Converted .epub to .mobi, getting double bullets?

davidmiles98 · 06-30-2012, 01:50 PM

Hi everyone,

I'm formatting an ebook in InDesign, and exported it as an .epub. The epub looks great on the Nook and iPad. When I converted the .epub to a .mobi using Calibre, the Kindle is showing all my lists with double bullets or double numbers (see image). Is this common? And, any idea how to fix it?

If I have to, I know I can try going into the code and deleting any extra characters. But I'm wondering if there's a quick setting in Calibre I should know about first.

Thanks for your help!

judy hewitt · 07-24-2012, 06:55 PM

I had the same problem today when I converted an epub to mobi using Calibre. The problem is Indesign CS6. Are you working in Indesign CS6? I exported my CS6 file to IDML, opened it in CS5.5. Then I created another epub from CS5.5 and converted to Mobi using Calibre. No double bullets or double numbers.

rurdyrucker · 04-14-2015, 02:22 PM

I have the same problem. I have a nice-looking EPUB that I exported from Indesign 6. At least it looks nice in the Firefox EpubReader plug-in.

But when I use Calibre to convert it to MOBI, my bullet point symbols were doubled. And the two consecutive bullet dots weren't quite the same size, ugh. And the margins didn't look quite like I wanted.

So I tried loading the EPUB into Kindle Previewer and then saving off the MOBI created by that.

So, fine, the double bullet points are gone. BUT my Table of Contents has been stripped out.

(By the way, exactly the same thing happens if I try and upload the EPUB directly to KDP...I think they're using hte same KindleGen that underlies Kindle Previewer. Double bullets are gone, margins maybe nicer, but no more TOC.)

So then I tried loading the Kindle-Previewer-made MOBI into Calibre and converting it to MOBI with a setting to autogenerate a TOC from my headers styles h1 and h2.

Good news, the TOC is back. Bad news, so are the double bullet point symbols. Good news, at least now the pairs of consecutive bullet dots are the same size. More good news, the nice Kindle-Previewer handling of the margins is intact. I guess I'll just live with this fix.

rurdyrucker · 04-14-2015, 03:41 PM

On closer study, my proposed detour through Kindle Previewer accomplishes nothing at all if I have to go through Calibre again to get my TOC back. I went over all my style code pretty closely and I think there's nothing wrong with it. So I think we're looking at a Calibre bug here. Does anyone else see this? Calibre conversion from EPUB to MOBI replaces single dot bullets by double dot bullets?

kovidgoyal · 04-14-2015, 10:51 PM

Convert to azw3.

eschwartz · 04-14-2015, 11:39 PM

If you plan on publishing the book through KDP, you really should be using kindlegen. Question is, why is kindlegen stripping out the ToC?

Can we see a sample ebook that has this problem?

rurdyrucker · 04-17-2015, 12:02 PM

First of all, the good news. I fixed the double bullet point bug by adjusting the EPUB export menu settings of InDesign. There's an option on the first page of the settings dialog to export bullet lists as styled paragraphs instead of at the default lists option. If it's paragraphs, you get to use whatever bulleted paragraph format you used in your InDesign file. And there's no double bullet points.

Now let's address the issue of Kindlegen stripping out TOCs.

Kovid, thanks for the suggestion. I tried converting to azw3, and the file looks great. The problem then is, however, that Amazon KDP doesn't accept azw3 file uploads. It has to be mobi. So azw3 files aren't of much use to me, although certainly I could distribute them myself instead of mobi.

Eschwartz, as I said, Kindle Previewer and Kindlegen strip out and fail to produce a TOC for any of my InDesign generated EPUB files. This only seems to occur with the InDesign files. Possibly this has to do with that I use the style names h1, h2, h3 etcetera for headers in InDesign.

You can find an example of one of my InDesign EPUBS as the free Creative Comments EPUB version of my novel TURING & BURROUGHS at the book's web page http://www.rudyrucker.com/turingandburroughs/ If you load this into Kindle Previewer, you'll see that the TOC disappears. But if convert with Calibre, the TOC remains.

In any case, I prefer using Calibre to Kindlegen, as then I have more control over the conversion process. The Kindlegen is a "take it or leave it" conversion tool with no options. Another point here is that I sell my MOBI files directly via E-junkie for my Transreal Books operation, www.transrealbooks.com

eschwartz · 04-17-2015, 03:04 PM

I would venture to say the best way to get control is to designate how it should look in the source EPUB. Then allow kindlegen to receive its instructions from there

rather than letting calibre kludge it into shape. If only because KDP apparently doesn't accept dual-MOBI unless it is from kindlegen/previewer, and doesn't accept AZW3 period (all those old devices can't read it). And only uploading MOBI means new devices don't benefit from AZW3.
Create a dual-MOBI to sell through KDP with kindlegen, and upload calibre-converted files for your website.

