Free from phoenix pick

[piperclassique]

Every tuesday and wednesday for ten weeks drm free for kindle

http://www.phoenixpick.com/KPromo.htm

First one is Daughter of Elysium by Joan Slonczewski
Via Amazon

[Synamon]

You can download Daughter of Elysium now. Plus the next two books in the series are on sale from Phoenix Pick as a bundle for $1.98 to tie-in with this promotion.

[HarryT]

Thanks. Now downloaded/bought.

[koland]

Has anyone tried opening this one in Calibre and/or converting to EPUB? I'm having same problem with it as with Halfway Human; both are supposed to be DRM-free.

I just happened to already have this title, so hadn't tried converting until tonight, just to see if it would work (since I ran into issue with HH).

I was on a fairly old version of Calibre, so upgraded to latest version (Win). Still, can't open the AZW file (created for K1 and K3, just to eliminate any possible KF8 issue).

[koland]

p.s. Since I purchased this on Smashwords a couple of years ago and it's been pulled from their catalog (for KDP), I tested redownloading it from SW - no problem, at all.

[ATDrake]

I don't use Calibre, but they're not DRM and manually unpacking the contents with MobiUnpack works for me and yields HTML files which my browser is happy to open and KindleGen pleased enough to re-mobify (albeit visibly messing up the paragraph indents and who knows what else upon reconstruction).

Good to hear that Smashwords seems to have restored their deleted-from-catalogue downloads, though I remember this book having such annoying sudden font changes between paragraphs as to render it unreadable, which is why I didn't pick up any sale Slonczewski last year because I couldn't determine whether I liked her writing or not based upon it.

ETA: My ghod, there's a lot of cruft in these. Why would you set font face tags for random segments of every sentence throughout the book? What on earth are they using to generate their Mobi files?!

At the very least PPP should strip all that out so that they don't get dinged as much for the per-filesize delivery charges Amazon charges under KDP.

Maybe that's what Calibre is choking on.

And this is another reason why I don't consider mobi-only format files worth paying for. At least messed-up ePubs are easier to fix, most of the time.

ETA 2: Just doing a simple search/replace to blank remove the font-face tags alone managed to save me half the file size in the HTML version.

And I haven't even started on their weird use of empty divs with height set for who knows what reason (apparently to provide those annoying blank spaces between paragraphs) and the p tags with height, width, and totally extraneous justify set for each and every single one.

ETA 3: Downloaded filesize: 2.1 MB. Cruft removed and re-mobified without any compression: 1.4 MB. On -c2 tightest compression setting: 1.1 MB. Difference in delivery costs deducted from royalties on the 70% royalty plan if used: 15 cents per sale. Joke that I could be making here: priceless.

[koland]

AT - you really need to get more sleep!

Thanks for checking (and I may delete the SW edition). Apparently the (older) computer I was using last night has some issue with their AZW formatting (yet loved many another that I was checking and archiving last night). I've managed to get the Amazon editions to open on a 2nd system, so I'll convert to EPUB, then to mobi, in hopes it strips out some of the fluff (if not, at least it's easy to edit as an epub).

I've had other books with tons of random font changes that I've had to fix and I can only conclude they are using Microsoft Word as their source files. Nothing else seems to generate such garbage in the output (since I've seen the same on a few old word docs I tried converting without first dumping into notepad to start over with a fresh doc).

p.s. Do they charge the delivery size fee per sale or per download (via 3G)?

[koland]

OK. Smashwords editions, despite updates from originals, still have font changes every paragraph (wtf? really? why?). At least the AZW doesn't do that.

OTOH - the EPUB is 615K and the SW Mobi 1.6M, so smaller than the Kindle version (and the EPUB has a properly set cover). I think I'll start with the K edition and font strip (but need to leave in italics, which seems to be the only font change worth keeping) ... someday ... when I feel like reading the series...

[ATDrake]

It turns out from the metadata in their more recent ePubs (which are also crufty with the unnecessary extra spans set with font-style, in addition to the CSS which already sets font-style for the exact same things, ) that Phoenix Pick are indeed using a Microsoft product to generate, though not Word. Perhaps we should introduce them to OpenOffice + the ePub plugin, or even Sigil at some point.

