Paperwhite - can't switch fonts in some books

[elvenic]

I have couple of books now, not side-loaded, but officially purchased from the Amazon store, where I can't switch fonts - regardless of what font I choose in the font selection dialog, the text of the books is shown in san-serif font that looks like Helvetica. There is no 'publisher font' in the font selection dialog, so I assume these books do not contain embedded font.

In other books, including both bought in the Amazon store and sideloaded via 'Sent email' Calibre option (as personal documents), fonts are changing according to the selection in the fonts dialog.

I noticed this after I manually upgraded the Kindle Paperwhite firmware to new 5.3.0 version. But I can't tell if this books did not allow font changing before I upgraded, so this may be not related to this upgrade.

[HarryT]

This indicates that the book publisher has hard-coded the font in the book. Not a good practice, but some do it.

You can fix it with Calibre if you remove the DRM first.

[pidgeon92]

They might also be Topaz formatted books. These are more like scanned copies and do not allow font changes on the device.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by elvenic

I have couple of books now, not side-loaded, but officially purchased from the Amazon store, where I can't switch fonts - regardless of what font I choose in the font selection dialog, the text of the books is shown in san-serif font that looks like Helvetica. There is no 'publisher font' in the font selection dialog, so I assume these books do not contain embedded font.

In other books, including both bought in the Amazon store and sideloaded via 'Sent email' Calibre option (as personal documents), fonts are changing according to the selection in the fonts dialog.

I noticed this after I manually upgraded the Kindle Paperwhite firmware to new 5.3.0 version. But I can't tell if this books did not allow font changing before I upgraded, so this may be not related to this upgrade.

A couple (but not all) of the Philip K. Dick books that I downloaded during the recent sale were like that - also stuck in Helvetica.

[vxf]

For some lack of the draw, most of the books I have bought recently from Amazon behave like that. Locked fonts. Really a pain...

[elvenic]

pidgeon92: the books are definitely not topaz scanned books.

I imported one such book into Calibre (with book liberating plugins), that resulted in .azw3 file, and used Calibre's 'Tweak Book' tool to look at the file internals.

Looks like HTML/CSS was as created by MS Office tools (Word?). The .css file has lots of keywords like 'mso-*', contains approx. 80 kilobytes (3000 lines of text) of @font-face definitions, probably enumerating all fonts installed on the author's computer, and at the end there is a definition of style 'MsoNormal' that explicitely defines font-falimy: "Times New Roman". The same MsoNormal style is added as a style of every paragraph in the .html file that contains text of the book.

HarryT, is this how a font is hardcoded into the book?

If the font is hardcoded as Times New Roman, and the device does not have this font, and the font is not embedded into the book file, does it mean that the Kindle Paperwhite will default to a 'sensible' sans-serif font (which Helvetica definitely is)? And without an option to ignore the hardcoded font and use the font user selected in the fonts dialog?

A CSS font-family statement will definitely cause your issue.

I think it is stupid to use that kind of app to create a "for sale" book! If the author or publisher is that amateurish they shouldn't be creating books. If you paid for that book I would raise hell about it.

[elvenic]

Originally Posted by jswinden

If you paid for that book I would raise hell about it.

That was a $0-cost book (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0075XKPE6- now it costs $2.99, it was a temporary promotion I guess)

And it's not that I can't read the text of the book, I just can't switch fonts (that is, without liberating it and fiddling with css)

[replica145]

I have some books like this as well, PKD and a few others. I don't think it's hard coded though as they still allow font changes on my Kindle Touch. It's only on the Paperwhite that the fonts are locked.

[mewmartigan]

For some reason, the first Molly Fyde book by Hugh Howey wouldn't adjust fonts for me and the text was super small.

I also have some books (mostly Star Wars, Fate of the Jedi) where the font is super small.....so small that the 3 smallest font selections keep the text the same size.

They probably hardcoded the font size in the CSS. Print publishers are often clueless with eBook design.

[elvenic]

I bought another couple of kindle books from Amazon, both of them have the same behaviour - text in Helvetica font which can't be changed.

So I finally had enough of this. I got to try to fix this.

Thankfully, the fix with Calibre is very easy (as long as you are ready to strip the DRM (if any), which you probably should anyway).

