Does Microsoft allow official readers of "lit" format other than MS Reader?

Well, since Microsoft has pretty much abandoned MS Reader… you might try using Calibre to convert the files to eOub or Mobi. That is, if there's no DRM on them.

As for your yes/no question — the answer is no, but allow me to additionally provide the reason.

The reason that there is no alternative LIT reader for Android and/or other operating systems is simple: writing a LIT reader would put the app developer in legally dangerous waters. LIT is a closed format created and owned by Microsoft and any attempts to support it would be quite questionable from legal point of view. Personally, I doubt anyone would want to test the abilities of Microsoft's legal department.

Quoting the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act to point to just one of many legal problems a developer might clash into:

  DMCA "criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself." This is from the DMCA's wikipedia page

So, until Microsoft decides to officially make the closed LIT format available to the public, or at least modifies their relevant licensing accordingly… I wouldn't count on alternative LIT reader to be born.


How to install KOReader on Kobo Aura ONE

I was impatient so I went ahead with the procedure. (Although worried about bricking a new device, I got it mainly to read PDFs and therefore really wanted to have KOReader up and running).

So I will sum up here the procedure for first-time installation of KOReader on fresh new Kobo Aura ONE.
Note that this is just the procedure that I followed, it might change in future or not work for you. Off course, I provide no guarantees about accuracy of this guide. Please read the information in the below links for most up to date information.

Prepare your device. Make sure your device is working properly with no errors. It's recommended to update to the latest firmware version. Charge the battery full and switch off WiFi.
A prerequisite for installing alternative readers is the installation of Kobo Start Menu (KSM). The detailed instructions and the most up-to-date archive can be found here. Download it and follow the instructions:

  Step 1

  connect the Kobo to the PC
  copy the folder kbmenupngs to the root of the device (e.g. K:\)
  eject safely and disconnect
  check that all images (exit_nickel.png, switchtokoreader.png, etc.) are listed in the library and their thumbnails are displayed there, and at least once as tiles on the home screen. Only then proceed to step two.

  Step 2

  connect the Kobo device to the PC
  copy KoboRoot.tgz to the folder .kobo of the device
  eject safely and disconnect
  wait until the update is finished (do not interrupt it, even if it takes some time)

Note 1: You can always return to the default Kobo reader by starting the Nickel reader (press start nickel).

Note 2: KSM is by default only launched every second time but if everything is working correctly for you, you can set it to be the default:

  KSM is by default configured to run only after every second reboot, and nickel automatically runs after every other second reboot. This is a kind of security measure in case KSM does not properly run after installation (something that cannot be excluded with future firmwares or changed hardware). After KSM has started the first time, please change this behaviour:

  Select tools > activate > set runmenu settings.msh > always

The KSM should now be installed and working. But for Aura ONE (and some other newer devices) we need to apply also a patch. You can find the archive and instructions here. Follow the instructions:

  extract the KoboRoot.tgz from archive uploaded to this post
  copy the extracted KoboRoot.tgz into .kobo of your device (If you cannot connect to the pc from within KSM, connect from within nickel.)
  safely eject and disconnect your device
  select (in KSM home) handle update > install update (do not select install partial update)
  wait until the device has rebooted

After the patch, you should notice that the KSM font is slightly larger (at least on the bigger Aura ONE).
Now that KSM is up and running, you can install any compatible readers and utilities. This is relatively simple. Download the latest (or a version of your choice) nightly build from
http://build.koreader.rocks/download/nightly/
Extract the archive and copy the folder koreader to the .adds directory of your connected device. Safely eject the device and press start koreader to launch KOReader.

That is all. I haven't encountered any problems and the process was quite simple, after I gathered all the information (which was the hardest part).

On a sidenote: After brief testing, KOReader is definitely superior to the default reader for reading PDFs, thanks to its adaptive zooming (cropping) of whitespace. This makes even A4 documents readable. So if PDFs make big part of your reading, I definitely recommend it. For EPUB ebooks, I might keep using the original reader (a subjective choice) but thanks to the KSM, it is relatively simple to switch between the two readers.

The main information sources I followed were:

KOReader Wiki: Installation on Kobo devices - Aura One, Aura Edition 2,
tshering's post at MobileRead Forums about installing Kobo Start Menu (KSM),
tshering's post on MobileRead Forums about updating KSM for newer Kobo devices, and
Ken Maltby's post on MobileRead Forums about whole procedure to install KOReader (and other utilities)


Can I use a third party software as a full OS replacement on a Kindle Keyboard?

I do not think that there is any measure to stop you. Maybe except for the fear that you end up bricking the device by not being able to connect to it from your PC.

I do however not see a reason to do this. The only alternative firmware that I know of is Duokan, which works fine in dualboot. So there is no need to remove the original system.

Also since the Kindle is already running a Linux (without an X server though). So you could just install the programs you want without having the trouble of missing drivers etc.

So all in all it should be possible and I do not think anything would stop you. But lacking any alternative options, I do not see why one should do it.


Where can I find a list of the limitations of iOS KF8 (Kindle format on iOS)?

I haven't tested on ios for a few months, but my experience has been that the differences between ios and other platforms in the last 2 or 3 years have reduced considerably.

A while back I compiled a list of the included fonts for each platform (including ios). What are serif and sans serif fonts on different ebook reading systems?

When I test on ios, I don't sideload anymore. I found that uploading through the Kindle Manage your Content and Devices is sufficient.

The main issue I encountered with Kindle on ios is that your styles don't work on larger displays (and that affects image sizing and placement). For that reason you need to use css media queries to differentiate between display sizes. I wrote which breakpoints I used on this thread (ignore everything but the last Update section) https://ebooks.stackexchange.com/a/6027/417

Some advanced designers/testers will note more subtle differences in support, but generally if reference the font correctly, handle images ok and used css media queries and have good fallbacks, everything will be sweet.


How to sync my Kindle with my Kindle library without using WiFi?

Using Calibre you could try :

Adding the book in the Calibre library
Sending the book to your Amazon email address (Right click on the book > Connect / Share)
Sending the book to your Kindle while it is connected to your computer (Right click on the book > Send to device)

Of course this requires some initial configuration (telling Calibre how to send email, ...) and I can not guarantee it will work having no 3G Kindle to test it myself.

But it seems to be worth a try as it would most likely make sure that the file that gets copied on your kindle has the right format/information to be identified correctly.


Are there any rugged ebook readers out there?

Take a look at the earl, it is an android device with a 6” Flexible, sunlight viewable, E-ink screen (1024x758) with front light. It also comes with a solar panel, so you might want to put it on the outside of your pack (as long as you don't go hiking in the UK).

It has not been released yet, but it should be available this summer (I certainly hope I have mine by then). Price starts at $299 if you pre-order (the crowd funding campaign is over).

Being Android based you should be able to install an ePub reader like the one from Graphilos Studio on it. At the bottom of the meetearl.com page it says ePub, MOBI and PDF are supported, but to me it is not clear if that software is pre-installed or isn't.


What commands can be given in the Kindle's search box?

At least the following are supposed to work, although I haven't verified them:

;debugOn // verbose logging
;debugOff // non-verbose logging
~help
~usbNetwork  // starts a Dropbear SSH server
;ReadingTimeOff - switches off the reading time display
;ReadingTimeOn - switches on the reading time display
;ReadingTimeReset - resets the reading time computation
@author AuthorName keyword
@store keyword
@web keyword
@wiki keyword
@time

As @Tim pointed out in the comments, ~usbNetwork is non-standard, and some of the other "searches" on here may be hacks that require installation of additional software.

The following may be Touch-only; I can't verify this:

;dm - Dump messages to /documents
;dh - Dump cvm heap
;dt - Dump cvm stack
;shpm - set device to shipping mode
;urst - Reset user partition, deletes content of hidden System folder, Audible folder, Documents and tts folder.
        Before using do a complete backup of your device
;debugPaint - log painting functions
;debugPref - pref level logging
;dP - alias of ;debugPref
;311 - change carrier settings
;411 - server information
;611 - wan information
;711 - wifi information
;fc-cache - updates fontconfig's cache, then restart the framework
;setTime - sets kindle time to unix clock
;st - alias of ;setTime (format: yyyy-mm-dd HH:MM – e.g.: ;st 2012-07-22 17:59)
~ds - Never show screen saver   (then you cannot lock the kindle till next reboot.
                                 Rebooting the Kindle will restore the screen saver
                                 lock and, hopefully, everything goes fine!)

