Seize the Fire ePub broken
- Thread starter JWolf
- Start date
Unless I missed something in the thread, that's not a problem others have seen; the hyphenation problems they're referring to is a hyphen being present at all, when it shouldn't be (it's a line-break hyphen, not a word-break one).
After looking back in the thread to the original quote, I realize now that I misread it; I just assumed that JWolf was referring to what I was finding. Maybe it is the software?
I have a question about these "broken" epubs. I see the fonts are in the font folder but that's about all I know. How do I go about "fixing" them? I know "Zero Sum Game" and "Seize the Fire" both had this problem but I'm not certain how to go about fixing it.
If you could send me some info so I could fix it myself, I'd be most appreciative. I don't want to put work on you but I love to learn and if I can learn what the problem is and how to repair it, I can take care of any I run into in the future.
Give a man a corrected css and he can read for a day. Teach him how to correct the css himself and he'll read better formatted text forever...
or at least until S&S finds some new way to butcher their ebooks!
Thanks for any help you may be willing to provide.
Sincerely,
- Byron Followell
Later on today, I will post the CSS for download. If you have the ePub with DRM, I am not sure if this will work. I'll test it first to be sure. If it works, just change the extension to .zip, replace the CSS and rename back to .epub and enjoy. If you have removed the DRM, then you can compare the two to see what I did.
Send it to me on the other site, I just want to see the difference.
The link to the CSS is http://www.jkwolf.com/STF-CSS.zip. All you have to do is replace the CSS in the styles directory and you are good to go. You do have to have the DRM removed. I did try replacing DRMed CSS with the DRM free CSS and it did not work.
Done. You can have a look.
If the DRM is not stripped, the new CSS won't work.
Done. You can have a look.
If the DRM is not stripped, the new CSS won't work.
It should work if you removed the CSS from the list of encrypted files (for Adobe DRM, I believe it's META-INF\encryption.xml - the entire <EncryptedData> tag).
I guess I was being too vague. That's what I meant by "open". I'll play with the CSS today, see what it does. Too bad I can't try it in the nook app after I do - iBooks and Stanza will have to do.
Thanks loads Jon.
I'll compare this to the original css from STF and then see if I can make similar corrections in ZSC.
What sorts of readers can take advantage of these? Is it mostly ADE or can hardware readers such as the Nook or Sony reader take advantage of them as well?
Thanks.
- Byron
I'll compare this to the original css from STF and then see if I can make similar corrections in ZSC.
What sorts of readers can take advantage of these? Is it mostly ADE or can hardware readers such as the Nook or Sony reader take advantage of them as well?
Thanks.
- Byron
The Nook and Sony both use Mobile ADE, so they should be able to take advantage - the Mobile ADE implementations on the iPhone do, anyways!
Other readers using their own ePub implementation are iffier. But worst-case, they just use their own built-in font instead.
Thanks! So it means other can get it sorted if they want. I no longer have the encrypted version to try it out with. But I'll try it with a different eBook I still have encrypted.
Well, I just found another great example of Simon & Schuster's poor ebook creating capabilities. I just picked up Rihannsu, Book 5: The Empty Chair. It is one of the most poorly formatted ebooks I've seen.
There are no spaces between the paragraphs and there is no indentation whatsoever to even a single paragraph throughout the entire book. You know the little scene break spaces, forget about 'em because they don't exist. From the start of one chapter to the next, it looks almost like one long, giant paragraph. It looks horrible. I know I said in an earlier post that I don't care for spaces between paragraphs, and I don't, but at least they'd break this mess up a little bit. I'll have to add indentations to all of the paragraphs and hope to find a hard-copy of the book somewhere or use Amazon's search inside this book feature to find where the scene break are. I've already asked for a credit for two poorly formatted Star Trek books so far and I hate to do it again. Eventually, Amazon is going to think I'm a pirate or something.
Simon & Schuster, get your cr$#@p in gear and straighten this mess up. I make $35 an hour at my day job and I have to work overtime to fix your sloppy mess to make it readable. I figure I've got two or three hours worth of cleaning up to do to make this an enjoyable reading experience. At my going rate, you owe me close to $160 for doing your job. Of course, I know I won't see a penny of that and I got to pay $9.62 for the experience. Thanks. This customer is certainly feeling the love.
One EXTREMELY unsatisfied customer,
- Byron Followell
There are no spaces between the paragraphs and there is no indentation whatsoever to even a single paragraph throughout the entire book. You know the little scene break spaces, forget about 'em because they don't exist. From the start of one chapter to the next, it looks almost like one long, giant paragraph. It looks horrible. I know I said in an earlier post that I don't care for spaces between paragraphs, and I don't, but at least they'd break this mess up a little bit. I'll have to add indentations to all of the paragraphs and hope to find a hard-copy of the book somewhere or use Amazon's search inside this book feature to find where the scene break are. I've already asked for a credit for two poorly formatted Star Trek books so far and I hate to do it again. Eventually, Amazon is going to think I'm a pirate or something.
Simon & Schuster, get your cr$#@p in gear and straighten this mess up. I make $35 an hour at my day job and I have to work overtime to fix your sloppy mess to make it readable. I figure I've got two or three hours worth of cleaning up to do to make this an enjoyable reading experience. At my going rate, you owe me close to $160 for doing your job. Of course, I know I won't see a penny of that and I got to pay $9.62 for the experience. Thanks. This customer is certainly feeling the love.
