Embedding Russian/Cyrillic/Unicode Fonts in EPUB books

I'd like to read Russian literature in its original language. So I downloaded Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and put it in my Nook.

1. The original format of the book was a Word document. I had to save it as text file and convert its character set from Windows Cyrillic (CP1251) to UTF-8 using Iconv.
   
   

   iconv -f CP1251 -t UTF-8 annakarenina.txt > annakarenina-u.txt

   
   
   
2. I opened the text file with Sigil, formatted it and saved it as EPUB file.
   
   
3. Put Unicode fonts in the EPUB file that have a cyrillic range. You can do so with 7-zip. I recommend Book Antiqua, MinionPro or DejaVu Serif.
   
   
   • antquab.ttf
   • antquabi.ttf
   • antquai.ttf
   • bkant.ttf
   
   
   
4. Edit content.opf so that it has references to the fonts:
   
   

   <item id="font.bold" href="fonts/antquab.ttf" media-type="application/x-font-truetype"/>
   
   <item id="font.bolditalic" href="fonts/antquabi.ttf" media-type="application/x-font-truetype"/>
   
   <item id="font.italic" href="fonts/antquai.ttf" media-type="application/x-font-truetype"/>
   
   <item id="font.regular" href="fonts/bkant.ttf" media-type="application/x-font-truetype"/>

   
   
5. Edit the stylesheet.
   
   

   @font-face {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua";
     font-weight: normal;
     font-style: normal;
     src: url(../fonts/bkant.ttf);
     }
     @font-face {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua";
     font-weight: normal;
     font-style: italic;
     src: url(../fonts/antquai.ttf);
     }
     @font-face {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua";
     font-weight: bold;
     font-style: normal;
     src: url(../fonts/antquab.ttf);
     }
     @font-face {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua";
     font-weight: bold;
     font-style: italic;
     src: url(../fonts/antquabi.ttf);
     }
     a {
       color: inherit;
       text-decoration: inherit;
       }
     em, i {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif;
     font-weight: normal;
     font-style: italic;
     }
     strong, b, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif;
     font-weight: bold;
     font-style: normal;
     }
     p {
     text-indent: 2em;
     margin-top: 0pt;
     margin-bottom: 0pt;
     }
     body {
     font-family: "Book Antiqua", serif;
     margin-left: 5pt;
     margin-right: 5pt;
     text-align: justify;
     }
     .sgc-1 {text-align: center}
     .sgc-2 {text-align: right}

   
   

To see how a Russian ebook might look on your Nook or any other reader, download and try my ebook Anna Karerina.