The following are apparently Paperwhite-only, but I can't verify this:

";dm" : "/usr/bin/dm.sh",
";dmcc" : "/usr/local/bin/dmcc.sh",
";dh" : "/usr/bin/dh.sh",
";dt" : "/usr/bin/dt.sh",
";wifipopup" : "/usr/local/bin/wifipopup.sh",
";sandbox" : "/usr/local/bin/sandbox.sh",
";sbx" : "/usr/local/bin/sandbox.sh",
";shpm" : "/usr/sbin/shipping_mode",
";lzzl" : "/usr/sbin/shipping_mode",
";urst" : "/usr/sbin/userstore_reset",
";usbnetwork" : "/usr/local/bin/usbnetwork.sh",
";un" : "/usr/local/bin/usbnetwork.sh",
";di" : "/usr/local/bin/indexerdisable.sh",
"`stopIndexing" : "/usr/local/bin/indexerstop.sh",
"`startIndexing" : "/usr/local/bin/indexerenable.sh",
"`disableIndexing" : "/usr/local/bin/indexerdisable.sh",
"`indexStatus" : "/usr/local/bin/indexstatus.sh",
";ddc" : "/usr/local/bin/dynconfig.sh",
";resetConfig" : "/usr/local/bin/resetConfig.sh",
";rc" : "/usr/local/bin/resetConfig.sh",
";twoFingerChromeOn" : "/usr/local/bin/altChrome.sh 1",
";homeKeyChromeOn" : "/usr/local/bin/altChrome.sh 2",
";normalChrome" : "/usr/local/bin/altChrome 0",
";debugOn" : "/usr/bin/debugOn.sh",
";debugPaint" : "/usr/bin/debugPaint.sh",
";debugOff" : "/usr/bin/debugOff.sh",
";debugPerf" : "/usr/bin/debugPerf.sh",
";dP" : "/usr/bin/debugPerf.sh",
";311" : "/usr/bin/311.sh",
";411" : "/usr/bin/411.sh",
";611" : "/usr/bin/611.sh",
";711" : "/usr/bin/711.sh",
";setTime" : "/usr/bin/dateTime.sh",
";st" : "/usr/bin/dateTime.sh",
"~ds" : "/usr/bin/ds.sh",
";toggleLight" : "/usr/bin/light.sh",
";fc-cache" : "/usr/bin/fc-cache.sh",
";htmlViewer" : "/usr/local/bin/htmlViewer.sh",
";installHtml" : "/usr/local/bin/installHtmlViewer.sh",
";merchant" : "/usr/local/bin/merchant.sh",
";updateCamp" : "/usr/bin/updateCamp.sh"

Source

Here is an interesting tutorial on how to root your Kindle (not directly relevant to the question, in that it's not just a list of search commands, but relevant to Kindle hacking generally).


Is there a eReader app for Android, Windows and Linux?

FBReader and Cool Reader support all the operating systems that you have listed, but I don't personally use them, so I can't give you more insights. You can try them and see if they fit your needs.


Convert epub to epub, to do more heuristic processing

Use the command-line tool

[Manual]

If you use the command-line tool,
you can do just this.
Though you need to make sure the input filename and the output filename differ.

for example

ebook-convert myorig.epub mybetter.epub --heuristic-processing


Is it more difficult to sideload books on to a Kindle Fire than other devices?

The Kindle Fire is not difficult to sideload to--at any rate, the 1st generation version that I have is trivially easy: just plug the Fire into the computer with a micro USB cable, it shows up as a drive, and drag .mobi files into the relevant folder on the Fire. Easy!


Question about vocabulary used on itunes paid ibook application form

You've pretty much sussed out "frontlist"--the older titles, by comparison, are all "backlist". And yes, digital rights are similar to copyright. Basically (and IANAL), the author has copyright to the created work, and can then assign/give/sell some or all of those rights to other people. So "digital rights" means that you either have copyright, or the author has assigned you the right to publish digitally. So it's not quite the same as copyright, but it does mean "yes, I'm allowed to do this".

Active print catalog simply means "how many print titles do you have in current rotation?" If you're doing exclusively ebooks, that number will be zero.


Is it possible to take a screenshot from a Kobo ereader device?

Yes it is possible if you change the code of your Kobo a bit. A broad explanation and functions is explained in this forum post on another website: Mobile Read Kobo.

You must add the following code to the file Kobo eReader.conf, located in the {device_root_dir}/.kobo/Kobo/ directory:

[FeatureSettings]
Screenshots=true

Then everytime you press the powerbutton, you will take a screenshot with your Kobo Glo. This image is then stored as a PNG in the root directory.

Hope this helps a bit!


Any way in Google Play books to reset my location to the beginning of a book?

Tap in the middle of the screen and a slider will appear at the bottom of the screen.


How can I left justify text on my Kindle?

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

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


If I buy a Kindle Paperwhite do I have to get books from Amazon?

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

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

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

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

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


would it not need to be
32, 1, 2, 31 (assuming flipping on the short edge of the A4) that way 1 and 2 will be on opposite sides of page and so will 31 and 32.

Also something else to think about is odd number of pages in the book or non multiples of 2...
take 10 pages for example...

[10, 1, 2, 9]

[8, 3, 4, 7]

[6,5,?,?]

you would have 2 empty pages in the middle of the book
so to counter that you'd probably need to take that into account

ALTHOUGH this isn't taking into account that you will cut the pages in the center. That would be binding in the middle

Thinking in terms of binding page by page...

Having 1 and 2 together won't really work seeing as you want them to be back to back

back to 10 example

[4, 1, 2, 3] or could be [3, 1, 2, 4] or [1, 3, 4, 2], etc. But I'd do first one to keep the cut edges at the binding side

[8, 5, 6, 7]

[?, 9, 10, ?] or [?, 10, 9, ?] or [9, ?, ?, 10] or [10, ?, ?, 9] where ? is an empty page.


Is it a good idea to minify code when coding ePubs?

Personally, I never minify code in ebooks. A big part of the reason for that is that unlike many here, I don't use Sigil or Calibre to edit my epub files—I use either Notepad++ or Geany depending on the OS I'm working in. Because I'm always working with the code, it does nothing but make my life harder if I've minified the whole thing and the client comes back to us with two or three rounds of proofing corrections.

On top of that, many in the publishing world are starting to talk about using HTML5 as a base format for all their books. Since epub 3.0 content files are HTML 5, you're pretty much working directly with the source files when you're working with the epub, and the source files should be human-readable so that any problems that come up with them can be easily fixed.

Finally, the point of minifying code is to let files transfer across networks more quickly, which is a non-issue for ebooks where everything is local.


Since you can only specify one size, and not have the selected image depend on the devices resolution, you best take something that is as large as the largest expected screen format. I would at least go for 758 × 1024, but you can consult this table and decide for yourself.

Scaling down is normally OK, whereas scaling up always introduces artefacts.


Is there a way to sync reading progress across multiple devices and platforms?

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

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

The same is true of Kobo.

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


How to discover/work around a limited number of devices for Kindle ebooks?

As stated in Consumerist, as far as Amazon goes (the rules are usually similar [not identical] for B&N):

  You can download a book an unlimited number of times.
  In most cases, you can download the book to 6 devices. If you need to download it to more devices than that, you can request that Amazon
  release additional licenses for the book. According to Dan’s [their contact] recap of
  the conversation, Amazon promises nothing. But you can ask and they’ll
  probably oblige.
  Then there are the “other” cases, where a publisher sets the number of simultaneous devices to a lower limit. The following is from an
  email Dan received from Amazon’s customer support: “Publishers choose
  whether they apply DRM to their content and thus determine how many
  copies of each title can be downloaded to different Kindle devices at
  the same time.”
  There’s no way to find out this limit prior to buying the book.
  Releasing new licenses requires that all of your current device licenses be removed, so you’ll have to start over and re-download them
  to all devices again.

You should be able to remove a book from one device and download onto another after reaching your limit as long as both devices are connected to the internet, but there's no guarantee. There does not seem to be a way to see how many devices are left.


Can Kindle for PC be downloaded without an Amazon account?

You can certainly download the app onto your device without actually using it. But I assume you really want to know if you can open .mobi files in the Kindle app without an Amazon account.  And I'm afraid the answer to that is no.

The good news is that you can use other apps to read .mobi files. FBREADER is one such reader which works on both ios and android; you can find other android apps here http://www.androidauthority.com/best-ebook-ereader-apps-for-android-170696/ . They just can't read the .mobi digital rights management locked files.

Also, remember that .mobi is in many ways an inferior ebook format to .epub . If at all possible, I always prefer the .epub file to the .mobi file (and open them in Google Play Books, iBooks, Adobe Digital Editions, whatever). If you don't have access to the Kindle store, then you can probably find the file as an ebook in another store.


What is a good software for reading ebooks out loud?

