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Ugh, I hate this kind of stuff. At the same time, I’m a poor college student who finds the fact that the Kindle edition of books is often half the price of a p

Ugh, I hate this kind of stuff. At the same time, I’m a poor college student who finds the fact that the Kindle edition of books is often half the price of a physical copy, and everything is available through Amazon. Can anyone recommend a good ereader/publisher stack? I’ve considered trying to find ePub versions and then converting them to work on my Kindle—is that possible? Help free me from this prison!

Hitton 6y ago
Converting from epub to mobi or azw3 which are consumed by Kindle is easy. Calibre can do it and it can be even run from commandline. Problem with Kindle/Amazon is the "Kindle Unlimited" program which although profitable for authors, is bad for people who want to avoid Amazon's clutches, because it doesn't allow authors to sell ebooks elsewhere.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Funny story about formats, apparently Amazon recently changed their policy about what ebook formats they accept: mobi (a native format for Kindle) is no longer one of them. Source: A writer I follow had a book submission declined until they reformatted it from .mobi to .epub, and they discussed it on Facebook.
  - brewdad 6y ago
    Seriously? Epub isn't even supported by Amazon devices, at least not my 2 year old e-ink Kindle. Is this a play to ensure their DRM gets put into as many ebooks as possible when Amazon converts the epub to a native format?
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Honestly? I have no idea why they might do this. It's not supported on my Oasis either. The best I can come up with is pretty conspiracy-theory-ish: They're moving towards removing the ability for you to load open formats onto the Kindle directly (i.e. without going through their mail system or kindle-store purchases).
    - salamandersauce 6y ago
      No. Publishers can disable DRM if they want on Kindle. The reason they stopped accepting Mobi is because it's an ancient format that lacks a lot of features over ePub and Amazon's newer formats. It's like Apple not accepting 64kbps MP3s for iTunes. There's just no benefit, you can always make a just as 64kbps MP3 for your ancient device if you need it but you can't really go the other way around. Same with Mobi and ePub/Amazon's newer formats.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mdoms 6y ago
I bought a Kobo and haven't failed to find a book in their store yet.
captn3m0 6y ago
>I’ve considered trying to find ePub versions and then converting them to work on my Kindle—is that possible? Calibre does this perfectly. Alternatively, if you have a jailbroken Kindle - KOReader lets you directly read EPUBs.
- salamandersauce 6y ago
  I wouldn't say perfectly. Amazon's own tools do a far better job than Calibre for ePub to AZW which shouldn't be too surprising because that's how they're typically made. Calibre is handy thanks to plugins but I have found it lackluster for anything more advanced than a basic Latin script novel for conversion. Stuff like Japanese where it needs to do R2L it just completely falls on it's face. Comic books don't work well either.
  - AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
    > Comic books don't work well either. Are you trying to preserve Amazon/Comixology's "smart panel" navigation, or just get the images to display? For the smart panel nav, I can't help you, but if you all you care about is the images, I've made plenty of my own CBR/CBZs from Amazon AZWs by just pulling out the Images directory, zipping the directory, and renaming the .zip to .CBZ.
    - salamandersauce 6y ago
      Just images. I don't care about smart panel stuff. It's easy to go AZW/ePub to CBZ/CBR but Kindles don't natively support that or at least they didn't last time I had one. Going ePub to AZW is more complicated as there is some stuff to specify that images should display full screen with no margin, whether the book is RTL or LTR, table of contents, etc.
  - captn3m0 6y ago
    Amazon's own tool (kindlegen) isn't really supported. It hasn't been updated in years, it isn't available on the Amazon website any more even [0]. Their new offering (Kindle Previewer[1]) doesn't support Linux, so I haven't tried it out. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211 https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211 [1]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765261 https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765...
waterheater 6y ago
I recommend the Remarkable 2. In addition to serving as an e-reader, it is an excellent notebook replacement. As a cool note about the Remarkable 2..."under that Eink screen sits a dual core 1.2GHz ARM CPU, with 1GB of RAM, running Linux... and... you can SSH into it by default!!!" [1]. [1] https://github.com/danielebruneo/remarkable2-hacks https://github.com/danielebruneo/remarkable2-hacks
- katabasis 6y ago
  I have a Remarkable 2 (and love it), but one downside is that it only takes DRM-free books for it's e-reader. I wish the company would partner with some publishers so that I could buy books to read on the device. At least we have Standard Ebooks[1] in the meantime! [1] https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/
  - waterheater 6y ago
    Perhaps KOReader will solve your issue: https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader
  - waterheater 6y ago
    Also, a while ago, I built a script to download all epub files from StandardEbooks. Adapt to your pleasure. https://pastebin.com/4hQm1Nzh https://pastebin.com/4hQm1Nzh
    - robin_reala 6y ago
      Ideally you’d pull down SE books as you read them; mostly because we maintain the books regularly and you’ll be missing out on those improvements when you finally get around to reading the later 90% of the corpus.
    - captn3m0 6y ago
      This was my one-liner adapted from some HN comment iirc: curl -s https://standardebooks.org/opds/all | grep -oE "/(.*).epub" | cut -d '"' -f1 | grep -v "kepub" | sed '/^$/d' | sed -e"s/^/https:\/\/standardebooks.org/"|wget --no-clobber -i - I have it set as a @weekly cronjob, works well.
andrepd 6y ago
As for eReaders, I recommend Kobo. Top hardware and the software is also easily hackable. You can manage your library with Calibre and it will read most everything you throw at it.
- bathtub365 6y ago
  I have OverDrive set up on my Kobo so I can check out books from my local library and read them on the device. It works great.
salamandersauce 6y ago
Check out Boox. They make eInk Android tablets so you can just use the Kindle, Kobo, Google Play, Libby, etc. apps on it with no problems. No need to convert everything, crack DRM etc. Even those crummy textbook publisher apps work too. They are a bit pricy but they do a lot more than a Kindle and most models these days come with a Wacom pen for note taking and markup. I buy a lot of ebooks between multiple stores so having all on one device without loads of hoops is great. I ended up getting 2, a smaller one for reading books and a bigger one for marking up PDFs. Love em.
Y_Y 6y ago
Library Genesis will free you from that prison. It has most books and papers I've ever needed and it's less immoral than Amazon. http://libgen.gs/ http://libgen.gs/
- bathtub365 6y ago
  How is this not just pirating books? This seems to be much more immoral than Amazon, and also illegal in many places.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    It is pirating books.

