Do you like how ePub books look on your Sony Reader?

Originally Posted by perversity

To me, the switch is a deal-breaker. With the books I have redownloaded, the test runs nearly edge to edge of all four corners of the screen. The font looks terrible compared to the BBeb version. The only positive I've seen is that the thumbnail image looks better in the browser (yawn). You shouldn't have to use another program to convert the books you bought specifically for the device just to read them. I won't buy anymore books from sony until they get this problem resolved

Yes, it is quite unexceptable that software written 5 to 10 years ago to run on Palm PDAs and windows Mobile devices for displaying eBooks is still much better than that which is used by ANY eBook reader device today. I guess the main difference is that the PDA software was written by third-party, independent developers who listened to their clients (us) and gave them the features and improvements that they requested. But the eBook device software is developed by the device manufacturer for a particular eBook provider, and they don't give a damn about what we want. Their attitude is take what we give you and like it.

[AprilHare]

Originally Posted by Madam Broshkina

I have no issues with the ePub format in general. The ePub books that I downloaded from Sony look great on my nook. I just have a problem on how ePub looks on my Sony Reader(s).

How does that work - buying ePub books from the Sony store and transferring them to the Nook? Do you deDRM them?

[Madam Broshkina]

Originally Posted by AprilHare

How does that work - buying ePub books from the Sony store and transferring them to the Nook? Do you deDRM them?

I do not have to remove the DRM. They work without me having to do anything. I just load the file into Digital Editions and then transfer to the nook.

[Madam Broshkina]

The newest version of Calibre support the nook so I can also add the books to Calibre and send the books to the nook. Calibre will also let me change the metadata but will not let me convert the book to another format.

[vivaldirules]

I absolutely hate the look of epubs on my Sony 505. The example below looks pitiful and I blame Sony for forcing me to take a gigantic step backwards. I bought a Reader that displayed ebooks that looked great and then Sony screws it up and now I have a piece of junk. I guess I should throw away my inkjet printer and replace it with a tractor fed dot matrix printer. And my cable modem with a 300 baud modem that I can stick my phone into. And my monitor with a green monochrome one.

I realize the example below suffers from a publisher who doesn't know how to add paragraph indents. But I'm really pissed off and want someone from Sony to explain to me now when they're going fix this.

[emonti8384]

I think that Sony should give you the option of whether or not you'd like to buy the book in lrf or epub format, just like BOB or Fictionwise. That way people have a choice . Personally, since I only read on my Sony, I like the original format much better, looks a helluva lot better than what's going on now, lol

[mombeck09]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Here is a photo of my sony PRS-300 displaying an ePUB eBook I bought from Sony. I used ineptepub to deDRM it and Calibre to reset the margins to 15 points on top of page and 5 points on the sides. This view is using the smallest font size. To me this is a very readable eBook once I modified the margins.

Madam Broshkina is absolutely correct in her statement of how ePUBs display better on other reader devices than they do on the Sony devices. Each reader device capable of displaying ePUB files has its own unique rendering software which translates the ePUB file into what we see on the display. some devices do a great job, while others do a bad job. Unfortunately, Sony Readers do a rather bad job of displaying ePUBs. That is not the fault of ePUB formatting, it is the fault of Sony/Adobe rendering.

How long does it generally take to convert a book with Calibre? After half an hour, and looking like it wasn't getting past 47%, I gave up. Am I just not waiting long enough? Man, this seems like a lot of time and effort just to have Sony Reader look like a "real book" again!! What were they thinking, not giving us that option?

[Madam Broshkina]

Originally Posted by mombeck09

How long does it generally take to convert a book with Calibre? After half an hour, and looking like it wasn't getting past 47%, I gave up. Am I just not waiting long enough? Man, this seems like a lot of time and effort just to have Sony Reader look like a "real book" again!! What were they thinking, not giving us that option?

A liberated Sony ePub takes about 3 minutes to convert to LRF for me on Calibre.

