The Random Ebooks Questions Post

[elf]

Ask your questions! Get answers! Maybe even useful answers!

Ask anything! Ask about ereaders, or filetypes, or conversion methods, or where to find books, or which authors don't like ebooks, or what software works on which computers, or anything else ebook-related. Preferably, put the question, or part of it, in the subject line. That way, the questions will be easy to find, and new readers who show up can see if their question has been asked before.

Feel free to post links to your journal where you've spelled out your questions in detail (or just make a new post here; it's totally fine to make a long post about "thinking about ebook readers; what's the pros & cons of these two?")

Answer questions! If you know about a certain aspect of ebookery, jump in with answers!

Comments

AO3 bug with epub files?

[jumpuphigh]

I've been having this random problem where some AO3 fics that I've downloaded as epub open just fine in calibre but then give me a page error on my ereader (Sony 650). If I delete from reader and then run it through the convert books setting (from epub to epub) and reload on my reader, it works just fine. Have you come across this issue at all?

Eventually, I'll file a bug report with AO3 but if there is more data that I could give them, it would be helpful.

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[saekhwa]

Oh my goodness, I thought it was just me. I have the same ereader, and any time I try to open an epub file from AO3, it freezes the whole thing up.

The smaller fics work just fine (under about 3,000 words), but I generally want to read longer fics (upwards of 30,000 words) and those are the ones that seem to cause the trouble. For me at least.

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[elf]

I've run across it a couple of times.

Always happens on ebooks with pictures, presumably because the picture is a link rather than imported into the book; the Sony freezes trying to follow the link.

It might happen with other weird coding or links; I haven't found it consistent enough to figure out what files have problems.

Sony has a limit on the size of HTML it can deal with inside the epubs, but if they're using Calibre as the conversion engine, it'd automatically split them into smaller-than-300kb pieces.

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[jumpuphigh]

Note to self. Reconverted all my AO3 files. It appears to be about a 50% fail rate.

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[jumpuphigh]

Update: I've filed a bug report with AO3 linking to this thread.

book reviewers?

[zvi]

Do you know of any websites which either regularly include ebooks in their review selections or are primarily focused on ebooks. I know that STTB occasionally reviews ebooks, but, frankly, they don't review enough and theirs are almost all M/F of one kind or another.

I'm specifically looking for people who review spec fic and non-traditional romances.

Re: book reviewers?

[elf]

Mostly: Sorry, no, there's a great dearth of ebook reviews. There's a few blogs that have ebook reviews, and a couple that focus on erotica and not just M/F (most of which I can't get to from work, for what's probably sensible reasons); I'll see if I can find them later.

There's a group at Mobileread who decided "we should start doing ebook reviews, and put them somewhere," but it hasn't gone anywhere yet. (I think we're all intimidated at the idea of declaring ourselves Official Book Reviewers. One of my projects for the winter is "get off my ass and start writing ebook reviews like they're fanfic recs, and don't worry about what 'real' book reviews are like.")

That said, sites that have ebook reviews:
Reviews by Jessewave: "M/M adult-themed romance books." Seems to mention print books, but most are from publishers that offer everything in ebook format as well.

Tour's Books Blog has some ebook reviews, supernatural romance/erotica but I'm not seeing any non-het. (However, might work as a rec for authors.)
Smashwords Reviewed (Prone to looooong posts. Not sure it's worth wading through the mansplaining enough to get to the reviews, but the links on the side are reasonable.)
E-Finds: Books, Music, Video & Other On-Line Finds promises to do one Smashwords review/week. Probably not in the genres you're looking for.
Mobileread's Reading Recommendations forum... hit-or-miss as far as actual reviewing goes.

I remember an LJ with good ebook-romance recs; will have to see if I can find it again. And I remember seeing sci-fi/spec fic ebook reviews somewhere, but that'll be harder to find again; I keep getting tangled in "100 great science fiction books!" lists.

.lit file reading?

[fizzyblogic]

I don't have an ebook reader yet (still saving up), so I read ebooks on my laptop (running Windows XP) and I have some .lit files a friend gave me but I'm sort of floundering about programs to read them. I have a Firefox extension to read epub files in the browser, and looked around for a lit one but couldn't find any. Should I go with Microsoft's Lit reader? Should I get Calibre and convert the files, and if so what's best to convert .lit files to in Calibre? Are there any other conversion programs to recommend?

I'm very, very new to ebooks, and tend to get overwhelmed when I try to research on Google. /o\

Re: .lit file reading?

[jumpuphigh]

calibre has an ereader built into it which makes it very convenient. So, you could use calibre to convert and read both. I don't know if it will read .lit and don't have any .lit files as once I convert, I usually delete the file I'm converting from. However, you can read epub files and converting with calibre is really quite simple.

