7 ms·

Calibre (and the plugins to remove DRM) is the only thing that makes e-books worthwhile, despite still being overpriced. I wouldn't be wasting money on e-books

Calibre (and the plugins to remove DRM) is the only thing that makes e-books worthwhile, despite still being overpriced. I wouldn't be wasting money on e-books if I couldn't use them as freely as physical books. iPad, Kindle, Nook etcetera, it's all the same incompatible DRM-crippled crap. Without the existence of Calibre it's pretty much impossible to have your own virtual library. This software should get way more credit and support. Especially from publishers that support DRM-free books, like O'Reilly.

goldfeld 13y ago
Yeah calibre was a boon back in my Sony reader years. Plus Kovid (the project creator) is a really great and helpful guy. Dang it's been a while, good old times hanging around the MobileRead.com forums. The real shame is I've mostly become a dead tree book consumer, back from my enlightened epub ways. The status quo of ebooks is really bad, and as much as calibre helps, venturing out of the Kindle route was fairly high maintenance. I only hope we can take these freedoms back into the mainstream with all the 'own cloud' movements happening, that I may easily buy ebooks online straight into my cloud and serve them out to a smart ereader, to my phone, desktop browser, etc.
- vidarh 13y ago
  I don't know how hard it'd be to use Calibre for background/batch conversion, but Calibre + DRM plugins automatically pics up anything delivered to Kindle for PC now, which runs fine under Wine. So it should be reasonably simple to set up a script to run Kindle for PC under wine against a VNC server regularly, and run Calibre and trigger conversions now and again. I push my Kindle stuff straight to my Android devices without caring about DRM, but only because I semi-regularly dump any new books to my Kindle for PC install and make sure I get DRM free copies for backup purposes, but I currently do this manually. My "exposure" is never more than a handful of books. Otherwise I've bought a lot more than I otherwise would from O'Reilly because they're DRM free and happily sync my books directly to Dropbox etc. My "own cloud" I currently handle simply with rsync - storage capacity on my devices grow faster than the content I want to have on the go for the most part, other than video which I do need to manage a bit.
  - VLM 13y ago
    "I've bought a lot more than I otherwise would from O'Reilly because they're DRM free and happily sync my books directly to Dropbox etc." Pragmatic does the same thing; there's a directory called "Pragmatic Bookshelf" on my dropbox and inside that they automatically make a directory for each title. Multiple editions, when published, magically appear in the same title directory and they send an email to let me know. Source for this information is looking at my phone's dropbox while I type this. Delivery of electronic goods via Dropbox seems to be turning into a standard.
    - vidarh 13y ago
      Good to know. I've actually spent more money on books with O'Reilly than Amazon over the last year thanks to the DRM bit, and I might as well spread some of that love to Pragmatic as well. This is despite for many years spending maybe 90% of my "book budget" at Amazon with paper books, but partly I don't want to reward them for DRM and secondly that extra little tiny hassle to get my de-DRM'd archival copy adds just that little extra disincentive... And despite having a ton of Android devices, Google Play has gotten exactly $0 for books, videos or music, since it's a massive confusion of rental and DRM and I just don't can't be bothered verifying what is DRM free, and to keep (e.g. for books, I don't know if there is a way to verify if they're DRM free before purchasing - I can't find anything after a quick look).
lukifer 13y ago
Note that iPads and (some?) Nooks support DRM-free ePubs and PDFs. There are probably other readers that do as well. The Kindle is the worst when it comes to format support and vendor lock-in.
- Oletros 13y ago
  Well, Kindle supports PDF and DRM-free mobi files. What difference does it makes with the iPad when both of them have a proprietary DRM scheme? Nook or Sony accept standard DRM epubs, iPad doesn't
  - chmars 13y ago
    What do you mean by 'standard DRM'?
    - Oletros 13y ago
      The one that is used by all of the great devices makers, Sony, Kobo, B&N or Google in Play Books. Change the wording to "de facto" standard
      - chmars 13y ago
        I still don't get it. Do they use all the same DRM? Soft DRM is IMHO a possible way to go: You get freely usable files but the files get tagged with your name. It's AFAIK the kind of DRM Apple uses for music files from the iTunes Store.
        Oletros 13y ago
        Yes, they use Adobe Digital Editions DRM
  - Someone 13y ago
    There is no stanard DRM format for EPUB. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB#Digital_rights_management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB#Digital_rights_management: "An EPUB file can optionally contain DRM as an additional layer, but it is not required by the specifications.[24] In addition, the specification does not name any particular DRM system to use, so publishers can choose a DRM scheme to their liking."
anonymouz 13y ago
I find e-books very convenient to read, but am annoyed that it is harder to lend them to friends (if they themselves don't have a reader), and that I have nothing to put on my shelf. What I really wish for would be someone to offer physical books at price X and the combo physical book + DRM-free ebook at price X+0.50€ or X+1€ or something small like that. (I can understand that e-books by themselves are not dirt cheap, since most of the cost goes does not come from the printing and physical distribution process. But in a bundle with a physical book that is already paid for through the price of the physical book, so one just needs to tack on a little bit to make a nice profit). I'd take that option everytime, turning the small extra into almost 100% profit.
- mikevm 13y ago
  > and that I have nothing to put on my shelf. Why do you need anything to put on a shelf? I, for one, am glad that books don't need to take up physical space anymore.
  - dagw 13y ago
    Why do you need anything to put on a shelf? Because it adds to the room. I realize this is very much a question of personal taste, but I find that a room with a wall covered in books can be a beautiful design detail that adds warmth and character to a room. Plus physical books are pretty awesome in their own right.
    - zanny 13y ago
      I get it is asthetic taste, but I love whenever I move somewhere and I literally have nothing but white walls, bare floors, a desk, a bed, and a few drawers of clothes and necesssary accessories. It feels very clean to me. I don't like cluttering up space for no reason than to occupy it.
      - mikevm 13y ago
        Same here. Plus, those of us that do move once in a while know that books weigh a ton. When I helped my dad move, I think the boxes that had his books weighed more than his fridge ;-).
dredmorbius 13y ago
I've limited my consumption of eBooks to freely-available materials, or ePubs I've created on my own (from LaTeX sources, using Pandoc, from Calibre). I find they're an advantage over Web pages in that all the annoying formatting is removed, you're left with a basic text and can focus on the content. It's also amazing to have your entire library available (and indexed) at your fingertips. For research, use of plugins to create and maintain a bibliography is also tremendously useful. DRM is a zit on the face of knowledge. And I'll plug Moon+Reader, for mobile, a pretty slick ebook reader in my experience.