Anyway... I converted the EPUB with kindlegen, sideloaded the resulting dual-MOBI to my Kindle Touch, and saw a ToC.
I don't care what Kindle Previewer says (I will never know until they port it to linux anyway), but it is wrong.

kovidgoyal · 04-17-2015, 09:51 PM

I'll be happy to look at why you get multiple bullets in MOBI if you can post a sample epub reproducing the issue.

rurdyrucker · 04-26-2015, 06:07 PM

Thanks eschwartz. You seem to be right: if I convert an EPUB with Kindle Previewer, the resulting MOBI does indeed have the table of contents preserved. For some unknown reason this TOC does not appear in the Kindle Previewer emulation of a Kindle, but if you "side load" the MOBI to an actual Kindle device or to the PC Kindle App, then you will see the TOC. Not sure why Amazon has this bug in the Kindle Previewer.

So, given that the TOC is not in fact destroyed in a Kindlegen EPUB-to-MOBI conversion,m I may indeed use this method of making MOBIs in any cases where Calibre gives me too much trouble. For now I am generally content with the files Calibre makes, so I'm not going back to redo my old EPUB-to-MOBI conversions.

And, as you mention in passing the KindleGen made files are "double MOBI" files that are twice as big, and thus less convenient than the single MOBI files Calibre makes...this matters for offering as downloads off my own site.

kovidgoyal, I don't have a sample EPUB file with ul and li generated bullets to show you the double bullets problem just now. If I am get this situation again, I'll post sample code here. For now I'm just going with the InDesign export fix of exporting bullet lists in paragraph formatting, with my own epubtext-bulleted format on the paragraphs, and letting my epub-bulleted format do the indenting in the ebook. I've never liked the ul and li HTML tags anyway!

06-30-2012, 01:50 PM	#1
davidmiles98 Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2012 Device: All	Converted .epub to .mobi, getting double bullets? Hi everyone, I'm formatting an ebook in InDesign, and exported it as an .epub. The epub looks great on the Nook and iPad. When I converted the .epub to a .mobi using Calibre, the Kindle is showing all my lists with double bullets or double numbers (see image). Is this common? And, any idea how to fix it? If I have to, I know I can try going into the code and deleting any extra characters. But I'm wondering if there's a quick setting in Calibre I should know about first. Thanks for your help!

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07-24-2012, 06:55 PM	#2
judy hewitt Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2011 Device: iPad	I had the same problem today when I converted an epub to mobi using Calibre. The problem is Indesign CS6. Are you working in Indesign CS6? I exported my CS6 file to IDML, opened it in CS5.5. Then I created another epub from CS5.5 and converted to Mobi using Calibre. No double bullets or double numbers.

04-14-2015, 02:22 PM	#3
rurdyrucker Member Posts: 12 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2012 Device: iPad, Kindle, iPhone, Windows	I have the same problem. I have a nice-looking EPUB that I exported from Indesign 6. At least it looks nice in the Firefox EpubReader plug-in. But when I use Calibre to convert it to MOBI, my bullet point symbols were doubled. And the two consecutive bullet dots weren't quite the same size, ugh. And the margins didn't look quite like I wanted. So I tried loading the EPUB into Kindle Previewer and then saving off the MOBI created by that. So, fine, the double bullet points are gone. BUT my Table of Contents has been stripped out. (By the way, exactly the same thing happens if I try and upload the EPUB directly to KDP...I think they're using hte same KindleGen that underlies Kindle Previewer. Double bullets are gone, margins maybe nicer, but no more TOC.) So then I tried loading the Kindle-Previewer-made MOBI into Calibre and converting it to MOBI with a setting to autogenerate a TOC from my headers styles h1 and h2. Good news, the TOC is back. Bad news, so are the double bullet point symbols. Good news, at least now the pairs of consecutive bullet dots are the same size. More good news, the nice Kindle-Previewer handling of the margins is intact. I guess I'll just live with this fix.

04-14-2015, 03:41 PM	#4
rurdyrucker Member Posts: 12 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2012 Device: iPad, Kindle, iPhone, Windows	On closer study, my proposed detour through Kindle Previewer accomplishes nothing at all if I have to go through Calibre again to get my TOC back. I went over all my style code pretty closely and I think there's nothing wrong with it. So I think we're looking at a Calibre bug here. Does anyone else see this? Calibre conversion from EPUB to MOBI replaces single dot bullets by double dot bullets?

