Two problems converting ePub to mobi

[AlexBell]

I have two questions about converting from ePub to mobi with calibre. At least one of them I know has been dealt with before, but I can't find the answer.

The background is that I have just started putting some dead tree books for a small publisher into ePub, and from there converting to mobi for the Kindle. I know that the underlying XHTML and style sheet validate according to W3C standards, and I know that the ePub validates with ePubcheck.

Question 1: Covers. The ePub contains a cover page, which seems to be repeated in the mobi conversion. How do I prevent the occurrence of two cover pages?

Question 2: The margins on the mobi version are wider than set in the style sheet for the ePub version. calibre has a setting for page margins; it seems as though the margins in the mobi version are the sum of those set in the stylesheet and those set in calibre. Can I set the calibre margins to zero, and get the margins I've set in the style sheet? Is there another way of ensuring that the margins in the mobi version are the same as those set in the ePub version?

Regards, Alex

[user_none]

1) This is typically due to the cover being part of the EPUB itself. So the EPUB will have the cover as part of the content and set as an EPUB cover. When converting calibre includes the cover and all content (there is no distinction of what the content actually is).

2) Set the margins to 0 and see what happens. There are some strange things with MOBI and margins and with the Kindle that I can't remember off the top of my head...

[ldolse]

As a workaround to the first question, there is a 'remove first image' option under structure detection you can use during conversion to delete the embedded cover, which is typically the first image.

The margin issue is that mobi on Kindle only supports margin increments of 2em, so a slight margin in the original file could get rounded up to 2em. There is an 'ignore margins' option under Mobi output to help resolve this, though you will lose all indented paragraphs as well if they're purely using css. The solution for retaining indented paragraphs is to use <blockquote> tags, as that's the native mobi method for defining an indented paragraph. Nest blockquotes for multi-level indents.

[AlexBell]

Thanks to you both.

I'll certainly use the 'remove first image' option. But obsessional old me would rather put up with wider margins than use blockquote tags for things for which they weren't intended.

Regards, Alex