# ePub/PDF converting to .mobi all messy



## Manyelski (Mar 16, 2016)

Hello all, I bought for myself this little treat called Kindle Paperwhite I think 2nd gen. I have certain books on my computer, quite some actually and when I convert them from ePub/Word/PDF to mobi they appear all messy on my screen - the header and footers come in the middle of my pages, some sentences are cut off and I dont get the option of seeing the page number, just pro cent in the lower right corner. Not to mention the books appear on my library as h4h2h8s28hs and names alike and not able to change the names...How to properly convert, so far I have used online converters, from ePub/.../... to .mobi? Thanks


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## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

If you use Calibre to convert the files you can change the title, cover image, font, where the table of contents goes, and quite a few other things. I would recommend it over online converters.

PDF conversions tend to be the worst, because the text doesn't flow properly. But it does depend on how well the author/publisher has formatted them in the first place, so YMMV.


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## Manyelski (Mar 16, 2016)

Really not much luck with the app too. Any chance I can request books in this forum?


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## KeraEmory (Feb 8, 2016)

If they are old ebooks from non-legit sources, either commit yourself to learning how to clean them up by hand, or get legit replacements. 

PDF is always going to be a nightmare, especially if we're talking stuff that was obviously scanned in by hand.

P.S., there aren't really "page numbers" as such on the kindle platform.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Manyelski said:


> Really not much luck with the app too. Any chance I can request books in this forum?


What do you mean by 'request book'?

As others have said, books that start as PDFs that you try to convert are very likely going to be sub-par. I can't speak to ePub but if you think about it, PDF is an output format. It's supposed to be the end result . . . so it's not like a text of even .doc file that can be easily manipulated to have it look the way you want.

.mobi is also sort of an out put format too, but one designed specifically for eReaders whose software lets it be somewhat adjustable. PDFs are meant to be words on a page, full stop.

Trying to switch one to the other is not much different than trying to turn a 6 x 8 hardback book into a 4 x 6 paper back book -- you've got to do a lot of steps in between and it's a messy process that may not, still, yield a good final product.


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## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

Manyelski said:


> Really not much luck with the app too. Any chance I can request books in this forum?


Are you talking about PDFs? If they look like they're scanned images rather than text files (the clue is usually that you'll see the corners of the scanned page on the edges) then they won't convert properly. At best you'll just end up with another image.

In terms of requesting books, many authors on this forum offer a free book as the first in their series. Go to the Writer's Cafe http://www.kboards.com/index.php/board,60.0.html and check out the books in people's signatures. Please appreciate that indie authors depend on people buying their books to pay their bills, so if you download free books make sure you get them from legitimate retailers like Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, and so on.


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## tsemple (Apr 27, 2009)

Regarding PDFs, have you tried reading them directly on your PW? In many cases, that will deliver a much better experience than converting them. And it's easy. The only caveat would be 'scanned image' PDFs, which can be too taxing of PWs limited resources (but these are the same ones which cannot be converted directly, and require OCR conversion first).

I would try Landscape mode, which automatically crops the left/right margins and will make the text about 70% of normal size (depending on size of the original), displaying each page in 2-3 'strips'. You can also zoom and pan.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

tsemple said:


> Regarding PDFs, have you tried reading them directly on your PW? In many cases, that will deliver a much better experience than converting them. And it's easy. The only caveat would be 'scanned image' PDFs, which can be too taxing of PWs limited resources (but these are the same ones which cannot be converted directly, and require OCR conversion first).
> 
> I would try Landscape mode, which automatically crops the left/right margins and will make the text about 70% of normal size (depending on size of the original), displaying each page in 2-3 'strips'. You can also zoom and pan.


For me, this doesn't usually work well because most PDFs are designed for an 8.5 x 11 page. And, of course, the Kindle screen is much smaller than that. So it makes the print to small to read easily, and the 'zoom' features for PDF rendering on the Kindle are not the greatest. Landscape orientation helps, but, for me, it's still not satisfactory.

YMMV, of course.


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## ancaiovita (Feb 13, 2016)

If the PDF is made of scanned images, there is not much you can do. Maybe print them out and read them like that.

I had some issues with PDFs of scientific papers which are on 2-3 columns and they would be a mess when I tried to read them on my Kindle. I used to print them out until I did something else: I copied the content of the PDF into a .txt file and I converted that one to mobi with Calibre and now I can read them digitally. You have no idea how much time and paper I saved this way.

And since you mentioned you were looking for indie books, check out Noise Trade Books - it's a website where you can legally download books in exchange of subscribing to the authors by giving away your email address. Here is a link with one of my books free for you to read:
http://books.noisetrade.com/ancaiovita/the-aging-gap-between-species


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