PRS-505 BN Non-DRMed title and Sony Reader

julia103 · 04-23-2011, 05:21 PM

I recently bought a non-DRMed book from Barnes & Noble. (The author has decided to release it as non-DRM on Kindle and B&N but not other stores at this time.) I downloaded it to my computer, imported it to the Sony Library software and then to my reader. This is what I do when buying books from anywhere other than the Sony store.

The book was readable on my computer, using the Sony Library, but when I tried to open it on the reader it showed a triangle with an exclamation point inside. I then noticed that in the book list it showed as only having one page.

I converted the book from epub to LRF with no problems and then re-downloaded to the reader. This time it worked and I was able to read it on the reader as well as on my computer.

Then, out of curiousity, I converted the LRF version back to epub and tried again to load it to the reader. This also worked. The converted epub file is approximately half the size of the original file but it doesn't appear that any text is missing. I'm not technical and wouldn't know how to look at metadata to see what might have been dropped.

Does anyone know whether this is an issue with B&N books? Or is it something about the reader? I haven't had problems with epub files from Baen or Smashwords. This isn't a big deal since the workaround is to convert, but I'm curious.

Pablo · 04-23-2011, 05:29 PM

The PRS-505 has a 300K limit on the individual text file sizes of an ePub document. Maybe the original ePub had one or more files larger than this (you can check looking inside the original ePub with 7-zip or any other compression program).
When you converted to LRF that problem disappeared.
I don't know what you used to convert back to ePub. Calibre, for example, when converting to ePub for use in Sony readers, splits the text so that the 300K limit is not exceeded.

04-23-2011, 05:21 PM	#1
julia103 Connoisseur Posts: 71 Karma: 212 Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: Baltimore MD Device: Sony PRS-505	BN Non-DRMed title and Sony Reader I recently bought a non-DRMed book from Barnes & Noble. (The author has decided to release it as non-DRM on Kindle and B&N but not other stores at this time.) I downloaded it to my computer, imported it to the Sony Library software and then to my reader. This is what I do when buying books from anywhere other than the Sony store. The book was readable on my computer, using the Sony Library, but when I tried to open it on the reader it showed a triangle with an exclamation point inside. I then noticed that in the book list it showed as only having one page. I converted the book from epub to LRF with no problems and then re-downloaded to the reader. This time it worked and I was able to read it on the reader as well as on my computer. Then, out of curiousity, I converted the LRF version back to epub and tried again to load it to the reader. This also worked. The converted epub file is approximately half the size of the original file but it doesn't appear that any text is missing. I'm not technical and wouldn't know how to look at metadata to see what might have been dropped. Does anyone know whether this is an issue with B&N books? Or is it something about the reader? I haven't had problems with epub files from Baen or Smashwords. This isn't a big deal since the workaround is to convert, but I'm curious.

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04-23-2011, 05:29 PM	#2
Pablo Guru Posts: 972 Karma: 4999999 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Rosario, Argentina Device: SONY PRS-T2, Kindle Paperwhite 11th gen	The PRS-505 has a 300K limit on the individual text file sizes of an ePub document. Maybe the original ePub had one or more files larger than this (you can check looking inside the original ePub with 7-zip or any other compression program). When you converted to LRF that problem disappeared. I don't know what you used to convert back to ePub. Calibre, for example, when converting to ePub for use in Sony readers, splits the text so that the 300K limit is not exceeded.

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