Hitton 6y ago

Converting from epub to mobi or azw3 which are consumed by Kindle is easy. Calibre can do it and it can be even run from commandline. Problem with Kindle/Amazon is the "Kindle Unlimited" program which although profitable for authors, is bad for people who want to avoid Amazon's clutches, because it doesn't allow authors to sell ebooks elsewhere.

falcolas 6y ago
Funny story about formats, apparently Amazon recently changed their policy about what ebook formats they accept: mobi (a native format for Kindle) is no longer one of them. Source: A writer I follow had a book submission declined until they reformatted it from .mobi to .epub, and they discussed it on Facebook.
- brewdad 6y ago
  Seriously? Epub isn't even supported by Amazon devices, at least not my 2 year old e-ink Kindle. Is this a play to ensure their DRM gets put into as many ebooks as possible when Amazon converts the epub to a native format?
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Honestly? I have no idea why they might do this. It's not supported on my Oasis either. The best I can come up with is pretty conspiracy-theory-ish: They're moving towards removing the ability for you to load open formats onto the Kindle directly (i.e. without going through their mail system or kindle-store purchases).
  - salamandersauce 6y ago
    No. Publishers can disable DRM if they want on Kindle. The reason they stopped accepting Mobi is because it's an ancient format that lacks a lot of features over ePub and Amazon's newer formats. It's like Apple not accepting 64kbps MP3s for iTunes. There's just no benefit, you can always make a just as 64kbps MP3 for your ancient device if you need it but you can't really go the other way around. Same with Mobi and ePub/Amazon's newer formats.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mdoms 6y ago

I bought a Kobo and haven't failed to find a book in their store yet.

captn3m0 6y ago

>I’ve considered trying to find ePub versions and then converting them to work on my Kindle—is that possible? Calibre does this perfectly. Alternatively, if you have a jailbroken Kindle - KOReader lets you directly read EPUBs.

