I recently decided to transition from making my ebooks as PDFs to making them as EPUBs. The reason I chose to use PDF before is because of the formatting control it gave me over my ebooks, and it would look on my ereader the same way it looked on my computer, which was something I couldn't achieve with EPUBs. However, having to reformat my ebooks when I change ereaders is a bit of a pain although its not as much of a pain than it used to be. Since it has been a while before I tried to make EPUB ebooks, I decided to see if it was time to revisit it again.
I use LibreOffice and it has the option to export documents to EPUB (either directly or giving you the option to set some of the settings and/or metadata). To ensure that I had no issues with Calibre I updated it to the current version (version 9.9). I took an ebook that I had saved as a OpenDocument Text file and generated an EPUB from it. I loaded the EPUB in to Calibre, checked it, and Calibre Ebook Viewer showed that the text I wanted centered was centered. However, when opened the ebook on my ereader (Nook Glowlight 4) all of the text that was supposed to be centered was not, all of it was ragged right (flush with the left margin).
This was the issue that caused me to choose PDF over EPUB, because over a decade ago I had the same issue when I made EPUB ebooks. I tried using styles and also direct formatting to try and get the text to center on my ereader, but nothing seems to work. I decided to try again because maybe things are different now.
I was wondering if it was just an issue with my ereader (I don't think so because I had the same issue when I was using my Nook Color over a decade ago), or could it be an issue with the tool I was using to make the EPUBs (the LibreOffice export option), an issue with the OpenOffice Text format as a source, or I will need to go into the EPUB coding itself to fix the problems. Another issue I discovered is that on my ereader I can change some aspects of an ebook's appearance but not all of them (I can change the font, line spacing, and justification but I can't change the size of the text). This takes away one of the main advantages of EPUB for me (I can adjust the way the ebook looks on my ereader rather than having to change the document and recreate the PDF).
Any advice/guidance would be appreciated.
I use LibreOffice and it has the option to export documents to EPUB (either directly or giving you the option to set some of the settings and/or metadata). To ensure that I had no issues with Calibre I updated it to the current version (version 9.9). I took an ebook that I had saved as a OpenDocument Text file and generated an EPUB from it. I loaded the EPUB in to Calibre, checked it, and Calibre Ebook Viewer showed that the text I wanted centered was centered. However, when opened the ebook on my ereader (Nook Glowlight 4) all of the text that was supposed to be centered was not, all of it was ragged right (flush with the left margin).
This was the issue that caused me to choose PDF over EPUB, because over a decade ago I had the same issue when I made EPUB ebooks. I tried using styles and also direct formatting to try and get the text to center on my ereader, but nothing seems to work. I decided to try again because maybe things are different now.
I was wondering if it was just an issue with my ereader (I don't think so because I had the same issue when I was using my Nook Color over a decade ago), or could it be an issue with the tool I was using to make the EPUBs (the LibreOffice export option), an issue with the OpenOffice Text format as a source, or I will need to go into the EPUB coding itself to fix the problems. Another issue I discovered is that on my ereader I can change some aspects of an ebook's appearance but not all of them (I can change the font, line spacing, and justification but I can't change the size of the text). This takes away one of the main advantages of EPUB for me (I can adjust the way the ebook looks on my ereader rather than having to change the document and recreate the PDF).
Any advice/guidance would be appreciated.
