Thread: Desktop App Where are Kobo books on my PC ?
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Old 06-16-2021, 08:52 AM   #8
davidfor
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Sydney, Australia
Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos
Quote:
Originally Posted by Odessa View Post
Thank you to all who answered.

I did find a number of files in

c:\users\username\AppData\Local\Kobo\Kobo Desktop Edition\kepub

and indeed they look like this :

466ba9fd-0ade-4a4d-a9e3-1ab932c417f5 (no extension name)

I do use Calibre and will follow your advice in due course, but for the time being, I would like to understand what those files are. What is a kepub ? Is it a proprietary format only readable by a Kobo reader or app ?
Yes, it is Kobo's format. But, it is just an epub with some extra spans. If you add the extension .epub, you can try and open it with an epub reader. That works if the book does not have DRM. If the book does have DRM, it might open, but, it will not be readable.
Quote:
Do I understand correctly that you don't get the same file if you synchronize from Kobo Desktop and if you download from the website ? (There does not seem to be a Download command in Kobo Desktop.)
Correct. The publisher supplies the book to Kobo. They process it to create the kepub and upload the epub elsewhere for downloading. If the publisher updates the book, it doesn't necessarily go to both versions.
Quote:
I tried to download that free book from the site, and all I got was a file called URLLink.acsm (not an .epub), which cannot be opened by any of the ebook readers installed on my PC. Is this the type of file which can only be opened by Adobe Digital Editions ?
That means the book has Adobe DRM and needs to be downloaded using ADE. The URLLink.acsm is used by ADE to fetch the actual book.
Quote:
What I'm trying to do, is make sure any books I have bought from Kobo (or retrieved as free books) reside on my PC, and not only on Kobo's server ; that I can read them even if Kobo goes bust some day ; or if they don't like me anymore and close my account for whatever reason (or none) ; or if they try to zap my books from a distance with a huge laser beam (or something).
Either version of the book will work for that. It really is just which method you prefer.
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