Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#61

Post by MrMember » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 3:45 PM UTC

anatoly wrote: post #46

manojlds wrote: post #18

What are folks using for Audible? Open Audible? It wasn't pulling my library correctly last time I tried.

1. Download your own AAX files (using the Audible download manager or search around for some ways to do it w/o the download manager). 2. Find out your 'activation keys' using ffprobe and the inAudible-NG project, see instructions here: https://github.com/inAudible-NG/tables/blob/master/README.md . Needs to be done only once for your Audible account. 3. Use ffmpeg with --activation_bytes to convert AAX to MP3 or other…

I recently used AAXtoMP3 to back up my Audible library. It worked quite well.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#62

Post by superhuzza » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #60

I have this great idea for a business: "ewhiteout" for ebooks. Basically you can selectively "patch" ebooks to censor profanity, sex scenes, violence, (and more) depending on your tastes and on what you like (and don't like) to consume. However, this is extremely unpopular with authors/publishers for the same reason that censoring movies is extremely unpopular with Hollywood (hence why companies like VidAngel are con…

Interesting, I'm so far outside the target market for this I was very skeptical initially. But as you point out, I'm sure there are many communities that would make heavy use of this.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#63

Post by Kevin_S » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 3:48 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #60

I have this great idea for a business: "ewhiteout" for ebooks. Basically you can selectively "patch" ebooks to censor profanity, sex scenes, violence, (and more) depending on your tastes and on what you like (and don't like) to consume. However, this is extremely unpopular with authors/publishers for the same reason that censoring movies is extremely unpopular with Hollywood (hence why companies like VidAngel are con…

I knew someone that used the vidangel service, but I don't really get it. If you remove the cursing/sex/violence from much of the works that use them, does it not remove context that is necessary? You mention ASoIaF, which is littered with all three right? How can you consume a "patched" version and still retain the themes and messages of these works?

If you don't want to be exposed to these things, why not just only consume content that does not have them in the first place?

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#64

Post by superhuzza » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 3:49 PM UTC

kranner wrote: post #35

superkuh wrote: post #22

Sometimes it's just better to pirate the books even if you've paid for them. The formatting and error correction is usually better and they stick to epub and mobi standards. As an aside: I was helping a friend out who owned a Kindle recently and shocked to learn it can't read mobi or epub. Why would anyone buy such a crap e-reader?

Kindles are awesome e-readers. They can read .mobi files, the battery time is in weeks and the e-ink display is very easy on the eyes.

Yes but they don't support epub, which is frustrating (at least mine doesn't). Easy problem to fix but it seems the majority of ebooks online follow this format.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#65

Post by ben7799 » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 3:50 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #52

ben7799 wrote: post #47

I've backed up my eBooks from time to time & cracked some books over the years that I had purchased & wanted to put on another device but a lot of the time I don't worry about it. I got my first kindle in 2010 and bounced over to Barnes & Noble for a while with a Nook but then came back to the Amazon ecosystem. I've bought hundreds of books over the years. But just like paper books there are a lot of books that I rea…

I have a Kobo and haven't had any complaints (though they're often not as cheap as Amazon though). P.s. I wasn't sure if you were saying this, but I don't think Kobo has anything to do with B&N.

I was just mentioning that I haven't really given Kobo a shot... so I could be in the dark and Kobo is better.

But I hear enough through the woodwork that I have been under the impression using Kobo would be trading off annoyances with some things better & some worse. Mostly what I hear is Kobo often has some hardware advantages but has some different software annoyances.

What format the book uses is a very minor concern to most of us who just read the books. Epub vs Mobi vs KF8 or whatever has no impact on me 99% of the time. The only time it'd really matter is hopping around between platforms and having to convert stuff.

If Kobo started having a huge advantage I'd be more likely to buy a Kobo and keep my Amazon library with Amazon and start buying Kobo books there. I wouldn't go on a big project to convert all my Amazon bought books to a Kobo compatible format. Cause once done I wouldn't actually need/want to re-read all those books on the Kobo.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#66

Post by lucb1e » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

manojlds wrote: post #18

What are folks using for Audible? Open Audible? It wasn't pulling my library correctly last time I tried.

This Q&A is relevant: https://askubuntu.com/questions/16918/how-to-listen-to-audib...

The second answer (which is the top voted one) is my answer. It's basically using ffmpeg with -codec copy.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#67

Post by sfotm » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #60

I have this great idea for a business: "ewhiteout" for ebooks. Basically you can selectively "patch" ebooks to censor profanity, sex scenes, violence, (and more) depending on your tastes and on what you like (and don't like) to consume. However, this is extremely unpopular with authors/publishers for the same reason that censoring movies is extremely unpopular with Hollywood (hence why companies like VidAngel are con…

I don't really see religious/conservative populations going out of their way to abridge a book that includes scenes that they need need "whited out". There are plenty of other books to read, and they'd probably prefer not to support works they disapprove of, anyway. That's even assuming that the books make sense with the sex and violence torn out; if you were to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with everything a puritan found objectionable torn out of it, there wouldn't be a very sensible story left.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#68

Post by harshreality » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

maskros wrote: post #9

Calibre is great, if you configure it properly. By default, converting books to another format will change the layout! Destroying the original formatting by default is unacceptable behaviour to be honest, so user beware. For Kindle, I suggest using the KindleUnpack plugin instead; which can extract the EPUB file embedded in the AZW/KF8 format file losslessly for use with EPUB based readers without having to worry abo…

Converting ebooks doesn't destroy formatting unless you convert to a formatting-limited format like mobi or rtf as an intermediate step.

kf8 and epub are roughly equivalent.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#69

Post by jedimastert » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #60

I have this great idea for a business: "ewhiteout" for ebooks. Basically you can selectively "patch" ebooks to censor profanity, sex scenes, violence, (and more) depending on your tastes and on what you like (and don't like) to consume. However, this is extremely unpopular with authors/publishers for the same reason that censoring movies is extremely unpopular with Hollywood (hence why companies like VidAngel are con…

> Honestly, I don't understand why since at the end of the day everyone gets paid, and indeed get paid more than they normally would have (I guess it's more of a "you are altering my art so people can consume it in ways I didn't intend" attitude).

The problem with "you are altering my art so people can consume it in ways I didn't intend" can be a purely economic one, as it's misrepresenting the "brand" that is the author. If you removed the "vulgar" things than you are changing the product in a non-controlled way. It's why some directors or writers remove their names after producers or whatever external controllers get a hold of it. It doesn't represent their creative abilities. They could put out two versions, but I think that the opinions of most authors that if the sex scene could be removed, it didn't need to be there, and it wouldn't have been there in the first place.

It's removing an aspect of the brand.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#70

Post by ses1984 » Tue, Jul 02, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

freddie_mercury wrote: post #49

ses1984 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why it's bad, but I know the end result is poorly laid out. It's always super obvious I'm reading something passed through calibre conversion, because accent marks will be missing, intra chapter breaks will be missing, punctuation is messed up, etc.

Er, pretty much by definition, when it does a good job you wouldn't know it had been passed through calibre conversion. So how do you count up those "successes" and measure them against the "failures" to determine whether, on a probabilistic kind of basis, it does a good or bad job?

Good point, in my case I've only done about 10 books and I can remember each one, 100% converted wit obvious problems.