Problem with opening an ePub

[WillyA]

Tell that to the millions of authors, software engineers, cookery books and bank accounts, Credit Cards and even IDENTITIES stolen all thanks to "don't be paranoid' no one will try to steal your work. If you actually believe that. Good luck fella!

[WillyA]

Well, so far all you've done is make me even more confused. If I ask "How to I fill a cup with water?" I would expect a reply like.

1. Take an empty cup.
2. Hold it under the tap
3. Turn on the tap until water comes out
4. When cup is full, turn tap off until water stops coming out.
5. That's all folks!

Not, is the cop made of bone china, earthenware or hard porcelain. If it's bone china be careful not to hit it or it might break. If the decoration is citron gold. it tends to wear off easier than burnished gold. What temperature is the water you are planning to fill the cup with? Can you post a picture of the cup on here so we can all see it and advise. (and 10 million others can copy the picture and give it away to everyone).

ALL I wanted was a simple 1, 2, 3, 4 guide. IK already mentioned I want to create an ePub. I use Sigil and Calbre, I'm a novice and all I want to do is display a cover picture when the book opens as Amazon DEMAND their ePub books do. (How do I know, because I created an ePub for an author who self publishes and Amazon rejected it (according to him) because it opened where the reader last left off), So I know it can be done.

I'm more confused now than I was when I started.

[Turtle91]

So...you are definitely getting touchy about valid questions.

The reasons the questions are valid is because there are different versions of ePub standards; version 2 and version 3.xx. Also, the big companies like the IDEA of a standard, open source, ebook format (ePub) for other people to use...not them...because they know how to do it better... So, each main company has a slightly different way of presenting the ebook....

People are asking because 98% of the time, the type of reader/app/device you are using matters. I think most people here missed in the OP that you weren't going for a big publisher, just for your personal use, and that you specifically wanted ePub2.

Noone on these forums really cares about your ebook, they are just trying to help you out. If you don't wish to give them the information they need to answer your question, that's ok, but don't get upset when you are given a bunch of things to try that may, or may not, help. That isn't "confusing", that's troubleshooting, Mr. Pascal. Remember the early days of pascal compilers - that was confusing!

Cheers!

EDIT: If you really don't trust the scrambling plugins, which have been successfully used many times, then you could always post a dummy version of the book...

1. Save-as a different file name
2. remove all of the xhtml files except the one you have with the cover image and perhaps one or two others with a bunch of nonsense "lorem ipsum" words.
3. All we really need to see is the opf and the offending xhtml file.
4. you could even replace the real cover file with a dummy file
5. Dammit Jim, I'm an ePubber not a mind reader!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by WillyA

Tell that to the millions of authors, software engineers, cookery books and bank accounts, Credit Cards and even IDENTITIES stolen all thanks to "don't be paranoid' no one will try to steal your work. If you actually believe that. Good luck fella!

There is nothing wrong with posting a scrambled eBook. It's not in a coded eBook. The same letters can be different scrambled letters. The only thing you have to go by is the length of the words.

For example, the word and will be scrambled different ways.

You need to give us as muc information is you can based on what we need to try to help you. Do you want our help?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by WillyA

Nope, I'm not putting the book on here. scrambled or not. I've been around computers for too long to trust ANYTHING on the web. What one man can scramble another can UNscramble and there are more criminals out there (10,000 blocked hacker IP addresses already on my firewall).

The ebook scrambler is a pretty much a one way algorithm.

Originally Posted by WillyA

You glibly speak of 'cover.xhtml' I don't have one. I have a titlepage.xhtml (which I was led to believe is also the cover).

The name does not matter. The reference to the name does matter. I could have a cover file called watchamaycallit.html and an cover image called blank_name.jpg and the epub renderer would not care as long as they were correctly referenced in the .opf file.

Originally Posted by WillyA

I don't believe I ever mentioned ePub3 or Kobo. I thought this forum was for SIGIL I'm not trying to create a new version Doomsday weapon or anything else. It's a simple help guide for myself AND MY FRIENDS (of which I have few) and I don't work for all the people who want to grab a copy of everything in print and give it away for free.

This is not a forum for Sigil. That would be the Sigil forum. Nor is this a forum for the calibre e-book editor. That has it's sub-forum in the calibre forum. This forum is for general queries, etc. about ePub ebooks.

Originally Posted by WillyA

If I start muttering about 'replicas in skulk' or 'unprocessed obituary flags' and 'subordinate references' I would be surprised if anyone understood a word, yet it's OK for you to start on about Kodo kepub format.

Would it matter if I started muttering about filtered read/write replicas or similar? I worked with Novell for years and still have fond memories of NDS/eDirectory, replicas stuck in move, etc.

I mentioned Kobo kepub format as it prefers to have all files referenced in the nav.xhtml or toc.ncx file as you mentioned ePub3 and not all references in the ToC file.

Originally Posted by WillyA

I think I came to the wrong forum and asked far too much. You need to have an in-depth knowledge BEFORE you ask for help. I wonder how long I would have lasted with Novell if I'd tried my best to confuse people who knew NOTHING about the product?

I would say that you are unwilling to show us your work. As I said, scrambleepub is not a reversible system. What you get is random characters replacement.

It is a heck of a lot easier to help when you can see what you are helping with. As it is, you are refusing to let us have that access.

I've attached a scrambled ePub to this message so you can see what it looks like. Unless your ebook does not use a Western character set, you should be okay.

[Quoth]

Amazon take the cover upload (at much higher resolution) and the epub upload separately anyway.

My workflow:

1. edit in LO Writer saving in ODT. Use Styles.
2. Final Save As in docx
3. Make epub from docx in Calibre.
4. Separately have image of cover edited at twice resolution Amazon wants. I use the Gimp, but use whatever.
5. Export a reduced to Amazon size png and tif. Used for Google, Smashwords, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo etc too.
6. Export 1072 x 1430 jpg image for Calibre for personal use.
7. Add that in Browse for Cover in Edit Metadata.
8. Proof ebook on a Kobo, re-edit LO Writer version, delete epub and recreate from docx
9. Upload final epub and large image to Amazon etc and enter all metadata and pricing. Four separate tasks.

Repeat step 8 as needed. The ebook record isn't deleted, just format.

Amazon doesn't use the image in the ebook.