Unhooking from Amazon Ebooks
remysharp.com
remysharp.com
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
There are two main tag values for Kindle books: EBOK and PDOC.
EBOK is intended for store content. (ebooks) PDOC is intended for user content. (personal documents)
In the past, only EBOK got cover thumbnails. So Calibre tagged books as ebok to get cover thumbnails.
This changed in a relatively recent firmware update for 7th gen and later Kindles, so now PDOC tagged books get cover thumbnails too. (Sept 2022)
I assume that Amazon just looks at the EBOK tag, assumes its an expired loan or something, and deletes it. Since that thread says only EBOKs get deleted. Calibre still tags as EBOK by default. A possible solution is to tag as PDOC instead. That thread mentions the problem started in 7/2021
I think you should reconsider "the benefit of the doubt".
I remember thinking similar things in the 90's with respect to microsoft.
I was talking to an ex-microsoft coworker about how windows would break compatibility with some 3rd party software. I said "engineers are under pressure to get some feature out, and they don't know how it affects every bit of software out there" or something", giving the benefit of the doubt to microsoft.
But he told me not to be naive, "microsoft would have meetings... How can we control this, how can we own this"
At the time that was a joke, we didn't care what MS Excel was, and then, for years, we didn't know anything other than Excel.
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.
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}/."Whenever someone on HN complains about Kindles, someone else recommends Kobo. But I never see anyone recommending the Nook.
I haven't used a Nook in close to a decade, but when I did, it was very hackable. I even used a $5 one from Goodwill as an e-ink photo frame. Are the modern Nooks as bad as Kindles now?
I opt for Boox because I run the Storyteller app on it, which I also run on my phone so I can easily switch back and forth between listening and reading.
It’s phenomenal once you get it dialed in with storyteller.
There are sources that say there are 1 M public domain ebooks.
https://libguides.library.umkc.edu/OER/PublicDomainBooks
Also there are thousands and thousands of DRM free ebooks to purchase. Possibly millions.
https://www.tomsguide.com/tablets/e-readers/no-kindle-no-pro...
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.
This is the docs site
Why not just convert them to mobi and read them with the native reader?
Which leaves them up to the mercy of Amazon's conversion system.
You can convert the files to mobi using Calibre.
Granted, it's less of having eliminated a step and more like having shifted the workflow, now having to load into KOReader as the new "default" state if you ever have to reboot the device.
I can put on a custom wallpaper. That you cannot do this without jailbreaking is largely also an ideological/philosophical issue, IMO. And, it's a fun icebreaker if another Kindle user in public walks by and sees a whacky wallpaper. Then, I can share my enthusiasm with hacking or tinkering with computers in general and sometimes that will carry into another line of conversation if everyone's in a conversing mood (of course, without pontificating or breaking out into a lecture about the evils of bigcorp, DRM, etc... I know some people are really bad about that).
Not everyone wants to dump time into tinkering with their Kindle like that, I get it. And honestly, mine collects dust these days, as I find it more difficult to ramp up reading momentum with it, whereas I can more easily (and inadvertently) binge-read if I grab the smartphone thinking I'm just going to squeeze in a few paragraphs, even if the experience is worse.
It seemed promising when it launched, but I switched to Goodreads (before the Amazon purchase) and haven't been able to find the time to look for an alternative since.
There is one based on ActivityPub called BookWyrm.
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.
- 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.
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200634500
Basically, they'll charge you 0.15 USD / Mb if you opt for the 70% royalty. Or nothing, if you opt for the 35% royalty. The deal would sort of make sense if it weren't for because they put so little value on the table.
There's a funny thing going on with maps in books.
Fantasy novels frequently include maps, and some people are pretty vocal about how much they appreciate those maps. But the maps are never relevant to the story at all; you'd lose absolutely nothing by leaving them out of the book.
History books also tend to include maps. The maps are much less detailed, and it's rare for people to make appreciative comments. But the maps are in there, even though the authors appear not to really care for them, because they're necessary to understanding most of what's going on. As far as relevance to the text is concerned, history books have a much more severe undersupply of maps than fantasy novels have an oversupply, and the fantasy oversupply is considerable.
And yet, somehow, all of the popular demand is for fantasy novels to have more maps and for history books to have fewer.
Totally fine.
> nor does he hold himself accountable to them.
Iffy: consistency matters in worldbuilding.
> Fans trying to stitch his world together run into issues and he just straight up doesnt give a shit.
Bad: This implies that 1. the constructed world is inconsistent and 2. the author doesn't care. A story set in a fluid world where things just move around breaks immersion and undermines stakes because the reader doesn't know what the rules are and stops caring when it becomes clear that things are just made up on the fly whenever it's convenient.
It's a different story on physical media, for example a well-made hard cover.
If only there was a national (or global) digital library of ebooks.
There are several, if the various shadow libraries (Library Genesis, Z-Library, Anna's Archive...) count.
Really? What library are you using? Virtually all of them will arrange to have the book you want sent from a partner library.
But I've lived places that had inter-library book loans before, and there were still cases where none of the libraries in the system had a book.
I had assumed this would be an imposition and I could handle searching myself. However, good librarians can work magic, whether it’s finding the same material in another format, arranging a loan, or even buying it outright.
The ones I know also assure me this is one of the fun parts of their jobs!
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.
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.