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Comment by oakhaven | Hacker News Reader

Yesterday I realized that I can just copy an epub to a directory on my Kobo reader to the `root/<auhtor's name>` of the mountpoint in /media/oakhaven/koboreader (on Ubunutu 22.04). It will show up in the list of books on the device.

For some reason I thought that uploading books to the Kobo reader was somehow complicated, and I only used Caliber to get books from laptop to Kobo.

I know Calibre has lots of other functions, but I didn't like the interface and I'm happy I don't have to use it, or any other application like that, anymore.

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This is actually one of the reasons why I bought a Kobo instead of a Kindle or whatever else was available a few years ago. When you plug them in they mount like any other USB mass storage and you copy your stuff to them… no need for special formats or anything either, standards like ePub work great.

It kinda made me wonder how Kindles remain so popular. First mover’s advantage? I dunno, but an eReader that can’t read ePubs and PDFs feels a bit like an audio player that can’t play MP3s and AAC.

Most readers only buy books from their device’s store, so they don’t need to worry about sideloading. And then once they’ve done so, they are hesitant to switch because it’s hard or impossible to extract yourself from Amazon or B&N or Apple’s ecosystem without losing content.

Ideally everybody would only buy DRM-free ePubs and audiobooks but realistically people don’t care. And I don’t see a repeat of Apple forcing DRM-free music happening here.

At least the Books app on Apple iOS/macOS will manage and read plain old epubs and PDFs without issue, even if you’ve already bought DRM’d books from Apple’s store.

It’s really only big name e-ink readers other than Kobo that have this issue.

It's not "other than Kobo", though; it's Kindle specifically (and only with ePub, it takes PDFs). The other devices will happily take both PDF and ePub.

As for Kindle... for most users Send to Kindle is going to be more convenient than sideloading anyways, and that does take ePubs now, so it's not a huge usability hit.

FWIW, in case it's useful to other readers: removing the DRM from a Kindle ebook is super easy using Calibre and the DeDRM plugin. You put in your Kindle's serial number into the plugin, download the ebook from Amazon, drag-n-drop into Calibre. From there you can convert it to pdf for specific formats, e.g. I use the Supernote A5X which is a great reading and annotation experience.

I would rather spend my money on books from publishers who provide DRM‐free epubs, like Tor Books or No Starch Press.

I think there's a lot of sideloading. Buying non-{english,mandarin,spanish} books happens often in other book eshops, usually language- or -country specific. If you supply your kindle ID, they are able to send it straight to the reader, but the book collection is then stored in the local eshop (or more eshops if you buy from multiple). That's why Calibre exists.

All Kindles I had (the latest is paperwhite from 2020 or so) mounted on USB as mass storage and supported pdf. They also supported epub since 2014 at least.

You're wrong about that last bit. Kindles still don't support just dropping an ePub into their storage -- you have to convert to a supported format first, either manually (or through Calibre), or by using the Send to Kindle service to get them into your Amazon library. Said service only started supporting ePubs itself in late 2022, also.

Last I looked last year they did not support EPUB except by conversion through the email interface. Which is way better than it was.

But yes, they support USB mass storage.

My recent model paperwhite does not support epub.

This is how kindles work too. Mount as an ordinary FAT filesystem USB mass storage device, copy the azw3 to it, then read.

I just email my ePub to my Kindle's email. It then appears on the Kindle. I also email stuff that my dad reads - to his Kindle. This is easier than "USB mass storage" and does not require connecting the device.

I'd suggest piping your epub through kepubify [1] before transferring it to your e-reader.

[1]: https://pgaskin.net/kepubify/

Its been forever since I set it up but you can also sync via ssh, so, wirelessly recursively sync a directory.

I think I loaded my books over USB, then synced daily news and additional books via rsync. Some of the content was auto generated and dumped into the dir like some auto fetch and email subscriptions, some was manual like copying in a new book after purchase.

But its not a very complicated problem, calibre just does a ton of other stuff too outside of copying books into a specific folder structure.

TIL that Kobo is running sshd :D. But cool, I'll try to find what the credentials are there.

Yeah I was quite surprised when I found out that that works! I thought Calibre was doing something special. That's why Citadel has a "copy to folder" — you can copy an ebook to an external drive. I'm not sure that it's really easier than just opening the folder to copy + paste it, but Citadel updates a metadata file Calibre uses when detecting what books are on the device to avoid having to read every file in the folder.

Does kobo require an account to use? Or can you just buy it, drop epubs into that directory and start reading?

You can just buy and use.

Even easier, I’ve been using send.djazz.se and sending my books through that portal.

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