Is there any way to download the free public domain books as epubs? - Page 2

tecweston · 12-07-2011, 02:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave9911

On the kobo bookstore website, they have a section on free ebooks. Quite a number of the free ebooks that came on your Kobo are available for download in the free ebooks section of their site.

How do you download them?

Dave9911 · 12-07-2011, 03:16 PM

On their main bookstore site, go to free ebooks.
There they have a category section. Pick the one you want.
Then in the list of books presented, there is an add to library button where the purchase button would be.

And...

Ahh, I see the problem here. Then you go to the kobo desktop app and it loads them to your kobo... But this doesn't give you a way to download them for side-loading to another reader...

hmmm... my bad. I thought it would let you download.

PeterT · 12-07-2011, 04:40 PM

Actually, I just tried Wuthering Heights by Emile Bronte. Select the option to add to your library; then, head to My Library and I see Wuthering Heights with a blue Adobe DRM ePub button next to it; click on that, and voila, an ACSM file will be downloaded that when opened will launch ADE to download a DRM protected version.

However! I just tried the same with The Art Of War. This was again added to my library, however, NO option to download an ePub version was provided

SF&F Reader · 12-07-2011, 08:52 PM

Yeah, some are available. I'd wager that most aren't.

As an interesting aside, I recently searched for "Michael Crichton" and found that Kobo had a free version of Timeline (sorry, link no longer available). Yeah, I did a double take, but I figured that the author may have donated the rights in his will or something so I tried it out. It wouldn't sync with the reader or the desktop so I tried the 'download' link. It redirected me to archive.org where a message said that the book had been removed due to its content.

My point? I guess Kobo sources some of its books from archive.org and perhaps some of the freebies that are available for download are from there.

BTW: Timeline is still listed in 'My Library' but I'm going to remove now anyway.

tecweston · 12-08-2011, 11:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeterT

Actually, I just tried Wuthering Heights by Emile Bronte. Select the option to add to your library; then, head to My Library and I see Wuthering Heights with a blue Adobe DRM ePub button next to it; click on that, and voila, an ACSM file will be downloaded that when opened will launch ADE to download a DRM protected version.

However! I just tried the same with The Art Of War. This was again added to my library, however, NO option to download an ePub version was provided

Odd. I wonder why Kobo doesn't allow you to download epubs of their public domain books, since they're public domain anyway there are no copyright issues. Except for maybe the covers?

Anyway, I'm very happy with epubbooks.com. I was using Project Gutenberg for a while, but it seems to be mostly a crapshoot; a lot of books seem to have been scanned in and are filled with spelling mistakes. But the ones on epubbooks are good (so far) and have decent covers (although they are low-res). I went back on there last night and downloaded a bunch of Dickens.

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12-07-2011, 03:16 PM	#17
Dave9911 Junior Member Posts: 9 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: KOBO	On their main bookstore site, go to free ebooks. There they have a category section. Pick the one you want. Then in the list of books presented, there is an add to library button where the purchase button would be. And... Ahh, I see the problem here. Then you go to the kobo desktop app and it loads them to your kobo... But this doesn't give you a way to download them for side-loading to another reader... hmmm... my bad. I thought it would let you download.

12-07-2011, 04:40 PM	#18
PeterT Grand Sorcerer Posts: 13,550 Karma: 79436716 Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: Toronto Device: Libra H2O, Libra Colour	Actually, I just tried Wuthering Heights by Emile Bronte. Select the option to add to your library; then, head to My Library and I see Wuthering Heights with a blue Adobe DRM ePub button next to it; click on that, and voila, an ACSM file will be downloaded that when opened will launch ADE to download a DRM protected version. However! I just tried the same with The Art Of War. This was again added to my library, however, NO option to download an ePub version was provided

12-07-2011, 08:52 PM	#19
SF&F Reader Groupie Posts: 150 Karma: 100855 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: Saskatchewan, Canada Device: Kobo Touch, Blackberry Playbook, Samsung Galaxy SII HD LTE	Yeah, some are available. I'd wager that most aren't. As an interesting aside, I recently searched for "Michael Crichton" and found that Kobo had a free version of Timeline (sorry, link no longer available). Yeah, I did a double take, but I figured that the author may have donated the rights in his will or something so I tried it out. It wouldn't sync with the reader or the desktop so I tried the 'download' link. It redirected me to archive.org where a message said that the book had been removed due to its content. My point? I guess Kobo sources some of its books from archive.org and perhaps some of the freebies that are available for download are from there. BTW: Timeline is still listed in 'My Library' but I'm going to remove now anyway.

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