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

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

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

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

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


What is the best way to read manga on Kindle?

The fastest and simplest way is to use a comic book archive format.

If you already have the image files, make sure that they are named with the correct alphabetical and numerical order (I.E. cover.jpg, page001.jpg, page002.jpg and so on); the program that you will use to read the comic will display your images in alphabetical order.
Then you can simply compress them in a .zip archive, and rename it's extension from .zip to .cbz. If you prefer, you can also compress the files in a .rar archive, but in this case you should rename it in .cbr.
Your ereader should be able to read one of these formats.

Alternatively, you can try PDFtk, it is a nice tool for manipulating PDF in various ways; it is cross-platform (hence you can find it also in the Ubuntu repositories) and can be used to create a PDF from the source images.
I've always used it from Command Line, but on openSUSE repositories I found at least a couple of graphical interfaces, the packages are named pdftk-qtgui and pdfchain; I suppose that these should be available on Ubuntu as well, try to look for them (bear in mind that on different distros, the package names could be a little different).


Text to speech is an ability of some computing devices to run a special program that will "speak aloud" a given text to you. That is, they process the text, and generate the sounds that resembles a person speaking that text aloud using speech synthesis algorithm.

A lot of different software supports text to speech; among them, Microsoft Reader as well as Kindle - at least the latter software running on Kindle 2d-gen or DX - here are instructions.
The difference from an audio book is that the latter is just an audio file; a recording of an actual human reading the book aloud, not the program producing the sounds.

Think of it as analogous to the difference between a video file from a movie depicting an actor doing things; and a computer game demo where a rendered video game character does those things on-screen.
"text-to-speech: Enabled" means that the book supports the ability of supporting book reader to render its text into speech, both from technical and licensing perspective. In case of Kindle Amazon books, since the technical capability is always there (same format), it's merely a question of licensing - see discussions of this (somewhat controversial and unpopular) feature here and here.


How to add read status column in calibre?

Caliber has the option to add custom columns.
The option is available trough Preferences -> Add your own columns -> Add custom column.
The complete procedure is explained in this article: does it fit for you?


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

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

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

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

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

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


Where to buy non-kindle-format (epub,azw) e-books which look like the printed books?

Among some of the major sources that note available formats, there is Google Books and ebooks.com. Since you mention academic publishers, ebooks.com is perhaps the overall best place.
https://www.ebooks.com/


How can I add custom fonts to my Kobo ereader?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


To return a loaned Kindle book:

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

source


Are DRM free ebooks considered a better quality ebook?

This question is a little subjective (is it better) and broad (there are many different DRM formats).

With that being said, in my personal experience, I prefer DRM-free ebooks. They work better in various readers that support the given document format. I don't always like to use my Sony Reader for books that I purchase (usually epubs). For programming books I often like to use my laptop (either web browser or Calibre) because the programming examples are more difficult to read when shown on a smaller screen that forces line wrapping in unusual places.

I've also had scenarios where I have bought an epub that only worked properly on a Kobo reader (bought from Chapters). I was forced to remove the DRM protection and manually edit the CSS files and remove some javascript code that was causing the font-size to be so large that the book was illegible.


What kind of k2pdfopt optimizations should I be using for these sample pages of a PDF?

Since this source has notes in the margins, use the -nl and -nr options.  For this example, like so:

k2pdfopt -nl2e- -nr3o- source.pdf -o converted.pdf


I have not used it but this program claims to be able to remove DRM without affecting the book. http://www.remove-drm.com/ibook-drm-removal-mac.html

If this can be confirmed as working you have your answer (yes)


Are there studies on the optimal amount of rows/columns per page?

The Studies reveal that personal choice is defined by each person and varies considerably.  72 characters is the old schools typewriter format. According to Wikipedia this is often maintained out of tradition.

The Effects of Line Length on Reading Online News(Wichita State University, 2005)

  Summary: This study examined the effects of line length on reading speed, comprehension, and user satisfaction of online news articles. Twenty college-age students read news articles displayed in 35, 55, 75, or 95 characters per line (cpl) from a computer monitor. Results showed that passages formatted with 95 cpl resulted in faster reading speed. No effects of line length were found for comprehension or satisfaction, however, users indicated a strong preference for either the short or long line lengths.

Besides orientation you must also consider font size in combination with screen size, to calculate characters per line.  But in the end yes there are studies, and they say everyone is different.


How can I reduce the resolution of images in an epub or mobi file?

Calibre already offers this functionality without any plugin. It's part of the ebook editor that installs with Calibre.

The editor will only edit files in the epub or azw3 format though. You can convert the mobi file to azw3 and then edit it. Converting it from mobi to azw3 may automatically downsize the file, but I'm not sure.

Once you have the file opened in Calibre's ebook editor, click on Tools, then click "Compress images losslessly".

Calibre > click the ebook > Edit book > Tools > "Compress images losslessly"

This will bring up a dialog where you can accept the default compression or choose your own. The downside to this is that it only compresses images that are in the jpg format.


The Amazon Publishing Guidelines has sample code for making a nested html TOC.

It's on page 16

Section 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Subchapter 1

Subchapter 2

Chapter 4

Subchapter 1

Section 2

 ...

Now here's an alternate way to do the same thing:

Section 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Subchapter 1

Subchapter 2

Chapter 4

Subchapter 1

Section 2
 ...

I've never tried it, but I assume it will work.

Also, I found another working example for nested TOC in the book EPUB3 Best Practices by Matt Garrish and Markus Gylling. The code they used depending on very sophisticated CSS for the NAV element. I'm guessing that this is only an EPUB solution and wouldn't work for the Kindle.

FURTHER THOUGHTS: It's not mentioned in the Amazon Publishing Guidelines, but I assume that all of this html is inside the  element (leading me to wonder why the elements here are all DIVs instead of LIs).


Any way to center whatever content appears on the screen?

I've yet to see an ebook reading system that handles vertical centering. The best you could do is insert mandatory page breaks before such images and give them some margin-top—but you'd have to guess at how much.


Go to Manage your content and devices and verify that these ebooks are listed. If you have uploaded content instead of purchasing them, I may have to change the dropdown  from Books to Docs.

Piece of advice. Create collections to categorize your ebooks -- (History, Fiction, etc). When in collection view, you can see uploaded ebooks and purchased ebooks together.

On my android device, the kindle app lets me see all ebooks I have purchased and uploaded. If the cover image icon doesn't have a check, that means it exists only on the cloud, and you must download it separately for this device.


I want to build an e-book server for my class

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

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

Also check this question.

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

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

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


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

As Microsoft stated, other EPUB reader apps are available, including the Open Source fbReader for Windows, as well as 12 others in the Microsoft Store.  fbReader offers bookmark and other sync across platforms as per https://books.fbreader.org/faq.html#synchronised-data so it would seem to do exactly what you want.


How to search for audiobooks narrated by the author?

I think the best approach is to find audiobook sharing websites that have an advanced feature for narrowing the search result to "narrated by Author". Seems like simplyaudiobook provide this feature
Also you can simply search in google "audio book narrated by author" and find many personalized lists such as:
http://www.goodreads.com/list/show/37378.Audio_Books_Narrated_By_Their_Authors
http://modernmrsdarcy.com/authors-reading-their-own-work/


Is there a way to have a fallback format for images?

Great question. I checked the  Kindle Publishing Guidelines and there's no instruction about that. (CSS Media queries can assist in some cases though).

Here's a page about SVG fallbacks for the web browser. I suspect that at least one of these tricks would work on Google Play Books, unsure.

The third option is to use java script to test and swap out images. Kindle doesn't really support that though.

Frankly, I would spend more time testing to see if an SVG is supported on a representative number of reading systems within one platform. Ever since we have had KF8, some of the platforms have improved the way they render something on different reading systems within that platform.

Your approach is wise, and I suspect that documenting fallbacks will be an important first step to implementing svg. But we don't seem to be there yet on Kindle. Maybe not even on iBooks as well.


Where can I source images for ebooks that are not restricted by reproduction limits nor dpi?

It depends from the type of images you need, but I'd suggest to have a look at openclipart. Its great advantage, besides containing images with an open license, is that they are stored in vectorial format (SVG), so they may be scaled at will.


How to add external epub to Kobo Desktop?

Please note that if you simply need to transfer .epub files to the reader, you can simply connect it to your computer with an USB cable, it will be treated like an external USB storage drive; you can simply copy your books on the reader (maybe on a new sub-directory to keep things clean and neat) and when you disconnect it, it will update the database and recognize your new books. There isn't anything easier than this ;-)

Anyway for a more complete management, I suggest you to try Calibre, it is a superb ebook manager itself with a ton of features; also, it is free and opensource and it is available for Linux systems too, if these are things that are relevant for you.

