Kobo Adobe Epub is a Kepub instead - Page 2

rashkae · 12-23-2011, 04:23 PM

Umm, two books now, in this thread, and yet more in the French blog thread. If this is an error, it's become a systymatic one, and Kobo has so far not deigned to respond at all. The blog furor might be over the top, but I think that's in the best interest of everyone.

taming · 12-23-2011, 04:33 PM

rashkae, I wrote to various Kobo senior staff when, over a month ago, you found incident #1. Now we have a second one. That does not seem to me to indicate a widespread issue. I don't think blog furor is helpful, myself.

I am not sure how I feel about the fact that the book is usable in the DRM format and problematic only when DRM is removed. As someone who routinely removes DRM for archiving, I understand why it is very, very annoying, but in terms of Kobo having provided a book that can be read if used as downloaded, I'm not so sure.

Publishers have written over and over again that one of the reasons that converting to ebooks is not as easy as everyone thinks it is has to do with having to prepare the books for each retailer separately. As the solution for all of these errors seems to involve asking the publisher to provide a properly formatted book, I am still not convinced it is a Kobo issue (though it could be).

rashkae · 12-23-2011, 04:55 PM

Who says the book is useable in the DRM format. It would still be the same book, and non-kobo devices would choke on it the same way. Kobo offers books in both Kobo forat and Adobe DRM format. It's the Adobe DRM format we are discussing here. Someone is erroneously stuffing the Kepub into the Adobe content server, and that's a problem.

taming · 12-23-2011, 05:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rashkae

Someone is erroneously stuffing the Kepub into the Adobe content server, and that's a problem.

What I am saying is that someone (that would be a publisher) might be sending the kepub formatted books to Kobo for inclusion in the Adobe Content Server. Could it be that someone made a dumb mistake on Kobo's end, well, yes, that could be. And it could be that when this happens, they need to ask the publisher for a new Adobe version. This is though very different from someone at Kobo deciding to put kepub books in Adobe clothing as some sort of strategy or routine practice.

Put a fork in me; I'm done.

rashkae · 12-24-2011, 12:30 AM

In the name of science, I bought another new release from Kobo. Same thing. This is not a random error. This is Kobo's new policy, and explains the resounding silence we've gotten since I first mentioned it. All epubs downlaoded from Kobo (for new books, they haven't yet re-formated the old ones) are now getting mangled so they only work properly on Kobo software. I can't believe how slimy this company has become in just a few months. This non-sense really has to be broadcast loudly.

Edit: At least this time, it appears as though the original css was included with the book. Restoring it only required deleting the kobo.css and kobo.js (since they would overwrite the publisher original values.)

taming · 12-24-2011, 03:10 AM

This is truly silly. If kobo was routinely doing something that kept ePUBs from being used on anything but Kobo devices we would have hundreds upon hundreds of complaints on MR about this. Maybe thousands. Why in the world would they do this--a big slice of their book sales go to owners of Sony, B&N, and other devices.

No need to answer me. You are now on my ignore list. One of only two people, btw,

rashkae · 12-24-2011, 08:42 AM

I'll answer anyway for the benefit of others.

Because they don't know.... to the average person, all they see is a book that is made with double spaced text, triple space between paragraphs, no margins, and they shrug and think that's just the way the publisher made the book. It takes someone with intimate knowledge of e-book structure to see what is wrong and call Kobo out on their sabotage.

PeterT · 12-24-2011, 09:25 AM

One more for the IGNORE pile. Bye Bye

rashkae · 12-24-2011, 09:29 AM

And that is, of course, Kobo doesn't screw up the "koboization" then completely ignores any complaints on the subject. Thirteen orphans, for example, the book I started this with, has it's original css missing entirely. It doesn't just mess up the formatting an display, it's missing all formatting entirely.

pvs · 12-24-2011, 01:07 PM

I'm shocked that Kobo is replacing publishers CSS with their own version on certain new books, or even overriding the publishers CSS with a Java Script. I was actually planning on buying some of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey series with Kobo, I'd had already downloaded a couple of sample chapters from Nook books and the books looked great (covers were included), but if Kobo have these replaced CSS versions, I won't be buying from them because I loathe Kobo's styling of books. I can't stand their no indents on paragraphs, I want my ebooks to look like books.

taming · 12-24-2011, 01:53 PM

All of my kobo bought books, with drm magically gone from ePUB versions, display the publisher's styling choices. So I get paragraph indents, no spaces between paragraphs, etc. This includes, via a setting on the Touch, the ability to use embedded fonts. The kepub books all have Kobo styling, though aspects of that can also be turned off by way of a device setting on the Touch.

10 posts since May 2010. Active fella aren't you, pvs? Nice that you dropped by this particular thread.

taming · 12-24-2011, 02:29 PM

i just went into Calibre, where my drm free epub books are stored. I highlighted a title, did a right click and chose tweak UI , and from there exploded the book, and looked at the style sheets. I did this for the last ten books I purchased, which included one book that was only published a week ago.

