Comment by davidpayne11 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidpayne11 | Hacker News Reader

If you find yourself frustrated with the Kindle walled garden, and want the book in another format (PDF, EPUB, etc), then you can convert your kindle books to PDF/Whatever format by following this procedure. Please note - This may not be legal, and is demonstrated for educational purposes only!

1)Download and install Kindle for PC (Or Mac, if you have a Mac)

2)Download and install freeware Calibre (Open Source) (http://calibre-ebook.com/download)

3)Download and install DRM removal plug-ins for Calibre (if you use Kindle for PC app, you will just need to add the Kindle plug-in to Calibre)

4)Download your .AZW (Amazon's proprietary format) ebook onto Kindle For PC

5)Run Calibre

6)Find the folder with Kindle for PC ebooks (My documents/My Kindle Content)

7)Select DRM-protected AZW files and drag-n-drop them onto Calibre

8)Calibre will remove DRM protection from AZW ebook(s)

9)Convert your DRM-free MOBI ebooks to any other format (like ePub/fb2/LRF/Mobi/PDF/PDB/TXT/RTF/LIT) using Calibre if needed.

10)Enjoy reading the book in your new format. This is another way to say 'fuck you' to walled gardens like the Kindle.

I've been tempted to do just that: Convert all my Amazon kindle books into MOBI and get out of the "walled garden" as you put it. There was one thing stopping me though. I have an inherent need to support authors as much as I can since I not only wanted to be a writer when I was a kid, but I actually ended up writing a few short stories and a couple of novels. All unpublished off course since they where not mature (as in experience and style) enough. I fear that if I get out of the walled garden I'll end up buying a lot less books (and supporting authors less and less) because of how easy it is to get books online, and I don't necessarily mean pirating FYI.

So yeah, I installed Calibre and was amazed by the flexibility it gave me... and I uninstalled it an hour later because I realized that I couldn't support authors if it was that easy not to do so.

In any case this is great information, thanks for the walkthrough. maybe one day I'll go ahead with it and get out of Amazons lawn (get it get it? garden && lawn?)

>I realized that I couldn't support authors if it was that easy not to do so //

You realise this is counter-logical presumably. There is no reason you can't support authors and have their works in a format that is easier for you to consume. Indeed isn't it part of established fair-use in the USA to do format shifting?

So you buy the work and, assuming it isn't already, transfer it to the format you wish to consume the work in ... so where is the part where the author/owner/licensee doesn't get their "support" (ie payment)??

I don't understand how format shifting is going to change the number of books you buy either; can you explain further?

As an aside, Calibre does a pretty good job of converting epub and the like into the kindle format. It can also create the "Collections" on your kindle, which makes finding your books much easier on the kindle.

I put together a little writeup for the steps on accomplishing this on Mac: http://zacwe.st/blog/kindle-to-epub

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