Re: .lit file reading?

[elf]

Microsoft is the only company with an actual .lit reader; it's their proprietary format. (For all I know, there's a way to read them in Internet Explorer.) Calibre converts .lit to other ebook formats very well (.lit is its preferred source format; converts well to pretty much everything), and Convertlit and the GUI version are both free, simple programs that convert .lit files to .html files.

Convertlit will run portably on a flash drive. (So will Calibre, but it's a lot messier.)

Re: .lit file reading?

[eva]

I would definitely recommend Calibre for the book sorting and archiving features alone. You can also use it to view epub files. I'd experiment around with the conversions it offers and see which formats you like best. I do much reading on a netbook, so I like to have formats that I can view in programs with a true fullscreen mode without any menu bars, so I might choose pdf or rtf. Sadly, as far as I can see, Calibre doesn't have such a mode in its internal viewer yet.

I'd recommend keeping the original files (Calibre does allow you to keep multiple formats of the same book in the archive). When you get a reader, you can then convert things to whatever format is recommended for that reader; Calibre supports a number of devices.

[eva]

OK. Buy a reader now or wait for more functions and cheaper devices? (Note: I'm in Germany, so not all readers popular in the US are readily available here. For example, you can get a Kindle from Amazon, but it is shipped via amazon.com, and while the cheaper one costs about 100 € by itself, there are 40 € of shipping and import fees added.)

re: Buy now or wait

[elf]

How much do you like to read? How tight are your finances?

The tech's not going to settle down for several years, and there's going to be an ongoing battle between "what the techies can design to work well" and "what the marketing agents think they can sell best."

In the meantime--the readers available now work very well for leisure reading. They suck for textbook use. (That's probably going to remain true for a while; the obstacles are non-trivial.) For that matter, the readers available 5 years ago work very well for leisure reading; I read for two solid years on a Sony Clié before switching to a dedicated ebook reader, and the Ebookwise is still considered a great reader. (The 128mb max memory card is its biggest problem. And the obsolete filetype support.)

The bells & whistles aren't going to stablize for even longer. If there's a *particular* feature you want that isn't available, or costs too much right now, you should probably wait for it; if it's just a matter of "but if I wait six months, the price will drop by 25%"... well, yeah, but you'll be out of six months of reading time.

A lot of us have been waiting for they mythical $100 ebook reader for years; right now, it only happens when things go on sale. The feature sets have gotten better--but mostly as general tech enhancements (today's batteries kick ass), not because the designers are actually paying attention to what works best. (Almost all the current ebook readers will hold *thousands* of books. None of them have good software for sorting & browsing through thousands of books.)

Mobileread has plenty of European members who can help sort out availability and prices, and there's plenty of support for people who want a reader not sold in their country, or sold for much more in some countries than others. If you want a Kindle at US cost + real shipping cost, that's available.

Did that help?

html and Calibre?

[stormcloude]

Cataloguing html books in Calibre just seems to turn them into zip files. Can I just put those on my ereader or do I need to convert them to something else first? If I need to convert them, what is the best format?

Also if I have two entries for the same book in Calibre is there a way to merge them?

Re: html and Calibre?

[eva]

Yes to the second question. I can't tell you the exact name of the menu entries since my system is in German, but you can select the books, rightclick them, and then go to the menu under "Edit Metadata" or similar. There should be an option "Combine book entries" or something like it. Remember which book you selected first and select the appropriate merging option.

[transcendancing]

I have a Kindle ebook, using Kindle for PC. Can someone tell me how to find out what page is what so I can reference my assignment properly? *fretful* WTFpolarbear are 'locations'?

If someone can help me with this I'd be deeply grateful and would give you all the internets. *hopeful*

[elf]

Kindle uses "locations" instead of pages because pages change when you increase or decrease the font sizes. And it's a nice concept--works well for discussing the book with other Kindle users, and keeps the number stable when changing fonts--but it sucks for academic work. (There's a *lot* of problems with ebooks for academic purposes.)

I suppose you could use "loc. 124-37" (or whatever) instead of a page number? I'm not sure how to list "this is an ebook;" maybe use the filename the same way you'd use a URL, in whatever ref formatting you're using?

Academic references are going to have to be flexible in dealing with digital content; lots of it doesn't have "pages" in any normal sense.

[havocthecat]

No questions, just a thank you on my part for putting up such a great resource for ebook fans. I really appreciate it!

[beatrice_otter]

I don't have an e-book reader yet, and probably won't for some time; I just use my laptop and Calibre. The majority of the e-books I have (and will be purchasing for some time) are a) Baen free books or b) fanfic downloaded from AO3 and ff.net or c) classics downloaded from Project Gutenberg. When I do get around to buying an ebook reader, I obviously have no idea what kind of ebook reader I will be getting. So there's a good chance I'll have to either convert using Calibre or go back and re-download all my ebooks.

