Device to Annotation and Reading - with Sync

[ensta]

Hi,

Am looking for a device/set-up to read and take notes on large books, Kindle, ePub and Google Books and PDF.
I want the ability to read books and sync annotations to Dropbox and notes/highlights to Evernote. Ideally without having to export manually.
I am using Readwise successfully for Kindle. But no sync options for Google Books it seems, only manual export. I also have straight epubs, so no option for note syncing there it seems.
I am considering Boox Note3, or Max3, but I also have a Samsung Note Pro 12. So, it would be ideal to set-up the system on that as a dummy first.
But either way, I'd like to know what the options are and whether it's possible to achieve all of these on either or both devices.

Any tips gratefully received.

Best regards,
N*

[hollowpoint]

It would help if you specified minimum screen size you're aiming at (I think you want at least 11", and probably more like 13", if you do a ton of reviewing and marking up PDF files and want to view at full size). Also would help to know if you're dead set on e-ink devices or open to tablets.

I think what you describe is an ideal role for tablet. For this, I wouldn't mess with these overpriced, made-in-communist-China Boox devices. Any Samsung tablet is going to be a decent option, no problems if you go with Samsung. But in the tablet world you can do better (and I say that even as a fan of Samsung's large/premium phone hardware). Instead I'd get one of the new Ipad Air tablets. Pair it with a Gen 2 Apple Pencil, you have an awesome device for handwriting, drawing, and notes. It'll do everything you want to do, AND it'll be a lot more versatile of a device with better long-term software updates and support. I have the current Ipad Mini, it's great, but I want a little more screen real estate for handwriting similar to you, and I'm thinking of an upgrade to the Ipad Air.

[ensta]

Thanks. e-ink is a high priority.
10.3 or more.
Samsung tablet is a functional option. But syncing highlights and annotations is the key challenge, on both devices.

[hollowpoint]

OK, I see what you're trying to do. I'm going to set aside the device question as it sounds like you're on Android either way, so it's a matter of choosing which device hardware you like best.

Believe it or not, what you want to do is surprisingly tricky (so this is gonna get a little lengthy :-) ). Because you actually are trying to meet several requirements with a single solution:

* Run several book-and-annotation ecosystems and their apps (Kindle, Google Books, and generic epub) on a single device.
* Find a solution that would let you (1) Take annotations in your Google Books and generic epubs, and (2) Automatically sync those to the cloud without requiring manually exporting the annotations to some other format.
* The cloud server for the syncing must be Dropbox.

There are probably new options, there's always something new. But I've checked out this issue before myself, tried different approaches, here are a couple of options I've tried. Unfortunately, some of these would involve a compromise on the Dropbox requirement for your cloud storage; still think they're worth considering. But listed a couple of Dropbox options below too.


Option 1: Use Amazon Kindle as the 'book and annotations hosting service', for ALL your ebooks. Basically, you De-DRM every book you buy, and store the original source version of the book in its native format (Epub, AZW3, etc.) in Calibre. You keep your book source files DeDRM'd, organized, tagged, and backed up in Calibre, but beyond that you don't do a ton with Calibre. To get your DeDRM'd Google epubs and other epubs into Amazon, you have a few different options. For example, one simple option is the 'send to kindle' option, where you email the DeDRM'd epub file to your specified Kindle address, and Amazon converts it, adds it to the "Personal Documents" area of your account. Once the book is in there, you can read it on Kindle, you can take notes on it, those notes sync to your Amazon account, etc. It's actually super slick, this is what I use now, and this is after going full circle over about 10 years, trying all the other approaches . One limitation is that you can't do a lot of organizing your collections on your device, with Kindle books.

Option 2: Use Google Books as your epub-book-and-annotations-hosting service' for all non-Kindle books. So in this approach, you leave your Kindle books in your current solution. You use Calibre to DEDrm and convert all other ebook formats (besides Kindle, and your existing Google Books epub files) to epub. You upload the converted epub books to your Google Books account. You can store up to 1000 non-google epubs in your account along with your Google books, the notes will sync and work just fine. I've used this in the past, worked ok-ish, but didn't like the 1000-book limit for external ebooks. Also didn't love the Google Play ebook reader itself. These days, all I use Google Books for is BUYING an occasional book, but I immediately DeDRM, move into Calibre for storage, and put the converte file into my Kindle account as above.