I am not quite dumb enough to list on a public website what books magically (and at this point perhaps less than fully legally in Canada) ended up being drm free on my computer.

In general, the style sheets are located within the OEBPS folder in the exploded book. One book out of the ten had a kobo style sheet. That particular book was published by a very small press in Ontario. I understand that Kobo does the ebook creation for this publishing house in-house. Kobo also does eBook creation for other small presses, btw. That's the reason we were able to buy several of them shortlisted for the Giller in 2010 and 2011.

I would encourage anyone who is bewildered by some of the things being said in this thread to try it themselves with drm free books in their own library.

nogle · 12-24-2011, 03:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by taming

I would encourage anyone who is bewildered by some of the things being said in this thread to try it themselves with drm free books in their own library.

All the books I have (Kobo and otherwise) work just fine, so I see no need to start checking into the state of the ePubs. I have been trying to underrstand what hte issue is, and as far as I can tell, there seems to be a very small number of ePubs that are broken. It seems to me that it is up to the user to report it to Kobo and for kobo to replace the faulty file; in some cases that will flow back to the publisher.

It all seems to be, as Shakespere might put it, much ado about nothing.

pvs · 12-24-2011, 03:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by taming

10 posts since May 2010. Active fella aren't you, pvs? Nice that you dropped by this particular thread.

I didn't know that I had to live by your posting quotas to post in any thread. All I said was that if Kobo is replacing CSS files with their own CSS I wouldn't buy anymore books through them. I buy all my ebooks, or make my own, because a lot of my old books I own aren't available anywhere as retail ebooks. I have no moral problems with stripping the DRM so that I can read on any device (either mobi or epub) In my mind its equal to ripping music cds for personal use.

taming · 12-24-2011, 03:50 PM

As you know, the OP in this thread has said that Kobo is routinely inserting its kepub formatting into new standard ePUB (the Adobe ADE books) books, making them unusable on other devices. Kepubs can only be used on Kobo devices and Apps, just like Kindle books, or iBooks. The happy fellas that have created drm removal tools have created one for kindle books, but not for iBooks or kepubs.

Books people pay for on the Kobo site can be downloaded using the Kobo proprietary format and, as an alternative, they can almost always be downloaded as either drm free ePub or Adobe Adept ePUB files. These have NO Kobo files in them, unless Kobo created the files for the publishers themselves --something that is obvious and incontrovertible if one follows the process I outlined above.

I am sorry if I offended you, but angry threads like this bring imaginary members and "friends" into them fairly often.

12-23-2011, 04:55 PM	#18
rashkae Wizard Posts: 1,147 Karma: 5061953 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Ontario, Canada Device: Kobo Aura HD	Who says the book is useable in the DRM format. It would still be the same book, and non-kobo devices would choke on it the same way. Kobo offers books in both Kobo forat and Adobe DRM format. It's the Adobe DRM format we are discussing here. Someone is erroneously stuffing the Kepub into the Adobe content server, and that's a problem. Last edited by rashkae; 12-23-2011 at 05:00 PM.

12-24-2011, 12:30 AM	#20
rashkae Wizard Posts: 1,147 Karma: 5061953 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Ontario, Canada Device: Kobo Aura HD	In the name of science, I bought another new release from Kobo. Same thing. This is not a random error. This is Kobo's new policy, and explains the resounding silence we've gotten since I first mentioned it. All epubs downlaoded from Kobo (for new books, they haven't yet re-formated the old ones) are now getting mangled so they only work properly on Kobo software. I can't believe how slimy this company has become in just a few months. This non-sense really has to be broadcast loudly. Edit: At least this time, it appears as though the original css was included with the book. Restoring it only required deleting the kobo.css and kobo.js (since they would overwrite the publisher original values.) Last edited by rashkae; 12-24-2011 at 12:37 AM.

12-24-2011, 02:29 PM	#27
taming Trying for calm & polite Posts: 4,012 Karma: 9455193 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Mostly in Canada Device: kobo original, WiFI, Touch, Glo, and Aura	A Little Bit of Reality Inserted Here i just went into Calibre, where my drm free epub books are stored. I highlighted a title, did a right click and chose tweak UI , and from there exploded the book, and looked at the style sheets. I did this for the last ten books I purchased, which included one book that was only published a week ago. I am not quite dumb enough to list on a public website what books magically (and at this point perhaps less than fully legally in Canada) ended up being drm free on my computer. In general, the style sheets are located within the OEBPS folder in the exploded book. One book out of the ten had a kobo style sheet. That particular book was published by a very small press in Ontario. I understand that Kobo does the ebook creation for this publishing house in-house. Kobo also does eBook creation for other small presses, btw. That's the reason we were able to buy several of them shortlisted for the Giller in 2010 and 2011. I would encourage anyone who is bewildered by some of the things being said in this thread to try it themselves with drm free books in their own library.

