellent tool for creating the content in the first place.


Unless your Kindle was previously jailbroken, you can't install new fonts. If it was, you'll have to re-install the font hack.

  have to read non-English book but kindle don't support it.

Kindles with the 5.6.5 firmware support pretty much all languages without additional fonts. However, you must convert your books to the AZW3 format with Calibre, because the old MOBI format doesn't fully support some less frequently spoken languages.
If you don't like the default font, you can also embed fonts in your ebooks with Calibre. For more information see the Calibre documentation.


Is it possible to jailbreak Kindle Oasis 2?

Is it currently possible to jailbreak it?

Only if the original firmware (5.9.0.5.1 or 5.9.0.6.) of your Oasis 2 hasn't been updated. For more information see this website.

  If not, have there been Kindle e-readers before without jailbreak possibility, and has Amazon released the jailbreak possibility later?

Amazon has never released any jailbreaks. Hackers have reverse-engineered the firmware and developed jailbreaks for specific firmware versions.


Which ePub readers are available for Windows?

You can try IceCream Ebook Reader:

  Meet Icecream Ebook Reader, one of the best free EPUB readers that transforms your computer screen into a convenient top-notch ebook reader. The tool enables you read ebooks in EPUB, MOBI, FB2, PDF and other popular formats. Manage your digital library on your PC or Windows-based laptop. This program also features the ability to turn pages, use bookmarks, search your library, track reading progress and much more.


How to fit the size of a font to fit a PDF fillable box

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


Can't exit the font size screen on the Kindle 10th gen

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


How can I convert an HTML site into an ebook?

Of course you can. The easiest method is

save the whole site into a folder (e.g. mirror it with some command line tool like wget - it is available on Windows too - or Httrack)
zip the folder
send the zip to your device via Amazon e-mail solution.

Here's the official Amazon page documenting this feature.

If it's not what you want, you can use Calibre to convert HTML to various ebook formats, here is the official documentation.

And even more, you can download the official Kindlegen Linux CLI tool from Amazon and hand tailor the downloaded HTML with your favourite editor then convert it.

(And you can download the official Python docs in EPUB format which Amazon happily convert for you (the mailing method), and every other conversion option I had mentioned above will work with the EPUB too.)


On Kindle devices can you open an ebook as an email attachment?

Update:

Ipad/iBooks let you open .epub files from email attachments. So does Nook/Android. (You can also download them from a URL).

As far as I can tell though from the Amazon.com website, there is no way to open/add a .mobi file from email or a browser.


you will get the book, and probably won't get caught, but yes, it is illegal.


My HTML toc is not showing up in Calbre MOBI output

Just a suggestion but you could try:

Outputting your DOCX format to html from within MS-Word,
Making sure that it all works including the ToC, when it is in HTML format, preferably using more than one browser, and then
Converting the HTML format to MOBI from within Calibre -

This will save Calibre from having to deal with 2 formats at once, (DOCX & HTML), which might be the source of the problem.


What is the Paperwhite 3 Collections Cover Size?

I recently downloaded a book from Amazon and noticed that the book cover was really close in size to the collections size.  I downloaded the book manually from my content and imported into calibre and it said that the size of the cover was 926wx1400h.  After resizing my side loaded books my problem is solved.


How do I shop for only DRM free books on Amazon?

Since Amazon does not seem to let you search for this, you might want to use google:

site:www.amazon.com -forum "Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited" SEARCH-TERM

Google for DRM-free thrillers


Which ereaders support the EPUB3 format?

Some supported EPUB3 Readers are

Helicon Books EPUB3 reader (for Andriod)
Math jax
Online ePub3 reader
Gitden EPUB3 Book Reader (for Andriod and iOS)
Kobo Aura HD (source)

EPUB3 Support Websites

EPUB3 Overview
EPUB3 Support Grid


My Amazon book does not have links from ToC to chapters, why?

Piece of advice. When troubleshooting, I would make your output an epub file to make it easier to see what is wrong. An epub can be unzipped (you have to change the file extension --- so you can examine the resulting HTML files). You can always convert from epub to mobi later if you need to.

First, when using calibre to create an epub/mobi from an odt file, it has to generate html files which when zipped or processed can have a toc. It  assumes that you have formatted your .odt file in a way which allows calibre to guess the chapter headings. For help, see: https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/conversion.html#table-of-contents Generally the safest thing to do is to use the h1 tag or to Heading 1 style within LibreOffice or MS Office; generally Calibre can detect that. (You may need to tweak the conversion settings from the Convert options ).

A epub TOC can mean 2 different things in the context of a epub/kindle file: 1)an html page which appears at the front of the ebook or a 2)TOC when you press the TOC icon in the reading system. In your reading app, check the TOC icon to make sure that nothing appears when you press it. If it doesn't, then that is the source of your problem.

(The first kind of html TOC  can be autogenerated using a Calibre conversion option: Force use of auto-generated TOC).

There is a tab for MOBI OUTPUT/EPUB Output options in Calibre: make sure the right things are checked or unchecked:

Do not add TOC to book (make sure this is not checked!)

(generally the defaults are good, you shouldn't have to mess around with them).

In my experience, generating epubs and mobis from calibre is often buggy. I find that using calibre to convert from docx is slightly better than to convert .odt. So you might try converting to docx just to see if it converts properly.