04-14-2015, 10:51 PM	#5
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,842 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Convert to azw3.

04-14-2015, 11:39 PM	#6
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,422 Karma: 85397180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	If you plan on publishing the book through KDP, you really should be using kindlegen. Question is, why is kindlegen stripping out the ToC? Can we see a sample ebook that has this problem?

04-17-2015, 12:02 PM	#7
rurdyrucker Member Posts: 12 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2012 Device: iPad, Kindle, iPhone, Windows	First of all, the good news. I fixed the double bullet point bug by adjusting the EPUB export menu settings of InDesign. There's an option on the first page of the settings dialog to export bullet lists as styled paragraphs instead of at the default lists option. If it's paragraphs, you get to use whatever bulleted paragraph format you used in your InDesign file. And there's no double bullet points. Now let's address the issue of Kindlegen stripping out TOCs. Kovid, thanks for the suggestion. I tried converting to azw3, and the file looks great. The problem then is, however, that Amazon KDP doesn't accept azw3 file uploads. It has to be mobi. So azw3 files aren't of much use to me, although certainly I could distribute them myself instead of mobi. Eschwartz, as I said, Kindle Previewer and Kindlegen strip out and fail to produce a TOC for any of my InDesign generated EPUB files. This only seems to occur with the InDesign files. Possibly this has to do with that I use the style names h1, h2, h3 etcetera for headers in InDesign. You can find an example of one of my InDesign EPUBS as the free Creative Comments EPUB version of my novel TURING & BURROUGHS at the book's web page http://www.rudyrucker.com/turingandburroughs/ If you load this into Kindle Previewer, you'll see that the TOC disappears. But if convert with Calibre, the TOC remains. In any case, I prefer using Calibre to Kindlegen, as then I have more control over the conversion process. The Kindlegen is a "take it or leave it" conversion tool with no options. Another point here is that I sell my MOBI files directly via E-junkie for my Transreal Books operation, www.transrealbooks.com

04-17-2015, 03:04 PM	#8
eschwartz Ex-Helpdesk Junkie Posts: 19,422 Karma: 85397180 Join Date: Nov 2012 Location: The Beaten Path, USA, Roundworld, This Side of Infinity Device: Kindle Touch fw5.3.7 (Wifi only)	I would venture to say the best way to get control is to designate how it should look in the source EPUB. Then allow kindlegen to receive its instructions from there rather than letting calibre kludge it into shape. If only because KDP apparently doesn't accept dual-MOBI unless it is from kindlegen/previewer, and doesn't accept AZW3 period (all those old devices can't read it). And only uploading MOBI means new devices don't benefit from AZW3. Create a dual-MOBI to sell through KDP with kindlegen, and upload calibre-converted files for your website. Anyway... I converted the EPUB with kindlegen, sideloaded the resulting dual-MOBI to my Kindle Touch, and saw a ToC. I don't care what Kindle Previewer says (I will never know until they port it to linux anyway), but it is wrong.

04-17-2015, 09:51 PM	#9
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,842 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	I'll be happy to look at why you get multiple bullets in MOBI if you can post a sample epub reproducing the issue.

04-26-2015, 06:07 PM	#10
rurdyrucker Member Posts: 12 Karma: 10 Join Date: Apr 2012 Device: iPad, Kindle, iPhone, Windows	Thanks eschwartz. You seem to be right: if I convert an EPUB with Kindle Previewer, the resulting MOBI does indeed have the table of contents preserved. For some unknown reason this TOC does not appear in the Kindle Previewer emulation of a Kindle, but if you "side load" the MOBI to an actual Kindle device or to the PC Kindle App, then you will see the TOC. Not sure why Amazon has this bug in the Kindle Previewer. So, given that the TOC is not in fact destroyed in a Kindlegen EPUB-to-MOBI conversion,m I may indeed use this method of making MOBIs in any cases where Calibre gives me too much trouble. For now I am generally content with the files Calibre makes, so I'm not going back to redo my old EPUB-to-MOBI conversions. And, as you mention in passing the KindleGen made files are "double MOBI" files that are twice as big, and thus less convenient than the single MOBI files Calibre makes...this matters for offering as downloads off my own site. kovidgoyal, I don't have a sample EPUB file with ul and li generated bullets to show you the double bullets problem just now. If I am get this situation again, I'll post sample code here. For now I'm just going with the InDesign export fix of exporting bullet lists in paragraph formatting, with my own epubtext-bulleted format on the paragraphs, and letting my epub-bulleted format do the indenting in the ebook. I've never liked the ul and li HTML tags anyway!

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