5 ms·

To be frank I don't know if there's any serious 'workflow' involving ebooks that doesn't involve using calibre or equivalent software to ensure they're DRM free

To be frank I don't know if there's any serious 'workflow' involving ebooks that doesn't involve using calibre or equivalent software to ensure they're DRM free and in the format you want.

squeaky-clean 5y ago
On Kindle it's just clicking "buy now" and waiting 30 seconds for it to load on the device. I know that's not "drm free" or anything but I doubt 99% of ebook users actually care as long as their device can load it.
- y4mi 5y ago
  If readers didn't care about anything besides comfort then they'd just download the DRM free epubs from z-library for free, which is even less hassle then dealing with amazon kindle. I still own a Kindle and buy books through it, but it's just false that this is the least hassle option.
  - bernulli 5y ago
    What's the legal side of this?
    - coldtea 5y ago
      Don't ask, don't tell
    - bigbillheck 5y ago
      Not relevant if the only metric is 'comfort'.
      - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        Surely not having to pay is wven more comfortable
        GekkePrutser 5y ago
        Often it's not. I remember cleaning up MP3 headers from all the stupid 'downloaded from TUNEZ4U.blah - <real title>', weeding out tracks that were clipping or with their volume way too low. Or bad quality or weird codecs etc.. It was a lot of work! Something like Spotify really makes it worth it then. Totally better than downloading and the convenience is easily worth the price. I buy most of my ebooks as well as I like the sync between the Kindle app and the real Kindle. And most of them are well priced anyway. For video the convenience argument worked well too with Netflix for a while but now that the landscape had fragmented so much the whole "paid content is more convenient" thing is under a lot of pressure. It's not even the price that's an issue as you can subscribe to most services by the month to see one thing. It's the hassle of signing up, cancelling and downloading all their separate apps. So there the downloaded content is becoming more convenient again.
        bernulli 5y ago
        Couldn't agree more. For me certainly not worth the hassle to save $3 on a reduced book that will magically appear on my kindle after I clicked 1-click-buy, compared to pirating it. I remember how upon Radiohead's release of 'In Rainbows' people would argue that the fact that people would still download an album from Kazaa that you can legally download for free from the artists website proves how rotten everyone is. No - it's just that the UX of doing it legally sucked so much more.
      - bernulli 5y ago
        I'd say prison is pretty low on the 'comfort' scale, certainly lower than '1 click buy'.
  - biztos 5y ago
    Does “comfort” not include ease of use and discovery? I’m on Kobo and I’m a nerd and I have “workflows” for content I already paid for but isn’t Pocket compatible (lookin at you, NYRB!) and I’ve never even heard of z-library. Maybe the average Kindle user, ditto?
  - chipotle_coyote 5y ago
    I'm not sure I get your argument here. On the one hand: 1. shop for a book right on your Kindle device 2. click "buy" Whereas on the other: 1. go to your computer and search for a book on z-library 2. download the epub 3. convert the epub to a Kindle-compatible format 4. copy the book to your Kindle Isn't the first workflow clearly "less hassle" than the second?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - y4mi 5y ago
      Z library has a button to email/send the ebook to your kindle, so it's done after the first step. You can do that on your phone or kindle itself depending on the model.
    - michaelmrose 5y ago
