Troubleshooting

[the_other_sandy]

Now that it's Big Bang season again, I'm reminded of a problem I had last year that I never could solve. If I download a PDF file created by the author from a file sharing site, I have no problems with it. I convert it to EPUB with Calibre and it works just fine. But if I create an e-book using the download button on AO3, my e-reader freezes and

Comments

[stormcloude]

I think I've heard that if you convert it to rtf and then back to epub in Calibre the problem goes away? Or maybe it was converting epub to epub? Give one of those a try?

[the_other_sandy]

If I convert it EPUB to RTF to EPUB, won't I lose the pictures? Of course, that would solve the problem of my e-readers borking on the pictures, but I'd rather keep them if possible. I'll try the EPUB to EPUB thing...after my e-reader finishes charging, dang it.

[quiet000001]

epub to epub seems to be the Magic Calibre Fix for all kinds of weird problems.

[sineala]

I have a Kindle so I have no personal advice, but over on DW last year people were discussing your problem in the beginning of the comments here if that helps any.

[the_other_sandy]

Thanks! I'm impatiently waiting for my e-reader to finish charging so I can try the EPUB to EPUB conversion.

[beer_good_foamy]

I think it might be the images. I've heard that some older e-readers get that problem when the preview function in the library view tries to display images that are too large or too hi-res or... something like that.

If you use Calibre you should be able to either insert another image or just get rid of it.

[the_other_sandy]

I know how to remove images, but how do I insert another one?

[the_other_sandy]

Just posting the final outcome in case it helps anyone else. I did do the convert EPUB to EPUB thing, but it didn't make the pictures visible. What I finally did was save all the pictures from the fic onto my hard drive, resize them in a photo editor, and use Sigil to replace the original pictures with the resized ones. It was a giant pain in the behind (and only partially because the instructions on how to add pictures in the Sigil user's guide were wildly out of date and didn't work), but I now have an EPUB of the fic with working pictures that display correctly and don't bork my e-readers (not even the elderly Sony PRS-505).

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions!

[fides]

You can do it a bit more directly if you don't mind getting your hands dirty with html. Simply explode the epub in Calibre, either add in a new folder if you are being neat or copy the image files in, then edit the image links to point to the local image files you have just added inside the epub structure and rebuild the epub. Now you should have an epub with working internal image links. To be sure run a epub->epub convert and everything should be fine.

[the_other_sandy]

explode the epub in Calibre

I don't know what that means or how to do that.

[fides]

In calibre select a book and right-click to get the options menu.
Select the "Tweak Book" menu item.
This will bring up a window with four buttons: "Explode ePub", "Preview ePub", "Cancel", Rebuild ePub" (the last option being greyed out initially).
Select "Explode ePub".
Calibre will then open a file browser with the internal content of the ePub available for you to tinker with.
Once you have finished editing the ePub, close the file browser and select the (now available) "Rebuild ePub" button to pack everything back up again.
And you now have an ePub with your changes.

[the_other_sandy]

Brilliant! Thank you! That should save a few (bazillion) steps.