The key thing though is making sure that the .odt/.docx file is properly formatted and styled. You have to use the STYLES provided by ODT/MS Office for the TOC to be created properly. You can't just manually style the headings.

Hope this points you to a solution.

Further Thoughts: I think Calibre is a great application, but I would never rely on it for a published book (I run an indie ebook publishing company).

Instead, you should create a high quality epub (by whatever means), and then use Kindle Previewer to convert from epub to .mobi Important: Download the BETA version of this Kindle Previewer software -- the link is on the right side of that URL.


Kobo Aura One or the new 7 inch Kindle Oasis for PDF files?

Ever since the time I originally asked this question, I have bought both a Sony DPT-RP1 and an old Kindle DX.

The DPT-RP1 is really excellent. Thanks to its screen size, almost any conventional PDF book or article are perfectly readable.  But this has little to do with the answer. In fact I more recently bought an old Kindle DX because it was cheap and I wanted to try it. I am still amazed by how capable this old thing is. Its display quality is surprisingly good considering its age, and having a lower resolution than the DPT-RP1 has rarely been an issue.

The Kindle DX has a 9.7 inch-screen so it is much smaller than that of the DPT-RP1. However, aside from some rare exceptions, almost all of my PDF books are perfectly readable on it. Issues arise when reading two-column formatted scientific papers where the font size is small and the original paper size is A4. These are the bane of the DX because you have to either read in landscape mode and constantly scroll using physical buttons; or zoom in and again, scroll up-down and right-left. So when most PDF files are formatted this way, indeed, as stated in a comment, the DX is "barely tolerable".

I do not own a Kobo Aura One nor a Kindle Oasis, however, my experience with the DPT-RP1 and DX drive me to the conclusion that neither of those devices are good enough to deal with common PDF files because of their screen size.


Are there technical advantages of one common format over another?

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

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

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

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

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

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

A detailed comparison of eBook formats is available on Wikipedia.


It's possible to add a background-color: / background: BLACK (with white text) for a page in an AZW3 ebook?

It's possible to make an AZW3 ebook (or a section of an ebook) to have black background and white text by adding style="background-color:black;color:white" to the <body> tag of the html file with text inside your AZW3.

The problem is whether your chosen e-reader will display the background. For example, the internal Calibre reader will happily show black pages with white text; on the other hand, my Kindle Paperwhite 3 will not respect the background-color setting on body, but will use the color parameter, rendering white text on white background and making the book unreadable!

Not ideal, to put it mildly.

To get around this, you can set the background color on a div wrapping the text. The downside is that there will always be a white border around the page, because both Calibre reader and Kindle seems to apply its own page borders and ignore any margin or padding settings on <body> or <html> tags.

If I really wanted to do this, I would set the background and text color on both body and a wrapper div - that way I'd get a nice black pages on compliant e-readers, and black rectangles on Kindle and co.

...and then I'd try to test it on as many e-readers as possible, because Murphy's law is a thing, and any styling that has the potential of rendering the content unreadable will probably do it. ;P


Calibre: Difference between "Date" and "Published"

"The lookup names are pubdate (publication date) and date (calibre's "Date" column, usually the date you added the book to calibre)."

http://faq.calibrecompanion.co/index.php?action=artikel&cat=6&id=22&artlang=en


How do you create and add a .apnx file to a Kindle book to display real page numbers?

KindleGen supports both NCX pagelists and ADE page-maps. I.e., you'll have to add a pagelist/page-map and you'll also have to add page target markers in the (X)HTML files.

Note that the official Amazon tools won't generate APNX files. However, KindleUnpack can generate them from a mobi file generated by KindleGen.

You could also generate KFX files with the unofficial KFX plugin. When transferred to an eInk device, the firmware will automatically generate the APNX files.


Maybe I don't understand the question, but if you can already do the job with SetaPDF-Stamper manually then all it takes is a little PHP code to do it automatically. There literally is no easier solution to your problem as described; to automate it will take custom code, period, and SetPDF-Stamper is the kind of library you would need for that purpose.


Auto-adding to a Collection when using a Send-to-Kindle email

No.

It will show in amazon.com/myk under "docs".  You can select multiple items to organize into collections.

Perhaps there was such an option in the past.


Is it possible to cap royalties for an ebook?

I feel sure you could LEGALLY, it's just a matter of contract, but I doubt any publisher would want to fool with such a complicated setup. I might be wrong though. Possibly you might find one who'd be willing to do a contract where, if your total royalties from them exceed some fixed cap (it would need to stay fixed - asking to let you change the cap monthly is unreasonable) the excess would go into promotion, might be doable. Alternately, you could simply spend that amount directly promoting your books yourself, and not bother the publisher. Then it would be a deductible business expense I'd assume and so wouldn't be "income". That is probably the simplest thing.


How can I highlight visited anchors in an epub?

You can use a couple CSS selectors to style links.

a:link will select and style all unvisited links, while a:visited, surprisingly enough, will do the same with visited ones.

Examples:

a:link {
    text-decoration: underline;
}

a:visited {
    background-color: grey;
}

Remember that epub files are often read on B&W e-ink devices, so you should consider this if you want to differentiate links by using colors; the result might not be as expected.