[Faenad]

Originally Posted by mombeck09

How long does it generally take to convert a book with Calibre? After half an hour, and looking like it wasn't getting past 47%, I gave up.

It seems that Calibre freezed. You should try again or test with another book. On my computer it takes likes 5-10 seconds depending on the book.
If your purchased your computer this century, it should not take more than a few minutes

[Faenad]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

I absolutely hate the look of epubs on my Sony 505. The example below looks pitiful and I blame Sony for forcing me to take a gigantic step backwards.

Not purchasing anything new from Sony either till they fix it. Especially since they pulled out LRF support from the 900. This looks like a badly formatted word document IMO.

[mombeck09]

Originally Posted by Faenad

It seems that Calibre freezed. You should try again or test with another book. On my computer it takes likes 5-10 seconds depending on the book.
If your purchased your computer this century, it should not take more than a few minutes

Well, I tried the same ePUB file again, it stops at 47%. I deleted all, re-downloaded the ePUB file from Sony, removed the DRM again, and started over in Calibre. Same results. I left it running all night, still shows 47%. When I stopped it (had to use Task Manager - the Stop Job button didn't work), it cautions that it's running a process (but had made no progress in ten hours). When the eReader is connected, it sees the device and the log shows that it detects the four other books I already have on it. I made sure I have the latest version of Calibre. Then I removed that book, started all over with a different downloaded ePUB, same thing.

After I killed it, the log showed it parsed all 29 chapters and detected all 29, then nothing. Task Manager showed calibre-parallel.exe running. I closed out of everything - rebooted, and started all over with everything - same results. No virus scanning or defrag is happening in the background. I removed the eReader, and nothing but my bluetooth mouse is attached. I know the file has DRM removed, because I can read it in Calibre Ebook Viewer.

I must be doing something wrong. I tried first to just change so it was full-justified and leave it ePUB. When that didn't work, I tried to change the output to LFR, hoping that would accomplish the same. But I still can't get it to complete the conversion. HELP!! (By the way, my laptop is only about a month old!)

[Santa Fe Painter]

I made the comparison between a dozen books I purchased from Sony in the BBeb version and the new ePub. I won't be purchasing any more Sony books until the ePubs can have full justification (left and right margins), and the spacing removed between paragraphs.

I want the look and feel of a printed book page, not a web page. I am very disappointed.

[zelda_pinwheel]

i voted for epub, but my reasons include a lot of technical details which are irrelevant for the purposes of this poll, and also (far more importantly !) the fact that i frequently do a bit of "touch-up" work on my books to make sure they are formatted in a way that i find pleasant to read ; this includes using nice fonts with proper italics versions, defining decent margins, indented paragraphs, etc. i use Sigil to edit the epub file directly ; it's not difficult at all, but it does require a bit of knowledge of css and html code, and it should certainly never be *necessary* to do that to a book you've paid for.

but, that said, i am not sure that there can really be one answer for anyone to this poll, except for those for whom fully-justified text is absolutely indispensable (i happen to prefer left-aligned to machine justification, but i do know i'm in the minority). i say this because apart from the lack of justification support on sony devices and the display of the page numbers in the margins, there is no such thing as one universal "epub formatting" ; the formatting will vary from editor to editor and even from book to book ; one of the great things about epub is precisely that using css style rules you can do quite advanced and varied formatting. however, the sad truth is, apparently most editors have not bothered to learn how to do the formatting properly, and therefore are delivering books which look, frankly, pretty horrible (like vr's example). however, that is not a flaw in the format, it is simply shoddy work on the part of the publisher, and i think anyone who gets a book which sub-par formatting should write to the publisher and let them know you are unhappy with your purchase, and why. it's not that hard to do it right ; there is absolutely no excuse for publishers to be charging people for books that (in some cases) look positively abominable.