goldfeld 13y ago

Yeah calibre was a boon back in my Sony reader years. Plus Kovid (the project creator) is a really great and helpful guy. Dang it's been a while, good old times hanging around the MobileRead.com forums. The real shame is I've mostly become a dead tree book consumer, back from my enlightened epub ways. The status quo of ebooks is really bad, and as much as calibre helps, venturing out of the Kindle route was fairly high maintenance. I only hope we can take these freedoms back into the mainstream with all the 'own cloud' movements happening, that I may easily buy ebooks online straight into my cloud and serve them out to a smart ereader, to my phone, desktop browser, etc.

vidarh 13y ago
I don't know how hard it'd be to use Calibre for background/batch conversion, but Calibre + DRM plugins automatically pics up anything delivered to Kindle for PC now, which runs fine under Wine. So it should be reasonably simple to set up a script to run Kindle for PC under wine against a VNC server regularly, and run Calibre and trigger conversions now and again. I push my Kindle stuff straight to my Android devices without caring about DRM, but only because I semi-regularly dump any new books to my Kindle for PC install and make sure I get DRM free copies for backup purposes, but I currently do this manually. My "exposure" is never more than a handful of books. Otherwise I've bought a lot more than I otherwise would from O'Reilly because they're DRM free and happily sync my books directly to Dropbox etc. My "own cloud" I currently handle simply with rsync - storage capacity on my devices grow faster than the content I want to have on the go for the most part, other than video which I do need to manage a bit.
- VLM 13y ago
  "I've bought a lot more than I otherwise would from O'Reilly because they're DRM free and happily sync my books directly to Dropbox etc." Pragmatic does the same thing; there's a directory called "Pragmatic Bookshelf" on my dropbox and inside that they automatically make a directory for each title. Multiple editions, when published, magically appear in the same title directory and they send an email to let me know. Source for this information is looking at my phone's dropbox while I type this. Delivery of electronic goods via Dropbox seems to be turning into a standard.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    Good to know. I've actually spent more money on books with O'Reilly than Amazon over the last year thanks to the DRM bit, and I might as well spread some of that love to Pragmatic as well. This is despite for many years spending maybe 90% of my "book budget" at Amazon with paper books, but partly I don't want to reward them for DRM and secondly that extra little tiny hassle to get my de-DRM'd archival copy adds just that little extra disincentive... And despite having a ton of Android devices, Google Play has gotten exactly $0 for books, videos or music, since it's a massive confusion of rental and DRM and I just don't can't be bothered verifying what is DRM free, and to keep (e.g. for books, I don't know if there is a way to verify if they're DRM free before purchasing - I can't find anything after a quick look).

