epub to mobi conversion, formatting issue

[taupe]

I just got a kindle today. It's my first e-reader and I'm impressed by it so far.

I had an epub file which I thought I'd test out, so I downloaded Calibre and converted the file to mobi. But the formatting is not correct. The ebook looks fine as an epub when I view it in Calibre, but the mobi file has broken up the paragraphs.

It kind of looks like this and it's basically
unreadable

The entire book is formatted in
this way.



Is there a way to fix this? Did something go wrong with the conversion, or is it just a problem with this particular file? ebooks are completely new to me, and I know very little about conversion and file types.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by taupe

I just got a kindle today. It's my first e-reader and I'm impressed by it so far.

I had an epub file which I thought I'd test out, so I downloaded Calibre and converted the file to mobi. But the formatting is not correct. The ebook looks fine as an epub when I view it in Calibre, but the mobi file has broken up the paragraphs.

It kind of looks like this and it's basically
unreadable

The entire book is formatted in
this way.



Is there a way to fix this? Did something go wrong with the conversion, or is it just a problem with this particular file? ebooks are completely new to me, and I know very little about conversion and file types.

If you mean the Mobi file has a blank line between each paragraph, this is a setting in the conversion options in Calibre. Take a look, and it should be fairly obvious.

[taupe]

No, it isn't a blank line between paragraphs. The conversion actually destroys the paragraphs altogether.

It will have a full line, then 2 words on the next line. And then the next line will be blank.

Then another full line, 2 words on the next line, and then a blank line.

It looks like the example I gave in the previous post. It goes on like this for the whole book.

[pdurrant]

Are you sure the source is an ePub and not a PDF?

[taupe]

Yes. It's definitely epub, not PDF.

Just to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong, I just grabbed another epub book from Gutenberg and converted it to mobi, and the formatting turned out fine. So it appears to be an issue with the one file.

Is there anything in particular which would cause an epub file to not format correctly when converted?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by taupe

Yes. It's definitely epub, not PDF.

Just to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong, I just grabbed another epub book from Gutenberg and converted it to mobi, and the formatting turned out fine. So it appears to be an issue with the one file.

Is there anything in particular which would cause an epub file to not format correctly when converted?

Well, if someone had created it with a fixed line length - making each line a separate paragraph. Such as a hasty conversion from a PDF.

The answer to your questions lies inside the ePub. Unzip it and take a look at the xhtml files inside, and see what's going on.