According to what I was able to find over at the KDP program FAQs, delivery is a per-sale charge which gets deducted from the royalties on the 70% program under some arcane maths which makes it seem like a bit less of a direct hit to the profits. Vide sections 1D & 2 of their Pricing page.

The AZWs actually have the random font-changes throughout in the 4.4 MB of the unpacked HTML (which reduced down to 2 MB after stripping out just the invisible font-related cruft), but I'm suspecting that we just don't see them because they specify changes in particular font faces that aren't loaded because they don't exist in the Kindle models which only have a handful of different fonts anyway. The Smashwords version, IIRC, randomly sets font size and/or boldness changes instead, which gets carried on visibly into conversion to Mobi. I've seen a number of things turn out like this from the Meatgrinder.

If I ever get around to fixing myself a proper ePub of these or any other PPP books, I think I'll send a copy back to the publisher (who IIRC said he had only two people working for him on stuff) so that at least the next round of paying customers can enjoy books which don't take up quite so much space on their readers and have navigation marks and chapters that start on new pages, to boot.

[koland]

I converted to Lit, just for fun - there is one bad font change near the end (and going back to mobi results in huge space between paragraphs.

So, converted to EPUB - several useless images are included (only one of which is apparently seen, but is just an ad). Removing those (and references to them in the contents and individual files) dropped the EPUB down to 860K.

What is a good tool (and free) to edit the resulting EPUB with? I can see thousands of span changes (that are apparently causing the font change near the end) - could I assume that I could just strip those out (leaving bold and italics). Or just delete the style sheet completely (couldn't care less if the copyright page is in small print)?

[ATDrake]

People swear by Sigil which has its own forum here. Myself, I re-make my e-books by hand using a plain-text editor with good regexp support and the ability to use "text factories" which are pre-programmable template-y snippet things you can run to auto-insert/change stuff.

I'm on a Mac so I use TextWrangler most of the time, but I also have installed NoteTab Light which works in a reasonably similarly-featured way on my hand-me-down Windows XP netbook (both are freeware).

And frankly, for this and most other Mobi-sourced files which need cleaning up, I'd just use the MobiUnpack script (available here in the Mobi forums, and a copy is included in the "tools" as well) to extract the HTML, edit that all as one go (you can just do a global find/replace to blank all the font face cruft and completely superfluous spans out).

I'm not sure that just deleting the CSS would actually have any positive effect on the cruft, because Calibre does tend carry over things and will actually assign its own weird classes to preserve formatting which clutters up the source even more. But CSS-deletion will generally tend to kill off most of the really visible formatting errors if you don't care about resulting filesize. (Still just 1.4 GB of usable space on my mere K2i.)

After that, just point Calibre or whatever back at the OPF file to regenerate using the new source. That should keep metadata and the NCX navmarks (if available) intact.

[koland]

Ok, trying Sigil again (had issues, long ago; seems much better).

Removed 300K of junk at end (bonus chapters from other books, most of them not even in the TOC). Now down to 500K, before attempting anything with the fonts.

Haven't played with REGEX in a while (and am on W7 now, so, have to do a bit of research to see which ones I want to use; suppose I could let Calibre do the search/replace, if I don't mind converting more than once).

Looks like the annoying font change was in the fluff at the end, so I no longer see that it sets Asalon hundreds/thousands of times and puts it right back to TimesRoman with the next CSS call.

[Blue2u]

koland, ATDrake
May I ask a question please? I'm fairly new to finding these freebies/deals, so please be patient and I apologize for interrupting this thread and straying off topic. But is it normal that you have to 'fix' downloaded books? I should know by now not to, but I assumed that because these came from legitimate book sellers they would be formatted correctly? If that's not the case, could you please point me in the right direction on how to do this 'simply' if that's possible?

Thank you for your time, apologies for butting into conversation.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Blue2u

But is it normal that you have to 'fix' downloaded books? I should know by now not to, but I assumed that because these came from legitimate book sellers they would be formatted correctly?