      I think you have entirely missed an entirely different comparison. The median hourly wage is about $15 an hour and virtually everyone already has a smartphone. Option 1: Work 14 hours for money to buy kindle paper paperwhite and 10 9.99 ebooks. Proceed to click and buy as you desire. Option 2: Work zero hours and click and download epubs and other formats on your phone which can accommodate multiple formats including the incredibly common on pirated sites epub format. Also honestly it doesn't help much to list the steps out when both options take less than 90 seconds and you have already decided to invest 2-10 hours in reading the book. I will happily spend more than an hour reading descriptions and reviews of different books to decide what I would prefer to read next.
      - bernulli 5y ago
        I think you have entirely missed the topic of this thread: the comfort of obtaining the book. The list of steps addresses exactly that, whereas reading the book has nothing to do with it.
        michaelmrose 5y ago
  - tw04 5y ago
    I’m guessing if you took a poll of 1000 random people and asked them if they know what z-library is you’d be lucky to find more than 1 person. I’d never heard of it until a year ago and nobody in my friends group had either.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    There's also library genesis that is very good for the more technical content. Especially because a lot of technical books are really hard too find in Europe in digital format. Very often I get the "not available in your region" message.
- stewbrew 5y ago
  Does Kindle allow you to scribble in the ebook?
  - jvandonsel 5y ago
    No. Highlights with typed notes are supported, though.
- zwayhowder 5y ago
  This. I have a Boox Note 2 that I love. I sync DRM free books to it via my NextCloud and I can draw/type notes in them and sync back to my computer. I've also got the Kindle and Adobe reader apps installed so I get instant when I want it too. (I'm an academic so a lot of my reading comes via library downloads DRM'd with Adobe). It can take hand written notes in a separate app, but I don't bother because my handwriting is as bad as the authors so I just type my notes up and sync them with NextCloud too. My wife isn't a tech nerd, she has a Kindle, she wants a book, she presses a couple of times on the screen and she has the book. Sure she might pay more than I would, but the time/convenience factor clearly outweighs that.
  - virtualritz 5y ago
    You can configure an email address in you Amazon account <youralias>@kindle.com. Sending any DRM free .mobi or .pdf to that address makes it magically appear on your Kindle. I think that is a great feature as most people know how to create an email with an attachment. And as a side effect you can send friends ebooks directly to their devices if they shared their @kindle aliases with you.
    - salamandersauce 5y ago
      The downside is that you're very limited in what file works. Mobi is ancient and lacks a lot of the improvements that Amazon made with AZW3 and KFX in regards to what it supports and how it's rendered. So no improved typography, no features like full screen images in digital manga or comics, etc. Sometimes you can do a hacky workaround and send an ePub as .png and it will give you an AZW3 but sometimes it just doesn't work. With my Boox reader I can just shove the file in my OneDrive and have it appear there.
asiachick 5y ago
I've never found calibre to work except on novels. Books with diagrams, tech books, it totally fails, at least for me
- jhbadger 5y ago
  Were you trying to convert a PDF or something? Tech books that are in an HTML-based format (epub or mobi) work just fine in Calibre because the diagrams and equations actually have a machine-readable format and can be converted from format to format losslessly. PDFs are pretty much only designed to be printed (they are really just modified Postscript documents, where Postscript is the language used by many printers)

