How to re-format ebooks after importing

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1

Hi. I have begun importing books into LingQ, but as many of you must already know, LingQ has simply created lessons based on the number of words imported — I understand that it truncates each lesson at 2,000 words. While I can learn from this, I want to make the books’ formats mirror the actual books to make reading more pleasurable.

For instance, the first book I imported has 16 short chapters. From this import LinqQ has created a course with 3 lessons. The first lesson has chapters 1-6 and most of chapter 7. The second lesson begins with the end of chapter 7 and continues through most of chapter 15. The third lesson begins with the end of chapter 15 and concludes with chapter 16.

Is it possible for me to edit this current “course with 3 lessons” so that the book will appear as a single course with 16 lessons, with each lesson representing an individual chapter? If so, can I do this after the book has been imported, or must I prepare the book for this prior to importing it? In the latter case, for instance, should I separate the book’s Epub or TXT file into individual files for each chapter, etc.? Can I then collect these lessons into one course inside of LingQ?

I have been scouring LingQ, this forum, Youtube and Google at large for information, but I’m not getting very far. I am considering importing a duplicate of the book and playing around with things to see if something works. (I am paranoid about ruining what I have already imported.)

Any advice or pointing me to articles, blog posts, topics within this forum, or Youtube videos, etc., would be much appreciated. And if I discover any solution on my own I will be sure to follow up here and post what I learn.

Thank you.

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2

I’ve been having the same issue. I don’t think there’s a way to get past the word limit.

I think it’s easiest (and less prone to bugs) if you format the text (and audio files if it’s an audiobook) before importing them. What I do for longer books is make each chapter a lesson (as you described) using Wordpad to edit the text files. In LingQ you can create a course by importing a chapter (as a course rather than a lesson) and then adding the other chapters to it, so that the course represents the whole book.

For shorter books, I cut the book into parts that are all just a bit smaller than LingQ’s limit. So Part 1 might be chapters 1-5; Part 2 might be 6-10, and Part 3, 11-16.

Then if it’s an audiobook, I use the free version of Movavi Video Editor to cut and/or splice together the chapters so they fit the parts I’ve created, then I save the files as MP3s so LingQ can recognize them. Then add the sound files, generate the timestamps (make sure to wait for it to finish saving), and you’re all set.

4

Yes. I import my books a chapter at a time, though even so some get split into two or more chapters.

I’m usually working with PDF which I convert to TXT with Calibre, so I can edit easily. I prefer Notepad++ ((https://notepad-plus-plus.org/).

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