Getting We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves in Epub Format
The first problem you run into is that most legal ebook sources for this book are locked into Kindle’s proprietary format or provide only PDFs, neither of which renders properly on most non-Kindle devices. I spent about two hours trying to reflow a PDF version only to give up because the pagination and caption placement were tied to a specific page size. The straightforward path is purchasing the official epub from Barnes & Noble or Apple Books. At the time of writing, the standard edition runs about $12.99 and comes with active table of contents links and chapter heading styling. That said, if you already have a Kindle or paperback copy and just want an epub for a specific device that doesn't support the original file type, there are technical workarounds worth knowing about. Here is what actually works in practice. I use Calibre as a conversion tool between formats. You open Calibre, add your existing ebook file, right-click and select Convert books, then choose EPUB as the output format. The settings you need to check are under Structure Detection — make sure the option for detecting chapter starts is set to automatically, which usually means it looks for patterns like "Chapter One" or "Chapter 2" in the text.
The edge case that tripped me up was when the source file had inline CSS for font sizing. The resulting epub looked fine on my laptop but broke on my phone because the absolute pixel values didn't scale. The fix was opening the converted file in Calibre's E-book Editing tool, searching for the style block, and changing the fixed font sizes to relative em units. It took maybe five minutes once I knew what to look for. Another thing most guides don't mention: if your source PDF contains scanned pages rather than selectable text, any conversion you run through Calibre will still produce an epub, but it will be essentially images with no reflow capability. Check before you convert. Open the original file and try to select and copy a paragraph of text. If you can't highlight it, you're dealing with a scan and will need OCR software before conversion will be useful. I ran into a situation where the source epub had embedded fonts that weren't licensed for redistribution. The book displayed fine until I moved it to a different reader app, at which point the fonts defaulted to Times New Roman and broke the intended typography. The solution was downloading the same edition from a different retailer and comparing the two files with a diff tool to identify the font packages. Replacing the non-standard fonts with system fonts resolved it without affecting the layout.
For people who primarily read on physical tablets with e-ink screens, you might actually prefer a well-formatted Mobi or AZW3 file over epub, since those formats render more predictably on older Kindle hardware. The conversion process is the same through Calibre, just swap the output extension. If you need the book quickly and don't mind supporting the author directly, the official ebook retailers are the least headache route. If you are converting your own files, Calibre handles the heavy lifting and the specific troubleshooting steps above usually save another hour or two of frustration that wouldn't show up in a standard tutorial.
Get the Full Details
