How To Fix Formatting Issues On Kobo Clara Bw Novels?

Some downloaded fanfiction on my Kobo Clara looks awful. Paragraphs merge, weird symbols show up. Are there simple formatting fixes for sideloaded novels?
2025-07-28 04:10:35
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10 Answers

Best Answer
Yori Omojesu
Yori Omojesu
Typically, issues with displaying e-books on the Kobo Clara BW (such as uneven spacing between lines or strange rendering of fonts) are fixed by converting them to an EPUB or KEPUB file using Calibre. If your e-book is not displaying correctly, try a soft reset of your e-reader as well. If you’re looking for a new book to sideload, ‘CLAIMED BY THE DEMON KING: DARK ROMANCE’ reads beautifully in simple EPUB with clearly separated chapters and minimal embedded styling, thus avoiding the majority of problems with rendering on e-ink screens.
2026-08-02
Vera
Vera
I have experienced some problems with the formatting of my Kobo Clara BW while reading novels. Most of the problems were caused by the text being too small, too large or even having strange line breaks. In order to avoid these problems, I convert my novels in advance to EPUB or KEPUB files using Calibre, the free ebook management software. Here I can change the font size, the margins and the line spacing as I like before transferring the ebook to my Kobo. In addition to this, I change the ‘Fonts’ and ‘Page Layout’ settings on my Kobo for individual ebooks. In most cases a switch to a different font (e.g. ‘Georgia’ or ‘Arial’) already solves the problem. Only in very rare cases I have to use Sigil, the free EPUB editor, to search for and remove hidden errors in the formatting of a given ebook. This, of course, is somewhat more complex, but it works.
2025-07-30
Yasmin
Yasmin
To see how books will look on the Kobo Clara BW before you add them to your device, you need to upload a compatible book file (for example EPUB or KEPUB). As opposed to reflowable e-Books, PDFs are not very suitable for reading on an e-Reader, so in most cases you will need to convert them first. For me Calibre is the ideal tool for this purpose – I usually choose the 'Kobo' output profile to make the maximum use of the book’s formatting.

Inconsistent spacing, unusual paragraph breaks between lines and a host of other formatting ‘fiddly bits’ can mostly be attributed to poor formatting of the ‘originally’ created source files. As I sometimes manually tweak the HTML and CSS when using Calibre to ‘Edit book’, (margin sizes, font size etc) I will also sometimes revert back to the Kobo’s original font settings (usually found in menu(Settings)>Device>Font), in a futile attempt to return the text to a more sensible, aligned format.

Occasionally a chapter may appear to be missing when in fact the book is intact. Occasionally 'Polish books' in the 'Edit book' dialog can solve this problem by correcting the metadata for the book's table of contents and chapter markers. If, after replete cleanup, your book is still not appearing to be entirely intact it is possible that the problem is a result of a downloaded file being faulty, perhaps even in some way corrupted, and you should retrieve a fresh copy from the site on which you downloaded the original book.
2025-08-01
Jade
Jade
Bad formatting can ruin reading on the Kobo Clara BW as much as poor choice of book. The best way to start is to ensure the book is an EPUB (the Kobo supports most EPUBS but some PDFs too).

When I come across e-books with jagged text or lines that overlap each other, I turn to the very powerful tool that is Calibre. Within this powerful tool, I change the book to the ‘Heuristic processing’ option as this can uncover and fix hidden problems within the e-book. I then make sure to change the line space and the margin so that it matches my preferences as to how I read.

Occasionally, it will not convert properly, and look awful on the Kobo. If this is the case, I connect the Kobo to my computer in USB mode rather than transferring wirelessly. Also, I make sure to correctly edit the metadata in Calibre for books with problems in the chapters, etc. If I do these things, all of my books read perfectly and make for great reading sessions.
2025-08-01
Paul Elliott
Paul Elliott
Corrupt microSD card? The Clara BW has internal storage. If in the past you had used a microSD card via an adapter (some models of eReaders supported this in the past) and the card is now no longer working, corrupted even, it is possible that the book(s) on it have become corrupted too. Try to move the offending book to the internal memory of your eReader. If you don’t have an SD card to test with, then this is a non issue for you.

(One more thing): even if you've removed a microSD card from your Clara ever, it's possible that the database is still pointing to locations on the now-unplugged card. A factory reset will remove these references in due course. (Storage corruption is very rare on modern Kobos, which all use solid internal storage. But when it does occur, it has a few distinct symptoms: books won't open; they appear to be reading only but show 0% progress; text appears to be garbled. You can perform a disk check on the card in question on a computer to see if there are any errors.)
2026-07-30
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