Hello,

I have a book "The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden" by Jonas Jonasson. It weights about 3.5 megabytes so I thought there has to be an embedded font considering the size. Put it on the Nook and checked Publisher Defaults but the font changed to the one that's default to Nook and shows when there's supposedly no publisher defaults in a book. Puzzled I have checked this book in Sigil and nothing showed up in the fonts section. As there are hardly any images in the book I was kind of taken aback that it's 3.5 mb in size. Opened it in Calibre and its editor showed some fonts. Why then they're not showing up in Sigil and on NST?

Thanks in advance for answers.

I'd need to see the file, but fonts don't usually boost the size too much, depending on which fonts are used - they can usually be only a few dozen kb. It kind of sounds like the stylesheet defines fonts without embedding them - you'd seem them while previewing the file on your computer, but if they aren't installed on the Nook then it will just default to the ones it has.

When I've been preparing ebooks, I find what can bump up the file size are the image files, and the best way to crunch the size down is to rework them - you can often really bring the size down with a little and compress them a little more.

If you want a more definitive answer, then you can add a download link here or, if you don't want it to be public, PM it to me and I'll take a look.

I have checked all the images in the book with Sigil and surely they don't weight this much altogether.

It's not really crucial for me to see these fonts, but since they are in the file then why they don't show up... I guess the publisher of the book has put them there for some reason. I like to have a book displayed as it was designed if it's available.

Here's the file. Maybe you'll come up with something.

http://1drv.ms/1r90GyY

Thanks for that - it is certainly mysterious. However, I expect this is right:

I guess the publisher of the book has put them there for some reason.

You can obfuscate embedded fonts if they don't have a free license that'd allow you to distribute them otherwise:
http://web.sigil.googlecode.com/git/files/OEBPS/Text/tutorial_embed_fonts.html
http://epubsecrets.com/font-embedding-and-font-obfuscationmangling.php

It may be the Nook has problems with this:
http://indesignsecrets.com/topic/nook-rejecting-embedded-fonts-epubs

The whole area is a bit of a mess:

Font obfuscation has been the source of much confusion. If you dig around the Web, you’ll find plenty of blog posts and forum chatter full of confused and frustrated ebook makers trying to make sense of it all. The confusion stems largely from the fact that, until recently, the IDPF and Adobe had competing font obfuscation algorithms, and reading systems supported one or the other. If you used the Adobe obfuscation method, your embedded font would render correctly on maybe the NOOK but not in iBooks, and so on.

Because reading systems were split on which font obfuscation method they supported, EPUB creators were forced to create two versions of the file, one of each using the two methods. However, as of this writing, the major reading systems are no longer split in this regard and are using the obfuscation recommended by the IDPF. Therefore, preparing two files is no longer necessary.

http://epubzone.org/news/epub-3-font-embedding-and-licensing

That said, according to their documentation, Sigil seems to still allow you to use the Adobe system so..

However, I wonder if Calibre is causing issues here - the ePub has clearly been through the Calibre grinder and I see nothing in the stylesheet that would bring in the fonts for use in the ebook, so even if they weren't obfuscated, you'd not see them whatever device you used to view that file. Your best bet is to try a better conversion - if you are using an AZW as a source file, then use KindleUnpack. This might fix the problem.

I didn't convert it to epub but got it in this format in the first place. Sigil doesn't show the fonts so I can't change type of font obfuscation.

As you said Calibre says that there's no link to the fonts... then why place them there? That's a bit weird to me. A previous book of the same author has the same problem. LOL

Think I'm going to just deleted them to reduce the size if I can't use them...

I didn't convert it to epub but got it in this format in the first place.

Oh OK, I misunderstood. I assumed you had a copy that was working properly but not on the Nook. Re-reading what you said reveals that you only say you can see the fonts in Calibre's book editor, whereas I thought that meant it was working, but you only meant they are listed with the files. In this case there isn't much you can do with that file, but see below.

Sigil doesn't show the fonts so I can't change type of font obfuscation.

Only the person who added the obfuscation can change it. However, Sigil should, at least show them, which suggests something has gone wrong with the fonts, especially as I think Sigil can work with both types of obfuscation. However, this is the first file I've dealt with that uses it, so I don't really know a lot about it.

As you said Calibre says that there's no link to the fonts...

The error "this file is not listed in the book manifest" is presumably caused by the botched conversion. All you can do is delete the fonts or add them to the manifest, but the latter doesn't work.*

Think I'm going to just deleted them to reduce the size if I can't use them...

I did find another version, it is almost identical except that it is only 430 kb as it looks like someone has already cleaned up the mess by deleting the fonts.

Using that I then added the fonts back in - I assume the retail version would look pretty much like this, perhaps with some minor variation in spacing (no I don't know why the file is smaller, perhaps that is something to do with font obfuscation):
https://anonfiles.com/file/8f91bafd039a63737df93739c6087f0d

* I did try and use the styles I used for the ePub in that last link in the file you provided but it didn't kick things into life (I also updated the manifest) which suggests that, somewhere along the line, the font files have been corrupted.

Ultimately, if it is still issue and my reverse engineering doesn't help, then you can put in a request for the retail ePub in the relevant forum here. I assume the book will be popular enough that you could scare up a copy. However, they don't seem to be doing anything fancy with the fonts (like using hand-written or monotype fonts for different forms of writing) so it might not be a big deal.

I'll probably leave it as it is. And just enjoy reading. Just was curious of the situation. I'll check later whether your version displays this font on the Nook.

I'll probably leave it as it is. And just enjoy reading.

Yes it is a perfectly readable copy, in fact the default font

Just was curious of the situation.

Me too!! I don't feel we've really got to the bottom of what has gone wrong and if there was a way to

I'll check later whether your version displays this font on the Nook.

Thanks, it'd be good to know. The fonts presumably won't work on iBooks (I could have tweaked it to work, but we were focused on the Nook), but they should work in the Nook. It'd still be good to hear if it does, as I don't have one to test it.

I checked just the file with added fonts and it opens normally but the formatting is a bit of resulting in space of one line between paragraphs plus when I check publisher defaults it exits the books. So no luck.