Thread: why are some epub files so big?
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Old 01-22-2013, 04:47 AM   #17
Bookripper
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Join Date: Oct 2012
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ripplinger View Post
I open up the epubs in Sigil and delete the fonts themselves. Then I also go through the stylesheet.css file and delete all references to "font-family:xxxx" where all the special fonts are called. You don't change anything else about the epub that way, the formatting and code stay the same. If there's excess images like I said, various sizes of the same image, I delete those too and the pages that reference them, they're just about always on their own page. Then it all reverts to default font uses, or if you have a hack on your reader that allows more fonts, you can freely change to any font you want.

I also don't like when they include several chapters or images from another book, another waste of space although that part is usually minimal... I'll never ever read them that way. Either I'm interested in the book and will buy it or not, reading the opening chapters, where it's usually the slowest-moving of the storyline, will never make me want or not want a book. The images though can be a pain, I've seen some books with a multitude of smaller images for almost every book an author has written... waste of space as well as annoying to me and I remove those pages and images as well.

Conversions as said can help, but can you sometimes end up with undesired results. The Modify ePub plugin can also be tried, but it's not always 100% foolproof, I've run across some books where it didn't remove the font. Sigil is so simple to use and you're in total control of what gets changed or not.

Mobi files are always larger in file size than the identical epub. A lot of times the mobi files are created in both new and old mobi formats, which is actually the 2 versions in one file. If I convert an epub into mobi, I always select the older format, which is the smaller size and will be compatible on all Kindles.
I'm doing the same thing: deleting excessive covers and images, and I also delete the fonts. But I dont delete the references to "font-family:xxxx" in the stylesheet. Can this do any harm?
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