4 ms·

Amazon's Kindle will finally add ePub support

53 points by axiomdata316 4y ago

adamomada 4y ago
From the Kindle ‘jailbreak’ thread yesterday, i learned it’s not the kindle being able to read ePub natively, but instead amazon doing conversion of ePub to the format kindle can read FTA > the Send to Kindle function will convert ePub files to a format that can be opened on the e-reader.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cratermoon 4y ago
The epub format is kind of garbage, but at least it's an open spec.
- webmaven 4y ago
  > The epub format is kind of garbage, How so?
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    It's just html pages with a little CSS in a zip archive.
IRP 4y ago
Converting to their own proprietary format is not natively supporting Epub format. Also converting being more prone to errors, there will be unreadable ebooks more often than if the reader was supporting it natively.
synicalx 4y ago
Hopefully this means more reliable conversions between epub and AZW. Using various 3rd party tools for this up until now, I've nearly always ran into weird formatting issues - some very minor and some that made books almost unreadable.
- mdaniel 4y ago
  Heh, Kovid had better convert to AGPL since there's a very real chance Amazon is just running epub files through it and sending the results to the Kindle: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre/blob/v5.41.0/LICENSE https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre/blob/v5.41.0/LICENSE
Louisgaga 4y ago
Finally! I have a VM set up for years with calibre to automatically convert epub to mobi and email them to my kindle.
lazyeye 4y ago
Whatever the format, Amazon will be logging/tracking every single page click (as they do now).
hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31213943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31213943 (3 days ago)
angulardragon03 4y ago
Fun fact: you can already send ePubs to kindles, if you change the file extension to .png (a valid format that Amazon’s Kindle email service accepts). This doesn’t seem to work in Apple Mail (it doesn’t treat image attachments as true file attachments seemingly and tries to add them inline into text, leading to Amazon telling you that you didn’t attach anything), but I got it to work today from Outlook.
- axiomdata316 4y ago
  Wow. Cool tip. I'll have to try that.

53 points by axiomdata316 4y ago

From the Kindle ‘jailbreak’ thread yesterday, i learned it’s not the kindle being able to read ePub natively, but instead amazon doing conversion of ePub to the format kindle can read FTA > the Send to Kindle function will convert ePub files to a format that can be opened on the e-reader.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

cratermoon 4y ago

The epub format is kind of garbage, but at least it's an open spec.

webmaven 4y ago
> The epub format is kind of garbage, How so?
- cratermoon 4y ago
  It's just html pages with a little CSS in a zip archive.

IRP 4y ago

Converting to their own proprietary format is not natively supporting Epub format. Also converting being more prone to errors, there will be unreadable ebooks more often than if the reader was supporting it natively.

synicalx 4y ago

Hopefully this means more reliable conversions between epub and AZW. Using various 3rd party tools for this up until now, I've nearly always ran into weird formatting issues - some very minor and some that made books almost unreadable.

mdaniel 4y ago
Heh, Kovid had better convert to AGPL since there's a very real chance Amazon is just running epub files through it and sending the results to the Kindle: https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre/blob/v5.41.0/LICENSE https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre/blob/v5.41.0/LICENSE

Louisgaga 4y ago

Finally! I have a VM set up for years with calibre to automatically convert epub to mobi and email them to my kindle.

lazyeye 4y ago

Whatever the format, Amazon will be logging/tracking every single page click (as they do now).

hoppyhoppy2 4y ago

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31213943 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31213943 (3 days ago)

angulardragon03 4y ago

Fun fact: you can already send ePubs to kindles, if you change the file extension to .png (a valid format that Amazon’s Kindle email service accepts). This doesn’t seem to work in Apple Mail (it doesn’t treat image attachments as true file attachments seemingly and tries to add them inline into text, leading to Amazon telling you that you didn’t attach anything), but I got it to work today from Outlook.

axiomdata316 4y ago
Wow. Cool tip. I'll have to try that.