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zuppy | 1 year ago

my biggest fear from moving out of kindle is losing access to the store. they did a good job securing most of the authors and books.

what’s your source for books and how often it happens for the books you’re looking for to be unavailable?

discuss

order

ornornor|1 year ago

Libgen, #bookz on irc, and dedrm plugin for calibre will let you get drm free copies of books you already own so you can use them however you see fit

digikazi|1 year ago

Sadly Libgen seems to have been down for the past couple of months, there is some discussion whether it will ever come back or not.

b112|1 year ago

This is why I buy an android e-ink tablet.

My needs are unique, all of our needs are unique I suppose, but I want epub but also want to use the Kindle app (in cases of them being the only place to get a book).

I worry about firmware updates(security), but also my needs do not require the tablet being online constantly. So in a case like this, not a phone, not online, I only bring the wifi up to download books from Amazon via their Android app.

Otherwise, I copy epubs over via USB.

This is the middle ground.

I've been quite happy with the Meebook E-Reader M7.

eek2121|1 year ago

FWIW actual kindles don’t need to be online except if you are buying a book or transferring one via their website.

Older Kindles did have an optional cellular connection, but that was to make purchases easier.

Kindles aren’t limited to the Amazon store. Your kindle has an email address you can email books to, and there are ways to transfer via USB, etc.

zuppy|1 year ago

thanks, i researched into this and bought a boox go color 7. now i can have both the kindle app (for books i can't buy anywhere else or already purchased) and new books outside of kindle app. bonus, it has text to speech which kindle doesn't really want to let you do so it won't lower audible purchases. not the same quality as audoble, of course, but free.

londons_explore|1 year ago

google search "book_name epub"

nolok|1 year ago

This is rather terrible for supporting authors though. I read a lot of scifi from small authors who self publish on kindle direct publishing, and I would rather they get my money for their work.

And yes I can pay then find the epub (and not all are available, due to small author), but the experience is then much worse.

a-french-anon|1 year ago

`filetype:epub book_name` should be tried first, in my opinion.

zuppy|1 year ago

... but this does not replicate the kindle one-stop store experience. and looking on the kobo store doesn't help either, i wanted the experience for someone who actually migrated from kindle. i may find the books i'm looking for now, but what are the struggles for people who actually used it? do they come later than kindle, are they using multiple shops, etc.

edit; yes, i know about the pirating options. i'm not talking about those.

magnetowasright|1 year ago

If there's no DRM-free version available to purchase, I buy from the kobo store (it's very easy to access different region stores which can impact book availability) and I then remove the DRM. Library genesis is also an option, of course.

pmx|1 year ago

You can browse the Kobo book store here https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebooks

_thisdot|1 year ago

What are the prices compared to Amazon's? Books are generally cheaper here in the subcontinent. I did a price comparison of 30 books and found out that Kindle editions cost significantly lesser than Kobo. And Kobo editions cost slightly higher than paperbacks.

The total amount for these 30 randomly selected books came to: Paperback price: ₹13,017 (~$149) Kobo price: ₹13,252 (~$152) Kindle price: ₹9,171 (~$105)

broken-kebab|1 year ago

I don't know if it still works, but the last time I checked it was possible to un-DRM (de-DRM?), and convert amazon format to normal epub, and read it everywhere

criddell|1 year ago

Depends on which version of the DRM. KFX hasn’t been broken yet. It’s been a bit of a cat-and-mouse game where the DeDRM people make some progress then Amazon tweaks something and they have to start over. There are some workarounds that involve getting Amazon to give you an older version of the file, but then you lose the typography improvements present in later versions of Amazon’s ebook format.

benkaiser|1 year ago

Yeah there's a way to do this with Calibre + some plugins on windows. I tried on my Mac but it was unsuccessful.

rr808|1 year ago

I use the libby app on Kobo to get books from the library. Its just what I need. I can add epubs and pdfs from dropbox but never use that any more.

nunez|1 year ago

ebooks.com has loads of books on the platform, though they're DRMed. libby's great also.

no need to be locked into kindle anymore.

transferring books is also easy. you can install Calibre on your computer, connect the Kindle to it via USB and transfer. if you're into self-hosted, you can run Calibre on a server, either as an installed binary or in a container, and send books to it via email or dropbox.