Originally Posted by jswinden

Directly from the publisher, the BBeB (LRX) versions typically look more like a printed book than the ePUB versions. But most of what I'm reading in this and other posts about ePUB dislikes is due to two reasons, both of which or easily solved:

(1) The publishers don't know how to format ePUB, much like some web sites look horrible and some look good, most ePUB publishers are terrible at formatting using ePUB. They need to learn what CSS is and how to use it, and Adobe needs to update their ePUB rendering engine to allow full utilization of CSS.

exactly.

(2) The margins and sentence spacing issues are controllable. Currently you need to use a third-party application like Calibre to adjust margins after you have removed the DRM on an ePUB. However, there is no reason why reader firmware cannot allow the adjustment of margins, spacing, font, font-size, font-weight, etc. Most reader applications that have been around for PDAs, smartphones, etc. have these "look and feel" user adjustable options. Take a look at MobiPocket Reader, eReader, Microsoft Reader, etc. for PDAs.

you can also use sigil for this sort of thing, and given the diversity of personal preferences i suspect that a lot of people will continue to modify the formatting of their books even after publishers *do* learn how to make decend epub files. however, it still is frankly inexcusable to find commercial ebooks which are so poorly formatted as to require intervention by the customer to make them look halfway decent, regardless of your personal taste. that said, now that sony has switched over to epub, hopefully there will be sufficient outcry on the part of their customers about the poor formatting to force the publishers to make more of an effort, and about the outdated and imperfect rendering engine used on sony devices, which might motivate sony to put a little work into that. i suspect that if they just added justification support, and the option to mask the marginal page numbers, a lot of people would be a lot happier ; both of those should be trivial to implement.

Originally Posted by XK143

Gotta agree with LaCamera. I just spent an hour fiddling around with the "new" versions of my already-purchased books from the new Reader Store. I don't care for 1) the font, 2) the text being stretched nearly as far as possible to the edge of the screen, and 3) the left-only text justification. I had previously customized my font and it was quite readable. Now I don't think I have that option (yet), let alone any of these other display horrors with Sony's ePUB.

Also, unless I've done something wrong, the font size does not change with the font button on my Reader (a PRS-505), it just makes some kind of page adjustment. I'll have to investigate further. But I'll be keeping the old Sony format on the books I've already purchased and not buy anything else from the Sony Reader Store until I see an improvement or something althogether better. Ick.

those are good examples of bad formatting, alas, although i know that is no comfort to someone who has bought a book which doesn't look good. however they are not inevitable ; it is really easy to define a different font (you can even add a font to your device and add a few rules in the css to use that font for your book), and the margins. also a font which does not change size is probably some kind of formatting mistake. i am not saying that you should have to clean up after the publisher ; i am saying, the publisher should make the effort to learn how to do things right ! as for the lack of justification, it *could* easily be fixed with a firmware update, we'll see if sony ever gets around to that...

Originally Posted by Madam Broshkina

I have put 7 Sony books on the nook. 6 of them have full justification. 5 of these 6 have a space between the paragraphs. The nook does not display the little page numbers on the side. The nook displays the title of the book.

madam b, do you mean that the nook displays running headers with the title ? could you show a photo of that ? it does sound like the epub renderer used on the nook is definitely better than the one used by sony.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Faenad

Not purchasing anything new from Sony either till they fix it. Especially since they pulled out LRF support from the 900. This looks like a badly formatted word document IMO.

This is not how all ePub looks. Its just how one eBook looks. How it's formatted is up to whomever did the ePub conversion. I've seen ePub's look all kinds of ways. I even have one (still have to fix) that is setup so incorrectly, that ADE cannot change the font size. I know I can fix that.

So the good thing about ePub is that we can remove the DRM and edit the CSS to fix what it is we don't like. And if you don't like the smaller margins, just go into the CSS and fix it how you like it.

[JSWolf]

Does the nook have history? This is important for ePub eBooks that have endnotes but the endnotes do not have a go back link.