So the question is this: what format should I be downloading the ebooks in, that would either be a format I would likely use or easily convertible into whatever format I end up needing?

[jumpuphigh]

Despite the dominance of Kindles right now, the consensus seems to be that epub is the way of the future. Will it be? I don't know. It is however, easy to convert to other formats.

Sigil, coding, and breaking files into bits

[adelheid]

I have a file with multiple titles that I would like to be able to break up into the separate titles, provide with tables of contents, and if at all possible, correct the typos (okay, I'd correct the typos if I cared enough, which I doubt I ever will.)

Before I download Sigil (and start learning coding - eek!) I'd like to know how much of that Sigil will be able to do/help me do. Can someone give me a brief rundown? Thanks!

Re: Sigil, coding, and breaking files into bits

[elf]

I speak no Sigil. However, from what I've been able to pick up, that sounds like what it can do. (Not sure what you mean by "break up into the separate titles"--make a TOC in the one book, or convert into several ebooks?)

I suspect that Sigil is the best tool for what you want, even if it doesn't do everything. It may involve weird options like copying the original book several times & deleting everything you don't want, instead of "split into several ebooks," but other than that, I believe it'll work; I know it can put in tables of contents & allow you to fix typos.

The Mobileread Sigil forum is probably a good place to check.

[beatrice_otter]

Is there a problem with the latest Combined Tools Package (i.e. deDRM stuff) from Apprentice Alf? Because I went to update my plugins (de-DRMing on my Nook books wasn't working any more) and I couldn't get any of the plugins to install. Either Calibre didn't see them at all even though they were there, or it said they didn't have a top-level py file.

[(Anonymous)]

You might have to update your Calibre?

~stormcloude too lazy to log in.

[boundbooks]

Question! I'm working on a primer for how (and why) to browse Archive of Our Own for non-fannish readers. I know that most of the people here are probably fannish, but would it be appropriate to post it here in addition to my own journal? I think it might be a useful post for people who haven't considered fanfiction in the past, or even a post for people who do read fic to link to people who don't read fic.

[elf]

Sure! More ebook info = good. More info about non-traditional-publishing ebook sources = good.

And plenty of the fannish readers here (self included) would probably love advice on how to point selective non-fannish friends at AO3.

Basics: What can and can't I do with readers?

[brightwanderer]

If I buy a Kindle, can I buy books from big stores other than Amazon? From Waterstones or Blackwell for example? If I buy a Sony or other reader not tied into a name, can I still buy things from Amazon or can you only read their books on a Kindle? What about the DRM-free stuff on Amazon?

I want to be able to get fantasy and YA books, predominantly - all sorts, indie and published and old and new - and really I'd prefer to just log onto Amazon and go for it. But I don't like the proprietary nature of the Kindle and its restrictions.

Re: Basics: What can and can't I do with readers?

[elf]

If you have a Kindle, you can't use DRM'd ebooks from any store other than Amazon. (Unless you strip the DRM, which I gather is not difficult, but a lot of people are strongly invested in convincing you that's illegal. It is, at the least, a hassle.)

Any non-Kindle reader can't use DRM'd ebooks from Amazon--and possibly can't use any books from Amazon unless they're converted first.

The Kindle reads:
.mobi/.prc ebooks, either non-DRM'd, or with Amazon's DRM
.tpz, Amazon's "topaz" format, only available through them (and nobody likes it)
.pdf ebooks, without DRM (badly. None of them are good at PDFs)
.txt files, which are almost useless as ebooks.

The Nook reads
.epub & .pdf with B&N's DRM, other Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) DRM (there are two types), and non-DRM'd

Sony reads:
.epub & .pdf with ADE, and without DRM
.txt
.rtf

Kobo reads:
.epub & .pdf with ADE
non-DRM'd .mobi (so, files from Amazon *that don't have DRM*, or have had it removed, would be readable)
.txt, .html, .rtf, .cbz, .cbr (however, I have no idea how good the support is for these; I have a reader that claims to read these and does it horribly.)

None of the other readers currently strongly marketed read DRM'd .mobi ebooks; the industry is shifting to .epub. (It's a much more versatile format; .mobi is a holdover from the PalmOS days.)

Waterstones is tied to Sony; they sell in .epub, and I believe it's all DRM'd. Blackwell also uses Adobe Digital Editions; it's unclear whether everything is DRM'd, but you can probably expect it is.

A lot of ebookstores try not to tell you exactly what filetypes they sell; several don't tell you whether the files are DRM'd or not. (B&N sells some with & some without--but refuses to tell you which are which. Amazon's can only be identified by the device # restriction on the book listings. (If it says unlimited devices, it doesn't have DRM.)

