Glo Kobo not starting on first page...

[OhGodBears]

Whenever I open a book on my Kobo Glow, it seems to arbitrarily start on pages 3 - 7, and never on the first page.

Is there a way to fix this?

[JD Gumby]

Depends completely on the ebook. Apparently there's a start-at-X-on-first-open variable that Kobo respects. Generally puts you past the cover, copyright notification, titles, and sometimes (but not always) the table of contents.

Sadly, there is no way to disable this very annoying behaviour (at least not without going into the epub and clearing out that variable). :/

[OhGodBears]

Arrrgh. It's very, very frustrating in some books.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by OhGodBears

Whenever I open a book on my Kobo Glow, it seems to arbitrarily start on pages 3 - 7, and never on the first page.

Is there a way to fix this?

What I've noticed is that for sideloaded epub files, the Kobo readers start displaying at the first entry in the embedded toc.ncx file (the epub table of contents file) if present. For me, that means after I play with the file in Sigil, it will start at the first page I want to read. Cover image, publisher information, list of books by the author are left in place but are not displayed unless I page back to them. The worst case file I have started reading at page 15 where the epigraph starts. The prior 14 pages are cover image, blurbs for other books by the author, some rather useless maps and 3 forewords (original by author and two by author and publisher for the 25th anniversary republishing -- did I really need two forewords dedicated to telling me that the science in the books is out of date but it was decided not to re-write the book to update the science?

Regards,
David

[soulfuldog]

Think this is the same with all e-readers, they just open the book up where the book tells it to (which is set by the author/publisher).

[byblo]

I received this ereader two days ago (my first ebook. been waiting for years before finding something fitting my needs), and this feature is irritating me incredibly.

I can accommodate all the limitation and bugs of this machine, but that one :s

Is there a way to disable this behavior directly on the ereader, instead of editing the whole ebooks collection ?

[Ripplinger]

I was wondering why that kept happening to me too on the Kobo Glo. It makes me think it skipped something, so I always have to go back first before I start reading.

And just for info, it never happens on my Sony PRS-350s, when I open a book for the first time, it opens to the very first page, the cover page.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by byblo

I received this ereader two days ago (my first ebook. been waiting for years before finding something fitting my needs), and this feature is irritating me incredibly.

I can accommodate all the limitation and bugs of this machine, but that one :s

Is there a way to disable this behavior directly on the ereader, instead of editing the whole ebooks collection ?

Not as far as I know. As far as the ereader is concerned, if there are entries in the TOC, the first entry is where the publisher wants the book to open. This fits in with Kobo's philosophy about following the publisher layout as far as possible.

Personally, when I edit an ebook, I remove the TOC entries prior to the first page I want to read so I can miss the cover page, the author's book list, blurbs about the publisher, dedication, etc.

Regards,
David

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

I was wondering why that kept happening to me too on the Kobo Glo. It makes me think it skipped something, so I always have to go back first before I start reading.

And just for info, it never happens on my Sony PRS-350s, when I open a book for the first time, it opens to the very first page, the cover page.

And then you get to go through the cover page, the author's book list, the pages about the publisher and even a couple of pages of dedications and acknowledgements before getting to something you might actually want to read.

Regards,
David

[Ripplinger]

Yes. Maybe I'm weird, but I like to see those pages before I start reading. I like knowing if there's an index available or not for when I'm further in the book and want to check something. I like reading the epigraphs and silly dedications and about the authors. A lot of which gets skipped by the Kobo deciding where to start.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Ripplinger

Yes. Maybe I'm weird, but I like to see those pages before I start reading. I like knowing if there's an index available or not for when I'm further in the book and want to check something. I like reading the epigraphs and silly dedications and about the authors. A lot of which gets skipped by the Kobo deciding where to start.

That decision is not made by the Kobo. It is made by the publisher. Like any other computing device, the Kobo simply follows it's instructions. If you are really addicted to reading them, it's just a couple taps and a slide to get there.

As for the index? Do you mean a table of contents? The one that is often at the end of the ebook and not the beginning? Why bother since it is much easier to pop up the table of contents based on the contents of the toc file. If you mean a real index, again the TOC makes it much easier to find.

