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.

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: AO3 bug with epub files?

[elf]

I'll have to re-check; I've been able to read several longer fics without problems, but I know of a Sony bug that could clash with them.

Sony's epub reader can't deal with segments larger than 300kb; if the conversion isn't breaking up the HTML pieces into small enough parts, they'll freeze when it tries to read them. (Epubs are just repackaged zip files of HTML + some metadata. If you change the extension to .zip and unzip it, you can see the raw contents.)

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[jumpuphigh]

Ack. I just had my first one freeze my ereader. How do you unfreeze it? :D

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[jumpuphigh]

I've had it happen with files that don't have pictures so that isn't the only cause. I think I might just have to convert all my AO3 fics prior to sideloading for the time being.

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.

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[saekhwa]

Awww, okay, that would explain it then. I wasn't aware of the bug and figured it was something on my end. I guess that explains why re-converting it through Calibre seems to work. Thanks so much!

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[elf]

Restart by pushing the tiny hidden button in the back. Or whatever the 650 uses for "hard reboot."

Or connect it to the computer, delete that ebook, and see if that fixes it.

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[saekhwa]

Ack. Well, the first time it happened, I had to do the equivalent of a force quit. I slid the power button at the top and held it until the screen went blank. I waited a bit, turned the device back on and immediately deleted the book. When I looked at the Sony forums, a few suggested resetting the device, but I hate doing that, especially since I'm always away from my computer and don't want to re-load everything.

Also, thanks for the heads up on re-converting through Calibre. That seems to be working so far.

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[elf]

Sony tries to pretend the bug doesn't exist, because if you use their software for conversion, you'll never notice it. So it's not a bug, right? It's just incompatibility with ebooks built by other people!

Which, um, every other epub reader on the planet can handle.

(Sony's bug comes from the hardware limitations of the PRS-500; limiting the files to 300kb pieces was a way to keep long files from taking forever to load. We have faster processors now.)

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[jumpuphigh]

Thanks. I had to use the reset button as plugging it into my computer (my first instinct) did nothing. I (re)converted all the AO3 files and now I don't know which one it was that caused the freeze but hopefully it is fixed now.

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[jumpuphigh]

I slid the power button at the top and held it until the screen went blank

That's a handy tip. Thanks!

I'm happy enough with calibre that I haven't even opened the Sony software that came with the device.

Re: AO3 bug with epub files?

[jumpuphigh]

I wonder if I should just automatically run every book through calibre's convert process before loading. If I just make it a habit, it won't take more than a few seconds to do that.

Sony software

[elf]

The Sony software is nowhere near as user-friendly & customizable as Calibre. Its sole advantage (aside from needing it to buy stuff from the Sony store, which, pff, not goin' there) is that when it loads LRF files--a now-deprecated filetype--to the reader, it auto-paginates them so they don't take the extra half-minute to open the first time.

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?

[saekhwa]

Hmmm. I'm thinking I might just do this, too.

.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.

Re: .lit file reading?

[eva]

As an alternative to portable running, I have installed Calibre on both my netbook and my desktop and synchronise the ebook folder as well as the library through Dropbox. Works great, even though the netbook is under Ubuntu and the desktop under Windows.

[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.)

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?