It's probably easiest to get a Sony, buy from Waterstones & Blackwell directly for it, and buy from Amazon through the PC program and use another program to strip the DRM, then use Calibre to convert to .epub. But only probably. And stripping the DRM may or may not be legal in your area. (Nobody has ever been prosecuted, nor is likely to be, for removing DRM on their own purchases.)

That's a lot of info to throw at you at once; I'm happy to go over more if you'd like, but I don't want to overwhelm you or swamp you with details that won't matter to you.

Instapaper trouble

[haikitteh]

I'm having some trouble with Instapaper grabbing all the docs in a folder. I've got a lot of pages marked - 28! - and it seems to grab about half of them and leave the rest (leaving off the earliest saved).

I couldn't find any info on whether there's a limit to the number of pages it would grab on the FAQ.

Anyone else had this trouble, or have a fix for it?

[fred_mouse]

Does anyone have links for discussions of software that can be used for document conversions that doesn't reference fan fic? I need to be able to point a work mate at useful information, and I'm not really willing to get into a discussion of the whys and wherefores of what I do in my own time.

[elf]

Yes! Mobileread forums have endless discussions about conversions that have no connection at all to fanfic!

Their ebook software set of forums are for Calibre, Sigil, EPUBReader, Writer2ePub, Open Inkpot, and general ebook-library-management discussions; they also have a Workshop forum for all aspects of ebook creation, from scanning to OCR programs to editing programs.

Fanfic occasionally gets mentioned but not focused on, and somehow comes off sounding like "I want to download and convert a year's archives from my favorite blogs" instead of "I want 350mb of Kirk/Spock at my fingertips."

I'd be happy to point you at specific threads, but would probably need some hints about which aspects of conversion/ebook production you want tips for.

[yhlee]

Are the options for reading PDFs still dismal on current ereaders? My iRex DR800, which I loved because I could read full-sized PDFs (either by changing font size or using selection zoom) and epubs, and which was pretty much perfect, appears to have died, and at this point looking for another one is probably not such a hot idea. I could do without the epubs if only I could read PDFs. I read them on my laptop sometimes, but the experience is not very good.

[elf]

Short answer: yes, dismal.

Longer answer: Kindle DX does okay for reading, because the screen is bigger, but has no search, highlight or bookmark options for PDFs.

The Jinke line (Hanlin, Astak EZReaders) have decent reflow & font options (8 sizes) for PDFs that can reflow, but those are hard to find in the US. They have no zoom, just reflow-and-embiggen-text, and no annotation support. (At least, mine doesn't have annotation support; I can't really speak for all of them.)

I think most (all?) of the others currently in production either do zoom or reflow but not both.

The new Sony T1 may have the best PDF support on the market right now. The Sony discussion forum at mobileread is a good place to look for specifics.

DeDRMing Kindle Books

[strina]

I downloaded the tools zip from Apprentice Alf's blog post, installed the Calibre plugin, customized it with my Kindle's serial number, and started importing books to convert. It worked on literally half of them (16 of 31); the rest said that the incorrect key had been given. I've redownloaded the books to make sure they're authorized to that Kindle. I've tried running the Python script to get my Kindle PID instead of just the serial number and it fails, but if I'm not typing my sn# correctly, WHY DID CONVERTING WORK AT ALL.

I am so very confused.

Downloading and reading a Nook/epub ebook with FBReader and or Calibre on my laptop?

[pauamma]

If the Nook format is actually epub as it seems to be, and since (I think) FBReader and Calibre (the ebook readers that exist for my FreeBSD laptop) seem to support that, does that mean I can buy Because Internet from whichever palatable retailer will let me download it to a non-US billing address (which seems to mean Penguin US or Barnes and Noble as Penguin UK wants over twice the Penguin US price, Books-a-million sells to US customers only, and I don't trust Apple, Google, or Amazon to supply an unencumbered format that I could get onto my laptop)? Or do I have to find another source/way to do it?

Re: Downloading and reading a Nook/epub ebook with FBReader and or Calibre on my laptop?

[elf]

Nook is indeed epub. (Now. It may not have been when this post was first made; they acquired the "ereader" format from Fictionwise and were using it - or its DRM - for a while. But everything is now epub.)

I recommend testing the process on another book first. Calibre's De-DRM plugin still requires Adobe Digital Editions to be installed; I don't know if you can put that on a FreeBSD laptop. (Err. Windows emulator thing, maybe? Or Wine?)

Amazon's kindle books will also work through Calibre's de-DRM, but you need an older version of the Amazon kindle reader software to make it work. (There are links, somewhere. And you have to turn off automatic updates. Works fine after that.) I would not trust Apple or Google either.