Option 3: Use FBreader as your epub-book-and-annotations-hosting service' for all non-Kindle books. FBreader is a nice cross-platfrom app (Android, Iphone, MacOS, web) I've used for years, though I recently moved off of it. It's both a highly customizable ebook reader, and a web-based annotations and book collections hosting service. The way you'd have to use it is, you'd again have to use Google Drive (I'm not aware they support any other cloud storage solution). You'd DeDRM your Google, and other epub books in Calibre, then you'd upload all of them to your FBreader account (which will store the files in your Google drive). When you take annotations on those books, FBreader stores those in your Google Drive account as well, associating them with the books (so there's no external export), and syncing them seamlessly across devices. This actually works pretty well, like I said I've done it. Here's an interesting bonus, should you decide to choose your Boox device that you listed: FBreader is planning to specifically support Boox e-ink devices and their annotations app. They've already added support in a currently available beta app (see FBreader.org/news). No idea how all that will work, but worth knowing since you're considering Boox devices.

Option 4: Use an app that has its own service for synchronizing books, collections, and annotations, to Dropbox. The catch here is, all these apps can use Dropbox, but for your own convenience you'd want to use Calibre to DeDRM all your Google Books along with your other epubs, keep them in Calibre, and then publish the library to your Dropbox. If you wanted, you could even do the same with all your Kindle books, then you'd have everything running on the same app, annotations, syncing, and backup system. You'd no longer directly use the Google Books or Kindle services or readers, for anything other than initially buying books. Otherwise, you'd just be putting all books in Calibre, reading with one of these apps/services, and storing annotations and synced book files on your Dropbox storage.

Here are 3 I'm aware of that have good rep and use Dropbox:
- Moon+ Reader Pro. Syncs books, metadata such as collections and book details, and annotations to Dropbox with the paid edition. It's a nice reader, I've used it. Bonus items include:
that it also includes PDF markup and annotations features. It also direct-connects to Calibre library. This one might be worth checking out. I'm currently sold on pulling my books into the Kindle service as above for sync and annotations, but if I weren't doing that, I'd probably try this option since I already bought the paid lifetime Pro version of Moon+ years ago. One downside with moon is that last time I tried this, the annotations themselves aren't very 'rich' as in giving specific location links into the content, as the Kindle and Google Play apps do.
- Prestigio reader. Don't know much about this one, they have the capability to sync books/annotations to Dropbox, G-drive, Onedrive, though.
- Bookari. A French company I believe, they have a free Android app but also a monthly subscription service that not only hosts all your books/annotations in Dropbox, but gives you a web browser-based view of all your book content, mass export options for ALL your annotations, etc. I tried it briefly, about 2 years ago, but the monthly subscription cost (I think around $5 or $6/monthly) was more than I wanted to spend at the time. But might be worth checking out, see if it has the functionality you want. If I was really serious and doing a lot of annotations for work-related purpose, I'd be checking out this option since it has a lot richer features.

One last item--added as an afterthought. You mentioned using Readwise, one of this species of apps that can harvest annotations from Kindle and export to an app such as Evernote. I assume that also means you're an Evernote reader.

The most interesting, cross-platform one of these web content-harvesting 'snippet' apps I've seen recently, is called Snippet. I'm actually doing a free trial of their paid subscription. It's quite interesting in that it knows how to harvest Kindle annotations and then export to EverNote, Onenote, and other formats like some of these other apps. But what I really like about it is, it's a general purpose web content snippet-gathering tool. It runs as an extension in your browser. Which means, not only can it harvest Kindle annotations from the online Kindle notebook, but if you used one of the above solutions that displays your annotations content in a web page (two examples that do that are: FBreader, and the Bookari service), presumably you could use Snippet to harvest your annotations from those web pages and pipe into Evernote as well. Just a thought.

[ensta]

Wow, thanks for your thorough and lengthy reply.
I'll respond soon.
But yes, you're on the money with this assessment.

[ensta]

Thanks for this.
Am a bit unclear how to get epubs into Kindle.
Can do it on the desktop, but then these don't sync across the diff platforms.
Any tips.
So far, Bookfusion is working ok. And Kobo PDF for annotations.
But I do want to move to e-ink, so thoughts on hardware would be welcomed.
Considering Boox Note 3 and Max Lumi.

Cheers

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by ensta

Thanks for this.
Am a bit unclear how to get epubs into Kindle.
Can do it on the desktop, but then these don't sync across the diff platforms.
Any tips.
So far, Bookfusion is working ok. And Kobo PDF for annotations.
But I do want to move to e-ink, so thoughts on hardware would be welcomed.
Considering Boox Note 3 and Max Lumi.

Cheers

I don't believe any self loaded files will sync between devices. Perhaps if you mail your file to Amazon and have them convert it but even then they probably don't keep a copy. It is Amazon that is doing the syncing.

