How to take a backup/export your kobo ebooks

I had an issue with my ebook reader – kobo, just wanted to test my ebook on another ebook reader – should be fine right? Turns out the books i bought and paid for on kobo don’t allow me to do that.

 

A quick google tells me there is a plugin called obok but it seems older and i ‘aint got no time fo dat!’ .  Plugged kobo in to my PC, told it to connect, opened a linux terminal and had a poke about . This is what i found.

velofille@tea:/media/velofille/KOBOeReader/.kobo$ ls
affiliate.conf  BookReader.sqlite  certificates  device.salt.conf  dict  guide  kepub  Kobo  KoboReader.sqlite  version
velofille@tea:/media/velofille/KOBOeReader/.kobo$ cd kepub/
velofille@tea:/media/velofille/KOBOeReader/.kobo/kepub$ ls -sh
total 28M
3.1M 0ebc1dcc-8ee2-4184-b89d-4ea7d63be35b  792K 642a7ebd-f337-421a-b285-db7f3034423d  496K c6f9076c-0f3d-4804-a2d8-dab922fde058
1.3M 2c1cadeb-805b-4f7c-866c-cc1a5b3a37df  384K 75a93a60-b844-4c15-aab3-264e05d2b9d2  1.5M cc2c97aa-478f-4909-98f6-57df0aedeab1
292K 2d7ff8d7-c55b-4ce7-b5c6-e2829dd0a181  320K 7dc7280d-3af5-445c-899a-2e9dc74c3fcc  764K e9fda9bc-b601-4b7f-a5bb-6f2e66285617
4.5M 349f9491-e5b5-449f-9e05-5969b374c986  796K 8a41e46c-9246-4cc3-9775-396fbed422ec  1.5M f4538279-26a6-45f7-af8a-22ecaf60f79b
832K 452e403a-301e-4ae8-adcb-2a063a0969b7  1.3M 9fd75d28-fb3e-4d6c-bbb1-6c17e4a2c699  1.7M fafe790d-3f52-4d3a-9fab-798f12114fba
1.7M 497eb736-14c9-4ac1-b3d3-14f930989485  324K b054220c-ad1b-42d4-b8d7-16a47b70aaa9  316K fdcc3a9e-4f6d-4f18-8c1f-82a5ccfacb13
1.7M 5c3fd797-79af-4fe6-80b5-abd5728f6c7a  1.4M b5755009-3b29-447e-bf24-1821fc728d86
2.1M 5fa748aa-8507-4674-b94f-a55fbd860e18  792K c1fd4250-b11c-4b3a-b99e-437405ea1fee
velofille@tea:/media/velofille/KOBOeReader/.kobo/kepub$ file *
0ebc1dcc-8ee2-4184-b89d-4ea7d63be35b: EPUB document
2c1cadeb-805b-4f7c-866c-cc1a5b3a37df: Zip data (MIME type "application/epub+zip"?)
2d7ff8d7-c55b-4ce7-b5c6-e2829dd0a181: EPUB document
349f9491-e5b5-449f-9e05-5969b374c986: EPUB document
452e403a-301e-4ae8-adcb-2a063a0969b7: EPUB document
497eb736-14c9-4ac1-b3d3-14f930989485: EPUB document
5c3fd797-79af-4fe6-80b5-abd5728f6c7a: EPUB document
5fa748aa-8507-4674-b94f-a55fbd860e18: EPUB document
642a7ebd-f337-421a-b285-db7f3034423d: EPUB document
75a93a60-b844-4c15-aab3-264e05d2b9d2: EPUB document
7dc7280d-3af5-445c-899a-2e9dc74c3fcc: EPUB document
8a41e46c-9246-4cc3-9775-396fbed422ec: EPUB document
9fd75d28-fb3e-4d6c-bbb1-6c17e4a2c699: EPUB document
b054220c-ad1b-42d4-b8d7-16a47b70aaa9: EPUB document
b5755009-3b29-447e-bf24-1821fc728d86: EPUB document
c1fd4250-b11c-4b3a-b99e-437405ea1fee: EPUB document
c6f9076c-0f3d-4804-a2d8-dab922fde058: EPUB document
cc2c97aa-478f-4909-98f6-57df0aedeab1: EPUB document
e9fda9bc-b601-4b7f-a5bb-6f2e66285617: EPUB document
f4538279-26a6-45f7-af8a-22ecaf60f79b: EPUB document
fafe790d-3f52-4d3a-9fab-798f12114fba: EPUB document
fdcc3a9e-4f6d-4f18-8c1f-82a5ccfacb13: EPUB document

Bingo! If you are in windows, just turn on hidden files, find the .kobo directory, then the kepub directory inside that. I copied those all off, renamed them to .epub and then imported the into calibre.

Rename:

velofille@tea:~/kobooks$ rename s/$/.epub/ *

As it turned out, the ebook was fine, just had an odd font 🙂