Download DRM-free directly to the Kindle

[azog]

This is probably old hat by now, but I was pretty excited to have it work:

Last night, I used the web browser on the Kindle to navigate to www.manybooks.net, found a likely candidate, and was able to download it directly to my Kindle's memory. It even came up with a message that asked me something like "are you sure you want to download this content?", and then it said that it will appear in my library shortly. I thought that was pretty nice. I've been downloading DRM-free books on my PC, and transferring them via the USB cable, but I was feeling lazy last night.

[catsittingstill]

I think it's cool that the Kindle will do that :-).

[Hadrien]

Something even cooler: in our e-books for the Kindle on Feedbooks, there's usually links to other books from the same author, and recommendations. You can directly click on these and download these books. Yep, you don't even need to be in the browser to download DRM-free books.

[cfw123]

I love my Kindle, so this is great news indeed, as I also hate DRM. Suggestion: when I log into manybooks from my Kindle, can you trap my Kindle phone number on the Sprint network, and save it in my account with manybooks. Thereafter I want to be able to download DRM free content from manyooks direct to my Kindle without going through the hassle of logging into manybooks from my Kindle, which is a pain.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

Something even cooler: in our e-books for the Kindle on Feedbooks, there's usually links to other books from the same author, and recommendations. You can directly click on these and download these books. Yep, you don't even need to be in the browser to download DRM-free books.

What does the error "Application Error: Rails" mean. I get this everytime I try and download a file.

Dale

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

Something even cooler: in our e-books for the Kindle on Feedbooks, there's usually links to other books from the same author, and recommendations. You can directly click on these and download these books. Yep, you don't even need to be in the browser to download DRM-free books.

That's lovely. I also appreciate how well-formatted the books are on your site. Sadly many of the books I've downloaded, even from here at Mobileread, don't have the metadata set correctly. Tables of contents are usually good here but it's pretty problematic accross the sites I've been to. The books I've seen from your site so far have all been good. Do you have a catalog with links in mobi format available? I know it would be changing all the time, but it would be way quicker to search and download from that rather than browsing the site.

[JSWolf]

Alisa can you point out if there is one of my books where the Metadata is not correct?

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Alisa can you point out if there is one of my books where the Metadata is not correct?

I checked out your War of the Worlds and Peter Rabbit. Neither displayed the Author data in the Kindle menu. Peter Rabbit didn't appear to have a Table of Contents at all. War of the Worlds had one. The links worked, but the Kindle didn't recognize it as a Table of Contents. It thinks there isn't one.

[Nate the great]

The author problem has to do with the tool used to make the ebook (Book Designer). That's something you are unable to do.

[ctitanic]

Originally Posted by Hadrien

Something even cooler: in our e-books for the Kindle on Feedbooks, there's usually links to other books from the same author, and recommendations. You can directly click on these and download these books. Yep, you don't even need to be in the browser to download DRM-free books.

wow! what a good site is that! I really like it! A really plus for kindle owners.

[Hadrien]

Strange problem, with the author, with mobigen it's easy to add an author (I specified the author in the OPF file on Feedbooks).

What does the error "Application Error: Rails" mean. I get this everytime I try and download a file.

Dale

Well that's a bug. I need to get rid of a few bugs like these and make a few improvements, although overall it works fine. Log in and you shouldn't get this problem anymore.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

The author problem has to do with the tool used to make the ebook (Book Designer). That's something you are unable to do.

Anyone know of a tool which allows the metadata in a Mobi file to be edited? It would be nice to be able to add author, etc, to books created by BD which, as you say, is currently unable to set Mobi metadata other than title.

[tsgreer]

I know that in mobipocket creator you can add/change the metadata, but I have no idea how to do in books that were created in something else.

Hey I just realized that my statement doesn't add to the conversation at all--sorry!

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Anyone know of a tool which allows the metadata in a Mobi file to be edited? It would be nice to be able to add author, etc, to books created by BD which, as you say, is currently unable to set Mobi metadata other than title.

I think the format has to be updated to "version 4" before "editing" would even be a possibility, and if BD output "version 4" Mobi files it would probably already have the Author etcetera. I suggested a while ago writing LIT files from BD, converting to OEB with ConvertLIT, and then to MOBI with mobigen.exe. This was in the context of getting a TOC (which added complexity to the task). I can't test this because BD LIT needs MS Word, which I don't have. It might be a viable work around until BD can be upgraded with better MOBI support.

Another possibility would be html2mobi. Use mobi2html to explode the existing version and html2mobi to recreate it with author etcetera. However, this requires Perl under Windows, and, in addition, when I tried mobi2html it extracted the html but did not completely "explode" the file (i.e. I don't think mobi2html followed by html2mobi currently replicates the original). This approach is in principle viable though. We just need a Perl on Windows "expert" to get us started.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by wallcraft

I think the format has to be updated to "version 4" before "editing" would even be a possibility, and if BD output "version 4" Mobi files it would probably already have the Author etcetera. I suggested a while ago writing LIT files from BD, converting to OEB with ConvertLIT, and then to MOBI with mobigen.exe. This was in the context of getting a TOC (which added complexity to the task). I can't test this because BD LIT needs MS Word, which I don't have. It might be a viable work around until BD can be upgraded with better MOBI support.

Another possibility would be html2mobi. Use mobi2html to explode the existing version and html2mobi to recreate it with author etcetera. However, this requires Perl under Windows, and, in addition, when I tried mobi2html it extracted the html but did not completely "explode" the file (i.e. I don't think mobi2html followed by html2mobi currently replicates the original). This approach is in principle viable though. We just need a Perl on Windows "expert" to get us started.

It is actually pretty easy to get Perl running on Windows. Occassionally however Perl want some Unix utilities but again this is also pretty easy to get on windows. I use cygwin for unix commands (but may are ported separately_ with a Perl installation and an emacs installation. My machine command line looks like Unix whenever I need it to.

There are also Linux versions that are bootable entirely from a CDROM so you can just boot into Linux anytime you wish.

Dale