01-25-2011, 10:00 AM | #1 |
C L J
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Project Gutenberg and other places.
I'm happy with my Sony at the mo, but a friend of a friend is thinking about buying an ereader and being swayed towards the Kindle. However, I've read that it's not possible to put project gut and books from other places which are not Amazon on the reader.
For example, if Susanna (the person in question) wanted to put a gutenberg book or trawl the darkside - sorry, but she's not a member of MR and I'm not responsible for her morals - on the Kindle, would it be technically possible? Or do Kindle and Co limit books to those downloaded from their "official" site? I hope this makes sense. I'm trying to talk her into a Sony, but she's seen a Kindle a closer friend of hers has and has the kindle bug! |
01-25-2011, 10:16 AM | #2 |
Omnivorous
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Any file in mobi or pdf format can be side-loaded onto the kindle with usb. And Calibre is your friend.
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01-25-2011, 10:28 AM | #3 |
Enquiring Mind
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As long as a MOBI or PRC file is DRM-free, it should work on the Kindle (so, for example, Project Gutenberg MOBI ebooks should work fine). The only real restriction is not being able to read EPUB files directly on the Kindle, and not being able to read ebooks which have non-Amazon DRM. But there are scripts and plugins for stripping DRM from ebooks for personal use, and Calibre can convert EPUB and other formats to MOBI format which can be loaded onto the Kindle.
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01-25-2011, 12:21 PM | #4 |
C L J
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So it's okay to convert txt files into a kindle format using Calibre?
Thanks for the help. |
01-25-2011, 12:31 PM | #5 |
Omnivorous
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And if fact, books from Gutenberg do not need to be converted. Gutenberg now provides fairly well formatted mobi files for download.
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01-25-2011, 12:34 PM | #6 |
eBook Enthusiast
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Where do people get this odd idea that you can only load Amazon books onto the Kindle from? It's complete nonsense. As has been stated, you can load any DRM-free Mobipocket-format book onto the Kindle.
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01-25-2011, 12:46 PM | #7 |
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01-25-2011, 12:50 PM | #8 |
Wizard
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A lot of the more popular books from Gutenberg have much better version available here on mobileread.com.
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01-25-2011, 12:53 PM | #9 |
C L J
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Harry, I don't know where the notion comes from, it was something I heard/read. Maybe folk think that because of the wifi?
KindleWorm: I know that txt doesn't look great on the sony prs 505, especially if you prefer justified margins, which I do. I always convert txt into rtf using a template I created for the purpose. But that's just me! |
01-25-2011, 06:35 PM | #10 |
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It's not a great mystery considering how for a long time, Amazon and the Kindle were constantly being attacked here for using a "proprietary" format and "locking you in" and not supporting epub and so forth.
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