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

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

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

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


Google Play Books unable to save margin note

Looks like my Ghostery browser extension was messing with the site. I was able to pause it and reattempt and found the notes made their way through. I drilled down into the trackers that were blocked, one was "Site Analytics: Google Analytics" another was "Advertising: Technorati". It was the Technorati tracker that was required for the GPB notes features to operate.

It's a little disconcerting to see advertisements in the mix of GPB. Anyone know what the deal with that is?


Parsing an epub file and displaying its contents on a website?

Yes, the files are 'real' HTML (or rather XHTML) and will work in any web browser.


The field for the ISBN is labeled "Ids:" and is located between "Tags" and "Dates". It allows you to enter ID types other than ISBNs.


which readers honor -webkit-transform CSS property?

I guess the problem is either:

in the specific software (Moon + Reader Pro): maybe it has some bugs
in parsing .css
or in the screen size of your tablet: the scale 0.25
is too big for it

The css you provided looks reasonable:

-webkit- tags are added for compatibility with iOS readers, because those readers won't display an epub properly without this tag

-ms- tags are added for compatibility with Windows readers

As your platform is Android, the first 2 tags in the following CSS should be ignored:

-webkit-transform: scale(0.25);
-ms-transform: scale(0.25);
transform: scale(0.25);

So your reader should parse the simple transform tag.

I'd advice you to:

Try to change the scale(0.25) to scale(0.15) or so and see if the
result is better.
Write to the support of Moon + Reader Pro app and ask if there can
be a problem in the app when rendering your specific epub.


How to convert a html ebook to a pdf file?

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

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

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


What does it mean that a pdf is "paginated"?

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


How does Adobe Digital Editions work with Kobo's DRM?

According to the Kobo website:

  When do I need to use Adobe Digital Editions?

  If you use any of Kobo's free reading apps or a Kobo eReader, you may
  never need to use Digital Editions at all. Kobo's reading apps and
  eReader can automatically download most books from the Kobo Store, and
  update your library with them.

  The exceptions are when:

  You want to read eBooks from another store or from a library on a Kobo eReader;
  You buy Adobe DRM PDFs from the Kobo Store and want to read them on a Kobo eReader;
  You want to read books from the Kobo Store on an eReader from another company.

  In these cases you will need to use Digital Editions to open your
  books and transfer them to your eReader.

  The reason for this is that most eBooks from online booksellers and
  libraries are protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM
  prevents the unauthorized copying or redistribution of eBooks, to
  protect the rights of authors and publishers. There are different
  types of DRM, but Kobo supports a version by Adobe. This is why you
  may need to use Adobe's software, Digital Editions, to open and
  transfer some eBooks to your eReader.

Also, when you buy a book from the Kobo store, you often receive an ACSM file (I have received this type of file often when buying ebooks from the Kobo store for my Sony Reader PRS-650). An ACSM file is a license file that Adobe Digital Editions will first verify and then download the appropriate ebook.

UPDATE (I should have read further down... they mention the ACSM files on the same page as linked above):

  Why did I get an ACSM file when I downloaded my book from the Kobo
  Store?

  Your Kobo eReader can read books in EPUB and PDF format. (A file
  format is how books are stored on your computer.) If you downloaded a
  book and received an ACSM file, don't worry – this isn't a problem.
  The ACSM file is the license for the PDF or EPUB book you bought. To
  get the book itself you just need to open the ACSM file in Adobe
  Digital Editions. Digital Editions will verify your license and then
  download your eBook in either EPUB or PDF format. You can then
  transfer your book to your Kobo eReader (or another compatible
  eReader).

  You will get a license file if you download a book that is protected
  by Adobe Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM prevents the
  unauthorized copying or distribution of books, to protect the rights
  of authors and publishers. Most books in the Kobo Store are protected
  by DRM.


How to remove white space from the text layer in DjVu

First, use the djvutoxml tool to extract a text layer in XML format from the DjVu document.

At the command prompt, type:

path\djvutoxml.exe path\book.djvu path\book.xml

Instead path parameter substitute your location on the disk.

Press Enter...

Then, using the regular expressions, remove the selected characters(placed between sharp brackets > <). You can use any text editor (that can do regex).

String to remove spaces:

<WORD><CHARACTER coords="\d*,\d*,\d*,\d*"> </CHARACTER></WORD>

String to remove tabs:

<WORD><CHARACTER coords="\d*,\d*,\d*,\d*">&#9;</CHARACTER></WORD>

Regular expression can also be written in this form. This deletes everything at once:

<WORD><CHARACTER coords="([0-9,]*?)">(&#9;| )</CHARACTER></WORD>

Original fragment:

<WORD coords="318,262,706,190">Hallo</WORD>
<WORD><CHARACTER coords="707,262,760,190"> </CHARACTER></WORD>
<WORD coords="761,262,813,190">World!</WORD>
<WORD><CHARACTER coords="814,262,860,190"> </CHARACTER></WORD>

Fixed fragment:

<WORD coords="318,262,706,190">Hallo</WORD>
[here was the code for the space]
<WORD coords="761,262,813,190">World!</WORD>
[here was the code for the space]

(You can see how large text strings have been removed. Here 62 characters to describe one space!)

