Kobo + Libby + Calibre has been my loadout for a decade. Works great!
Agree, though for me it's only been a year, so all I can feel toward your "for a decade" is jealousy. It really is a much more enjoyable experience. If only I'd switched sooner!
Kobo was a Canadian company (before being bought out by Rakuten, though I think they still have a big office in Toronto) and I'm Canadian. So I think we were early adopters of their e-readers for that reason. All our bookstores and electronics retailers (RIP Futureshop) carried them.
No Kindle supports ePub natively. Amazon converts ePub to a supported format when you use the send to kindle email service. If you just load the book on over USB it won't work.
Every kindle that supports the new format (Kindle devices since 2013 with latest OS upgraded) support loading non-DRM ePubs directly over USB. There's no conversion anymore. (I've done this.) Amazon's not going to openly advertise that this deprecation is also the line in the sand where "non-DRM ePub just works", but that's what has happened. Of course one of the sadder problems with the ePub ecosystem is that it use…
Are you sure about that? Even Amazon's own sales page state: "Kindle Format 8 (AZW3), Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, DOCX, DOC, HTML, EPUB, TXT, RTF, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion; Audible audio format (AAX). Learn more about supported file types for personal documents." implying that ePub only works through conversion. They don't support DRMed ePubs through conversion either so it's a bit odd they say that instead of including it natively.
I went through this migration last year. A few things that helped: Calibre is the escape hatch. Converts everything to EPUB. Even if you don't use it day-to-day, it's the best tool for getting your library out of Amazon's format. Public domain catalogs are huge now. Standard Ebooks, Internet Archive, Gutenberg - tens of thousands of well-formatted free EPUBs. Most people don't realize how much is out there. For actua…
The ereader scene is just a disaster that shows the dangers of prioritizing DRM. I had ereaders for two decades, managed to read about 6 books on them and ultimately have almost nothing to do with related media forms because of the experience which replaced any actual reading routine with jumping through hoops.
I get the DRM hate but I've had a kindle, a few at this point, for roughly 14 years. I've read over 6 books this year alone. Not sure it's the device if you've only manage to read 6 books in 20 years.
Sure you can. An ebook has zero cost of distribution and no middlemen. A physical book has to be typeset, printed, shipped to stores, shipped to customers, marketed in store, etc etc etc. If a physical book is sold for $10 at least half that is printing, distribution and retail. Like the GP, the price fixing of ebooks at the Dane price as physical books mothers me as well, particularly because physical books can be s…
>> An ebook has zero cost of distribution and no middlemen. 100% incorrect. ebooks still: - Have to be edited, proof read and formatted properly. - Have to have a cover design. - Unless you're distributing on your own website (which is uber rare), you still need to pay for platform fees and retailer costs for distribution. - Marketing and tech support which is the same for any book, regardless of what platform its so…
When you consider that different ebooks and different font selection can result in lines and pages breaking at any random place, ebooks may actually be more expensive to produce.
Don't think I've ever read a properly produced ebook. Page breaks fall wherever and formatting is dictated more by my size/border/etc choices than by whomever "produced" then book. Nevertheless automatic typesetting and formatting have existed for decades! TeX and LaTeX are ancient and produce better looking results than any book I've ever read on any of my ereaders, and those aren't the only tools in this space. Wha…
I converted ebooks into PDFs specifically formatted for my reader size and typeset in the fonts I like. It had proper kerning, hyphenation, widow/orphan control, drop capitals, etc.
However that PDF is not reflow-able (or changeable in any way) once it's on the device, and that's not what people are buying ebook readers for.
I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.
I can understand why one would want to move from Kindle to another device, but this article starts by complaining that support is being dropped for devices from before 2013. I can even understand being upset by this, but I have absolutely no faith that whatever other device I switch to will still be supported in 10+ years. Could be. But I sure wouldn't count on it.
Usually an unsupported device stops getting new functionality and security fixes. The unsupported Kindles lose existing functionality, i.e. the ability to add books. Not quite bricked unlike, say, Sonos, but you are limited to the books y already downloaded to them. This is inherent to DRM, and the reason why I would never have considered buying one in the first place. The eReader I have is a PocketBook Versa. Same p…
Also in case of reset, you cannot activate your kindle anymore
I only read ebook when I don't have access to my physical books. When I do read ebooks, I prefer it on my XTeink X4. It doesn't have the conveniences that Kindle and other similar divices offer but it works for me.
Besides portability, what other benefits are there to using e-books? I vastly prefer having a physical copy of a book, mainly because I’d rather not look at a screen while reading (unless necessary.) Plus, I love lending out books to friends, and I feel like it’s a much bigger pain to do so virtually (unless they’re tech savvy!)