Kindle > ePub (properly)

[M4R5]

I've been back to this topic time and again, but I still can't get a decent ePub from a Kindle purchase. I've tried telling Calibre not to mangle the files, but it doesn't seem to make any difference to the output.
The main problems are:

Extra spaces between lines
Missing spaces between lines
Wrong justification
Wrong indentation

Missing pictures

Unfortunately my Kobo is extraordinarily bad at reading decrypted .mobi files from Amazon, so the conversion to ePub seems necessary. The difficulty is in getting a good copy.

Two particularly difficult books have been

ISBN: 0988263408
ISBN: 0062110543

both from Amazon's Kindle store.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the original and the best output I can get from Calibre at the moment:Can anyone advise? I'm not set on using Calibre. Something else would be just fine if it can do a better job. I anticipate this problem is only going to become more frequent as I buy more books from Amazon. I may even have to migrate to Kindle one day. Thanks

NB: The poor formatting in the post is deliberate, and quite accurate in showing some of the problems.

[davidfor]

Unfortunately, the image doesn't show. I think it is something to do with the number of posts you have. Same with the books. I think you posted links, but only the ISBN shows. To verify I found the right books, they are http://www.amazon.com/Tony-Northrups...4094683&sr=8-1 and http://www.amazon.com/Wonders-of-the...4094706&sr=8-1.

I don't own either, but I grabbed the previews. Both converted to epub with no obvious problems. And my Kobo Glo had no problem with them.

Flipping through the "Wonders of the Universe" on the Glo and Kindle PC, I can't see any real difference. Some of the images appear on a separate page on the Glo, but that is to do with the size of the images.

The DSLR book isn't quite as good. A couple of the sections have underlines through out. And there are a couple of spots where a new page is started after lists. The conversion seems to have split the book at these points. I don't know why.

Personally, I am quite impressed by how well the conversion worked and the Glo displayed the books.

I have the conversion options as pretty much the defaults. And I did a second conversion of the DSLR book with the options reset to defaults. There wasn't any real difference.

It might be something difference about the full books. The previews look fine, but maybe the full versions are causing the problem.

[M4R5]

It does irritate me when people spend two seconds on a subject and think they know everything. If you had the full books, and flicked in to the end of the first chapter, you'd see that from that point onwards, all the pictures are missing.

But you've missed the whole point of the post anyway. I didn't say the conversions were unreadable, I said they weren't accurate and I gave a number of differences, such as line spacing.

Here is a summary of this thread so far:

OP: "Books don't quite convert right. Some formatting is different"
Reply: "When I convert books only some formatting is different. This is great."
OP: "Please never reply to one of my posts again"

And then I explained that I'd deliberately broken the formatting in my post to look like a typical Kindle > ePub conversion. And you didn't really get that either.

[twowheels]

Two posts and you already manage to come across as an a--. Davidfor went out of his way, downloaded the samples, did the conversions, tried various options to recreate your problem, and you have the nerve to say to never reply to one of your posts again?

Far more than two seconds were spent, and no claim was made to know everything -- only that it appeared to be working fine with the limited information available.


Here's my summary of the thread:

OP: New member asks a question, first post ever
Reply: Goes above and beyond to try to help
OP: Proves to be an incorrigible blockhead
Me: Suggests that perhaps OP should never bother posting any questions again and find another forum to bother.

[Dr. Drib]

Moderator Notice

Rudeness is uncalled for and will not be tolerated.
Everyone involved start over again, please.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by davidfor

The DSLR book isn't quite as good. A couple of the sections have underlines through out. And there are a couple of spots where a new page is started after lists. The conversion seems to have split the book at these points. I don't know why.

I also took a look at the DSLR book's preview; it seems to be broken up within the converted ePub into a large number of source files; in fact, each and every element listed in the Table of Contents is in a distinct file, so since the Kobo starts a new screen with each and every file, that would explain the peculiar display.

[PeterT]

M4R5; please remember one thing; it's highly unlikely that any one who is prepared to help by digging into the issue with you, will happen to have the exact same books as you are having issues with.

Like you, we are all just casual, or semi-casual users of these forums, and we like to try to help people who are having issues.

In many cases, all we can do is to share OUR experiences and knowledge; we can't share someone else's experiences.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by M4R5

It does irritate me when people spend two seconds on a subject and think they know everything. If you had the full books, and flicked in to the end of the first chapter, you'd see that from that point onwards, all the pictures are missing.

Firstly, I didn't spend two seconds on it. I spent an hour or two looking at it. And I have spent a lot more time over the last year or so on converting books to be read on my Kobo devices.

As I said, I couldn't see any real differences in the formatting of the original and converted versions. There was a little extra space between some sections. I think most of those are, as PeterT suggested, differences in how the files within epubs are handled. They always have a page break at the start of each file. There might have been some extra file splitting that could be adjusted with the appropriate options.

As to missing pictures, your original post didn't say they were only missing after chapter one. It is very unfortunate that the previews didn't show this. Though the DSLR preview does have two chapters and the pictures seem to be there. Unfortunately, I am not gong to spend money on books I have no interest in to try to sort this out.

But you've missed the whole point of the post anyway. I didn't say the conversions were unreadable, I said they weren't accurate and I gave a number of differences, such as line spacing.

Unfortunately, conversions aren't perfect. And especially not for books like these with a lot of formatting. And there are differences in how the different formats specify things that are not necessarily directly translatable. Plus there are a lot of options that will fiddle with things like line spacing. That means that you may need to do multiple conversions with different options to get the best version.

And just to pick the problems you mentioned in the first post:

Extra spaces between lines

I only saw extra spaces between sections such as before a picture or the text attached to the picture. And some of these might have been caused by the need to keep the picture on the same page as the text.

Missing spaces between lines

I didn't see any.

Wrong justification

There definitely were no justification problems

Wrong indentation

Anything that was indented in the original was indented after the conversion. The exact amount might have changed but wasn't noticeable.

Missing pictures

All pictures were there in the preview.

Here is a summary of this thread so far:

OP: "Books don't quite convert right. Some formatting is different"
Reply: "When I convert books only some formatting is different. This is great."
OP: "Please never reply to one of my posts again"

And then I explained that I'd deliberately broken the formatting in my post to look like a typical Kindle > ePub conversion. And you didn't really get that either.

I did read that and I did understand that. But, as I said the conversion of the previews for both previews was actually quite good. I didn't see any of the problems you tried to show with the post.

My post was not intended to say that you were not seeing problems. Unfortunately, I couldn't reproduce them. Maybe if I had the full books I could. Maybe it is a problem further into the books or a problem caused by the size of them. I can't tell from here and you didn't actually say. A report like yours and a response like mine isn't uncommon. One of the ideas is to discuss what is going on and try to improve it. The improvements might be suggesting changes in the conversion options chosen, recommendations on how to fix things after the conversion or feedback to the developers to improve things.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by M4R5

I've been back to this topic time and again, but I still can't get a decent ePub from a Kindle purchase. I've tried telling Calibre not to mangle the files, but it doesn't seem to make any difference to the output.

There are sticky posts at the top of each calibre forum. These posts are there to help folks. Check out this sticky post located at the top of the Conversion forum: How to ask a question about conversion problems.

[Barb-B]

Wouldn't it be easiest to simply buy the books in epub format from Barnes & Noble to begin with? They have both available. Then if you want to make modifications, just use Sigil.