Finally, use the djvuxmlparser tool to merge modified XML with DjVu document.

At the command prompt, type:

path\djvuxmlparser.exe -o path\final.djvu path\book.xml

Instead path parameter substitute your location on the disk.
Parameter -o defines the target file.

Press Enter...


What are criteria for determining whether an ebook file is pirated or non-infringing?

There is no real way we have had cases where major ebook places sold books that later were shown they did not have the right to ..

e.g. Amazon and the copy of 1984 they pulled back see here

  An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.


How to download ebooks from Kindle to PC?

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


Can I legally remove DRM from ebooks I have purchased if I live in Canada?

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

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

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

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

Bummer...


Kindle highlights not syncing between devices

I was able to fix this by removing the book from my iPhone and redownloading it.

Now if I want to see highlights sync immediately between the devices I have to go to the Library after adding a highlight and then go to Library on the other device, press sync and go back into the book. Then a few seconds later the highlight appears.
Not ideal but it works.


Is there a good size comparison of which of different e-book formats is smaller?

This is something I find interesting. I'm going to post an answer with some findings. As I discover more, I'll expand on my answer.

Old, But Still Useful Comparisons

This document is fairly old (warning, link is a zip file containing a pdf) and the information may not accurately reflect how things are today. It also does not contain many of the popular formats of today (there is none of the epub formats listed and mobipocket (prc) I believe as a predecessor to .mobi). I'll list the details for historical purposes though.

Excerpt from the report (Copyright 2002 by ePMA -- ePublishing Marketing Associates -- www.epmaasoc.com):

  To make this comparison, we took the Project Gutenberg plain text file
  of the book The Metal Monster by Abraham Merritt, stripped it of the
  PG legal Disclaimer and such. Next we removed the linefeed/carriage
  returns from the end of each line, so paragraphs would flow for
  different formatting, and then added basic markup with HTML, to
  provide paragraph breaks and chapter headings. Except where noted,
  this HTML file was then used to create the eBook in other formats. no
  cover or other images were included.

NOTE: This was done for a non-illustrated volume. There was talk of doing another test in the future with an illustrated volume, but I was not able to find it.

Here were the findings:

Format                               Kbytes% Txt
Rocket (fb)                        248K   52%
Mobipocket (prc)                285K   60%  MS Ebook (lit)                    292K   61%  Plain text (txt)                    477K   100%Web Document (HTML)     487K   102%Embiid (ubk)                       489K   103%MS Word 2002 (doc)         620K   130%hiebook (kml)                     654K   137%Adobe Acrobat (pdf)        691K   145%MS Wordpad (doc)            952K  200%eBook Pack Express (exe)2860K600%

UPDATE

This is a comparison of various ebooks I own in multiple formats. I did not create or convert the formats personally and I am unsure of the exact versions (e.g. epub2 vs epub3). I still thought this might be useful information since all books were generated by the same company (manning). These are all programming books, and as such, they have some images in them and embedded markup language. This should provide a decent comparison vs. something that is only text or mostly images.

The following list of books are compared in epub, mobi and pdf (sizes are in KiloBytes, smallest bolded).

Brownfield Application Development in .NET

epub - 3,447K
mobi - 4,115K
pdf - 8,573K

C# in Depth, Second Edition

epub - 5,429K
mobi - 6,330K
pdf - 8,573K

HTML5 for .NET Developers (results skewed by this book, see below)

epub - 24,533K
mobi - 13,945K
pdf - 13,177K

PowerShell and WMI

epub - 8,797K
mobi - 11,081K
pdf - 14,536K

Real-World Functional Programming With examples in F# and C#

epub - 8,483K
mobi - 9,446K
pdf - 14,536K

The Art of Unit Testing with Examples in .Net

epub - 4,280K
mobi - 4,754K
pdf - 9,535K

The Art of Unit Testing with examples in .Net, Second Edition

epub - 3,784K
mobi - 4,356K
pdf - 9,535K

Findings

Average Sizes

epub - 8,396K
mobi - 7,717K
pdf - 11,426K

In almost all cases, the epub was the smallest file. Mobi was slightly larger and pdf was the largest. However, the average size of the mobi files were actually smaller overall. This was due to one very large epub file for the HTML5 for .Net Developers book. This book skewed the results since the file was nearly twice the size of the other formats. My best guess is because this file contains many HTML code examples, which may cause problems for the epub format (basically XHTML). Perhaps this is an epub3 format, which supports HTML5 (the book title is a good hint). Again, I did not generate these files, so I am not certain of the reason.

To combat this single anomaly, I decided to remove that book from the averages. When removing the book, the averages of the remaining books looks like so:

Average Sizes (removing HTML5 for .Net Developers - i.e. the anomaly)

epub - 5,703K
mobi - 6,678K
pdf - 11,134K

Take it for what it is worth, but in these findings it suggests that the epub and mobi formats are quite close in size, while the pdf format is nearly double.

Answer to be continued with newer formats and more research.


Can you create flashcards in the Kindle device?

Well I bought my Kindle Paperwhite so now I can answer my own question: No, you can't create flashcards with it.
Still it's a great device and a great investment to your reading hobby.