You read those pages where they list every book the author has written, co-written, edited or otherwise contributed to? Every time you read that book? The first time I read a book by an author, I might skim over that content. After that, why bother?

Regards,
David

[Ripplinger]

Yes, I meant the TOC, not index, which typically is at the front of the book (if it's there at all, many books still don't have one).

Reading a lot of new authors means all those pages of other books they've written are new (but those are often at the end of the book, which is the correct placement to me). If I like the book, I want to know what else the author has written. So yes, I do read those pages too. While I do reread some books, it's not too often, so rereading the same content isn't a problem for me, I of course skip over those the 2nd time around.

I don't mind skipping the cover, but other pages shouldn't be skipped to me. The next time I notice it, I'll have to open up the book in Sigil and see if there is some reference on where to start.

But I'll still always want to start at the beginning and not miss the epigraphs or dedications.

[guma]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Not as far as I know. As far as the ereader is concerned, if there are entries in the TOC, the first entry is where the publisher wants the book to open. This fits in with Kobo's philosophy about following the publisher layout as far as possible.

You are assuming here that publishers expect e-readers to behave like the KOBO does. I'm not sure whether this is a valid assumption, since most e-reading devices and apps seem to behave differently. I would guess that publishers just handle the toc data like a table of contents in a printed book.

Or do you think publishers are putting all this stuff (and especially the advertising blurbs) in a book but don't want people to read it?

[sysKin]

This is one of those features that sound excellent (heck even obvious) in theory but just don't work in practice.
The problems I have with it are:
1. I still go back to the beginning just to see what was skipped. Nothing of value ever was, but this is a leap of faith I'm not taking.
2. Simply opening a new book and closing it magically makes it 1-3% read. I have to open it again and go to the beginning to make it unread...

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by guma

You are assuming here that publishers expect e-readers to behave like the KOBO does. I'm not sure whether this is a valid assumption, since most e-reading devices and apps seems to behave differently. I would guess that publishers just handle the toc data like a table of contents in a printed book.

The behaviour is seen in ADE and in Adobe Reader Mobile based code. This covers a fair chunk of the ereaders out there. You can modify the ARM SDK to change this behaviour though in most cases I've seen, this has not been done. The only ebook publisher for which I have information on their ebook creation flow, used Adobe InDesign to create the ebooks from the author's submitted files and tested them with ADE after creation. I'm not absolutely certain since I wasn't that interested in their Kindle publishing but I think they used KindleGen to convert the epub for Amazon.

I've never seen a TOC in a real book that included the cover and title page while that is quite common in ebooks. Tables of content in paperback fiction books seem to be a vanishing breed in any event.

Looking at one paperback I have on the table (Dog and Dragon), the pages are:

There is no table of contents.

0. cover with EAN bar code on inside of cover
1. a blurb for the book
2. a list of books by the author
3. the title page
4. copyright and publisher information
5. dedication
6. blank
7. acknowledgements
8. blank
9. 1st page of list of characters
10. 2nd page of list of characters
1. finally... Chapter 1 starting on page 1
389. moving on to chapter 27 which ends on page 389
390. blank
391-393. Appendix
395-406 Excerpt from Portal
00. inside of back cover with UPC bar code
outside of back cover with puffery and repeat of EAN barcode

Now I look at the ebook. Layout is virtually identical except the blurb moves after the title page. There is a table of contents listing cover, title page, booklist, copyright & publisher info, dedication, acknowledgements, chapters 1 - 27, appendix, Portal excerpt. Average non-image page takes 2-3 taps to display.

When I read the paperback, I skipped by most of the first pages stopping to read the dedication and then plowed into chapter 1.

When I read the ebook (since Baen is good enough to supply their ebooks without DRM), I modified the TOC to start with chapter 1 so I didn't have to tap 20 times to get to the body of the book.

Originally Posted by guma

Or do you think publishers are putting all this stuff (and especially the advertising blurbs) in a book but don't want people to read it?

They may want people to read those pages and most of the time they place entries for the advertising in the TOC to make it easier to find. Television advertisers may expect people to sit and watch commercials. I prefer to do neither.

Regards,
David