Formatting all books in library to same format

[TashPerth]

Sorry if this has been posted before, I couldn’t find anything on it.

I have a library with 13,000 books, but book I transfer a book to my ereader its formatted differently. Different font, size, spacing, alignment and I have change all the settings each time I start a new book.

Is there a way I can apply a standard formatting style to my books before I load them on my ereader?

[Adoby]

Yes.

You can do a bulk conversion, for instance from epub to epub, and specify that all or some style information should be stripped.

The bulk convert dialog has a lot of options you might use.

But be careful. You may loose too much. Try it first. And have backups.

[deback]

What e-reader are you using? Many e-readers use their own formatting. You might be able to disable that and use the original formatting in the epub files.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by deback

What e-reader are you using?

The OP has Kobo Glo in their profile, I would assume they're using it.

[JSWolf]

There is nothing you can do to make the formatting the same for each book other than to go into the code for each book and manually edit it. A bulk conversion won't work. If any have DRM, then those you cannot change. Those without DRM, you can use the Calibre editor to make the changes. Even if it is a Kindle, you can still have different formatting with different eBooks.

[Tarana]

Try it on 10 books first. See how it works. Once you have 20 books converting the way you want them to, then duplicate the library and convert that duplicate to a single format. MOST books will convert the way you want, but formatting in the original may prevent that occasionally. You will likely have to run the computer overnight.

I did this for my late sister several years ago - converted my library to a duplicate in mobi format only. Some of the books came up with blank lines between lines. I had to use the editor to fix that.

edited to add: I should add that if you go from say EPUB to MOBI, this works. I don't know if it will work if you have Epub to Epub. Again, 10 books at a time to see what works.

[steven168]

will there any issues convert epub to azw3, i do for most of my books

[Tarana]

Originally Posted by steven168

will there any issues convert epub to azw3, i do for most of my books

Shouldn't be but there is no way to check if the formatting is really wonky until you actually look at it on your ereader. After several members commented on advantages of azw3, I'm experimenting on that. My sis has a Kindle Touch, so there is no advantage for her to have azw3 at this time. I might experiment though. As mentioned before, try on a small number of books before you work on your entire library and WORK WITH A COPY!

[Sarmat89]

That is an inherent problem with EPUB format which sadly cannot be fixed.
If you had your library in a semantic format, like FB2, it would never occur.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Tarana

Try it on 10 books first. See how it works. Once you have 20 books converting the way you want them to, then duplicate the library and convert that duplicate to a single format. MOST books will convert the way you want, but formatting in the original may prevent that occasionally. You will likely have to run the computer overnight.

I did this for my late sister several years ago - converted my library to a duplicate in mobi format only. Some of the books came up with blank lines between lines. I had to use the editor to fix that.

edited to add: I should add that if you go from say EPUB to MOBI, this works. I don't know if it will work if you have Epub to Epub. Again, 10 books at a time to see what works.

Don't bother trying it for any books. IT DOESN'T WORK! You cannot automate changing the format of ePub's to all be the same.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

That is an inherent problem with EPUB format which sadly cannot be fixed.
If you had your library in a semantic format, like FB2, it would never occur.

The inherent problem is not with ePub, it's with the publishers. They try to make ePub look like the pBook and they fail miserably. They need to to use defaults were appropriate, not use different font sizes where not appropriate and use a margin of 0. Use blockquotes instead of incorrectly simulated blockquotes. Also, don't use a stupid CSS with (sometimes) hundreds of unused CSS classes. Also, stop making ePub 3 eBooks unless you want to do something that ePub 2 won't do. There are ways to do it correctly and most do it rather wrong.

Now if the a publisher wants to hire me, I'll show them how to do it properly.

[steven168]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The inherent problem is not with ePub, it's with the publishers. They try to make ePub look like the pBook and they fail miserably. They need to to use defaults were appropriate, not use different font sizes were not appropriate and use a margin of 0.

any example on how the problem like.

what to do when have this problem?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by steven168

what to do when have this problem?

YOU and the calibre editor is all (and a few hours to LEARN basic HTML code) that is needed.
It takes me less than 5min to 'touch up' most EPUB to my liking.
NOTE: I do NOT just totally remove publishers styling. I love subtle differences in the look of my books.

0) I check for code errors (debug) and correct ERRORS (the red). It is how many I find. Naked text with the TAG set alongside just incompetent.
1) I set a standard BODY style (and remove a whole body DIV)
2) I remove the font size,face... for standard P text (It will use the BODY spec for the bulk of the book )
3) I REDUCE any wasteful top/bottom margin over 5%. (I do try to proportion my change to match) margin-top: 30%
4) Clean out UNUSED CSS rules using the tool included in the Editor

(Optional adds a few more minutes)
5)Embed fonts called for, but not included or supplied by my device. (I do like pretty books ) Replace fonts that do not render well on e-ink
6)Reduce ridiculous HiRes fleuron image resolution. Its a decoration , not a 10 foot masterpiece
7)Revise the <IMG tag , when it is the same image appears in multiple Image files (and clean out the excess files)

These are the common tasks I do. Automation (conversion) can't clean to these levels.

[Divingduck]

[deback]

I use the Modify ePub plugin and Convert to automate many fixes. Convert will fix many things, if you add enough things in the Styling and Transform sections of Look and Feel.

Some of the things I fix automatically in most of the books I convert are (I run Modify and then Convert):

All indents are changed to 1.2em, all line-heights are changed to 1.2, remove blank line spaces (but sometimes I have to manually edit the paragraph CSS code to fix this or manually delete the lines that add the blank line spaces), change the "body" side margins to 30pt from 5pt, add the Charis font and remove all other font style CSS codes in the .css file, remove all the CSS codes that are invalid according to Calibre (these are all in the Transform section), justify all text in the paragraphs (manually have to justify some of the sections at the beginning of the books), change the CSS code for cover images that are coded as auto and auto to 100% and 100% (I have a macro that adds the CSS code for this in the .css file, so I only change the class to calibre3a and hit ctrl-shift-5 to add the CSS code quickly), paragraph font size is changed to 1em from whatever the original code is, and many more automated things I can't think of at the moment.

Convert removes all the unused CSS codes, Modify removes a lot of things that shouldn't be in the files, and on and on.

I also highlight all the files and run the ToC plugin to edit any ToCs that need to be fixed (like add ToC from files when there are no ToCs, rename chapter numbers to Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc, rename Chapter One, etc, to Chapter 1, etc). The ToC plugin will open the next file after you click on OK for each prior file.

My only wish is that Convert would do the Check Book and Automatically fix errors automatically during the conversions. I have to do this manually, but there are usually very few errors found after I run the Modify and Convert plugins.

When I get done doing all of this (most of it is automated), my files are very clean looking and they all have the same format in the text for the paragraphs. I'll manually edit the CSS codes for some of the beginning pages, if there is too much top and bottom space or when I notice other things that should be fixed.

Some files are so badly coded and have tons of <spans> and other poor coding that it can take much longer than five minutes to edit the file properly. If I really want a certain book, I will spend the time to edit everything, including the spellcheck and the Report (to fix punctuation and remove improper symbols due to scanning errors, etc).

I also have edited hundreds of Open Library books to fix everything and format the files properly, in addition to modifying and converting many thousands of ePub files.