If you want to stick with EPUB, you can save space by giving each tone a class with a short name and defining the class's color in the CSS. So the example you gave would look something like this:

<span class="a"> 今 </span>

The CSS file, named something like stylesheet.css, would define the class like this:

span.a {
    color: #64B4FF
}

You'd need to add a link to the stylesheet in the head element of each HTML file like this:

<link href="stylesheet.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"/>

The path in href is relative, and this example assumes stylesheet.css is in the same directory as the HTML file.

I don't know if this approach will save enough space to speed up highlighting and dictionary lookups, but it's something to try.


How can I print an image-only ebook as a physical book?

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

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

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

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


Embedding code in EPUB can be accomplished with pure HTML and CSS. The <code> tag and monospace attribute will bring you most of the way. See https://github.com/oreillymedia/HTMLBook for a lot of detail.


What you're experiencing is also known as the "Scunthorpe problem", which is caused by wordfilters going haywire. To make a long story short:

Wordfilters do not work. They never did and never will.

If you actually want to remove cursing from any text, you're looking at a major programming task.  There is no short-cut approach that actually works. It needs a substantial amount of code to semantically analyse every sentence in its context to find out if "cock" actually refers to a male chicken.

If cursing bothers you so much, I truely suggest picking your authors accordingly. There are tons of good authors out there who don't make judicious use of curse words. I assume there are more people bothered by this so there should be bloggers, forums etc. around giving recommendations.

P.S. I find it funny that you seem to have "Christ" on your filter list.


Reducing size of e-book on .MOBI file. Or any alternative to .MOBI file for KDP

It is not normal that other poeple told me that with the same number of images and 300 more pages his final file is 1.8MG and my file is 4.48MB

That measurement is not reliable and can very wildy based on the image quality and compression potential. Besides, 1.8 mb to 4.5 mb is not a big deal to worry about.

Is there any way to reduce the .MOBI file size??

How are you generating the mobi? Kindle Previewer or Kindlegen actually pack multiple formats into the result. For example Calibre's converter only outputs one format, thus reducing the file size. But as I said, the file size is not really anything to worry about.


Is it possible to sync ebook app with desktop applications?

You didn't mention if you wanted to do this over the network or over USB.

I've personally used the following approaches:

The Kobo app automatically syncs directly with the Kobo device when you attach the device to a computer using a USB cable.
I can copy ebooks files directly to my Kindle and/or Android phone when attached to my computer using normal drag-and-drop.
I can email ebook files to my Android phone and/or use Dropbox to access them, and when I click on them on the phone, they get copied to my local storage for reading.

None of these require accessing the ebook store from the mobile device.


Amazon Kindle Paperwhite 2 - Reading progress line has disappeared

Have you tried tapping on the bottom left corner of the screen while reading a book? You can switch among various options:

%, Loc
%, time left in chapter
%, time left in book
blank (ie, your current state)


Is it possible to transfer kindle books to my iPad and how to do it?

Install the Kindle app from Apple's App Store.

The app will show the same library in Amazon as the kindle does.

If you have loaded books directly then these will have to be copied.


A few things here: for starters, I agree that not all the stuff that is front matter in print should be in the front for an ebook. We generally move the copyright page to the back, for example, as well as praise for the book and anything else that seems ancillary.

Bear in mind that ultimately it's the <spine> of the content.opf file that does the organizing of what goes where, not the table of contents. The <spine> is what reading systems will look to to see what comes next. The playOrder attribute in the ncx is not needed, and in fact in epub 3.0 they've done away with the ncx file entirely and replaced it with a toc.xhtml.

Finally, you can include the [guide][1] in your ncx file to indicate things like the cover, the start of the main content, and so on. Most reading systems will ignore most of that, but a number of them will default to opening on whatever you specify to be the start of the content—Kindle and iBooks will both do this, for example. Here's an example <guide> from the IDPF:

<guide>
        <reference type="toc" title="Table of Contents"
                 href="toc.html" />
        <reference type="loi" title="List Of Illustrations"
                 href="toc.html#figures" />
        <reference type="other.intro" title="Introduction"
                 href="intro.html" />
</guide>

Check the guidelines for the particular retailers you'll be using for more details about the <guide>; as I recall, Amazon only wants you to mark the start of the content and the cover.

EDIT: The above link doesn't seem to be showing up; here's the URL: http://www.idpf.org/epub/20/spec/OPF_2.0.1_draft.htm#Section2.6

Further Edit: You can get the <guide> functionality in epub 3.0 with <nav epub:type="landmarks">: http://www.idpf.org/accessibility/guidelines/content/nav/landmarks.php


Is there a compelling reason to distribute both '.azw' and '.mobi' files?

.azw is basically .mobi with the possibility to add DRM. According to the wikipedia article you cited it even has less instead of more features. Since using DRM is kind of pointless if you also offer a DRM free .mobi version, there is no advantage.

.kf8 supports some HTML5 and CSS3 features which the other formats don't. This allows creating more advanced layouts which may be an advantage if you have more than just plain text with chapter marks and headings.


If the ebook contains some definitions about the fonts to use, it takes the precedence over the default Calibre settings.

Maybe the ebook you are reading has some CSS rules that define the default font to use on the book itself (and probably the ebook even includes the said fonts).