One EXTREMELY unsatisfied customer,
- Byron Followell
Have you complained to Pocket about this yet? Might be a good idea.
Just checked the Nook version I have (or at least it's free sample) and it appears to be formatted OK. Well, it does at least have spaces between each paragraph.
Just looked some more, and there is a scene change with the same kind of space as regular paragraphs. I'm thinking that might be a mistake, but I haven't seen any other versions to know for sure.
Just checked the Nook version I have (or at least it's free sample) and it appears to be formatted OK. Well, it does at least have spaces between each paragraph.
Just looked some more, and there is a scene change with the same kind of space as regular paragraphs. I'm thinking that might be a mistake, but I haven't seen any other versions to know for sure.
Something else I've noticed over the past couple of years is that there seems to be no rhyme or reason to how these things are created. I mean, the last really "good" looking Star Trek ebooks I've seen that someone really took their time on were ones created for the Microsoft Reader format.
I bought tons of these over the years, sort of collected them really, but didn't like reading them on my computer screen. I really liked the "idea" of ebooks more than actually reading them. Now, with ebook readers, I love them. I have hundreds to dedrm and convert for reading on my Kindle. The one thing I've noticed and been surprised by is how consistent most of the formatting was back then. Also, if I use Calibre to convert to epub for editing, the formatting tags (term?) are consistent. They use the same tag/code from book to book to create a scene break space. They use the same code to format that chapter starting text, the dedication text, chapter headers, etc. Occasionally the chapter header text size or something might change from book to book, but you always know what the tag is called. If their current book of ebook creators don't have any sort of common tools and standards, how can they ever hope to put out a quality product?
It's like if Toyota (my employer) said "go out there and make a new Sienna guys" and didn't give their employees any common tools or work procedures and they didn't look at what they'd made before. They just said everyone, on your own, go down to Harbor Freight or Wal-Mart and buy whatever tools you want and then figure it out as you go along. I'm sure the customers will be satisfied with it. Where else are they gonna go? Nobody else sells the Sienna, right? Oh, and don't get me started on the whole big American feet mistaking the gas pedal for the brake pedal mess! It's the 80s Audi fiasco all over again. You know what they found way back then, right? You guessed it, operator error. Imagine that!
Thanks for letting me rant. It'd be nice if someone from S&S was on here to read these and could actually do something about it but I know better.
- Byron
I bought tons of these over the years, sort of collected them really, but didn't like reading them on my computer screen. I really liked the "idea" of ebooks more than actually reading them. Now, with ebook readers, I love them. I have hundreds to dedrm and convert for reading on my Kindle. The one thing I've noticed and been surprised by is how consistent most of the formatting was back then. Also, if I use Calibre to convert to epub for editing, the formatting tags (term?) are consistent. They use the same tag/code from book to book to create a scene break space. They use the same code to format that chapter starting text, the dedication text, chapter headers, etc. Occasionally the chapter header text size or something might change from book to book, but you always know what the tag is called. If their current book of ebook creators don't have any sort of common tools and standards, how can they ever hope to put out a quality product?
It's like if Toyota (my employer) said "go out there and make a new Sienna guys" and didn't give their employees any common tools or work procedures and they didn't look at what they'd made before. They just said everyone, on your own, go down to Harbor Freight or Wal-Mart and buy whatever tools you want and then figure it out as you go along. I'm sure the customers will be satisfied with it. Where else are they gonna go? Nobody else sells the Sienna, right? Oh, and don't get me started on the whole big American feet mistaking the gas pedal for the brake pedal mess! It's the 80s Audi fiasco all over again. You know what they found way back then, right? You guessed it, operator error. Imagine that!
Thanks for letting me rant. It'd be nice if someone from S&S was on here to read these and could actually do something about it but I know better.
- Byron
I got Shattered Light on my Nook, and it's space perfectly, and the text changes style and size fine. The only problem I have is more of a stylistic preference than a booboo, I think. When you go to the find option, it only lets you go between the stories, not the individual chapter.
How do you do that thing you guys were talking about earlier where you change the cover of a ebook. I just added a book to my wishlist, but the cover it gives me is my least favorite of the different covers it's got.
The book is Bitten by Kelley Armstrong, and it gives me this cover but I like this one better.
How do you do that thing you guys were talking about earlier where you change the cover of a ebook. I just added a book to my wishlist, but the cover it gives me is my least favorite of the different covers it's got.
The book is Bitten by Kelley Armstrong, and it gives me this cover but I like this one better.
Do you do any ebook editing at all? Do you know how to remove the drm?
I don't want to get us in trouble so I'm not going to discuss how to remove drm here and assume you already know how. Once you have a "free" ebook, assuming it's an epub, edit it using the excellent (and free) Sigil editor. You can add the image you want and change the filename reference on the title/cover page and remove the old image. It's fairly easy.
I usually remove the drm from my ebooks, use Calibre to convert from mobi to epub, use Sigil to clean up the ebook, add images as needed, almost ALWAYS create a table of contents since they rarely exist in Kindle books, then use Calibre to convert back to mobi for reading on my Kindle. It's really much easier than all these steps make it sound once you've done it a few times. The real time-consuming part is cleaning up the formatting and that's determined by how much that sort of thing concerns you. When you're a perfectionist like me, well...
You can get Calibre here:
http://www.calibre-ebook.com/
and Sigil here:
http://code.google.com/p/sigil/
I hope this helps a little. Feel free pm me if you need anything further.
- Byron
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