So if you bought from Amazon a book for your KIndle Paperwhite that is shown in Helvetica (sans-serif) font and you can't change the font using Font Dialog, do following:

a) (this needs to be done only once) configure Calibre to remove 'font-family' style element during conversion: in Calubre, go "Preferences" --> "Convertion - Common Options" --> select "Look & Feel" --> select tab at the bottom "FIlter Style Information" --> check "Fonts"

b) import the book into Calibre fron the Paperwhite device (make sure you have Aprentice Alf's plugin installed and configured for your device, otherwise Calibre will not be able to convert the book)

c) convert book to MOBI (even if it is already in MOBI format). May be you could convert to AZW3 too, I didi not try this - in any case, do convertion by Calibre. If asked Calibre to strip font styles (see step a), Calibre will strip hardcoded font styles and you will be able to change fonts using Font Dialog on the device.

d) send book back into the device

Note that if you did any conversion of this book in Calibre before, Calibre will store convertion options specifically for this book and will not use default options that we set up in step a) for this book any more. In this case you will need to make sure that "Fiter Style Information" --> "Fonts" is checked in this book convertion dialog.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by elvenic

I bought another couple of kindle books from Amazon, both of them have the same behaviour - text in Helvetica font which can't be changed.

So I finally had enough of this. I got to try to fix this.

Thankfully, the fix with Calibre is very easy (as long as you are ready to strip the DRM (if any), which you probably should anyway).

So if you bought from Amazon a book for your KIndle Paperwhite that is shown in Helvetica (sans-serif) font and you can't change the font using Font Dialog, do following:

a) (this needs to be done only once) configure Calibre to remove 'font-family' style element during conversion: in Calubre, go "Preferences" --> "Convertion - Common Options" --> select "Look & Feel" --> select tab at the bottom "FIlter Style Information" --> check "Fonts"

b) import the book into Calibre fron the Paperwhite device (make sure you have Aprentice Alf's plugin installed and configured for your device, otherwise Calibre will not be able to convert the book)

c) convert book to MOBI (even if it is already in MOBI format). May be you could convert to AZW3 too, I didi not try this - in any case, do convertion by Calibre. If asked Calibre to strip font styles (see step a), Calibre will strip hardcoded font styles and you will be able to change fonts using Font Dialog on the device.

d) send book back into the device

Note that if you did any conversion of this book in Calibre before, Calibre will store convertion options specifically for this book and will not use default options that we set up in step a) for this book any more. In this case you will need to make sure that "Fiter Style Information" --> "Fonts" is checked in this book convertion dialog.

That is a nice guide, good information. Karma for that.

One thing to add might be - if you going to convert to azw3 anyway, define your own custom font in font-family in conversion. In case you have a favourite font that is not on PW. This font would be available once the publisher font checkbox is selected in font settings in PW.

[johnnyb]

Just keep returning these books until Amazon changes publishing guidelines to accord with their device advertisements (change font type and size etc)

[elvenic]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

Just keep returning these books until Amazon changes publishing guidelines to accord with their device advertisements (change font type and size etc)

Yes, if that was a fatal problem, I might have retuned these books. But the books _are_ readable, and font size can be changed.

And, I got all these books for $0 dollars (I'm subscriber of ereaderperks.com mail list that sends me daily current free ebooks list), so it's not like I really lost any money on these books. So far all ebooks that I paid real money for do not have this flaw. (Yes, this may change if this $0 cost book is 1st book in a series and I want to buy subsequent books)

It actually may be that all these broken books are from independent authors and small publishers that just do not know any better and use MS Office to type and format the text of the book and then export HTML from MS Office which automatically includes font in the css style, and that's how hardcoded font finishes up in the ebook. All these ebooks worked OK on previous KIndle models (pre-Paperwhite) where the ebook reader application was probably just ignoring any font specification and used the only available Caecilia font, so these authors/publishers did not have any reason to worry.

And it is hard to imagine that Amazon will re-convert all these thousands of already existing ebooks in its store that were created before the Paperwhite device was released and were working OK with previous devices. I'm not even sure Amazon has technical capabilitiy to re-convert existing ebooks, and even if they have the technical capbility, that they will be willing to do the re-conversion.

But anyway, it is a good idea to notify tha Amazon customer service about this problem, which I'm going to do right now