Hi there, New to all this so excuse if I say something completley daft. I was given a Sony prs505 for my birthday by my husband, who spent ages trying to get hold of one, only to find that I can't register on the site to buy books. It seems that you can only register if you live in usa. i am in UK. I have looked on the net to find BBeB books over here, but they don't seem to exist! Husband is really disappointed, as am I. I have seen posts talking about converting files, so I purchased an Adobe pdf book here and tried to convert using PDFREADER. All seemed to go well until I noticed that the file size was only 1kb. It would seem that the programm thought that all 252 pages were empty!!!

Can anyone help me.....or point me in the right direction?
Thank you in advance.
Diane

Hi Diane,

You can only buy books from the Sony e-Book store with a US credit card or using a gift voucher.

PDF is absolutely the wrong choice to make - DRM-protected PDF files can only be read on the PC.

The easiest type of book to buy and convert are Microsoft Reader (LIT) books. These can be easily convert to the Sony BBeB format using freely-available tools. Take a look at a bookstore called "Fictionwise" for a great range of LIT books.

Thankyou Harry, I will go have a look right now. I am so glad to find that I can do something to get content as my husband was really disappointed that we couldn't seem to use it after going to all the trouble to get me one. Can you suggest any software to use to convert to .lrf?

What you need to do first is install Microsoft Reader on your PC - download it from www.microsoft.com. When you've got that installed, "activate" it so you can buy DRM-protected books. Now, do a Google search for a program called "ConvertLIT" and run the tool supplied with that to generate a "key file" for your PC - that's need to remove the DRM.

To do the conversion you use a free package called "libprs500" which you can download (I believe) from this site (someone else can advise - Jon?). That's the tool which converts the LIT file to the Sony's LRF format.

Don't worry if all this sounds time consuming - once you've got the software set up it's all extremely easy to use.

I must, in fairness, point out to you that removal of DRM is technically illegal in the UK, but nobody's going to hassle you about converting the format of a book that you've perfectly legally bought.

Hope that helps.

Thanks again Harry, I don't know if my computer skills are up to all that....but I will have a go....nothing ventured and all that!!!
Best wishes
Diane

Don't worry - it's all pretty easy, and you can always ask here for advice.

Fictionwise also sell a fairly large range of what they call "Multiformat" books, which ARE in Sony Reader format directly. They tend to be "back catalogue" stuff rather than current "best-sellers", but it's worth taking a look at: http://www.fictionwise.com

There are also a couple of thousand free out-of-copyright books that you can download completely free from this site, of course, which have been "hand-crafted" for the Sony Reader by many people who kindly upload them.

Finally, if you happen to be an SF/Fantasy fan, Baen (www.baen.com) sell all their books in Sony format without DRM, at very reasonable prices.

harry, you have been so helpful already, but could I ask something else please. I have downloaded microsoft reader and activated it. I found convertlit and saved that to my computer, but when i click on the reader key rec file I get a message "hook.dll can't be found".
What does that mean, any idea what i need to do now?

Ah, OK. You've got ConvertLIT 1.8, yes? Download the older v1.5 and run the "keygen" from that instead - that should work OK and give you a file called "key.txt". Something's changed in the latest version of Microsoft Reader which causes this problem with 1.8, but not with 1.5. Once you've got the key file, you don't need ConvertLIT 1.5 any more - go back to 1.8 for the actual conversion.

ok, will try that now, thanks.......

Harry, I'm sorry..you must think I am really thick...I have got myself 1.5 as you said. The files I have are attached (hopefully). Nothing says keygen.

What do I do now?

Sorry, I think I'm getting a little confused here. Install 1.8, and then replace the regretably named "clit.exe" from 1.8 with the version from 1.5. Then run the 1.8 "ReaderKeyRecoveryTool" as described in the 1.8 "Readme" file. That should generate a file called "key.txt". THEN replace the 1.5 "clit.exe" with the 1.8 version again.

I think I've got that right - apologies for the confusion.

Woooooooo!


I've done it

Thank you so much for your help and advice Harry, I couldn't have got there without you, you're a star.

I have just managed to buy a book from whsmiths, "convertlit" it and then "libprs500" it and it is now on my device.

I am thrilled to bits......of for a cupps now..I think I've earned it. On the plus side if I hadn't had all the problems I have..I would never have found your forum. I shall be dropping in regularly now.
Thanks Again

Diane

Great :)

Check out also the E-Book section on this here site (see menu at the top).

Great job Harry, It's people like you that make this forum one of the best.

Hi Harry,

I have followed the advice you gave to Diane and wondering if you can help me out.

We have downloaded .lit file.
Downloaded Converlit
changed the versions
downloaded the recovery key.

At this point we are stuck. How do we use this key to unlock the file.

We have tried to convert using calibre but cant seem to get past the correct file directory.

Could you please help?

We have tried to convert using calibre but cant seem to get past the correct file directory.

Could you please help?

You have to use convertlit to downconvert the .lit file before calibre can convert it to .lrf. Run convertlit at the command line and it will show you a sample command line on how to do this.

BOb