One of its strengths is the opportunity to add plugins to extend its functionalities. It works perfectly with any ereader device, without the need to add anything, but I suggest to you a couple of plugins that are specifically aimed at Kobo users, that can be useful to have:

Kobo Touch Extended Driver: It replaces the standard Kobo device driver shipped with Calibre, its main feature is to optimize the .epub books you are sending to the device with the particular format used by Kobo, called .kepub.epub. Kobo e-readers have two different readers inside (I mean "reader" as a software here), one is used for standard ePub files while the other has some different features and is used for Kepubs. I prefer the last one, but in the end it is a matter of personal preferences, so I suggest you to try both of them and see which format you like the most.
Kobo Utilities: this is a must-have tool, IMHO. It allow you to perform many operations directly on the device, by manipulating its internal database; it is nothing too complicate, but it could be considered as a tool for advanced users that know what they are doing; I must say that I've never had any kind of problem, but I suggest you to read the warnings from the author.

Please note that you don't have to download these plugins from the MobileRead forum, the easiest way is to install them directly from inside Calibre, where this task can be performed from a nice and handy graphical interface.


Kindle paperwhite ver.5.7.2.1 - how to bring back one-click book open?

GO back to previous home screen menu following these steps:

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

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

Let me know if it worked.


Calibre doesn't look at the directory structure nor at the name of a file to determine the name of a book it imports. It tries to extract that information from the metadata that if finds in the file. What it actually retrieves depends on the file format.

I add all most all my books to Calibre using the command-line tool calibredb, specifically using Python program that gathers the correct info, corrects it where necessary, and then calls:

calibredb add --duplicates --authors="author names" --title="title of the book" file_name_of_the.ebook

If you provide the parameters, Calibre will no longer try to extract them from the ebook.

(There are a lot more options there use calibredb add --help to see them).

With a small program you should be able to walk the directory tree and automatically construct the right parameters for calibredb, or maybe an editor with learning mode working over the list of files should get you the script/batch file to do the upload into Calibre.


how to export images using abbyfine reader?

Yes you can export images in Abby Finereader when you convert PDF to HTML.

First abby will automatically determine images if not zone the image area manually.

Second in options menu (Top right) select save -> HTML -> select Keep Pictures, so when you save as html you will get all the images in one folder.


Internet access on the 3G Amazon Kindles?

I have various Kindles including:
My Kindle Fire first model, second edition, WiFi - it can access any web site over wifi
My Kindle 4 WiFi and Kindle 5 WiFi can also access any site over wifi

My Kindle Paperwhite 3G can access Wikipedia.com over 3G. It asks for a WiFi connection to visit sites such as google.com This concurs with Nathan Osman's comment on your question.

So in answer to your question, all the kindle models I have include a web browser. They can access most sites using WiFi, however the newer 3G models are restricted to wikipedia and amazon by Amazon.

PS: Even on the older Kindle Keyboard 3G models I found they sometimes asked for WiFi when I tried to visit sites after a while. However if I first visited the Amazon store then the 3G connection worked correctly for other web sites. I tried this approach on the Paperwhite 3G however I was still asked for a WiFi connection when visiting sites such as Google so there seems to be a policy-based restriction on newer models (possibly to save Amazon from data charges?)


Occasional blank pages in ePub produced by calibre from Word document

I don't use calibre to produce ebooks, but you should be looking at the css file. My guess is that p.block_7 has some code to force a page break.  You can probably fix the problem in two ways -- by removing the blank p tag  with the corresponding css or changing the css file itself. Here's code from my recent css file to see what live code looks like.

  p.centeredpagebreak {
     text-align: center;
     font-size: 1.2em;
     page-break-before: always;
     }

MORE about CSS

As you can guess there are also options to do page-break-after and to specify "never" instead of always. By the way, support for this css declaration is flaky; it varies on which reading system you're testing on. IIRC, Google Play Books doesn't support that.. Depending on the device and the context, sometimes Even Kindle doesn't always render it properly.

Answer 2: Like I said, I don't use MS Word/Calibre to format ebooks. But my guess is that if you use the HEADING style for each chapter, you don't need to include a page break in the MS Word file; Calibre will just assume that for every section with a HEADING style, it should insert a page break. Try this suggestion first before trying to mess with the css.


You should consider converting these to EPUB files instead of PDF. My experience with Sony is that the EPUB files are handled much better (and faster).

You can use Calibre to convert DOCX, ODT and RTF formats directly, if you have the files in some other format you can use LibreOffice to convert them first to DOCX (make sure you have an up-to-date version of Calibre, older versions only supported RTF).

Another alternative is to use pandoc for conversion from DOCX or ODT, but you would have to try to make sure if images are correctly converted.


Click ... in the bottom right corner. Select CONTROLS, swipe action, press the button to the right, and choose select.


Is there a way to make third party book (non-amazon) covers appear as screensavers on Kindle?

After running some experiments I have finally managed to solve this issue for my Paperwhite4.
For anyone having the same issue - follow this sequence:

Take a side loaded document of any format
Open it w Calibre
Right click on it and press “Edit metadata”
In a new window press the button “Download metadata” (it’s at the bottom of the screen)
Follow thru with a dialog window
Choose one of the book covers proposed by Calibre (do this step even in case you think your document already has a cover)
Finish by pressing “Ok”
Convert your document to mobi
Hook up your kindle via USB
Right click on the document in Calibre and choose “Send to device”
Choose “Send specific format to”
Choose “Main memory”
Select mobi file from the list

You are done. Your document’s cover will  display on the lock-screen.
Essentially it appears that three things were key:

downloading/ updating the file’s metadata and the cover via Calibre
converting the file to mobi
sending the file to kindle via USB (through Calibre as opposed to simple drag and drop using windows explorer)


Kindle Keyboard shortcut for returning to last "page"

The back button gives you back to your original place.


What devices support reading scanned PDF documents well?

I read scanned PDFs on my Android tablet pretty regularly and without problems.

I presently use a Lenvo Yoga 10 HD+ (previously I had an Acer Iconia A200), but any reasonable spec tablet should do you. I usually use ezPDF reader, but there's a lot of PDF readers out there that work fine (ezPDF was the first that I found that performed well for most things I look at).

If you're trying to quick-flip pages one after the other, it'll take a second or three to go to the next one. If you actually read each page, though, you won't see that, because it renders the next page in the background.

Things to look for:

Quick page flip (or at least page flip you won't notice)
Controls that make sense to you
Pan and Zoom controls appropriate to the platform
If you close the PDF and re-open it later, does it come back to the same place? I know a couple of readers I tried DIDN'T do that.
Reasonable screen size - the 10" display on my tablet is fine for 8 1/2x11 pages, as long as the type isn't minuscule.
Make sure the device takes an SD card - you'll want lots of space to store PDFs.

I find it's nice to side-load stuff to the SD card, and read from there.


How can I keep a large number of EPUB files, managed in calibre, "polished"

The short answer is yes, and I have ranted about this in parallelizing EPUB polishing.

The problem with some Linux systems (Ubuntu) is that there is a limit to the message popup queue. Since ebook polishing (using calibre) is done quicker than the time a message is displayed, this queue overflows and calibre cannot write messages to it any more, and (on last try at least) calibre did lock up.

If you look in any directory where calibre stores the EPUB, you can see that there is a metadata.opf file that contains the metadata for the corresponding ebook. You have to specify this file as argument for the ebook-polish program together (-o option), together with the corresponding EPUB file.

What you therefore need to do is make list of 'outdated' EPUB files (outdated compared to the metadata.opf files in the same directory), and then call:

ebook-polish -o path/to/metadata.opf path/to/book.epub

and rename the output (path/to/book_polished.epub) to path/to/book.epub.

The script referred to in the above rant does exactly that. As prerequisite you need to have GNU parallel installed¹.

With the script I was able to process 1329 polishes in 3m25. Searching and updating 4 changed files in 2400+ item database with 1600+ books now takes less than 2 seconds². Of course files in the calibre database that are not supported by ebook-publish (such as PDF) are completely skipped.

¹ In case you wonder, yes the script, via parallel, calls itself for each file to callebook-polish and rename the output
² Fast enought to always try and polish the EPUB files before I synchronise the selected files with the reader devices


Can I donate an ebook to my library's Overdrive collection?

No.  If your library uses overdrive you can not give them ebooks to be loaned via Overdrive.  According to the Overdrive FAQ only titles purchased from overdrive are available for library loans.