You can try this yourself: this version of Treasure Island from MobileRead include font definitions for the text, and it keep using it even if you change the standard one on the Calibre settings.
This version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, always from MobileRead, doesn't contain any font definition in its CSS and it uses the default one as defined by Calibre.

It just works like that. You should look at the default settings in Calibre as a fall-back in case the book doesn't provide any information in this sense.

If you really want to change the font used during reading, you should edit the CSS file(s) inside the epub and remove all references to any defined font.

Calibre also has a plugin called Modify Epub that, amongst other things, let you remove internal font settings from an epub file. Once you have installed it, select the epub files you want to modify this way, click the Modify Epub icon on the toolbar, and select the corresponding option, as shown on the picture. It will remove both the custom fonts inside the book and the references to them on the CSS.

Please note that if you process many ebooks at once it may require some time to complete this task.


I found a hacky solution to the problem by editing the eBook's styling using Calibre.
Importing the ebook and then right click on Edit book which opens the actual contents of the book. Now the actual formatting is done via a stylesheet (in my case called stylesheet.css).
In this stylesheet there are the generated properties for the image sizes, e.g.
.calibre95 {
    height: 229px;
    width: 226px
}

Now the images can be adjusted by editing the height and width of every relevant entry. I've done this via a small Python script since Calibre generated a new entry for each image and there were a lot.
I know this is not a general solution but might help some to fix there books as well


What is the most effective way to manage an overheated device?

Stop playing game or using the device for a while may be the best solution.


Should a shorter Kindle file have faster word look up?

Usually word look-up is done through what is called a index. I don't know exactly what kind of index is used in Kindles, but I know for sure that they do use one (indexing file can be found in the system folders in your Kindle).

In general, indexes are made in such a way to minimize the time required for a look-up even when dealing with a great amount of data (search engines online are an example of that). This means that the dimension of the file, in general, should NOT affect much the time required for a word look-up.

Now, considering that the elaboration power of a Kindle is not as the one of a PC, there might be a number of contingent factors that might influence the time required for a word look-up. Perhaps the two most significant ones are:

background processing (syncing with cloud, WiFi detection, etc.) that might absorb at least part of the computational power,
the way the data is stored on the local memory (Kindle main partition uses a FAT filesystem, which means that significant fragmentation is a possibility) that might influence the time required to access the index file. EDIT: this is not the case for flash drives, so this is not actually influencing performances

In order to optimize word look-up in general you might try to go off-line (in order to reduce background processing) and to defragment the memory of your Kindle. This done, the speed of word look-up should be very similar for all e-books (with a difference of maybe some milliseconds).


Can custom fonts be embedded in mobi or epub books targeting eink readers?

You can definitely embed fonts, yes. There are a few issues to watch out for when doing so, however:

You may not have a license to use the font in ebooks. The font needs to be licensed in such a way as to not just allow use, but also distribution. There are a number of open source fonts available that do permit redistribution--make sure you read the license, though, before using any of them. Many of them will also require that the license be included; it's easy enough to just throw that into the font's directory, but be sure to actually do it if the license requires it.
Many reading systems (I'm looking at you, Nook) will by default override publisher CSS and use their own instead. If you use fonts as the sole differentiator for different types of information, you'll lose that info when publisher CSS is turned off. If you're using a different font in place of bold for emphasis, consider markup up the text as <b class="exclamation"> ... </b> instead of <span class="exclamation"> ... </span>. Then you can define b.exclamation { Font-weight: normal; font-family: awesome_font; } in your CSS. That will make the text bold if publisher CSS is off, but put it in your awesome font if publisher CSS is working.


How to get number of locations of a Kindle ebook programatically?

Number of locations isn't in the metadata of a book file, it's the Kindle's calculation based off the book length. That thread mentioned give's some guesses about what the calculation is, but they still appear to be guesses. Theoretically, if you know the formula you can just create a simple program in Excel, enter the variables for each book, and get your answers.


For safest saving work with text in the text field, whether in special programs (Calibre, Sigil) or writing a simple post in a discussion or forum, it is good to copy this text(ctrl + c)and paste(ctrl + v)to notepad (or its equivalent according operating system) and save it separately.

(For example, PSPad or Notepad++ highlights special characters)


How can I reset the reading speed data on a Kindle?

According to a Kindle forum thread the command to reset this data is:

;ReadingTimeReset

On a touchscreen Kindle, tap the top of the screen to bring up the search box.  After you type the command and get no results, return to the book.  The status line will show Learning reading speed...  Since the search string is saved, you won't have to laboriously type the command again in order to reset again.  That ought to make testing a lot easier.


What are risks and disadvantages of publishing DRM-protected books for an author?

Self-published authors (who are going to be the only authors with the opportunity to decide on DRM vs DRM-free) will need a support mechanism for handling DRM-related problems. After all, any distraction from writing limits your income (see the famous clam sundae digression, p.25  in RA Heinlein's The Cat Who Walked Through Walls for an example.)


Improve 'Look Inside' view of the Kindle mobi eBook in Amazon

I believe this is working as designed by Amazon. When they create the mobi package of files from your upload on KDP, one of the things they create is a .html version of the whole book - basically the entire book on one long scrolling page. I think this is used for the Look Inside feature. Look at some other major Kindle books and see if it's the same.


