Turning Calibre ePubs into pdfs

I have written about the freeware ebook reader, Calibre before (read here). But I have not yet mentioned that this piece of kit can also convert our ebook formats from ePub or mobi to pdf files. However, Calibre's default settings don't provide a tidy result: for example, the margins are set to be too narrow; the page format way too short, and the font size is too large. A few tweaks, as advised by Rohde (2015) below, will give us a much more readable result.

The instructions are (Rohde, 2015):

1. Open Calibre and select the file
2. Right click, select Convert Books | Convert Individually
   
3. Change the output to PDF on the top right corner of the screen. Go to ‘Page Setup’ tab and change all margins to 75 pt
   

   

4. Go to ‘PDF Output’ and set the following settings
   

   

Now we simply click "OK", and we are done. Click on pdf under the format for the file type in the right-hand detail side bar to open our brand new pdf.

Thanks to Max Rohde for the tip!

Sam

References:

Rohde, M. (28 January 2015). Rendering Beautiful PDF Documents with Calibre. https://maxrohde.com/2015/01/28/rendering-beautiful-pdf-documents-with-calibre/

read more "Turning Calibre ePubs into pdfs"

How to read 200 books a year

I read an interesting post by Charles Chu recently on Medium (6 January 2017).

Apparently the average American loses 608 hours of their lives annually on social media, and 1642 hours in front of the TV (Chu, 6 January 2017). Ouch. And if we think of the number of ...er ...'alternative facts' out there, perhaps this isn't the best use of our time.

It probably doesn't improve our thought or decision-making processes, either.

Charles laid out the mathematics instead for how to read 200 books a year (Chu, 6 January 2017. Also see the poster with this article). Surprisingly, it works out at 8 hours a week.

However, if we do the mathematics a different way, we need to read 3.8 books a week in order to read 200 in a year.

I think it will take most of us longer than 2 hours per book - particularly if we are using talking books, which average around 10 hours in length.

I listen to around two talking books a week, plus my other on-screen reading... my talking books get listened to at night using my iPod and earbuds, as I go to sleep. I also do a fair bit of technical reading, as a PhD scholar.

So I suspect that it would take us closer to thirty hours a week to get four non-fiction books read. Then we have enough time budget to read two and listen to two.

But even thirty hours is only just over four hours a day. Ditch the TV and social media for three nights, and four books a week is pretty do-able.

Read on!


Sam

• Reference: Chu, Charles (6 January 2017). The Simple Truth Behind Reading 200 Books a Year. Retrieved 5 February 2017 from https://betterhumans.coach.me/the-simple-truth-behind-reading-200-books-a-year-1767cb03af20#.sbditxjxk

read more "How to read 200 books a year"

How to write an eBook

This is a clever little presentation that outlines some of the tricks to writing a longer piece of work, regardless of what it is for. 

Applying these techniques will help you get whatever it is that you need to get done, done. Check out Uberflip's ideas:

Sam

• Reference: Uberflip (2015). How To Assemble a High Converting eBook. Retrieved 27 February 2015 from http://visual.ly/how-assemble-high-converting-ebook?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email

read more "How to write an eBook"