desperate Zimbabwe Kindle owner

[lynrogers]

Hi everyone. This post is an effort to get advice from all you experts on ebook readers. I live in Zimbabwe which is a problem in itself as you will see. There are virtually no bookshops in Zim so I recently (on advice from a Kindle owner who does not live in Zimbabwe bought a Kindle. This would seem to be the perfect solution.
The Kindle was sent by courier to me in Zim and at the end of the day - taking into account customs duty - ended up paying more than US$300 for the privilege.

First problem - the Kindle wireless transmission does not work in Zim so I registered my computer to receive ebooks via broadband and registered my Kindle to accept transfer of the Kindle books via the USB cable supplied.
I paid for an ebook with my (International VISA credit card) and

Second problem - got a message from Amazon that Zimbabwe Kindle owners are not allowed to download Kindle books. So that takes care of that. All that money and nothing to show for it.

Is there an ebook reader that does not need all this red-tape?. Its like dealing with a government department which wants to make life as difficult as possible.

Microsoft ebook software downloads need a "passport" to use (more shades of Government-like interference) and now it appears my Vista operating system does not have "Activation ActiveX control software" and I can't download ebooks via Microsoft!!

I would like to utilise eBooks.com for material but how will I get it onto my Kindle. I will have to de-register the Kindle before using it as Amazon will not sell ebooks to me. Then I must send any ebook content via an email and in PDF format to my Kindle??? Will the Kindle reject these books because I have de-registered? I will have to buy a ebook content first and then attempt to transfer the content to the Kindle only to find it can't be done.

I am sure all you guys know exactly what I am talkming about. So all in all - I would like some advice on an ebook reader which is not riddled with all these "regulations " and difficulties. That will accept downloads of ebooks from my computer and which has a decent enough screen and battery power to enable me to read a book over a couple of days.

Is this too much to ask for???
driftzim@zol.co.zw

[ATDrake]

Wow. That's really a shame that you had to spend so much money and jump through so many hoops to end up with a reader that doesn't work for you.

Don't deregister your Kindle. There are certain perks that come with a registered Kindle, like the ability to use the @free.kindle.com auto-conversion service for certain file formats that will make them readable on the device.

I suggest that since Amazon won't officially allow someone from your country to buy books in their store, you familiarize yourself with alternative e-book sources, especially the ones which are DRM-free. You're in luck if you like sf/fantasy or romance genre fiction, which are readily available via Baen's Webscription, Fictionwise's MultiFormat listings, which are even cheaper with the discount coupons they've been putting out pretty frequently, and plenty of small romance e-bookstores, that will cheerfully sell to customers all over the world.

And maybe also learn to remove DRM and convert files to sideload onto your Kindle, because no other e-bookstore which sells its books as "Secure" DRM-restricted files will have a format that the Kindle will accept. Except for password-protected PDFs, which you can now use on the K3. We can't really discuss how to do this in detail on the forums, since it's a legal grey area in certain countries, but the information is readily available online.

As for getting the books onto your Kindle, you do not need to email them, or use PDF, though you're certainly welcome to do so if you like.

Just hook up your Kindle to the computer via the USB cable, and drag and drop the files into the "documents" folder. They will need to be in PDF, .mobi/.prc/.azw, or .txt. The Kindle will not reject your books, although it won't see them if they're not in a compatible format.

You can use the free application Calibre, which has its own subforum here, to convert any non-DRM copy-restricted book. And you might as well get your money's worth out of Amazon's auto-conversion service, which will handle .doc, .html, and .pdf files (be sure to use the @free.kindle.com address, the regular @kindle.com one comes with fees).

If you master the necessary DRM-removal skills, you can also try the Philadelphia Free Library, which lets non-residents borrow their e-books for the cost of a $15 card per year. Perhaps see if Kobo will let you shop there. Sign up for an account and see if they let you download one of the Free eBooks from the link at the top of the page. They're supposed to be very good about international customers, though it may make a difference that you're in Zimbabwe instead of, say, Sweden.

There are plenty of good sources for legal free e-books, including our library of public domain classics hand-formatted by our members right here. Just click on the E-Books tab in the blue navbar at the top of the forum to see the listings.

There's also the public domain archives of both classic and obscure out-of-copyright works over at Project Gutenberg and its spinoff projects, Feedbooks and Smashwords carry a lot of free self-published stuff, which is admittedly of varying quality, and plenty of established authors and publishers put free short stories and even entire books for download on their websites.

Alternatively, if you really want to buy books via Amazon, you could always set up a US-address account and use a US-based IP-hiding VPN proxy so that Amazon easily can't tell you're in Zimbabwe while buying stuff. Plenty of people do this in order to purchase books that simply aren't available in their area due to geo-restrictions.

Hope this helps, and welcome to MobileRead!

[abookreader]

okay - so you live in Zimbabwe but do you have a connection to another address or nationality?

The address the Kindle uses to determine what books should be available to you is the one listed on the Manage My Kindle Amazon.com webpage. It doesn't necessarily have to match the physical location of your Kindle. Kindles are meant to travel.

In order to buy from ebooks.com and put on your Kindle there are basically two steps. 1. Remove the DRM and 2. Convert it to a Mobi file.

The software Calibre can help you with both of those. You can see a Calibre forum for it here at Mobile read. You will need a plug-in for the DRM part. Once it is installed, you simply download your book to your computer, add it into Calibre and then click on convert file.

We can't give you the exact instructions you need for the Calibre plug-in here but if you Google "Apprentice Alf blog" you will find what you need there.

[polly]

Some of the bookstores will look at your IP address to establish your location, while others use the information you give them. When I lived in Germany, Amazon's store would mask out books that were restricted from being sold in Germany so that I couldn't even see them in the bookstore. I got around that with a program called hotspot shield. It's an advertising based program, but if you run Firefox with adblock enabled, you won't see any sign of the ads. Running hotspot shield, I was able to purchase "only in the US" books from Barnes and Noble and Amazon. The Sony store didn't care once I set my geographic area to US. You can purchase preloaded internet credit cards to give yourself a US credit card and make up a US address. BooksOnBoard didn't ever seem to care where I was located, but I used a US based credit card for purchases there.

I agree that whatever reader you use, you're going to have to strip the DRM to have any hope of getting modern books. It takes a little research, but it greatly increases the number of bookstores where you can shop. Your Kindle won't support book formats from any other store, so you'll have to strip the DRM and convert the book first. As abookreader said, this is very easy to do with Calibre once you have it set up and Calibre does a nice job of both managing your library and converting nonDRMed books to other formats.