If you have mixed feelings about Calibre (e.g., powerful, but the GUI looks unpleasant to you), you can use Calibre to help you convert books to EPUB format, then put them in something like a `~/doc/` directory on your laptop, with descriptive filenames.
Then you can read on your laptop, such as with `foliate`, and also sync to an ereader that lets you mount it as USB storage, with a script for which the key part is:
cd ~/doc && rsync -crltv . "${DeviceMountPoint}/."
Authors also need to unhook from Amazon, and here are some reasons why:
- They keep at least 30% of the cut, but much more if you dare to include high quality images in your e-books. That map you spend a week or two creating? It'll be a messy blur in a kindle.
- If you are not a best-seller, Amazon brings you nothing in terms of discoverability. In fact:
- the moment a potential reader lands on your book's page, Amazon will show them ads for other books. Consider that that potential reader may have come there after you paid for ads in Amazon or in some other platform, or after you spent a day doing in-person marketing at an arts fair. That's just asinine.
The discoverability issue affects me the most as a reader, since Amz keeps surfacing ten-a-dime stories that happen somewhere in USA, mention starwars three times per page, and involve werewolves.
1. Jailbroken my old Kindle to freeze the software version.
2. Use it to get new books from Amazon, and then import them into Calibre. Calibre can then de-DRM them, with the help of the dr-DRM plugin. It only needs the Kindle's serial number to work.
3. In addition to Calibre Desktop, I'm also running Calibre Web with the same database (my book database is on a network drive). Calibre Web also has OPDS server support.
4. I'm now reading books from a reMarkable tablet that has KOReader installed. It also has OPDS support, so I can browse my library from it and download books as needed.
5. I'm also using Storyteller to align Audible books and the Amazon Kindle eBooks, synchronizing them.
Stuff that doesn't work:
1. Position sync between audiobooks and physical books. KOReader does have a position sync protocol, but translating its position into an aligned position is not trivial.
2. Automatic audiobook alignment when new books are added.
3. I'd love to use a Kindle Oasis with 4G with my eSIM to be able to sync the reading position. This was _the_ killer feature of Kindles for me.
I discovered recently that if you sideload a book onto the Kindle via Calibre, Amazon can delete them silently at some later stage if they decide you didn't purchase it from Amazon. This includes public domain works.
It's allegedly a result of how Calibre manages tags in order to display covers but still feels deeply wrong.
I've got a nook and always try and buy eBooks through Barnes and noble. Not because I have anything against amazon but because I want physical book stores to survive. Its been a long time since I bought a physical non technical book for myself but I love taking my kids to B&N and letting them roam around and find something to read.
I've been a Kindle user for over 15 years, but I finally stopped buying Kindle books after Amazon removed the "Download & Transfer via USB" option, effectively eliminating the ability to remove DRM.
You can still remove DRM with Calibre and the PC Kindle app (not sure if it works for the latest versions of the Kindle app, but the older versions can still download books fine anyway).
That said, I've switched to Kobo a long time ago. It's easy to de-DRM, and under the encryption there's a bog standard EPUB with some minor Kobo-specific extensions - and no additional image compression, which is important for comics and manga. I have a Kobo reader too, but these EPUBs work everywhere and don't suffer from any AZW->whatever conversion issues.
It produces EPUB3 files with embedded audio aligned with the text. Use Libation and Calibre to strip your DRM or use Libro.fm to buy audiobooks without DRM.
ACSM download, DRM-stripping and uploading to Dropbox can be automated with a python script if you buy from the Kobo store. It requires Calibre, but you just need it for the CLI. Another python library is needed for automating the ACSM auth and download. KOReader's UI is awful, but once you get the hang of it, importing books from Dropbox to read on your Kindle device is pretty nice.
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[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 49.4 ms ] threadWhy not just convert them to mobi and read them with the native reader?
Then you can read on your laptop, such as with `foliate`, and also sync to an ereader that lets you mount it as USB storage, with a script for which the key part is:
- They keep at least 30% of the cut, but much more if you dare to include high quality images in your e-books. That map you spend a week or two creating? It'll be a messy blur in a kindle.
- If you are not a best-seller, Amazon brings you nothing in terms of discoverability. In fact:
- the moment a potential reader lands on your book's page, Amazon will show them ads for other books. Consider that that potential reader may have come there after you paid for ads in Amazon or in some other platform, or after you spent a day doing in-person marketing at an arts fair. That's just asinine.
The discoverability issue affects me the most as a reader, since Amz keeps surfacing ten-a-dime stories that happen somewhere in USA, mention starwars three times per page, and involve werewolves.
1. Jailbroken my old Kindle to freeze the software version.
2. Use it to get new books from Amazon, and then import them into Calibre. Calibre can then de-DRM them, with the help of the dr-DRM plugin. It only needs the Kindle's serial number to work.
3. In addition to Calibre Desktop, I'm also running Calibre Web with the same database (my book database is on a network drive). Calibre Web also has OPDS server support.
4. I'm now reading books from a reMarkable tablet that has KOReader installed. It also has OPDS support, so I can browse my library from it and download books as needed.
5. I'm also using Storyteller to align Audible books and the Amazon Kindle eBooks, synchronizing them.
Stuff that doesn't work:
1. Position sync between audiobooks and physical books. KOReader does have a position sync protocol, but translating its position into an aligned position is not trivial.
2. Automatic audiobook alignment when new books are added.
3. I'd love to use a Kindle Oasis with 4G with my eSIM to be able to sync the reading position. This was _the_ killer feature of Kindles for me.
https://open-slum.org/
It's allegedly a result of how Calibre manages tags in order to display covers but still feels deeply wrong.
Long thread here: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=340936
They might be able to also integrate with Hardcover API for syncing your books list as well as using WebDAV protocol for syncing locally book files.
https://github.com/readest/readest
That said, I've switched to Kobo a long time ago. It's easy to de-DRM, and under the encryption there's a bog standard EPUB with some minor Kobo-specific extensions - and no additional image compression, which is important for comics and manga. I have a Kobo reader too, but these EPUBs work everywhere and don't suffer from any AZW->whatever conversion issues.
https://storyteller-platform.gitlab.com.io/storyteller/
It has a server and mobile apps for reading.
It produces EPUB3 files with embedded audio aligned with the text. Use Libation and Calibre to strip your DRM or use Libro.fm to buy audiobooks without DRM.
For book deals, try bookbub. There are regularly deals on kobo which you can get notified of.
If I cant get an ebook via Kindle or Google Books its usually available on libgen.