4 ms·

> But now, Hunter says there’s “no reason on Earth to give a billionaire your $9.99 for your e-book,” Except, many of the books I want to read are self-publis

> But now, Hunter says there’s “no reason on Earth to give a billionaire your $9.99 for your e-book,” Except, many of the books I want to read are self-published by small authors, and are only available on Amazon, probably because of how easy it is to self-publish there. I hope they can fix that, because it's my current biggest complaint about owning a Kobo reader.

WolfeReader 2y ago
Making an ePub is easy as pie - look into PanDoc for one trivial-to-use CLI application which can do the job using Word docs or Markdown as a source and emit ePub, PDF, and other ebook formats. The idea that Amazon is essential to self-published ebooks is blatantly false, and is encouraged by Amazon to lock authors into the Kindle ecosystem.
- onetokeoverthe 2y ago
  Calibre is another free easy to use epub making software
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- noman-land 2y ago
  Is there something for converting pdf to epub?
  - WolfeReader 2y ago
    Yes, but: 1. Calibre can do the job for the case of mostly-text PDFs, while keeping images too of course. I haven't done this, but a quick search reveals that it can give inconsistent results (mostly depending on the source PDF of course). 2. If the "text" of the PDF is actually just an image, consider OCR instead, or treat it as a digital comic as I'll cover next: 3. For digital comics, a different program called CBConvert is what you want. I actually don't think ePubs are the best format for comics, and usually convert to CBZ format instead; CBConvert has this all covered.
iainctduncan 2y ago
That is only because the authors chose the amazon exclusive option. From what I've read, this is declining in popularity anyway. If there are more good alternatives, self-publishing authors will change their preference.
Seattle3503 2y ago
> Except, many of the books I want to read are self-published by small authors, and are only available on Amazon, probably because of how easy it is to self-publish there. I have that issue too. A lot of the books I read are on Kindle Unlimited, which requires exclusivity.

WolfeReader 2y ago

Making an ePub is easy as pie - look into PanDoc for one trivial-to-use CLI application which can do the job using Word docs or Markdown as a source and emit ePub, PDF, and other ebook formats. The idea that Amazon is essential to self-published ebooks is blatantly false, and is encouraged by Amazon to lock authors into the Kindle ecosystem.

onetokeoverthe 2y ago
Calibre is another free easy to use epub making software
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
noman-land 2y ago
Is there something for converting pdf to epub?
- WolfeReader 2y ago
  Yes, but: 1. Calibre can do the job for the case of mostly-text PDFs, while keeping images too of course. I haven't done this, but a quick search reveals that it can give inconsistent results (mostly depending on the source PDF of course). 2. If the "text" of the PDF is actually just an image, consider OCR instead, or treat it as a digital comic as I'll cover next: 3. For digital comics, a different program called CBConvert is what you want. I actually don't think ePubs are the best format for comics, and usually convert to CBZ format instead; CBConvert has this all covered.

iainctduncan 2y ago

That is only because the authors chose the amazon exclusive option. From what I've read, this is declining in popularity anyway. If there are more good alternatives, self-publishing authors will change their preference.

Seattle3503 2y ago

> Except, many of the books I want to read are self-published by small authors, and are only available on Amazon, probably because of how easy it is to self-publish there. I have that issue too. A lot of the books I read are on Kindle Unlimited, which requires exclusivity.