Can I add the titles I purchased from another vendor to my OverDrive collection?
Only titles purchased from OverDrive are licensed to be included in your OverDrive collection. You may upload proprietary content (e.g., lesson plans, podcasts, audio or video recordings, etc.) to your collection.

Overdrive is a subscription based service.  Each library creates it's own  custom digital collection, which is managed by the library staff.  Overdrive does not offer any services directly to library patrons so purchasing on behalf of the library is not an option.
You would need to contact your local library, you may be able to make a direct monetary donation in combination with a request to include a title in your library's collection.

Does my digital library allow patrons to access OverDrive’s entire catalog of titles?
OverDrive allows your library to create its own custom digital collection. Your team will be able to browse OverDrive’s extensive catalog of eBooks, audiobooks, music, and video and select titles based on your library’s collection development goals. Patrons will also have the opportunity to “recommend to library” the titles they would like to read that the library has not yet purchased. Ability to recommend titles varies by geographical location.


is there any way to convert/import microsoft word documnet to Adobe InDesign book

Follow these steps:

Create an .indd document
Set the page margins and document properties to mirror what you have on Microsoft word, or — better still — set these properties based on how you want your book to be.
Select File -> Place or Ctrl+D
From the dialog box, select the Microsoft Word file
Go through the Microsoft Word Import Options making sure you select what pertains to preserving the formatting of your work.
Import and apply character styles to your taste.


Ask for a replacement.  Generally, a brightness setting of 9 is quite enough for day/night reading.  Actually, 9 is still too bright in the dark.

This happens with most of the Kindles since they are mass-produced in China and don't follow the lumens standard, nor was it written anywhere in the description, so that we can verify it.  I have seen the Kindle white is white but the Kindle black appears slightly yellowish to me.


Is it possible to create anchors in the numbers of an  list?

Earlier in text:

Header 1

Header 2

further down...

item one

item two

If you're making an EPUB book, every tag must be closed, or self-closed.
idiotprogrammer had the syntax right, but the example did not work (for IDPF specs).


How to rename epubs when the file name is a numeric string?

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

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

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

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

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


Are sound effects acceptable or desirable in a fiction audiobook?

I don't think they are any rules, but the important thing is that the effects sound professional and not too distracting. The problem is that if you commit to one sound effect, you are implicitly agreeing to produce other sound effects as well -- which may or may not be easy.

Not that I'm into sci fi but when teaching overseas I happened to hear a Star Trek novel narrated by one of the actors who was in the series. One thing that really made the audio novel was that it included all kinds of sound effects from the original series. (They were great!). I actually think I heard a Louis L'Amour book which included limited sound effects. Also nice.

I think sound effects (or music) work particularly well as intros or outros to a scene. Also, I can imagine certain sound effects can enhance the mood (drops of water, a heart beat, etc).

Sound effects definitely add to the story, and if you have the chops to self-produce, all the better. But don't get caught in the trap into thinking that because your audiobook has sound effects that it must be better (and sell better)  than non-enhanced titles. The story is the most important thing.

I have heard so many examples of well-produced enhanced audio books (especially sci fi books like Philip K Dick); practically, the reason it isn't done more often is simply because of lack of money or technical skill.


Sending data automatically to a server from a PDF document

Answer:
the easiest way is to add URL-links in the PDF text, because is the unique widespread (standard) option to online interactivity, present in near all PDF-readers. Some variations: 1) a link to a complete online form webpage; 2) one link for each question/answer.

Comment: why to use PDF? and about EPUB?. EPUB is HTML, so have standard support to HTML interactivity.


Is it possible to add extra "Beta Features" to the Kobo Glo?

I think that you need to do some advanced hacking, there is no official way to add more features to the default firmwares AFAIK.

Anyway it is possible to apply external patches and customized versions of the firmware; it is not something that I have done myself, but at MobileReads they have a complete section dedicated to Kobo devices' hacking.
In particular, you might want to start from the thread named "List of Tweaks / Hacks / Mods" that is an index of everything is being posted on the forum. There are many different new features/hacks/patches, each one of them has its own way to be added, so I fear that there is not a generic way to perform these modifications. You should look specifically for what you want to change and follow the instructions for that particular hack.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

wrapper img {

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

dd {
  margin-bottom: 1em; }

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

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

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

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

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

col {
  display: table-column; }

colgroup {
  display: table-column-group; }

tbody {
  display: table-row-group; }

tfoot {
  display: table-footer-group; }

thead {
  display: table-header-group; }

td, th {
  display: table-cell; }

tr {
  display: table-row; }

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

dt, th {
  font-weight: 700; }

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

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

@media print {
  body {
    overflow: auto; }

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

p {
    page-break-inside: auto; }

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


My recommendation is to keep it as a PDF and let people read it by using a PDF app on their tablet.

As long as you have a decent sized tablet (9 inches or more), PDFs can look superb. I don't know if scores have any special requirements for size.

Another option would be to use a fixed layout epub http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Fixed_layout_ePub

The easiest way to do that would be to purchase a one month license to Adobe Indesign, import your pdf into it and do any necessary formatting adjustments (One month licenses are cheap, but the learning curve is fairly steep).

Aha, I have forgotten to ask the key question: do you want to sell it? If yes and you want to do through Amazon, that is a whole different question (your only option would be a fixed layout epub for Kindle).

Even if you say yes, I would still just keep it as a pdf and upload it to smashwords and sell it there (they accept pdf files for selling).


While producing an audiobook, how to mark the begining of an unnamed and unnumbered section or chapter?

It really depends on the type of content you are producing and how many sections there are (and what they are about).

I've heard lots of readers just give a longer pause between sections, and that worked well.

On the other hand, flashbacks are already a unique beast and we are already accustomed to hearing or seeing some kind of cue. The standard I'd use is that if  listeners might be confused about when a flashback scene takes place, perhaps an additional cue should be inserted.

But some flashbacks flow so naturally into the text that this is never a problem (especially if you're using 1st person or 3rd person limited with a strong narrative voice). On the other hand, more omniscient narratives might require more cues.


How Does Amazon Kindle Renting work on *buntu/Linux Systems?

Perhaps renting works differently from buying/lending/borrowing ebooks, but all you do is to download the Kindle reading app on your device. Then, the rented item will magically appear after you purchase it.  I know the android Kindle app works great on mobile devices.

I don't know if Calibre has the ability to strip DRM from ebooks.(NOTE: We don't discuss DRM on this Stack Exchange). But the Kindle cloud reader is browser-based, so I don't see why you can't just read ebooks in a web browser.


How do I transfer my kindle collection to my new computer

After adding your new PC to your Amazon account as a Kindle device, and after downloading Kindle software onto your new PC, then open the Kindle program, and choose Collections, click the plus sign, and choose Import Collections.


Kindle paperwhite and sharing quotes with goodreads for side-loaded books

This is a good, common question that seems to have an answer here: Trouble hooking up Goodreads with sideloaded ebook on Kindle Paperwhite

  I have found the best way to get it 100 percent working is this:

  If your book is not already in AZW3 format then convert it. (Has to be AZW3 and not just AZW.)
  Secondly, highlight the book and edit metadata.
  Once you are at that screen delete any other format that you have shown in the top right side leaving only AZW3.
  Delete the tags by hitting the recycle icon next to the tags box and hit download metadata.
  Once you have done that make sure the only tags you have are ISBN, Google, goodreads and amazon. You may not have all 4 but make sure
  that you do not have any mobi-asin tags.
  Save and download the quality check plug in for calibre.
  Highlight the book and click on the quality check icon at the top, look for 'fix' on the drop down menu and click 'fix asin for kindle
  fire'. Don't worry it will also work for paperwhite etc.
  Delete any copy you already have on the device and resend.
  For completeness I also go to the top of calibre and click device and update the cached metadata on device.
  Eject device and you should be good to go! Full integration with goodreads as if you had purchased through Kindle store.

Alternatively, try using the Quality Check tool:

  Get the Quality
  Check
  plugin for Calibre and then use it's "Fix -> Fix ASIN for Kindle Fire"
  feature. It expects that you have the Amazon ID in the book's metadata
  somewhere, which should be there if you download the metadata using
  Calibre. This inserts the ASIN and allows goodreads integration to
  work. I tested it myself.

  One annoying thing is that it seems that if the Kindle notices that
  there's a mobi-asin field (which the above introduces in order to
  fix Goodreads integration), then it seems to download and use the
  cover art that Amazon has for that book, instead of the one you set in
  Calibre. I'm not sure if there's a way to circumvent that.


Why does EPUBCheck report warnings and errors for ISO8601 date-time string?