NCX TOC - Hide the external TOC in EPUB 2?

You cannot deactivate/remove the ncx file. As the epub will not validate without it. Why dont you just simply remove all the links from within it, that way, if a reader does open it up in a sidebar it will simply show a blank screen. Not really user friendly though. I would recommend you add atleast one entry, pointing to the start of your book or your "internal toc".
Taking the above into consideration your navmap inside your ncx file would look something like this:

<navMap>
    <navPoint id="navpoint1" playOrder="1">
        <navLabel>
            <text>Your book title</text>
        </navLabel>
        <content src="page1.xhtml" />
    </navPoint>
</navMap>


Are Baen eARC editions generally very different from final published books?

The eARC (electronic Advance Reader Copy) editions vary widely in quality because the editor, proofreader and copy editor haven't got their hands dirty. Some are great, some are OK. In every case the final book is better. If you are thinking about self publishing I recommend reading both versions of at least one book. You will come to appreciate Eric Flint's philosophy about delaying publication until his favorite editor has time.

On the other hand if you have to know what happens in the Peoples Republic of Haven, you will not see any plot changes, just grammar, formatting and spelling.


what does the v5.0 in the name of an e-book file stand for?

This is an indication of the quality of the ebook. (v5.0)  should be
close to retail quality:

v1.x: publication has been scanned and OCR-ed, but not spell checked.
v2.x: publication has been scanned, OCR-ed, and spell checked but not proofread.
v3.x: publication has been scanned, OCR-ed, spell checked, and proofread.
V4.x: publication has been proofread by multiple persons and is near retail quality.
v5.x: publication is of retail quality.

Minor version numbers are normally used for committed/uploaded changes.

I have not come across any (semi-)official website for these indications. I pulled these from my notes that I made while doing book scans myself. I think they came from some Usenet post.

Some v5 material still has a lot of errors (especially older publications where the fonts are not easily recognised by the OCR).


Problem with left alignment in Calibre/iBooks

I don't think text-align left and Justify text have anything to do with one another. Justification is usually controlled by the reading system, while text-align left is the default behavior for text. The css property text-align mainly has to do with alignment inside of a box (usually a single line). You could use another css property to scoot the text to the left or the right (margin, etc).


Is the file size limit for Nook epub files still 600MB?

I appears that the limit is now 20MB

  Your manuscript file must be less than 20MB in size and in one of the
  following formats: .doc, .docx, .txt, .rtf, .htm, .html, or .epub.
  Many manuscript files that are larger than 20 megabytes don't need to
  be.  If your manuscript file is larger than 20MB, try reducing the
  image size, decreasing the dots per inch (dpi), and/or increasing the
  JPEG compression on the images in your eBook.  After applying JPEG
  compression to the images, you should be able to get the individual
  image files under 100 kilobytes each.

See also The Nook Press Publishing FAQ


What are the actual on/off/sleep states for and how do you hard reset a Kindle WiFi?

As already commented,  plug in the Kindle 4 to the wall or your Mac/PC.  Let it charge for a bit -- even 15 minutes will help.  Leave it plugged in,  and press and hold the power button till the screen flashes. Wait a minute to see if it is doing a reboot. When that probably isn't enough,  do it again.  I've heard the number "5 times"  and I've experienced needing at least 4 times (actually, I wasn't counting).  The screen will flash, and after a few times of this,  it will finally continue past the flash and will begin a full reboot.

After 4 or 5 of these freeze ups, I decided my battery might be aging, and started recharging it every night.  It can't hurt.  I also kept my eye open for a cheap spare K4, just in case.


How to simulate an epub ereader and inspect its DOM?

For editing an EPub, I would look into sigil. It has the ability of WYSIWYG editing and comes recommended by other users on this forum. It's free and open-source.

An alternative is Calibre. Editing EPubs is a bit more code-centric in contrast to sigil. It's also free and open-source.

For some comparisons between the two programs, check out this blog.

As far as an actual hardware emulator for specific eReader devices, I'm not aware of any.


Direct copying of epub files on the Kobo internal file system

In a nutshell

One way to make visible epub files copied directly on the Kobo file system is to use the Kobo browser once afterwards to download an epub file from the web.

Context

I did some more experimenting on my own, and finally succeeded, though
I did not explore the precise boundaries of what can work and what will
not work. I am giving details, so that you know my experimental
evidence. This is personnal experiment, not anything I read anywhere. So, get second confirmation if that info is critical for your purpose.

If you are only interested in the result, and the technique to transfer
ebooks to your Kobo without any specific software, simply jump to the
last section od this answer.

My question was motivated by the fact that I wanted to transfer ebooks
from my Linux computer to my Kobo eReader. I am running Calibre, which
I use to improve some of the ebooks, but for some reason that I have
not yet identified, it will not detect my Kobo when it is connected to the computer
by a USB cable.

So having read in various places that a Kobo can be seen as a USB
drive, on which ebooks can be copied, I tried as reported above without
success, but no indication of the reason(s) for failure. The files
were simply ignored, wherever I put them. Performing a sync did not
help.

The experiments

Then serendipity came to my help. I had been wondering for some time
how I could connect to book sources on the web. I did not know how to
browse the web with the Kobo. And then I discovered the hidden web browser,
which they consider experimental.
In Kobo's own words:

  Since the browser is still a beta feature, some websites may not
  display properly. Please note that the browser is not officially
  supported by Kobo.

