Kindle !
It was a long dream to have a ebook reader to read the books easily.
I love paper books much. But not all the books I read are available in paper.
Mostly I read the english books I read will be around Free Open Software, Its philosophy, Documentation for programming languages like Python, Ruby etc. Reading them on laptop is fine. But was looking for ebook reader experience, as reading for hours in laptop is a painful one.
Finally, two days back, got a kindle.
Kidle supports the ebooks in mobi and awz3 format.
Most of the english books are available in that format.We can get tons of free ebooks for kindle in english.
For Tamil?
Tamil books I read involves various areas like novels, literature, short stories, philosophy etc.
Google is not helping me to find out one single Tamil book in mobi format.
Kindle 4.1.0 has native Tamil support and it shows the font little nice, if we convert some html books into mobi using the Free Open Source Ebook management software “Calibre“. calibre-ebook.com
Because, it is not showing the tamil unicode fonts well, I was much worried. The whole purpose of kindle would be gone just to read english books. I dont want this to happen.
How to read tamil in kindle then?
PDF is the only option to read the tamil book. But the A4 page sized pdf books are tough to read in knidle.
We have to change the orientation to horizontal. and have to click more to read a page.
Create PDF for kindle
We can get a lot of Free Tamil books in the site “Project Madurai”
http://www.projectmadurai.org/pmworks.html
Using the unicode HTML files, we can create Kindle sized PDF files and they are displayed in kindle as awesome.
How to create PDF for kindle?
A Page with a size of 9cm width and 12cm height is a perfect match for kindle to read.
We can use LibreOffice writer to create such pdf files.
1. Set units as centimeter
Tools->options->LibreOffice Writer->General->Measurement unit
select “centimeter” from the list.
“OK” to apply this change.
2.
Copy the required HTML page content from Project Madurai site or any other site.
3.
Open a text editor like gedit ot kate.
Paste the copied book content in text file to be free from any annoying formatiing issue.
Copy this text content again.
4.
Create a new Document in LibreOffice writer.
Format->Page->Page(tab)
Set width as 9cm and Height as 12 cm
Set left,right,top,bottom margins as 0.5 cm
“OK” to set this.
5.
Paste the content copied from the text file.
Select All.
Set Font as “Lohit Tamil” and Size as 9.
5.
Export this to pdf file.
Copy this pdf file into the kindle using the usb cable.
These are the steps to create a kindle sized PDF file.
The Tamil PDF is displayed fine now as
What Next?
We need the Tamil books in HTML format to create such Kindle sized PDF files.
Unfortunately, we can not get much books or sites except “Project Madurai” to get tamil books as unicode HTML or text format.
Let us expect the tamil book publishers release their books in mobi format or HTML format.
Reading the Tamil PDF files in Kindle is a great experience. It makes me to read more and I can not do any thing than reading a book.
I feel like going back to my school days when the days were filled with only books.
The Roads I Go 
இந்தப் பதிவும் தமிழ்ல இருந்திருந்தா நல்லா இருந்திருக்குமே! 🙂
யாரு பாஸ் நீங்க?
அடியேன் சீனிவாசன் 🙂
excellent..wonderfully said..
Excellent. Thanks.
Excellent. I dont agree with Vignesh.thanks
Thanks Shrinivasan, Appreciate the instructions.
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It.s already a year now. Is there any improvement in your reseacrch? I need some idea to publish tamil eBooks . I am looking forward your reply.
Yes. Started http://Freetamilebooks.com
Check this.
We use pressbooks.com to create ebooks.
Good Work Srini
தாங்கள் தயாரித்த mobi format தமிழ் நூல்களை எங்கேயாவது பதிவேற்றம் செய்யலாமே
Adding them at http://FreeTamilEbooks.com
http://Freetamilebooks.com
may i know how to make unicode file. For instance i have got a pdf file with tamil fonts now how should i convert it to unicode so that i can copy that to libre write plz help me
You cannot tamil text from PDF files.
That is the very bad bug in PDF files.
You have retype them.
Thanks for ur instant reply. Can u find me a solution. I have got a tamil pdf book 315 pages but to support for kindle with ur 9cm X 12cm paper size plz with font size 12
Plz get me a solution Cuz it cannot be re typed its 315 page pdf file:) and its a story book that’s not available in project Madurai
How was the PDF file generated?
Do you have the source file?
If you have source file, we can try.
Else, you have to retype it.
There is no other way.
It’s a downloaded file but able to copy the texts:)
If you don’t have source, retyping is the only way.
Hi shrinivasan,
It’s a nice article. I hated pdf format in kindle as it slow in rendering and turning page. So I made two changes in your method. First after copying the HTML content from project madurai I pasted it in notepad and while saving I changed the encoding format to UTF-8. When using calibre I converted the txt file to mobi format. While doing it, in the options —> look and feel —-> embed font family —> I chose Latha font and ticked embed referenced fonts.
Now when I load this mobi file in kindle, it displays like a charm like any other english book. Now its awesome to read tamil books in kindle. With some more efforts I could add even index, etc while converting. Hope it would be useful for others.
That’s nice. Will try this.
you article is very useful for me thanks for that .if u have any new method of convert or Tamil books let me known thanks
Excellent article, it helped me a lot to read a tamil novel(Ponniyin Selvan)
how does page turn works? does PDF support page turn in kindle? mobi format is proprietory. epub is the open standard in which html content is embeded. books should be released in epub format.
Yes. Page turn is working with PDF in kindle.
As kindle does not support non English languages, 6 inch PDF is the only way to read tamil in kindle.
My kindle paperwhite supports tamil. I am able to read tamil books in mobi and epub format. I can provide a sample tamil ebook in mobi in case required for checking.
Thanks. Please send a screenshot and sample mobi file.
Send to tshrinivasan@gmail.com
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Thank you for the wonderful work you do. I just downloaded few .mobi files from your website and it works like a breeze on my new Kindle Paperwhite i bought last week. Thank you once again and keep up the good work.
Hi, I am using an alternate method to creating a PDF or copy-pasting-html-onto-txt methods. I have installed the ‘Send to Kindle’ extension for Chrome browser. When I view a Unicode page from Project Madurai, I click the ‘Send to Kindle’ button on the browser and the page shows-up perfectly on my Kindle, without the flickery PDF rendering. Thanks!
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You can use k2pdf software to convert any PDF to 9/12 page sized PDF file in one-step.
http://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/download/
You have done an excellent job Mr. Shrini!!!!