To be frank I don't know if there's any serious 'workflow' involving ebooks that doesn't involve using calibre or equivalent software to ensure they're DRM free and in the format you want.

squeaky-clean 5y ago

On Kindle it's just clicking "buy now" and waiting 30 seconds for it to load on the device. I know that's not "drm free" or anything but I doubt 99% of ebook users actually care as long as their device can load it.

y4mi 5y ago
If readers didn't care about anything besides comfort then they'd just download the DRM free epubs from z-library for free, which is even less hassle then dealing with amazon kindle. I still own a Kindle and buy books through it, but it's just false that this is the least hassle option.
- bernulli 5y ago
  What's the legal side of this?
  - coldtea 5y ago
    Don't ask, don't tell
  - bigbillheck 5y ago
    Not relevant if the only metric is 'comfort'.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Surely not having to pay is wven more comfortable
      - GekkePrutser 5y ago
        Often it's not. I remember cleaning up MP3 headers from all the stupid 'downloaded from TUNEZ4U.blah - <real title>', weeding out tracks that were clipping or with their volume way too low. Or bad quality or weird codecs etc.. It was a lot of work! Something like Spotify really makes it worth it then. Totally better than downloading and the convenience is easily worth the price. I buy most of my ebooks as well as I like the sync between the Kindle app and the real Kindle. And most of them are well priced anyway. For video the convenience argument worked well too with Netflix for a while but now that the landscape had fragmented so much the whole "paid content is more convenient" thing is under a lot of pressure. It's not even the price that's an issue as you can subscribe to most services by the month to see one thing. It's the hassle of signing up, cancelling and downloading all their separate apps. So there the downloaded content is becoming more convenient again.
        bernulli 5y ago
        Couldn't agree more. For me certainly not worth the hassle to save $3 on a reduced book that will magically appear on my kindle after I clicked 1-click-buy, compared to pirating it. I remember how upon Radiohead's release of 'In Rainbows' people would argue that the fact that people would still download an album from Kazaa that you can legally download for free from the artists website proves how rotten everyone is. No - it's just that the UX of doing it legally sucked so much more.
    - bernulli 5y ago
      I'd say prison is pretty low on the 'comfort' scale, certainly lower than '1 click buy'.
- biztos 5y ago
  Does “comfort” not include ease of use and discovery? I’m on Kobo and I’m a nerd and I have “workflows” for content I already paid for but isn’t Pocket compatible (lookin at you, NYRB!) and I’ve never even heard of z-library. Maybe the average Kindle user, ditto?
- chipotle_coyote 5y ago
  I'm not sure I get your argument here. On the one hand: 1. shop for a book right on your Kindle device 2. click "buy" Whereas on the other: 1. go to your computer and search for a book on z-library 2. download the epub 3. convert the epub to a Kindle-compatible format 4. copy the book to your Kindle Isn't the first workflow clearly "less hassle" than the second?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - y4mi 5y ago
    Z library has a button to email/send the ebook to your kindle, so it's done after the first step. You can do that on your phone or kindle itself depending on the model.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    I think you have entirely missed an entirely different comparison. The median hourly wage is about $15 an hour and virtually everyone already has a smartphone. Option 1: Work 14 hours for money to buy kindle paper paperwhite and 10 9.99 ebooks. Proceed to click and buy as you desire. Option 2: Work zero hours and click and download epubs and other formats on your phone which can accommodate multiple formats including the incredibly common on pirated sites epub format. Also honestly it doesn't help much to list the steps out when both options take less than 90 seconds and you have already decided to invest 2-10 hours in reading the book. I will happily spend more than an hour reading descriptions and reviews of different books to decide what I would prefer to read next.
    - bernulli 5y ago
      I think you have entirely missed the topic of this thread: the comfort of obtaining the book. The list of steps addresses exactly that, whereas reading the book has nothing to do with it.
      - michaelmrose 5y ago
- tw04 5y ago
  I’m guessing if you took a poll of 1000 random people and asked them if they know what z-library is you’d be lucky to find more than 1 person. I’d never heard of it until a year ago and nobody in my friends group had either.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  There's also library genesis that is very good for the more technical content. Especially because a lot of technical books are really hard too find in Europe in digital format. Very often I get the "not available in your region" message.
stewbrew 5y ago
Does Kindle allow you to scribble in the ebook?
- jvandonsel 5y ago
  No. Highlights with typed notes are supported, though.
zwayhowder 5y ago
This. I have a Boox Note 2 that I love. I sync DRM free books to it via my NextCloud and I can draw/type notes in them and sync back to my computer. I've also got the Kindle and Adobe reader apps installed so I get instant when I want it too. (I'm an academic so a lot of my reading comes via library downloads DRM'd with Adobe). It can take hand written notes in a separate app, but I don't bother because my handwriting is as bad as the authors so I just type my notes up and sync them with NextCloud too. My wife isn't a tech nerd, she has a Kindle, she wants a book, she presses a couple of times on the screen and she has the book. Sure she might pay more than I would, but the time/convenience factor clearly outweighs that.
- virtualritz 5y ago
  You can configure an email address in you Amazon account <youralias>@kindle.com. Sending any DRM free .mobi or .pdf to that address makes it magically appear on your Kindle. I think that is a great feature as most people know how to create an email with an attachment. And as a side effect you can send friends ebooks directly to their devices if they shared their @kindle aliases with you.
  - salamandersauce 5y ago
    The downside is that you're very limited in what file works. Mobi is ancient and lacks a lot of the improvements that Amazon made with AZW3 and KFX in regards to what it supports and how it's rendered. So no improved typography, no features like full screen images in digital manga or comics, etc. Sometimes you can do a hacky workaround and send an ePub as .png and it will give you an AZW3 but sometimes it just doesn't work. With my Boox reader I can just shove the file in my OneDrive and have it appear there.

asiachick 5y ago

I've never found calibre to work except on novels. Books with diagrams, tech books, it totally fails, at least for me

jhbadger 5y ago
Were you trying to convert a PDF or something? Tech books that are in an HTML-based format (epub or mobi) work just fine in Calibre because the diagrams and equations actually have a machine-readable format and can be converted from format to format losslessly. PDFs are pretty much only designed to be printed (they are really just modified Postscript documents, where Postscript is the language used by many printers)