lukifer 13y ago

Note that iPads and (some?) Nooks support DRM-free ePubs and PDFs. There are probably other readers that do as well. The Kindle is the worst when it comes to format support and vendor lock-in.

Oletros 13y ago
Well, Kindle supports PDF and DRM-free mobi files. What difference does it makes with the iPad when both of them have a proprietary DRM scheme? Nook or Sony accept standard DRM epubs, iPad doesn't
- chmars 13y ago
  What do you mean by 'standard DRM'?
  - Oletros 13y ago
    The one that is used by all of the great devices makers, Sony, Kobo, B&N or Google in Play Books. Change the wording to "de facto" standard
    - chmars 13y ago
      I still don't get it. Do they use all the same DRM? Soft DRM is IMHO a possible way to go: You get freely usable files but the files get tagged with your name. It's AFAIK the kind of DRM Apple uses for music files from the iTunes Store.
      - Oletros 13y ago
        Yes, they use Adobe Digital Editions DRM
- Someone 13y ago
  There is no stanard DRM format for EPUB. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB#Digital_rights_management http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB#Digital_rights_management: "An EPUB file can optionally contain DRM as an additional layer, but it is not required by the specifications.[24] In addition, the specification does not name any particular DRM system to use, so publishers can choose a DRM scheme to their liking."

anonymouz 13y ago

I find e-books very convenient to read, but am annoyed that it is harder to lend them to friends (if they themselves don't have a reader), and that I have nothing to put on my shelf. What I really wish for would be someone to offer physical books at price X and the combo physical book + DRM-free ebook at price X+0.50€ or X+1€ or something small like that. (I can understand that e-books by themselves are not dirt cheap, since most of the cost goes does not come from the printing and physical distribution process. But in a bundle with a physical book that is already paid for through the price of the physical book, so one just needs to tack on a little bit to make a nice profit). I'd take that option everytime, turning the small extra into almost 100% profit.

mikevm 13y ago
> and that I have nothing to put on my shelf. Why do you need anything to put on a shelf? I, for one, am glad that books don't need to take up physical space anymore.
- dagw 13y ago
  Why do you need anything to put on a shelf? Because it adds to the room. I realize this is very much a question of personal taste, but I find that a room with a wall covered in books can be a beautiful design detail that adds warmth and character to a room. Plus physical books are pretty awesome in their own right.
  - zanny 13y ago
    I get it is asthetic taste, but I love whenever I move somewhere and I literally have nothing but white walls, bare floors, a desk, a bed, and a few drawers of clothes and necesssary accessories. It feels very clean to me. I don't like cluttering up space for no reason than to occupy it.
    - mikevm 13y ago
      Same here. Plus, those of us that do move once in a while know that books weigh a ton. When I helped my dad move, I think the boxes that had his books weighed more than his fridge ;-).

dredmorbius 13y ago

I've limited my consumption of eBooks to freely-available materials, or ePubs I've created on my own (from LaTeX sources, using Pandoc, from Calibre). I find they're an advantage over Web pages in that all the annoying formatting is removed, you're left with a basic text and can focus on the content. It's also amazing to have your entire library available (and indexed) at your fingertips. For research, use of plugins to create and maintain a bibliography is also tremendously useful. DRM is a zit on the face of knowledge. And I'll plug Moon+Reader, for mobile, a pretty slick ebook reader in my experience.