I am refraining from using the rolling on the floor laughing smiley face because actually, it's rather depressingly common to have fairly high-priced books coming out from their original publishing houses via legit booksellers be riddled with typos, messed-up layouts, and other rather noticeable errors.

I've had a number I paid for come out with some very annoying "does no one even look at these things before they start charging money for them?!?!" obvious errors, which I've described in some detail over in this post, if you're morbidly curious about Stuff That Can Go Wrong. I bought all those particular Amazon-purchased examples on sale, but they are regularly list-priced at $9.99 each before any applicable discounts.

We've had a number of dedicated threads about the matter in the General Discussions forums.

However, in most cases it is true that generally the typos are relatively minor (albeit annoying) and not usually worth going to the bother to fix for a book one doesn't intend to re-read all that often (or at all).

Originally Posted by Blue2u

If that's not the case, could you please point me in the right direction on how to do this 'simply' if that's possible?

The simplest way to do this is really to learn how to extract the contents of any given ebook file and do some minor editing of the text in an editor, then pass the corrected file back to your conversion software of choice*. Depending on where you buy your books and whether or not they have DRM from that source, you may first need to remove said DRM to extract the text, which of course we cannot discuss directly here on MR.

For advanced formatting errors, you will probably have to learn a bit about HTML and CSS to be able to fix, but they're pretty easy to learn the basics of and there are plenty of helpful introductory tutorials for absolute beginners on the web.

The best format to start from for fixing and eventual conversion to the output for your reader is an ePub source, or an extracted HTML that you can modify into an ePub because you can preserve niceties such as cover images and metadata and tables of contents/navigation without having to remake them every time you go back and modify the file.

And you can ask questions and get plenty of answers in our dedicated file format and software app forums right here on MR.

Hope this helps.

* Or just learn to hand-assemble an ePub, which is really easy and just requires a text editor and a zip utility.

[Blue2u]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

I am refraining from using the rolling on the floor laughing smiley face because actually, it's rather depressingly common to have fairly high-priced books coming out from their original publishing houses via legit booksellers be riddled with typos, messed-up layouts, and other rather noticeable errors.

I've had a number I paid for come out with some very annoying "does no one even look at these things before they start charging money for them?!?!" obvious errors, which I've described in some detail over in this post, if you're morbidly curious about Stuff That Can Go Wrong. I bought all those particular Amazon-purchased examples on sale, but they are regularly list-priced at $9.99 each before any applicable discounts.

We've had a number of dedicated threads about the matter in the General Discussions forums.

However, in most cases it is true that generally the typos are relatively minor (albeit annoying) and not usually worth going to the bother to fix for a book one doesn't intend to re-read all that often (or at all).

I will head over to the thread you linked above and read, but I appreciate your taking the time to reply. While I certainly had encountered spelling errors in books I've read, there had only been a couple that were so horrible I couldn't get through them and I attributed that to questionable sources... I literally had no idea this would occur with regularily priced books. For the most part I guess I've been lucky.

The simplest way to do this is really to learn how to extract the contents of any given ebook file and do some minor editing of the text in an editor, then pass the corrected file back to your conversion software of choice*. Depending on where you buy your books and whether or not they have DRM from that source, you may first need to remove said DRM to extract the text, which of course we cannot discuss directly here on MR.

For advanced formatting errors, you will probably have to learn a bit about HTML and CSS to be able to fix, but they're pretty easy to learn the basics of and there are plenty of helpful introductory tutorials for absolute beginners on the web.

The best format to start from for fixing and eventual conversion to the output for your reader is an ePub source, or an extracted HTML that you can modify into an ePub because you can preserve niceties such as cover images and metadata and tables of contents/navigation without having to remake them every time you go back and modify the file.

And you can ask questions and get plenty of answers in our dedicated file format and software app forums right here on MR.

Hope this helps.

* Or just learn to hand-assemble an ePub, which is really easy and just requires a text editor and a zip utility.

I'm not really a very tech-savvy person, but I will keep your information in mind should I ever encounter a book that requires that length of correction.

Once again I appreciate your taking the time to reply to a relative newbie and I certainly appreciate your patience.