LibTalk - Forum for reading entusiasts

1g84 wrote: 19 Apr 2026, 14:20 I would like to suggest adding a feature to filter out web novels and adult content. I am currently trying to find the latest publications, but the search results are often overwhelmed by those genres.

Webnovels shouldn't be on there anyway as they weren't published. They are slowly flagged for removal as people have spare downloads to check them. Most don't make it through moderation.

A no adult content filter would be great. It'd fail on those adult novels that aren't properly tagged as 18+, but by doing so make it much easier to find those to tag them.

bisQuit wrote: 19 Apr 2026, 08:58 Please add sorting by the year of publication to the booklist.
Сurrently, it only sorts by the date the book was added by the booklist creator

Hello! Thank you for the suggestion; we'll add it to our list of ideas for future releases.

Hi, I'd love a feature to check the internals of a book before I download it. Many times the epubs I download from ZLib are poor conversions from another format with messed up formatting. I'd benefit greatly from being able to check the insides and make sure its fine before wasting a precious download from the quota. This would also help to weed out bad books.

SleepingPanda wrote: 20 Apr 2026, 12:35 Hi, I'd love a feature to check the internals of a book before I download it. Many times the epubs I download from ZLib are poor conversions from another format with messed up formatting. I'd benefit greatly from being able to check the insides and make sure its fine before wasting a precious download from the quota. This would also help to weed out bad books.

Open it to read online. It won't count as a download, and you'll get an idea what the book is like. It won't look exactly the same, but it will be similar enough to make your decision.

Ligia wrote: 15 Apr 2026, 01:41 You can create a Z-Alert for such files. When a file with a similar name or topic is uploaded, you'll receive an email.

how does one create a Z alert?

Zapkode wrote: 14 Apr 2026, 04:31 Hello my lovelies,
I was wondering how I would be able to reach you all about this.
You currently have a way to request books, however, there is no was to request books that are only kindle books. Self published. If it started as an ebook it doesn't have a 978 beginning isbn - in most cases the only identifying number is the ASIN - is there a way that this could be added as a way to request books? please thank you?!?!
Zapkode

I am seeing that we still cannot request books that only have ASIN to look them up, this makes me sad. They are kindle only book, and when I pay for the donations - I would like to see features that allow me to request the ability to get books I am missing to sets, I'd like to read.

Vika wrote: 20 Apr 2026, 19:07

SleepingPanda wrote: 20 Apr 2026, 12:35 Hi, I'd love a feature to check the internals of a book before I download it. Many times the epubs I download from ZLib are poor conversions from another format with messed up formatting. I'd benefit greatly from being able to check the insides and make sure its fine before wasting a precious download from the quota. This would also help to weed out bad books.

Open it to read online. It won't count as a download, and you'll get an idea what the book is like. It won't look exactly the same, but it will be similar enough to make your decision.

I've tried that but that's still not enough. Because even though the layout might be fine in most cases, there are cases where files are still missing important fonts for rendering non-latin script and these types of issues won't be noticed until a reader does a full read of the book and then notices the text isn't rendering correctly. The only way to accurately narrow these types of issues down beforehand is to see an epub's css file.

SleepingPanda wrote: 20 Apr 2026, 20:50 The only way to accurately narrow these types of issues down beforehand is to see an epub's css file.

Even then it doesn't always work. Seen books where everything technically works, but its very clear someone's swapped out the font file. Or some random local css has been stuck in a style tag in the individual pages. Really, you'd need access to the entire archive before you download it.

Vika wrote: 20 Apr 2026, 21:02

SleepingPanda wrote: 20 Apr 2026, 20:50 The only way to accurately narrow these types of issues down beforehand is to see an epub's css file.

Even then it doesn't always work. Seen books where everything technically works, but its very clear someone's swapped out the font file. Or some random local css has been stuck in a style tag in the individual pages. Really, you'd need access to the entire archive before you download it.

Exactly. A lot of books uploaded to Z Lib are poor conversions from other formats using calibre or conversions from pdfs. But at least seeing a basic list of the file contents published in the metadata section of the book on Z Lib would go a long way to improving this situation.

Maybe I'm asking in the wrong forum and this could be a feature of Literata instead since it loads the book for viewing anyway.

SleepingPanda wrote: 20 Apr 2026, 21:54 Exactly. A lot of books uploaded to Z Lib are poor conversions from other formats using calibre or conversions from pdfs. But at least seeing a basic list of the file contents published in the metadata section of the book on Z Lib would go a long way to improving this situation.

Heh, I'm guilty of that too. Sometimes the only digital copy of a book I can find anywhere is an old mobi or pdb. So, conversion through calibre at least gets it into a modern workable file format. Even if you then have to go all flamethrower Aliens-style on the resultant book to burn out all the super useless new classes calibre likes to spawn everywhere.

I'd rather we have a crap book than no book.

With you on conversions from PDF to anything else though. Convert it to PDF/E or to EPS. Those are about the only valid conversion types. Static and dynamic formats are just too fundamentally different.

I have successfully converted epubs to PDF, and its a nightmare. Strip all the data out of the epub into a word file, dump the formatting completely. Recreate in word, move images into place, rebuild tables. Dump word output into Acrobat, have it make the pdf from scratch. Its slow, tedious, takes most of a week for one book, but you can't tell it was ever an epub. Would have to do similar to convert a pdf into an epub. All existing formatting must go, back to raw data only, and have a WYSIWYG page editor make it to save some time, then add the css back by hand. Not remotely quick, but its the only actually effective way.

Problem is, convincing most people to do it that way is a losing battle, precisely because it is so much work. Why do that when you can just click one button, wait five minutes and get something borderline unreadable with no accessibility features? Sigh

Maybe I'm asking in the wrong forum and this could be a feature of Literata instead since it loads the book for viewing anyway.

Certainly not a bad thought. Both avenues are valid.

If its done that way, it'll most likely have to be somewhere out of the way, as most people have no idea what that stuff is. Heck the number of people who don't even realise epub is an archive format in the first place... It would be tricky to place the internals list in such a way it doesn't confuse the average user.