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Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

sonyaellenmann.com

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Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#101

Post by maskros »

harshreality wrote: post #68
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.

The default settings to remove/add spaces between paragraphs amounts to destroying the original formatting.

KF8 is a proprietary wrapper around a regular EPUB file.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#102

Post by captn3m0 »

superhuzza wrote: post #64
kranner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Installing KOreader after a jailbreak let’s you read whatever you want. (And connect to OPDS servers)

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#103

Post by BeetleB »

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.

What you described is equally true of Kobo, Nook, and pretty much every e-ink based reader. And they all support more formats than the Kindle does.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#104

Post by stoacc »

komali2 wrote: post #91
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…

Fair, but just like I've never needed my photo backups, when I do need them (if I ever do), I'll be very, very, very glad I put in the ~3 hours of work or so a month it takes to ensure my photos are all backed up.

How do you back up your photos?

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#105

Post by bduerst »

komali2 wrote: post #91
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…

Fair, but just like I've never needed my photo backups, when I do need them (if I ever do), I'll be very, very, very glad I put in the ~3 hours of work or so a month it takes to ensure my photos are all backed up.

Doesn't Amazon let you re-download your books on your kindle?

That's a little different than photos in that once the photo is gone, you don't have the opportunity to capture it again.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#106

Post by bduerst »

neves wrote: post #34
farss wrote: post #29

Don't forget to backup your marks and highlights also. I made that mistake once, and then lost my Kindle. Lost years worth of highlights and notes, so now I set up a bash script to automatically sync them to a Git repo when my Kindle is plugged into my laptop.

Your bookmarks and highlights are synced to the cloud. You should be able to read them online on: http://read.amazon.com/notebook From the kindle you can also export all the highlights of a book to your email. It's a lot better to read it on your email. The kindle device reader note reading experience is subpar.

Tangential, but is there a way to scrape this page or an API to access it? I'd like to be able to automatically pull my highlights and haven't found an easy way.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#107

Post by calcifer »

criddell wrote: post #92
bsharitt wrote: post #45

While I try to buy non-DRM books when I can, I'm still willing to buy DRM'd books as long as the DRM is pretty breakable(and I back them up immediately most of the time). If the books on Amazon, Google, B&N, etc were to suddenly have unbroken DRM, I'd stop buying DRM'd ebooks until that issue was "fixed". Every ebook DRM format(except maybe Apple) is already trivially removable, so I wish they'd drop the farce and go…

> Every ebook DRM format(except maybe Apple) is already trivially removable AFAIK, Amazon's latest DRM on KFX files hasn't been broken yet. That came out in 2015. Some people get around it by getting the book in the older format, but then you lose all the advanced typography stuff that KFX supports.

Removing DRM from KFX works since March [1].

[1] https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2019/03/30/dedrm-tools-6...

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#108

Post by calcifer »

bduerst wrote: post #105
komali2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair, but just like I've never needed my photo backups, when I do need them (if I ever do), I'll be very, very, very glad I put in the ~3 hours of work or so a month it takes to ensure my photos are all backed up.

Doesn't Amazon let you re-download your books on your kindle? That's a little different than photos in that once the photo is gone, you don't have the opportunity to capture it again.

Assuming Amazon doesn't just decide to delete it [1], sure.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#109

Post by criddell »

calcifer wrote: post #107
criddell wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every ebook DRM format(except maybe Apple) is already trivially removable AFAIK, Amazon's latest DRM on KFX files hasn't been broken yet. That came out in 2015. Some people get around it by getting the book in the older format, but then you lose all the advanced typography stuff that KFX supports.

Removing DRM from KFX works since March [1]. [1] https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2019/03/30/dedrm-tools-6...

I think Amazon patched their PC client and e-reader firmware to fix the hole. I don't think the DeDRM works on a KFX you download today.

Re: Backing Up My Kindle Ebooks (2018)

#110

Post by superkuh »

arkades wrote: post #23
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?

It reads mobi, just not ePub. And I use it because it’s got the best hardware experience of the bunch, IMO.

Do some? I was under the impression you couldn't load .mobi files on to it and they had to be converted to amazon's proprietary format.
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