Kobo Touch ePub Issues

[mpm166]

I recently got a Kobo touch and have copied several ePub files onto the device. I have noticed a few problems and am wondering if anyone can give any suggestions:

1. I cannot change font style for some ePub books. When I change the font in the Kobo menu, the book text does not change (even though the font in the menu does)
2. The margin slider has no effect on the margins for some of my ePub books (others work fine).
3. The covers for a few ePubs are not showing properly. The first page of these books show up on the Home (or Library) page, which does not correspond to the actual cover in these instances. I imported all the books from Calibre, and had the proper cover art showing within that software.

I imagine many of these issues are related to formatting within the ePub files that Kobo cannot seem to override. I am new to eBooks and the ePub format so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[PeterT]

When you say you had the correct cover in Calibre, did you do an ePub - ePub conversion to ensure that the image was also in the ePub file itself?

[SF&F Reader]

Calibre can remove margin and font coding, amongst other things. When converting the book, go to 'look and feel', then 'filter style information', then select the options you want. Here's a helpful graphic.

[mpm166]

No, I did not do an epub->epub conversion. Calibre simply had the correct cover jpg in its browser. Does Kobo Touch only receive/use the epub file for cover purposes? What if I copy in the " cover.jpg" into the same directory as the ebook? If not, do I need to set a certain option in Calibre when doing the conversion to ensure the cover shows up properly?

Originally Posted by PeterT

When you say you had the correct cover in Calibre, did you do an ePub - ePub conversion to ensure that the image was also in the ePub file itself?

[PeterT]

The Touch displays the covers found within the ePub file itself. The problem is that often (possibly for copyright / licensing reasons) ePubs do NOT contain the same cover as a paperback edition did.

Calibre will display a separate cover for a book that is stores in it's database as cover.jpg.

When you do an ePub to ePub conversion the cover.jpg gets added to the ePub and will be transferred to the Kobo for it to display.

[mpm166]

Thanks a lot! This seems like it will do the trick.
When I do the epub->epub conversion, will Calibre overwrite the original ePub file? Should I backup first?

Originally Posted by SF&F Reader

Calibre can remove margin and font coding, amongst other things. When converting the book, go to 'look and feel', then 'filter style information', then select the options you want. Here's a helpful graphic.

[SF&F Reader]

It most likely will replace the epub in your calibre directory. If you don't have the original elsewhere then it would probably be a good idea to back it up.

[rashkae]

Calibre now creates a backup of the original epub, which it will use on any further conversions (in case you need different tweaks/options for desireable results.).. You can also restore the original from the Meta Data screen. I would nontheless advise keeping a backup of your books as they were before bringing into Calibre. It's a fairly sophisticated program, and it's relatively easy to make oopses.

*Edit* Not discussed here, but it's worth mentioning that using the "Tweak Epub" command to manually make changes to an epub will not back-up the original, but works directly on the current file.

[mpm166]

Thanks for the additional info rashkae.

I seem to have figured everything out. Managed to do the epub->epub conversion which fixed issue with covers, fonts, and margins.

However, there was one undesired effect. Many of my original epub files seem to have the location of page breaks stored. Ie. no matter what my font size, a book I am reading will have 420 pages on my Kobo device, and will show when a page changes on the right margin (seems to be some correspondence with page numbers from a hard copy of the book). After I do an epub->epub conversion, this page break information seems to be removed. In other words, the number of pages shown by Kobo changes depending on the font size.

Does anyone know how to do the epub->epub conversion without affecting the page numbering in this way?

Originally Posted by rashkae

Calibre now creates a backup of the original epub, which it will use on any further conversions (in case you need different tweaks/options for desireable results.).. You can also restore the original from the Meta Data screen. I would nontheless advise keeping a backup of your books as they were before bringing into Calibre. It's a fairly sophisticated program, and it's relatively easy to make oopses.

*Edit* Not discussed here, but it's worth mentioning that using the "Tweak Epub" command to manually make changes to an epub will not back-up the original, but works directly on the current file.

[PeterT]

The page numbers displayed are based on (I believe) a 1024 characters is one page.

[mpm166]

Originally Posted by PeterT

The page numbers displayed are based on (I believe) a 1024 characters is one page.

Okay, so I guess that is how the pages were numbered in my original epub files. But as described, once I do the epub->epub conversion my pages are renumbered by my KoboTouch device based on font size. So if I increase the font size the total number of pages increases and is renumbered. I would like the same page-number functionality as the original epub file (prior to conversion).

Any help?