Kepub Calibre

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From 2017 to now, Amazon use KFX format for most of their e-books. Calibre can’t not open KFX file directly, even it is DRM free. The KFX Input plugin will collects all the individual files that make up a KFX book and make it into a zip file with the extension kfx-zip. Then you can easily import the zipped Amazon KFX file to Calibre. If you would use calibre to manage books, the extension would be taken care of automatically. The reason for all this is that calibre only supports single extensions. The double extension '.kepub.epub' is treated as '.epub' by calibre, so I use only '.kepub' in calibre so that it gets recognized as a distinct format.

  1. Calibre: The one stop solution for all your e-book needs. Comprehensive e-book software.
  2. As far as calibre is concerned, the extension for a kepub is just 'kepub'. The 'kepub.epub' extension is used on the Kobo ereaders only. When the kepub is sent to the device, the driver renames the file so the device will handle it properly. Within calibre, a kepub is treated as any other format.
  3. When your done, close Calibre and reopen it, this will ensure the plugins are active and ready for duty. Next up, we need to tell Calibre to convert our Kindle books, which means letting it know where to find them and what to do with them. Again, this step only needs be done once. First we must make a folder somewhere for Calibre to watch.

Kobo decided to go the proprietary Digital Restriction Management (DRM) way by providing some ebooks bought on their platform in their in-house Kepub format. This means that they can only be read on a Kobo device.

You might have noticed that, when trying to copy an ebook from your Kobo device to your desktop Calibre library, it tells you it can’t do that because the book is “virtual”.

You can actually remove the DRMs from that format by using a plugin called Obok, part of the great DeDRM toolbox provided by Apprentice Harper.

  1. Download the latest obok_plugin.zip file from GitHub;
  2. Open Calibre (if you don’t have this amazing ebook management app already, install it);
  3. Install the plugin: `Preferences > Plugins > Load plugin from file`;
  4. Use the Obok plugin with your device plugged in: select the problematic Kepub ebook(s) and let it do its magic. You can now copy the ebook to your library without those pesky DRMs!

Learn more about the Kepub format on wiki.mobileread.com.

This was tested with Calibre 2.71, Obok DeDRM 6.5.3 and a Kobo Touch with its software at version 3.19.5761.

As an eBook lover, especially a loyal Kobo eReader fan, I guess you must want to take full advantage of your Kobo device and make all the downloaded eBooks readable on it. For books purchased from Kobo eBook store, if we sync them via Kobo desktop or Kobo eReader, we usually get file in kepub format, which is created by Kobo and based on the standard EPUB format. But sometimes, we may also get EPUB files from other online eBook suppliers and want to view them on our Kobo eReader, we transferred them to Kobo device, finally just find they don't work well on Kobo at all. The EPUB doesn't offer some features present on Kepub. How can we solve the problem? In fact, if you need, you can convert EPUB to Kepub and get some extra reading features on Kepub. How to? Keep reading, you will learn how to convert epub to kepub in this article.

Why we need to convert EPUB to Kepub?

Compared with EPUB, Kepub does have a few key features that attract some Kobo users. Here I have listed the possible reasons you prefer Kepub and need to convert EPUB to Kepub:

  • Quicker to respond to page turn gestures
  • Faster text selection (e.g. when highlighting large areas of text)
  • Support for footnote previews
  • The zoom possibilities for pictures
  • Page numbers show the number of page turns remaining in the current chapter instead of the estimated number of pages for the entire book. (If you don't want this, there is an option in the driver settings to force full-book page numbers.)
  • The book title is shown at the top of each page.
  • The chapter title, if any, is shown at the bottom of each page with the page numbers.

Kepub Calibre

I guess you may say, changing the file from .epub extension to the .kepub extension is OK and it's rather easy. But things will not be so simple. If you just change the extension, when you close and reopen the book, you will always be taken to the start of the chapter you were in. Any annotations stored will not be redisplayed in the book. A conversion of EPUB to Kepub will solve the problem.

How can we convert EPUB to Kepub

For converting EPUB to Kepub without limitation, we'd better make sure the EPUB files are DRM free. Here you can use the eBook DRM Removal tool --Epubor Ultimate to decrypt DRMed EPUB files, then start converting EPUB to Kepub. It's a powerful DRM decryption program, compare with other similar software, its friendly and clean interface make it easier to use. Besides, conversion speed is also super fast. You can download it for free trial.

The detailed steps on removing epub DRM with Epubor Ultimate, please read:

After we have got the DRM free EPUB files, how can we convert EPUB to Kepub? Which eBook converter should we use? Here I recommend you a free but powerful eBook management tool Calibre, but we should know the fact that itself doesn't support Kepub formats. To convert EPUB to Kepub, we need to install a plugin--KoboTouchExtended to enhance it. This plugin enables some additional features to the Kobo Touch, Glo, Mini, Aura HD, and Aura. When transferring EPUB books to Kobo device, it will automatically convert EPUB to Kepub. Now just follow the steps below to start conversion.

Please ensure you have download and install Calibre already.

Step 1: Get the plugin

Click 'Preference' on the menu bar, a window below will pop up, then tap 'Plugins' under 'Advanced'.

Calibre

Next, you will see a following dialogue, simply click 'Get new plugins' button on the bottom left corner to find the KoboTouchExtended plugin.

My 22 Best Calibre Plugins 2020 (plus 7 Insider Tips) - OSXWiki

As there are so many plugins listed, we can enter 'kobo' in the search box behind 'Filter by name', then we will find the KoboTouchExtended plugin easily. Simply select this plugin, hit 'Install' button to install it. You may see an alert about the security risk, ignore it and click 'Yes'.

Step 2: Convert EPUB to Kepub Calibre

Convert Kindle Books To Epub Calibre

  • Connect your Kobo eReader to computer with USB.
  • Add EPUB files you need to convert to Kepub to Calibre.
  • Select EPUB files you want to send to device and click 'Send to device' button.

When the transfer has been finished, you can see the job status turns to 'zero', open your KoboeReader drive, in the root folder, you will find there are several new created folders which are named as author's name. Open it, you can see your transferred EPUB files have become .kepub.epub format.

Eject your Kobo, wait for a while, then you can see your newly copied files.

Convert Kobo Kepub To EPUB And Remove DRM

By the way, there is another plugin which can also convert EPUB to Kepub, it's KePub Output. After you installed it, when you convert EPUB files, you can see Kepub in the list of output format.

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Ada Wang works for Epubor and writes articles for a collection of blogs such as ebookconverter.blogspot.com.