Dale

[hollowpoint]

ETA, kind of a good news update. As an updated to what I posted below at first, it DOES look like even the annotations created on personally added docs (side-loaded books into your cloud Kindle account) in smart devices (android, iOS) running Kindle, actually get synced to the Kindle e-ink device as well. Updated inline to reflect that. In short, the impact of that is: Amazon's Kindle cloud account is the ONLY free and easy-to-use option I know of for converting books purchased elsewhere into Kindle format, uploading to your cloud account, and syncing books/highlights/annotations to ALL device types (e-ink, Android, iOS, PC).

Personally added ebook files to the Kindle cloud (such as an epub purchased elsewhere, and De-DRM'd) do sync across devices, at least for me they do. It gets a little tricky like I said abovebut it still works. I just ran a quick test with an epub and confirmed book syncing across devices for an uploaded epub still works.

* One caveat to note: the Amazon cloud notebook that shows annotations on ordinary purchased Kindle books, does NOT show annotations created on personal documents. The annotations you create in a sideloaded book, regardless which device you use, DO get synced to all the devices but those notes are simply not synced in the Kindle cloud notebook. Therefore, to extract and backup notes on sideloaded books you've added to your Kindle cloud, you can use Calibre to import the annotations. Or you can get various 3rd party apps to extract the notes to things like OneNote, PDF, Excel, markdown, or Evernote. Two such examples are the Knotes app, and the Snippet app.

With all that said, the Kindle platforms support for syncing 3rd party ebooks and their metadata across devices for free is, IMHO, far and away better than any system available . And that's why I use it rather than say, Google Play.

If OP interested in using this approach, here's what I do to get a 3rd party book such as an epub purchased elsewhere, into my Kindle devices/apps:

1. Setup your Amazon Kindle account by going into settings, and enable Personal document archiving, and find out what your send-to-kindle email address it.
2. Download and install Calibre, and the Alf DeDRM extension. There are threads and folks here at Mobileread that can help if you have trouble doing this.
3. After you buy an epub book, use Calibre + Alf to DeDRM the book.
4. Make a local copy of the DeDRM'd epub file, and change the file extension to something like ".png". So your file name would look like MyEbookFile.png.
5. Email the file as an attachment to your send-to-kindle address that you got out of your account settings.

Now Amazon converts that epub to their format, the ebook appears in your "Personal documents" in your Kindle account. The book file will sync to all your devices. Annotations should sync as above. To backup your annotations out of your sideloaded books, I'd use in this order: Calibre if possible, or the Snippet app.

[zendude]

Originally Posted by hollowpoint

In short, the impact of that is: Amazon's Kindle cloud account is the ONLY free and easy-to-use option I know of for converting books purchased elsewhere into Kindle format, uploading to your cloud account, and syncing books/highlights/annotations to ALL device types (e-ink, Android, iOS, PC).

Hello @hollowpoint - you mentioned that it's possible for personal documents sent to kindle cloud (either via email or sideloaded presumably from dropbox to say ipad kindle app) to sync to the Kindle Desktop App (at least that seems to be what's entailed).. My question is.. how were you able to do this? I wasn't aware that personal docs can sync to Kindle Desktop and when trying it again, it doesn't work... Were you by any chance referring to a virtually device setup where you have android OS installed and the kindle app running on it?

[hollowpoint]

I don't use Kindle Desktop--at all--so I can't answer the Q on that app.

However, it's definitely the case that you can sideload epub books into your Amazon cloud as a "personal document." I use Kindle-for-PC app for that purpose, though they do have other options like email conversion. Then if you add annotations to sideloaded personal documents on your devices that connect to your Kindle account (iOS, Android, Kindle), the annotations will sync across those devices. I do this all the time. If you set it up like I've suggested here with your devices, would be interested to hear if you find that it also syncs successfully to the Kindle PC desktop app.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by hollowpoint

If you set it up like I've suggested here with your devices, would be interested to hear if you find that it also syncs successfully to the Kindle PC desktop app.

In my limited testing a while back, the K4PC and K4Mac apps do not sync data for any sideloaded books. If you are sideloading books via USB to get the benefits of azw3 or KFX, they do not seem to sync anything on any Kindle device or app.

Since you receive a .mobi file when using send to email for formats other than .pdf, I found the quality unacceptable.

[user2334280]

I created an account to say thanks for this awesome thread, especially for all the research hollowpoint has done. I helped me a lot in my own search. I finally ended up using FB reader's network to sync my books and annotations. I'm using an Onyx Boox device and FBreader's latest beta plays really nice with it. The only downside is they don't have a very good desktop app yet, but apparently they are working on it again: https://fbreader.org/content/end-2021-update

In case anyone's interested, I've described my search here https://www.reddit.com/r/eink/commen..._syncing_epub/