Do you edit your eBooks?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by kandwo

I download metadata and covers and add tags all the time, but don't consider that "editing" the book.

The only time I've actually used the editor has been when I've bought "watermarked" books that contain warnings about sharing the book illegally, stating that "the book was bought by [name and e-mail address]" in the actual text. Had they just had that in the beginning and/or end of the book, I wouldn't have bothered; they chose, however, to include it in the text itself in several places.

I got one of those which was a freebie from the author. My email address was shown at the start of every page and at every scene break plus being buried in the .opf, .ncx and nav documents. Took about 5 seconds of search/replace to fix but rather annoying to have to do this. The same book also encoded my email address by using non-breaking spaces at the end of paragraphs.

[Sonnenfee]

I don’t edit my ebooks, with using KOReader I can set all which is important for me for reading.

[nellie27]

I used to TRY to edit epubs in Calibre , but that sort of thing isn't really in my skill set.

I use CoolReader for non-library books. When a book is first opened, I go to CSS settings and uncheck the "enable document internal styles". Then the book displays with the presets I previously established. (Like left justify only, line spacing, paragraph spacing, font style and size, margins. Lots of stuff. )

I know a lot of people don't care much for CoolReader, and the app has some real shortcomings, annoying shortcomings, but I use it pretty much exclusively for my non-drm'd epubs. They look the way I want them to. And I don't have to struggle to edit them.

[graycyn]

If it's a book that I am likely to re-read in the future, I'll mark and fix typos. Then I don't have to kick myself for not doing it on the next read. Typos drive me crazy.

I'm less picky about formatting, unless it seriously gets in the way with an unreadable font, or inability to change font size or huge margins or something like that.

[kevin3289]

I go over every book until it's as close to perfect as I can get it. The very occasional spelling error might be ignored.

[SpicyPoison]

I edit each and every ebook I purchase
Self taught HTML & CSS while editing eBooks.
There are 400+ eBooks in calibre library.
All those books follow same formatting pattern. My pattern.
There is not even a single paragraph out of order.
But calibre converts epubs to azw3 very badly. So I open both formats size by side and manually copy paste the whole source code from epub to azw3. Does anyone know better solution to this? How can I create Azw3 from epub files without changing the formatting?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by SpicyPoison

I edit each and every ebook I purchase
Self taught HTML & CSS while editing eBooks.
There are 400+ eBooks in calibre library.
All those books follow same formatting pattern. My pattern.
There is not even a single paragraph out of order.
But calibre converts epubs to azw3 very badly. So I open both formats size by side and manually copy paste the whole source code from epub to azw3. Does anyone know better solution to this? How can I create Azw3 from epub files without changing the formatting?

You could use KindleGen to create a dual-format. Then use KindleUnpack to split them and remove the Mobi. That's as best as you'll get.

What is it that changes when you convert to KF8? It could be just a matter if fixing your settings.

Yes, the code does change no matter how you do it. But does the actual formatting change?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What is it that changes when you convert to KF8? It could be just a matter if fixing your settings.

Yes. It's not my experience that converting to azw3 changes the formatting, and I have converted thousands of books when I still used Kindles.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Yes. It's not my experience that converting to azw3 changes the formatting, and I have converted thousands of books when I still used Kindles.

One thing I know that needs to be changed in the settings is to remove the font size map. That does make a difference.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

One thing I know that needs to be changed in the settings is to remove the font size map. That does make a difference.

Another is to disable unnecessary chapter breaks, which can insert a pagebreak between titles and subtitles that doesn't exist in the original file.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Another is to disable unnecessary chapter breaks, which can insert a pagebreak between titles and subtitles that doesn't exist in the original file.

I did forget about that. It can also split the titlepage when it's not an image.

[SpicyPoison]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

What is it that changes when you convert to KF8? It could be just a matter if fixing your settings.

Images.
In epub I have them center aligned. After converting, when I read in kindle, they stick to left.

Also dropcaps. In epubs, the first letter of chapter is very big and covers first three lines in size. But kindle device doesn't understand this beautiful formatting and first letter is same size as other. How should I format my dropcaps so they look big and covers first 3 lines.

Line height. I also write my daily diary entries in epub format. I use a font family of my own handwriting for this. But this font generates 3 times more line spacing in kindle device. In calibre preview it's fine. But in kindle the line spacing is very large for my diary.

[DNSB]

@SpicyPoison: Are you converting to azw3/KF8 or mobi?

[SpicyPoison]

Originally Posted by DNSB

@SpicyPoison: Are you converting to azw3/KF8 or mobi?

I'm converting to AZW3 format. I'm sure of that. Calibre can't edit nivu l mobi files.

[gforgiraffe39935]

Yes, I edit my eBooks but usually only to fix issues.
I don't like to do it, personally, but since I do like to annotate and re-read my books, I just cannot stand to let some of these issues go unchecked, like many of you.

Examples:
1) Remove a watermark that was covering up book text.

2) Fix typos in some romance EPUBs that were clearly just OCR scans that the publisher didn't bother editing when they decided to publish their back catalogue as eBooks (example: number 1 in the middle of a word instead of lowercase letter "i"). These ones I almost forgive because I know it's rare that people want to re-read these books from the 1980s and 1990s. I re-read them every year and since my paperbacks were/are falling apart and I prefer my eReader these days and I cannot stand to re-read them with such annoying errors...edit it is!

3) Fix the margins that clearly were never checked by the publisher or author when the books were uploaded to wherever I bought them.

4) Change the book cover to one of my preferred ones, usually the NON-film tie-in one. The biggest joy of discovering Calibre and owning my EPUBs, honestly.