This happens because at least two parts of EPUBCheck dislike the ISO8601 timezone format in different ways. In the dc:date context, EPUBCheck is OK with "2020-12-09T14:06:40-07:00" but not with "2020-12-09T14:06:40-0700". The only difference is a colon in the timezone offset of 0700 hours. I learned about this oddity from a PHP manual page comment. The author pointed out that the format method of the DateTime class yields different results for the format specifiers 'c' and ISO8601. The former includes the colon in the offset and the latter does not.
When I applied that correction to my code, the dc:date warning went away because EPUBCheck accepted "2020-12-09T14:06:40-07:00" as a valid date-time. However, the error persisted.
Reading the W3 specs for date-time and the IDPF specs for dcterms:modified, I eventually figured it out. Where I went wrong was in reading the error message. It said it was expecting a date-time of the form "CCYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ". I already knew that the "T" in the middle was a literal character to separate the date from the time. My mistake was in thinking that the "Z" at the end was a symbolic character like all the others. I figured it was a placeholder for the timezone offset.
I was wrong. The "Z" is another literal character that means the time is in UTC, or Coordinated Universal Time, or Greenwich Mean Time, or Zulu Time or whatever other moniker you give to the time zone surrounding zero longitude.
If you read the W3 standard carefully you'll find a slightly ambiguous statement about the meaning of the letter "Z" at the end of the date-time string. Then look up the IDPF standard and search the page for both dc:time and dcterms:modified. All the examples show a literal "Z" in the date-time strings. Nowhere does this standard say it will accept local times with a timezone offset at the end.
Thus, we have two takeaways. 1) Always terminate a date-time value with "Z" in EPUB XML, and 2) Always use UTC time for any date-time values. While EPUBCheck will accept a local time for the dc:time item, that is not a guarantee that an e-reader will interpret the offset correctly.
In the end, I changed the PHP code to use the following. The resulting date-time string validates in EPUBCheck and it looks like all the examples in the IDPF standard. It also generates UTC time.
$isoDate=gmdate('Y-m-d\TH:i:s').'Z';

DO NOT move the "Z" inside the gmdate() format specifier. That will really munge up the string and probably give you more errors.


I am not sure what you consider an interesting book.  That depends much on the reader. Anyway, I edited your question to remove the reference to "interesting books", since it is a matter of opinion and as such is generally a proscribed issue on StackExchange.

Asking for, or giving a list of places where you can find free ebooks is also proscribed, as it can give rise to endless lists and answers. Furthermore, it would make little sense since the question would become far too broad (another proscribed situation), because you did not specify (fortunately, I think) the kind of books you are interested in.  I am saying fortunately, because it does leave open the one proper option, which is to describe in general terms some current disseminations and pricing practices, which structure the ebook market.
These should be hints as to how to search on your own the current market for sources of free book. Ad searching is good, because its is always an open door for serendipity.

Answers to your question may also depend on how legal you expect the download
to be. For several reasons I would discourage downloading from illegal
sites and I will thus ignore this possibility.

Parameters that may play an important role include :

the kind of book you are looking for : romance, scifi, thriller,
philosophy,   mystery, comics, etc.;
the book format:  epub, mobi,
pdf, scanned pdf, ... knowing that  readers do not always accept all
formats;
your tolerance to DRM  (Digital Right Management systems).
Though rarer for free books, they manage to be a pervasive annoyance
in any context;
whether you might be willing to pay a very small
price rather than nothing.

Note also that some books (whether free or not) may not be
downloadable from some countries.

Without attempting to list sources, 2 sites are major entry points for public domain books, that cannot be ignored:

The primary source of well formatted free ebooks is certainly
Project Gutenberg. I would say they have a very large
collection of interesting books, well digitalized.
If you are not fussy about format, there is also the Internet
Archive, which has pointers to lots of library resources, some
of which do offer public domain books for free. And there is the
Internet Archive own repository. But these books may be in
awkward formats, or poorly digitalized ... the technical quality is
very variable.

But since the above sources are making available public domain books, they are   unlikely to contain recent books.

Many independent authors give some of their ebooks for free, though
you seldom get complete series (but it does happen). They will often
ask you to subscribe to their mailing list in exchange for the free
book(s). And some of these mails will contain information about other
free resources. See BookFunnel and Instafreebie. Many author will give you books for free, in exchange for honest independent reviews on various sites. You may also get pre-release versions (ARCs, i.e., advance review copy) in exchange for reviewing or proof-reading the book.

Most retailers (including Kobo, Smashwords or Amazon) have a lot of
books available for free, sometimes permanently, sometimes only for 2
or 3 days. Grab what you want, as it may be gone tomorrow.

You can subscribe to various daily mails that will keep you informed
of such opportunities. Examples include BookBub, The Fussy Librarian,
Book Cave , Robin Reads, BookBarbarian and many others.  Some mailing
lists may specialise on topic, publisher or retailer. Just subscribe
to some.

Some publishers give away free books to people who are subscribed to
their mailing list. Some of them are quite good, though they are often
the first volume of a series. For example, the publisher Arc Manor (aka Phoenix Pick) specialises in science
fiction, and has one book for free every month.

Many books can be bought for very low prices, such as $1 or $2,
including award winners and classics.

A good source can also be to buy book bundles. Humble Bundles has some
great opportunities in all kinds of books (including comics). You can
typically get a bundle of 25 books of good average quality (including
some top ones) for $15. You may also want to look at StoryBundle
bundles, though they are less varied, and a bit more expensive. Besides these two bundling retailers, you can sometimes get bundles from publishers or retailers.

There is a lot more to be said and found, but this ought to get you
started. My information is probably biased by the kind of books I am
interested in.

But it is also important to help by paying when you can. Most of these books
have to be produced and edited by people who try to make a living.


CSS: display: none - Is it supported by all devices?

Try to use anchor tag as shown below and link these id in your index page.

Example:

California was the first...


How do I reverse an epub that turns right to left?

This might not apply in your case, but my response was getting too long for comments.

If you have an epub3 and you have access to the files, you can set the page progression direction.

If you look here at the section titled Global Direction you'll see that you can set the direction globally in content.opf:

<spine toc="..." page-progression-direction="rtl">

In your case, you would want to use the opposite, "ltr". The next section Content Direction shows how to set the direction for individual html files:

<html dir="rtl"
   ...
</html>

I can't really say why iBooks is rendering this particular epub with rtl page direction, but there is this note in the Global Directions paragraph:

  There is no default value when this attribute is omitted; the reading system will render the content in whatever is its default manner.


Can eBooks deleted from Kindle Cloud be 'repurchased' for free?

It's probably rather late for this answer, but Amazon customer service reps do have the ability to get back books you've accidentally deleted.

In my case, I was deleting old personal docs, got prompted to log in again, and didn't notice that the dropdown had switched from "Docs" to "Books" until I'd clicked Select All and Delete and wiped out 200 books.

I immediately got on chat with an Amazon CS rep and explained the situation.  He clarified what was deleted and then said

  No worries, I will restore the deleted books from my end.

It took probably 15-20 minutes for him to finish restoring them, and then for them to all show up in my account again, and the "Acquired date" was changed from its original value to today's date.

But the important thing is that the books are back!


How do I copy and paste text from Windows 8 Kindle app book to Microsoft Word

You can't do it directly from the desktop reader app for Windows 8.

You can, however, do one of the following things instead:

1. Use Kindle Cloud Reader

Highlight the text you want to copy.
Go to https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights and find the highlight in question.
Copy and paste the text from there.

Of course, use this within the limits of copyright, etc.

See this related question about essentially the same thing.

2. Use the Windows 7 app

If you can stand the non-Metro layout, you can run the Windows 7 app on Windows 8 (see this discussion.  The Windows 7 app allows copying: when you highlight text and right click, "Copy" is one of the options:


How to create plain text flashcards for the Kindle?

Yes,Windows now has this feature.

For a nicely detailed look, see:
 https://www.digitalcitizen.life/how-use-kindle-app-windows-read-ebooks?page=1


You can turn demo mode on by typing: demo mode on into the search box.

You can turn demo mode off by typing: demo mode off into the search box.


Batch conversion of arbitrary formats to djvu, mobi, epub - not with calibre

I've been converting PDF to other formats for over 3 years. I've converted at least 20 books.

A PDF file is not easily convertible, except for text paragraphs. I have a lot of experience extracting text from PDF. PDF is an endpoint, not meant for further processing or extracting of text. You will find you have a LOT of problems extracting images and tables. Images generally don't extract at all. Tables will be really messed up and converting to other formats will require a LOT of manual cleanup.

That said, if you want to extract the text I found this site to be better than others: http://online-convert.com. It supports many input and output formats. And I tried at least 5 other sites and 5 other OCR programs for the PC.

