Buying ebooks online...

[baekgom84]

Hi everyone,

I'm relatively new to the e-book scene here and wasn't sure where to post this. I live in South Korea, and given the somewhat limited availability of English books here, it seemed that getting an e-reader was a wise choice. Recently I purchased a Next Papyrus Pageone e-reader (I believe this will be known as the Foxit eSlick PS when it comes out in other countries) which is somewhat lacking in features but quite cheap compared to the alternatives and perfectly functional for reading text.

However, one thing I didn't spend enough time researching was where I was going to get the ebooks from. I hadn't realised that virtually all of the major e-book retailers use DRM to restrict their e-books to certain devices, pretty much all of which do not support my e-reader (I suppose because it's sold exclusively in Korea, and understandably most Korean e-book owners don't place contemporary English texts high on their priority lists.) There also seem to be a few retailers, like the Sony e-book store, that restrict their sales to a handful of countries.

This leaves me in a difficult position. I found that Kobo will let me use my Korean debit card, and after some wrangling I managed to remove their DRM so that I could put the books on my reader. But still, their catalogue is missing or has restricted several titles that I'm interested in, which I've seen for sale on other sites like Amazon or the Sony reader site. As I've said, Sony won't let me use my Korean credit card, and possibly Barnes and Noble won't either (though I haven't tried yet.) This leaves Amazon.

Long story short: Is there a stable and consistent way to convert the Kindle e-books to an epub format? I've done a little browsing and it seems that there are ways to do it but I would much prefer to hear from someone who has had experience doing it. The current situation with e-book rights limited to specific companies and countries is ridiculous, and is surely only encouraging people to resort to piracy. I wouldn't even object to the DRM so much if there was a way that any given e-book could be purchased from any given site and used on any given e-reader.

Anyway I apologise for my somewhat long-winded post (admittedly I'm a little worked-up!), and would love to hear your opinions/experiences with what I've discussed. Thanks.

[neilmarr]

Good to have your company, Baekgom. This question is raised often. I'm no expert, but one of our resident gurus will be along to help soon, I'm sure.

In the meantime, if you're stuck for reading right now, pop into the bookshop section of my website (link below) and email me with two or three titles that catch your eye and your preferred format. I'll be happy to send them over with our compliments to help kick-start your library.

Best wishes. Neil -- ntmarrATbewrite.net (use the @ sign, of course)

[Care]

You can use Calibre to convert your ebooks to epub format. It is a free program, just google it and you will find the website. I am not familiar with your device, but Calibre works for many different devices, and I know it converts almost any format.