Indeed, there is no indication in their user guide (which I had read)
of the very exixtence of that browser, and I had to search the web on
my computer to find it. Then I found the help page that explains how to activate this browser.

So I tried the Kobo browser to download a (DRM-)free book from the
web. It worked ... and (nearly) all the books I had copied by hand on
the Kobo file system became visible and readable. I am saying nearly
all, because it actually saw only the files with an .epub
suffix. Those files had been copied

directly in the root directory of the Kobo file system,
or in a directory codex I had created at the root of the Kobo file
system,
or in a subdirectory of that codex directory.

I did not check how deep the hierarchy can be.

Note that the book I downloaded from the web was also stored by the Kobo eReader browser in the
root directory. However, books with DRM are clearly stored somewhere else.

I did not (dare to) check what happens when a file has a .epub suffix,
but is not an epub file. But I did check that ebooks placed in other
locations are not seen (of course, I checked only some locations), unless it is a user
created directory hierarchy placed in the root directory.

I added some more books to check for other means to make then visible to the user. Since downloading a book seemed critical, I was wondering whether a sync induced download would do the job (it does not).
Then I added two Kobo (DRM-)free books to my account on Kobobooks.com, and
checked in my computer that they were indeed added to my account on
kobobooks.com.

Then I performed a sync on my Kobo, and it did download the two
books. But that did not make visible the books I had previously added
directly in the file system. It is  worth noting that, though they
were (DRM-)free, these ebooks were not downloaded at the root of the file
system, like the epub files downloaded by the browser.

But when I downloaded an ebook from project Gutenberg, the new books I had
copied directly in the file system became visible in the book collection of the Kobo eReader.

This is already longer than it should. So, I am skipping some details to give my conclusions, for what I understand.

Some basic know-how for adding (DRM-)free ebooks directly to the Kobo memory.

The key idea is that the Kobo eReader (or at least the Kobo Glo HD
that I use - but I suspect several of them work the same) has a web
browser, which can be used to download books in your Kobo.

The browser is somewhat hidden, as Kobo considers it an experimental
item, not officially supported.

The browser download the epub files right in the root directory. And
then calls some piece of software to integrate it into its
organization of the ebooks collection. The nice point is that it checks all the non-standard (i.e. non system) files and
directories that are present at the root level, so as to recreate the information needed
to integrate them. Aa a result, it takes into account the fact that
some files may have been removed, modified or moved into a different
subdirectory.

The only bad news is that (afaik) the only way to get that software
executed is to download an epub file from some site with the Kobo
browser.

Hence, copying ebooks from your computer onto the Kobo, assuming
the computer does not have a web server, can be achieved by connecting
the Kobo to the computer with a USB cable. The Kobo is then seen as a
memory device, with a file system which can be mounted as usual (for
example on directory /mnt with : mount /dev/sdc /mnt depending on where it shows up, here on /dev/sdc --
note that it is not /dev/sdc1). Then you can copy epub files or file
hierarchies at the root /mnt of this file system. Then you dismount the file system with umount /mnt, and make sure copying is terminated (Unix sync command) before removing the USB cable, if you will.
Finally, you use
the Kobo browser to download at least one extra ebook (possibly always
the same one :-).

This was described for a Linux system, but should be adaptable to any operating system.

An important point is that all the epub files must have the .epub suffix.

Another thing that I have not been able to determine is whether these
files can benefit from other services, such as cloud storage. But
I am very moderately interested in the cloud anyway.

Now, some other user may have better, simpler ways of achieving the
same result, or more, without using specific software such as Calibre. I find it a
bit frustating not to be able to used Calibre because it will not
detect the Kobo USB connection on my machine. I would not mind using a degraded
version where I would have to tell Calibre when the Kobo is connected and where.


Can I create my own ebook cloud with Calibre?

Yes, it is possible and rather easy to do so.

You start it with the connect/share button on the main toolbar, then selecting start content server; it can be configured from preferences > sharing. It should be a simple task, if you need more help just ask. With this method calibre must be running because basically what you are doing is setting up a web interface to connect to it. This way it will be accessible from any web browser. See also calibre manual on this topic.

I also suggest you to read this guide from mobileread.

Be sure to protect your content server with a password, so you must be required to login to be able to access it. You don't want to let everyone access your copyrighted ebooks and have to do with piracy.


Are there any ebook readers that do not have web browsers

Yes, there are many, both software only and hardware ebook readers that don't include web browsing especially older models.
For many hardware ebook readers
it doesn't make sense to have a webbrowser because they have no touch screen and no virtual keyboard, making it impossible to specify a URL. Most of these devices have no way to connect to the internet that would be a requirement for webbrowsing. (E.g. the older (2007) sony devices).

For software ebook readers it often doesn't make much sense to try and compete with real webbrowsers, they are better of focussing on enhancing ebook related HTML display functionality.

Before the kindle formats and ePub there were other formats that were not HTML/XHTML based, such as PDF (but there were a few other with a more efficient format than either of those as well) and readers for those ebooks don't have a HTML rendering engine built in, and web browsing would not be a natural extension to that kind of renering engine at all.