You will not get the accuracy you want from any program as far as I know. There might be better programs, like Abbyy Finereader but they are not free and there is no such thing as perfect conversion from PDF to anything else, especially for images and tabular data.

Books of fiction are easy to extract the text from because they are just wrapped paragraphs with few or no images and no tabular data. So to test your conversion, find a more challenging book with tabular data and images and see how it goes.

Some PDF books have the text inside them and extract fairly well. Some PDF files are just a bunch of images, one scanned page per image. For these you need OCR.

Also, there is no OCR that is 100% accurate. You might get 90-95% accuracy. But we don't know which letters or words are inaccurate, so that means we have to check every word in the output. This takes a lot of time.


It may be that your battery has burst. That would be the most likely cause of an abrupt breakdown. If the device is no longer under warranty, I'd suggest opening it up (check for videos on YouTube) and having a look. Replacement batteries are easily obtainable and, if you can operate a screwdriver, putting one in is within any user's capability.


You can upload your PDF to Google Drive, convert it to Google Docs (open with Docs), and apply tool Translate to... English. It will make a copy of the PDF in editable format and also keep the original.

Visit drive.google.com, sign into it with your username and password
Click on NEW > File Upload, select the file from your computer..
After uploading the file, click on ‘Recent’ on left and and select the uploaded file, right click on it and select Open with >’Google Docs’
When the document will open in another tab, click on Tools > Select ‘Translate document’

Enter the document title, choose a language to translate into and click on ‘Translate’ button

Translated document will open in another tab, which you can edit, print or download to your computer.

Source


Avoid additional styling of images in html made by Calibre viewer

Testing this it seems that this is simply a quirk of Calibre's ebook viewer. It adds the absolute calculated size of the image dynamically into the source. This size changes when you resize the window (with the inspector window open it shows continuously). Whether max-width and max-height styles are set by the viewer depends on the viewing mode. In page mode (default) these values are set, they seem to be needed for the calculation. In continuous mode your values will not be overridden.

So this is just a quirk of that specific software. You can't change it, you can't draw any conclusions about the behaviour of other software; e.g. my Sony T2 doesn't set own max-width leading to pictures that are not completely visible. In fact I would prefer the intelligent behaviour of Calibre viewer here. FBReader resizes the image to a smaller size to fit it into the width.

Sizes smaller than 100% or the current pixel width can be used without problems, Calibre does not ignore it in either mode. (Absolute pixel widths are obviously a bad idea in any case.)

You can set the values to your needs. As different applications use different heuristics to produce a readable rendering you should stay as close to a semantic markup as possible to be able to ignore such additional output.


Are soft hyphens supported by epub devices?

I don't have definitive information here. But a google search reveals that Kindle has improved their support for soft-hyphens recently. But mostly this is done within the reading system.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/standardebooks/v_oRXH6mLwQ
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=285812

Quote:

  While Amazon, intent on keeping developers miserable, declined to explain how their new hyphenation engine works, it actually appears to just be support for the Unicode soft hyphen character (U+00AD).  If Kindle encounters a soft hyphen near a line break, it considers it a hyphenation opportunity.

I did a quick check of Google Play Books and Kindle for Android and see that body hyphenation doesn't seem to be turned on. I seem to remember that iBooks hyphenated body text (maybe). The Amazon formatting guidelines doesn't mention anything about it.

I suspect that unless you are using specialized or technical texts with a lot of long multi-syllable words, it doesn't make sense for the author/publisher to add the soft-hyphen character yourself.


Is it time to do away with (e)book return policies?

This is probably not the best kind of question for SE because it asks for an opinion, and your needs may vary.

Also, there are technical issues and business issues involved.

Also, I'm guessing that you are talking about non-DRM files. If you had DRM in your reading system, it would probably be trivial to revoke the license for a piece of content.

I start with the assumption that most people are honest and that returns happen rarely in ebook sales. I also start with the assumption that piracy is not a significant problem for most ebooks.

It would be good customer service to allow returns. It defies expectations when you say that all sales are final -- especially if the customer made a mistake.

A more common issue is that the user purchases something and then discovers that the ebook has significant formatting issues or doesn't render well on the device he or she is using.

My approach would be to allow the return, but set limits on how often a customer can do it. Also, I would limit the window of time which customers can return things.

Purely from a business perspective, book purchasers are a rare enough species that I wouldn't do anything to alienate them. Also, aside from time and inconvenience, the ebook seller doesn't really lose the good because it is not a physical object. (That's why when I publish things, I am liberal about sending out review copies -- it costs me literally nothing).


What is the native pixel resolution of the viewable area on a Kindle Paperwhite 2 when displaying a .pdf file?

To prevent the images from scaling you should set the width of the image in pixels rather than in, eg, 100%. It appears that the Kindle Paperwhite is 4.6 inches wide at 212 ppi (source), which comes to an unlikely 975.2 pixels wide—but it's a place to start. I would suggest setting image width (or width of containing div) to 970 px for starters. If it's distorted, then there is probably a hard-coded margin for the page of greater than 2 pixels, so reduce a small amount and try again.

Note that specifying the pixel size will mean that on other Amazon devices, the image will not resize to fit the screen—iPad and iPhone Kindle app users may not be happy with the end result.


The calibre home page is at https://calibre-ebook.com As this is open source you can see what is included in the download. The source is on Github
In general for all downloads never download from a place that lists downloads always look for the author's home page. Or you can trust places you know about by other means than a simple search.


I have a dumb phone LG840G, is there an ebook reader available for it?

You should be able to use the browser or UC Browser/Opera Mini to read HTML files from an SD card, that is the best chance to get something usable.

An alternative would be to render the ebook to PNG images and browse the image on the phone, but this takes much more memory.

You can also open plain text files from your SD card using the build in File Browser and read them in the viewer (there might be limitations on the file size).


What is the minimum required content for a valid ePub?

Here's an epub 3.0 file that validates with epubcheck 3.0.1 (the current version at the time of writing). There's plenty more info that can (and should) go in there, of course, but you asked for minimums. We'll start with file structure:  in the root directory, there's one mimetype file and two folders--the OEBPS and the META-INF. Here's the mimetype file contents:

application/epub+zip

be sure not to have any return/line break characters in there.
In the META-INF folder, there's one file, the container.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<container version="1.0" xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:container">
  <rootfiles>
    <rootfile full-path="OEBPS/content.opf" media-type="application/oebps-package+xml"/>
  </rootfiles>
</container>

In the OEBPS folder, things get slightly more complex. First is the content.opf file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<package xmlns="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" unique-identifier="db-id" version="3.0">

<metadata>
    <dc:title id="t1">Title</dc:title>
    <dc:identifier id="db-id">isbn</dc:identifier>
    <meta property="dcterms:modified">2014-03-27T09:14:09Z</meta>
    <dc:language>en</dc:language>
</metadata>

<manifest>
    <item id="toc" properties="nav" href="toc.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml" />
    <item id="ncx" href="toc.ncx" media-type="application/x-dtbncx+xml" />
    <item id="template_css" href="template.css" media-type="text/css" />
    <item id="hello" href="1_hello.xhtml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml" />
</manifest>

<spine toc="ncx">
    <itemref idref="hello" />
</spine>

</package>

Then comes the toc.xhtml file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<title>toc.xhtml</title>
<link href="template.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Table of Contents

Hello

And finally we have the content of the ebook itself, in this case 1_hello.xhtml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<title>1_hello.xhtml</title>
<link href="template.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Hello World!

As a bonus, there's a toc.ncx file. This is not required to be valid, but it's required if you want the book to have a working Table of Contents on epub 2.0.1 devices (which is pretty much all of them):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<ncx version="2005-1" xml:lang="en" xmlns="http://www.daisy.org/z3986/2005/ncx/">

    <meta name="dtb:uid" content="isbn"/>
    <meta name="dtb:depth" content="1"/>

<docTitle>
    <text></text>
</docTitle>

<navMap>
    <navPoint id="hello" playOrder="1">
        <navLabel><text>cover</text></navLabel>
        <content src="1_hello.xhtml" />
    </navPoint>
</navMap>

</ncx>

And there's also the template.css in there, which is just a CSS stylesheet. In this case, it looks like this:

h1 {
  text-align: center;
}

And that's it! For more complex stuff, there are a number of free epub 3 samples available at https://code.google.com/p/epub-samples/.