salamandersauce 6y ago
I wouldn't say perfectly. Amazon's own tools do a far better job than Calibre for ePub to AZW which shouldn't be too surprising because that's how they're typically made. Calibre is handy thanks to plugins but I have found it lackluster for anything more advanced than a basic Latin script novel for conversion. Stuff like Japanese where it needs to do R2L it just completely falls on it's face. Comic books don't work well either.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  > Comic books don't work well either. Are you trying to preserve Amazon/Comixology's "smart panel" navigation, or just get the images to display? For the smart panel nav, I can't help you, but if you all you care about is the images, I've made plenty of my own CBR/CBZs from Amazon AZWs by just pulling out the Images directory, zipping the directory, and renaming the .zip to .CBZ.
  - salamandersauce 6y ago
    Just images. I don't care about smart panel stuff. It's easy to go AZW/ePub to CBZ/CBR but Kindles don't natively support that or at least they didn't last time I had one. Going ePub to AZW is more complicated as there is some stuff to specify that images should display full screen with no margin, whether the book is RTL or LTR, table of contents, etc.
- captn3m0 6y ago
  Amazon's own tool (kindlegen) isn't really supported. It hasn't been updated in years, it isn't available on the Amazon website any more even [0]. Their new offering (Kindle Previewer[1]) doesn't support Linux, so I haven't tried it out. [0]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211 https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000765211 [1]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765261 https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765...

waterheater 6y ago

I recommend the Remarkable 2. In addition to serving as an e-reader, it is an excellent notebook replacement. As a cool note about the Remarkable 2..."under that Eink screen sits a dual core 1.2GHz ARM CPU, with 1GB of RAM, running Linux... and... you can SSH into it by default!!!" [1]. [1] https://github.com/danielebruneo/remarkable2-hacks https://github.com/danielebruneo/remarkable2-hacks

katabasis 6y ago
I have a Remarkable 2 (and love it), but one downside is that it only takes DRM-free books for it's e-reader. I wish the company would partner with some publishers so that I could buy books to read on the device. At least we have Standard Ebooks[1] in the meantime! [1] https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/
- waterheater 6y ago
  Perhaps KOReader will solve your issue: https://github.com/koreader/koreader https://github.com/koreader/koreader
- waterheater 6y ago
  Also, a while ago, I built a script to download all epub files from StandardEbooks. Adapt to your pleasure. https://pastebin.com/4hQm1Nzh https://pastebin.com/4hQm1Nzh
  - robin_reala 6y ago
    Ideally you’d pull down SE books as you read them; mostly because we maintain the books regularly and you’ll be missing out on those improvements when you finally get around to reading the later 90% of the corpus.
  - captn3m0 6y ago
    This was my one-liner adapted from some HN comment iirc: curl -s https://standardebooks.org/opds/all | grep -oE "/(.*).epub" | cut -d '"' -f1 | grep -v "kepub" | sed '/^$/d' | sed -e"s/^/https:\/\/standardebooks.org/"|wget --no-clobber -i - I have it set as a @weekly cronjob, works well.

andrepd 6y ago

As for eReaders, I recommend Kobo. Top hardware and the software is also easily hackable. You can manage your library with Calibre and it will read most everything you throw at it.

bathtub365 6y ago
I have OverDrive set up on my Kobo so I can check out books from my local library and read them on the device. It works great.

salamandersauce 6y ago

Check out Boox. They make eInk Android tablets so you can just use the Kindle, Kobo, Google Play, Libby, etc. apps on it with no problems. No need to convert everything, crack DRM etc. Even those crummy textbook publisher apps work too. They are a bit pricy but they do a lot more than a Kindle and most models these days come with a Wacom pen for note taking and markup. I buy a lot of ebooks between multiple stores so having all on one device without loads of hoops is great. I ended up getting 2, a smaller one for reading books and a bigger one for marking up PDFs. Love em.

Y_Y 6y ago

Library Genesis will free you from that prison. It has most books and papers I've ever needed and it's less immoral than Amazon. http://libgen.gs/ http://libgen.gs/

bathtub365 6y ago
How is this not just pirating books? This seems to be much more immoral than Amazon, and also illegal in many places.
- solarkraft 6y ago
  It is pirating books.