From d811b6364af58d7d5da2e97e9c259c6ecebdfd48 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Kovid Goyal <kovid@kovidgoyal.net>
Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2026 11:33:46 +0530
Subject: [PATCH] Fix a bug in KEPUB markup removal when there are empty kobo
 spans

---
 src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/polish/kepubify.py | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/polish/kepubify.py b/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/polish/kepubify.py
index 2ade9b8819..9a40106332 100644
--- a/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/polish/kepubify.py
+++ b/src/calibre/ebooks/oeb/polish/kepubify.py
@@ -271,7 +271,7 @@ def unwrap(span: etree.Element) -> None:
     if len(span):
         p.insert(idx, span[0])
     else:
-        text = span.text + (span.tail or '')
+        text = (span.text or '') + (span.tail or '')
         if idx > 0:
             prev = p[idx-1]
             prev.tail = (prev.tail or '') + text