12-24-2011, 03:50 PM	#30
taming Trying for calm & polite Posts: 4,012 Karma: 9455193 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Mostly in Canada Device: kobo original, WiFI, Touch, Glo, and Aura	As you know, the OP in this thread has said that Kobo is routinely inserting its kepub formatting into new standard ePUB (the Adobe ADE books) books, making them unusable on other devices. Kepubs can only be used on Kobo devices and Apps, just like Kindle books, or iBooks. The happy fellas that have created drm removal tools have created one for kindle books, but not for iBooks or kepubs. Books people pay for on the Kobo site can be downloaded using the Kobo proprietary format and, as an alternative, they can almost always be downloaded as either drm free ePub or Adobe Adept ePUB files. These have NO Kobo files in them, unless Kobo created the files for the publishers themselves --something that is obvious and incontrovertible if one follows the process I outlined above. I am sorry if I offended you, but angry threads like this bring imaginary members and "friends" into them fairly often. Last edited by taming; 12-24-2011 at 03:52 PM.

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12-23-2011, 04:23 PM	#16
rashkae Wizard Posts: 1,147 Karma: 5061953 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Ontario, Canada Device: Kobo Aura HD	Umm, two books now, in this thread, and yet more in the French blog thread. If this is an error, it's become a systymatic one, and Kobo has so far not deigned to respond at all. The blog furor might be over the top, but I think that's in the best interest of everyone.

12-23-2011, 04:33 PM	#17
taming Trying for calm & polite Posts: 4,012 Karma: 9455193 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Mostly in Canada Device: kobo original, WiFI, Touch, Glo, and Aura	rashkae, I wrote to various Kobo senior staff when, over a month ago, you found incident #1. Now we have a second one. That does not seem to me to indicate a widespread issue. I don't think blog furor is helpful, myself. I am not sure how I feel about the fact that the book is usable in the DRM format and problematic only when DRM is removed. As someone who routinely removes DRM for archiving, I understand why it is very, very annoying, but in terms of Kobo having provided a book that can be read if used as downloaded, I'm not so sure. Publishers have written over and over again that one of the reasons that converting to ebooks is not as easy as everyone thinks it is has to do with having to prepare the books for each retailer separately. As the solution for all of these errors seems to involve asking the publisher to provide a properly formatted book, I am still not convinced it is a Kobo issue (though it could be).

12-24-2011, 03:10 AM	#21
taming Trying for calm & polite Posts: 4,012 Karma: 9455193 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Mostly in Canada Device: kobo original, WiFI, Touch, Glo, and Aura	This is truly silly. If kobo was routinely doing something that kept ePUBs from being used on anything but Kobo devices we would have hundreds upon hundreds of complaints on MR about this. Maybe thousands. Why in the world would they do this--a big slice of their book sales go to owners of Sony, B&N, and other devices. No need to answer me. You are now on my ignore list. One of only two people, btw,

12-24-2011, 08:42 AM	#22
rashkae Wizard Posts: 1,147 Karma: 5061953 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Ontario, Canada Device: Kobo Aura HD	I'll answer anyway for the benefit of others. Because they don't know.... to the average person, all they see is a book that is made with double spaced text, triple space between paragraphs, no margins, and they shrug and think that's just the way the publisher made the book. It takes someone with intimate knowledge of e-book structure to see what is wrong and call Kobo out on their sabotage.

12-24-2011, 09:25 AM	#23
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 12,177 Karma: 73448616 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Nexus 7, Clara, Touch, Tolino EPOS	One more for the IGNORE pile. Bye Bye

12-24-2011, 09:29 AM	#24
rashkae Wizard Posts: 1,147 Karma: 5061953 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Ontario, Canada Device: Kobo Aura HD	And that is, of course, Kobo doesn't screw up the "koboization" then completely ignores any complaints on the subject. Thirteen orphans, for example, the book I started this with, has it's original css missing entirely. It doesn't just mess up the formatting an display, it's missing all formatting entirely.

12-24-2011, 01:07 PM	#25
pvs Member Posts: 20 Karma: 475242 Join Date: May 2010 Device: ipad mini	I'm shocked that Kobo is replacing publishers CSS with their own version on certain new books, or even overriding the publishers CSS with a Java Script. I was actually planning on buying some of the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey series with Kobo, I'd had already downloaded a couple of sample chapters from Nook books and the books looked great (covers were included), but if Kobo have these replaced CSS versions, I won't be buying from them because I loathe Kobo's styling of books. I can't stand their no indents on paragraphs, I want my ebooks to look like books.

12-24-2011, 01:53 PM	#26
taming Trying for calm & polite Posts: 4,012 Karma: 9455193 Join Date: May 2010 Location: Mostly in Canada Device: kobo original, WiFI, Touch, Glo, and Aura	All of my kobo bought books, with drm magically gone from ePUB versions, display the publisher's styling choices. So I get paragraph indents, no spaces between paragraphs, etc. This includes, via a setting on the Touch, the ability to use embedded fonts. The kepub books all have Kobo styling, though aspects of that can also be turned off by way of a device setting on the Touch. 10 posts since May 2010. Active fella aren't you, pvs? Nice that you dropped by this particular thread.

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