How to repack an epub file from command line

zip -rX ../my.epub mimetype META-INF/ OEBPS/

Without -X you could get the following when validating it with EpubCheck:

ERROR: my.epub: Mimetype entry must not have an extra field in its ZIP header

If mimetype is not the first in the epub file EpubCheck prints the following:

ERROR: my.epub: Mimetype entry missing or not the first in archive


How can I send articles from iOS Safari browser to my Kindle

Here are just a few possibilities (which I have not tested):

An app that lets you push to Kindle from within Safari
A bookmarklet (JavaScript link) that lets you add a page to Kindle
Another bookmarklet

Let us know if any of these work for you!


Is Markdown a viable source format for writing ebooks?

The answer is yes. You can use John MacFarlane's Pandoc to directly generate EPUB 2 or EPUB 3 from markdown.


Can I publish my book (paperback) using createSpace if I already initiated paperback and published Kindle edition in Amazon?

I don't know if Createspace works in India, but Amazon controls that company too.

It's fairly easy to find a local company produce the print books somewhere to be sold on Amazon.

In my opinion, I would focus exclusively on ebooks because the author has more control over what price to give it (and can receive a higher percentage of the profits). When I published 2 createspace books, I found that the prices you were allowed to set was way too high to make it competitive.


Publishers have been very slow to push the boundaries of interactive ebooks, outside of education and children's books. One exception is a French language version of H.P. Lovecraft's "Kadath", published by the publisher Mnémos, with Walrus Studio. That seems to have been almost an experiment on their part.  ( https://vimeo.com/43381264 )

I've developed epub3 interactive training materials. One consideration is that you have to know how the user will consume the content, as reader apps vary in their compliance with the epub3 standard. Apple's iBooks app is actually quite good. It's what I developed for and tested against, and the only option for reading Kadath.

I suspect that for the average person reading text for entertainment, the demand isn't there. If they want interactivity, they think "app," not "ebook."


Eink devices usually don't have screens with a smooth surface, they have a slight roughness, in order to simulate the look and feel of printed paper and to prevent unwanted light reflections on the surface during reading.

Applying a protective film over it will remove this feature; I don't know if such films with a non-smooth surface are in existance, but even in this case I suppose it won't adhere well to the ereader surface, causing unwanted blurriness.

The best option to protect an eink device, in my opinion, would be to use something like a sleeve or a full cover.


Cross-platform interactive ebook in iBooks Author

This is a case where a very user-friendly tool works well on only one platform.

Before I say anything else, you should have learned how to create and edit links in HTML. Also, it might help to use css which allows you to force a new page. Sample code here: http://www.paulsalvette.com/2012/04/adding-page-breaks-for-your-kindle.html (Keep in mind that ebook support for page breaks has improved but is still lacking in Google play books).

Creating hyperlinks in HTML for epub files is extremely simple. Unfortunately ibooks author probably generates a lot of hard-to-edit code (I'm guessing).  If you can unzip the .epub (an epub is just a zip with its suffix renamed to epub), you can probably make those changes manually. But that might be a lot of trouble.

Actually if you're testing the links, you could probably test with Adobe Digital Editions or the Readium in Chrome

I don't know why you choose ibooks author, but you probably would have had more luck with creating your ebook in sigil. You need to test the html files before you make an epub file.

One thing. I am a gigantic fan of CYOA, but here are 2 things you should know:

"Choose your own adventure" is trademarked. I would call it a "maze story" which is not trademarked.  I think there are some bona fide CYOA stories as ebooks, but I think the publisher created an app to host those stories. (By the way, looking over the print CYOA is very interesting. you can appreciate the artistic choices. I blogged about the series here (skip down a bit)).
This author Rudolf Kerkhoven has created some interesting (and successful) maze stories in Kindle. Check out "The Adventures of Whatley Tupper"


Publishing an ebook for free on Kindle Direct Publishing?

It is possible, though there are certain conditions.

If you publish with KDP and sign up for Kindle Unlimited, it will allow you to make the title free for a limited time (it used to be 2 days out of every 60).

You can upload ebooks to Smashwords, which will you can choose to give a free price tag for. Then, SW will  redistribute the same ebook to all the major ebook stores. So For BN, Apple, Kobo, etc, you can make the price free.

Amazon.com claims it will do price-matching. If you report that a title is free on another ebook site, Amazon is supposed to match the free price. But what usually happens is that Amazon is price it free for a while, and then it will revert back to the previous price.

I don't know what you're trying to do from a SEO perspective. Amazon.com usually will capture the top spot for all book titles, but that isn't that good of a thing. If anything, it takes away SEO juice from your own site.


How can I download a TED transcript to a Kindle Paperwhite

There are some ease ways and some that might require programming skills.

I'm describing the easy way:

Install the Send to Kindle extension for Your browser (I'm using Chrome)
Configure it to Your needs
Visit the TED talk that has a transcription, e.g. this one, and click on the transcript link under the video, choose Your language.
Now click on the "Send to Kindle" button on Your browsers toolbar to send it to Your Kindle
Turn on the wifi and sync Your Kindle.


How to avoid "orphaned" paragraph breaks in Scrivener?

This is a consequence of ebooks being reflowable; to all practical purposes, it's unavoidable, and it has nothing to do with Scrivener. There is theoretically CSS support for eliminating both widows (like what you've shown) and orphans (the reverse, where there's a single line at the bottom of the page), but the majority of ebook reading systems do not support them.

If you'd like to give it a shot anyway, you'll have to edit the CSS file and add:

widows: 2
orphans: 2

The 2 represents the minimum number of new lines that should be left at the top/bottom of a page.


Export .ePUB to text but somehow retain formatting

You could convert your epub book to a markdown/textile text file with Calibre. Make sure to select markdown/textile, before running the epub to txt conversion.
(Preferences > Output options > Text output > Formatting > markdown/textile.)


Is there any open standard for ebook notes format?

The short answer, no.

Kindle uses what is called a My Clippings.txt file using standard text formatted in a particular way. Here is an example that was taken from this readme file on a GitHub project (modified slightly to remove leading comment characters).

  97_Things_Every_Programmer_Should_Know
  - Highlight Loc. 250-51 | Added on Wednesday, December 29, 2010, 06:10 AM

  As soon as you make the decision to compromise, write a task card or
  log it
  ==========
  97_Things_Every_Programmer_Should_Know
  - Highlight Loc. 298 | Added on Wednesday, December 29, 2010, 06:19 AM

  the best way to capture requirements is to watch users.
  ==========
  97_Things_Every_Programmer_Should_Know
  - Note Loc. 1453 | Added on Sunday, January 02, 2011, 09:40 PM

  this is a personal note
  ==========

Sony Reader provides .note files. These are just wrapped .svg files (scalable vector graphics, an XML based image format). I believe this is because the Sony Reader notes can be annotations, doodles via a stylus and text highlights. You can find out more information about extracting them here.

Kobo, according to this thread, stores annotations in [epub-filename].annot, which is a standard XML file. I'm not sure if this differs for other eBook formats.

You get the point. There is no single standard format or way to handle annotations. That being said, perhaps someone could take various open source tools and create a single utility for exporting and/or importing annotations to various devices (sounds like an interesting side project...).


Find new books in Adobe Digital Edition - library

ADE is not a library, it is software to allow a person to read ebooks. Here are sources for free ebooks if that's what you want:

http://www.gutenberg.org
http://smashwords.com
http://manybooks.net
Free classics on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=2245146011
Baen free library, mostly scifi and fantasy. http://www.baen.com/catalog/category/view/s/free-library/id/2012
DDG search for free ebooks
Kobo free ebooks


want to convert OCR PDF to computer font

The problem is that the original image of the text is "in front" of the actual digital text of the PDF.

Figure 1: How layers are stacked in a PDF

PDF is composed of overlapping visible and invisible layers. OCR attempts to use algorithms to identify text placement and size, then place text objects under the original images of the pages.
See these blog entries: blogs.acrobat.com
Also, please see question by @tel here for additional discussion: How to replaces images of text in PDFs with formatted text using OCR
Without a professional subscription, I would use Adobe Acrobat DC to output as XML or DOCX, go into the XML and remove the images (e.g., using a regular expression), then try to apply text correction to the resulting document.

Figure 2: ABBYY FineReader 15 Option

By the way, ABBYY FineReader has an option to save your OCR results as pure text — not invisible text under an image of the text. The software isn't cheap, but the investment can make sense if you're often doing OCR.


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

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

  no discernible increase in piracy on any of our titles

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


What is this lock icon in the lower right corner of my iPhone kindle app?

This icon allows you to lock or unlock the screen automatic rotation. The state shown on the screenshot is with the autorotation locked i.e. the screen will not rotate when you tilt the phone.

To unlock or lock the autorotation just tap the icon. It will show up when you tap the lower right corner of the screen.

See for example: How to enable or disable Kindle-app screen rotation


Whats the best program to use to make ebooks

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

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

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