Question about side loading

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I sideload everything, no matter where I bought them. Mostly because I change the formatting (I have specific preferences).

I do this too. Partly because back when I first started buying ebooks on my Nook, it was early enough that even professionally released books might not have properly formatted tables of contents. Books being reissued by authors who reclaimed copyright were especially prone to this.

Things are much better now, but even still poorly formatted ebooks exist. So out of habit I back up, check and sideload everything. I would do so even if I used a Kindle and bought my books from Amazon.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by CAFlanny

Long time lurker, first time poster. I bought a Kobo Libra a couple months ago and switched from using Calibre as mainly backup for my purchased books to side loading my books directly to the device. I know a lot of people on this forum side load their books from Calibre. Just curious, do you side load all of your books, including the ones purchased from your device's store?

I'm still a couple of months short of having been a Kobo user for 3 years. I have bought around 185 books from Kobo and of those, in that short time, perhaps as many as 10 have become unavailable to me via any Kobo app/device/website. So yes, I download and sideload all my purchases.

[cromag]

My primary ereader is a JetBook Lite, which isn't associated with a store and doesn't have wifi, so I side load everything.

And since everything is already in Calibre anyway, I side load my other ereaders, too, when I want to use them.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I do this too. Partly because back when I first started buying ebooks on my Nook, it was early enough that even professionally released books might not have properly formatted tables of contents. Books being reissued by authors who reclaimed copyright were especially prone to this.

Things are much better now, but even still poorly formatted ebooks exist. So out of habit I back up, check and sideload everything. I would do so even if I used a Kindle and bought my books from Amazon.

At this point "professionally released books" are my biggest bane. Aside from missing or badly arranged covers and ToC, many screw up basic formatting and metadata. One I just finished had many paragraphs split mid-sentence. Most of the indy stuff I download has been pretty good (obviously this is after the pre-screening before purchase to avoid the dross).

So in response to the OP, yes I side load all books. Partly because I want to be sure of having a backup that doesn't assume businesses run forever, and partly because I like my books to be consistently well presented in both layout and metadata.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by gmw

One I just finished had many paragraphs split mid-sentence.

That sounds (to me) like an uncorrected conversion from a PDF source.

So in response to the OP, yes I side load all books. Partly because I want to be sure of having a backup that doesn't assume businesses run forever, and partly because I like my books to be consistently well presented in both layout and metadata.

I do fix all my eBooks. I find most publishers have no idea how to make eBooks that are well formatted. If I was doing it, more eBooks out there would not need to be fixed or very simple fixes for those who's preferences are different then mine. But at least the CSS and code would be very easy to edit.

[CAFlanny]

Thanks for all the responses. It's always interesting (at least to me) how people use their ebook collections. I have backed up my ebooks since 2010 in Calibre. I have about 500 books from B&N that I'm glad were backed up before they stopped allowing downloads. I continue to back up my purchases from Amazon and Kobo, even if I read the book from their cloud. I have not gotten into editing books, yet. My current read is a Georgette Heyer novel that has the occasional word separated by a space, so maybe I will look into it.

[kyrilson]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I sideload virtually all my non-Kobo Plus content. Much like @Sirtel, I find spending 5 minutes on a book to clear up the formatting makes my reading experience much more enjoyable. These are mostly minor annoyances such as paragraphs that are double spaced, indent and extra spaces between paragraphs (one or the other but not both), useless font family specifications, etc.

I've always been curious about this. What are good settings that I should set my epub/kepub to for conversion? My main ereader is a Kobo Libra. I've never been able to get a epub to properly display very well and have always stuck with kepub for that reason. Obviously I don't know how to set my epub conversion properly. What settings do you use?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kyrilson

I've always been curious about this. What are good settings that I should set my epub/kepub to for conversion? My main ereader is a Kobo Libra. I've never been able to get a epub to properly display very well and have always stuck with kepub for that reason. Obviously I don't know how to set my epub conversion properly. What settings do you use?

A poorly formatted ePub should convert to a poorly formatted KePub. KePub doesn't have any special features to make it look better then the source ePub.

I fix the formatting of ePubs before I read them so I know they will look good. This means editing the CSS and code of the ePub.

[salamanderjuice]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

A poorly formatted ePub should convert to a poorly formatted KePub. KePub doesn't have any special features to make it look better then the source ePub.

I fix the formatting of ePubs before I read them so I know they will look good. This means editing the CSS and code of the ePub.

KePubs look different than ePubs from the same file on a Kobo because they use two different renderers. IMO KePub looks far better.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by kyrilson

I've always been curious about this. What are good settings that I should set my epub/kepub to for conversion? My main ereader is a Kobo Libra. I've never been able to get a epub to properly display very well and have always stuck with kepub for that reason. Obviously I don't know how to set my epub conversion properly. What settings do you use?

My experience has been that a poorly formatted epub makes a poorly formatted kepub. The only time I use an epub to epub conversion is when the input epub is a piece of total crap and I use calibre to do some cleanup on the file.

For the most part, I will edit about 90% of epubs before sending them to my ereader. The cleanup range from relatively minor such as cleaning up Vellum created ebooks to ebooks that have no useful CSS stylesheets and use embedded styles to ebooks that make epubcheck barf and me wonder how they got by any incoming quality checks.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by salamanderjuice

KePubs look different than ePubs from the same file on a Kobo because they use two different renderers. IMO KePub looks far better.

For those of us who are fans of typography, RMSDK is better. Though I would be dubious about saying the either RMSDK or the WebKit based renderer look far better.

[kyrilson]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

A poorly formatted ePub should convert to a poorly formatted KePub. KePub doesn't have any special features to make it look better then the source ePub.

I fix the formatting of ePubs before I read them so I know they will look good. This means editing the CSS and code of the ePub.

kepub always looks better than epub on my Kobo Libra. So I tend to only use kepub format. I've actually tested this. I took an epub file, copied it over to my ereader, and converted the same file to kepub and copied that over as well, and compared the two. Both were vastly different, and the kepub file was much nicer looking. I was a little surprised, as I had heard from others that epub was supposed to be "better". I suspect that my ignorance is a bit at play here, though. I may be able to make the epub version better through tweaking of the settings and conversion in calibre.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

My experience has been that a poorly formatted epub makes a poorly formatted kepub. The only time I use an epub to epub conversion is when the input epub is a piece of total crap and I use calibre to do some cleanup on the file.

For the most part, I will edit about 90% of epubs before sending them to my ereader. The cleanup range from relatively minor such as cleaning up Vellum created ebooks to ebooks that have no useful CSS stylesheets and use embedded styles to ebooks that make epubcheck barf and me wonder how they got by any incoming quality checks.

I never use epubcheck and edit the css only as much as necessary for my personal preferences. Have had no issues with my Kobo yet. IMHO such checks are overkill. I buy far too many books to check for errors and clean the code in every one of them, although I do edit them all.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by kyrilson

kepub always looks better than epub on my Kobo Libra. So I tend to only use kepub format. I've actually tested this. I took an epub file, copied it over to my ereader, and converted the same file to kepub and copied that over as well, and compared the two. Both were vastly different, and the kepub file was much nicer looking. I was a little surprised, as I had heard from others that epub was supposed to be "better". I suspect that my ignorance is a bit at play here, though. I may be able to make the epub version better through tweaking of the settings and conversion in calibre.

Do you patch your Kobo? I've found patches make a vast difference in how the epubs look.

[ownedbycats]

I installed the patch just to fix the font size issue.