Glo Newbie to whole e-reader process

[Francesca Thomas]

Hi there,

My name is Cesca.

I live in Canada and my husband just purchased a brand new Kobo Glo for me for an early Xmas present.

I was not even asking for one, but had vaguely thought it would be nice to have one, instead of carrying around a heavy book all the time.

This is just a quick intro of me so you know that I am a total newbie. Afterall, this is my very first e-reader.

My husband says I cant call it a Kindle reader because it is NOT a Kindle. LOL

I love the fact that he purchased a Canadian made e-reader and that he didn't buy me a Kindle - because I would NOT want to be locked into Amazon all the time.

Now I just have to figure out how to get a free ebook from Project Gutenberg onto my Kobo Glo without necessarily going through the Kobo Books website - where I am of course registered.

Its getting late

Ciao for now

Cesca

[davidfor]

Congratulations on the new device (for some reason I nearly typed baby!)

Getting a book onto it is easy:

- Download the book to your computer.
- Connect the Glo to the computer and press the connect button on the screen.
- Copy the book from you computer drive to the drive for the Glo.
- Eject the Glo and disconnect it.

The Glo will then process the book add it to the library.

Also, if you are looking for a book from Project Guttenberg, have a look in the library here. If there is a copy here, it will be a better version than you can get from PG.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Francesca Thomas

Now I just have to figure out how to get a free ebook from Project Gutenberg onto my Kobo Glo without necessarily going through the Kobo Books website - where I am of course registered.

Hi Cesca,

There's no need to even connect to your computer.

Go to Settings > Extras > Web Browser
http://gutenberg.org
Search for the book you want
Click on the EPUB version
press CONTINUE in the dialogue box
Enjoy!

[Francesca Thomas]

New Question - Do I need to be using this Calibre software to upload an Epub book (from Gutenberg) to my Kobo Glo?

I tried doing it the way David suggested, but nothing is showing up on my device.

Also how and when do I change the title? I dont want to be stuck with generic Gutenberg names and a string of numbers....

As to meera's suggestion - where do I find settings? I am using the Firefox browser, and I dont know if I have the epub App or not.

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by Francesca Thomas

Hi there,

My name is Cesca.

I live in Canada and my husband just purchased a brand new Kobo Glo for me for an early Xmas present.

I was not even asking for one, but had vaguely thought it would be nice to have one, instead of carrying around a heavy book all the time.

This is just a quick intro of me so you know that I am a total newbie. Afterall, this is my very first e-reader.

My husband says I cant call it a Kindle reader because it is NOT a Kindle. LOL

I love the fact that he purchased a Canadian made e-reader and that he didn't buy me a Kindle - because I would NOT want to be locked into Amazon all the time.

Now I just have to figure out how to get a free ebook from Project Gutenberg onto my Kobo Glo without necessarily going through the Kobo Books website - where I am of course registered.

Its getting late

Ciao for now

Cesca

You can also borrow books from your public libarary, with a little help from adobe digital editions. And its free to do so!

Good luck

Jack

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Francesca Thomas

As to meera's suggestion - where do I find settings? I am using the Firefox browser, and I dont know if I have the epub App or not.

As I said, you don't need to connect to your computer (or use it in any way). I'm talking about the Settings menu on the Kobo.

[Francesca Thomas]

Originally Posted by meeera

As I said, you don't need to connect to your computer (or use it in any way). I'm talking about the Settings menu on the Kobo.

Uh huh - Gotcha, Meera - thanks.

Well I have downloaded the Calibre software to my PC and with my Kobo connected to the PC, those books I choose from Project Gutenberg, seems to download from PG with no problems, so for now, the problem is solved.

I will investigate other methods of download as I get to know my new device. I have only had it for, like 3 days now!!!

Thank you all for your help.

[PeterT]

Actually you could do far worse than to get used to Calibre. It makes many MANY things a whole lot easier.

And ignore the FUD that you might see regarding calibre causing problems with sending books to the Kobo; calibre uses the exact same method as every other means does to copying files to the Kobo.

[Francesca Thomas]

Oh and I have also found Smashwords too

More books to buy (and cheapish - none more than $10) and download to my new Kobo.

I may eventually start writing too - but first I gotta read...

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Actually you could do far worse than to get used to Calibre. It makes many MANY things a whole lot easier.

And ignore the FUD that you might see regarding calibre causing problems with sending books to the Kobo; calibre uses the exact same method as every other means does to copying files to the Kobo.

Actually calibre can has caused corruption on various devices out there. But there is definately an effort to fix things.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/816572

[PeterT]

Dear Jack; this is EXACTLY the BS I was warning the original poster about. Please re-ignore me.

Calibre does EXACTLY the same as Kobo Desktop, Windows Explorer, xcopy, linux cp, and any other program. It calls an O/S API on the host to create a file on a storage device.

The storage device is the same in all cases; the file system exported via USB by the Kobo to the host O/S.

There is NO magic that one means of moving data to it gets that another does not.

[GeoffR]

Originally Posted by meeera

Go to Settings > Extras > Web Browser
http://gutenberg.org

I find the mobile version of some websites easier to navigate when using the reader's built-in browser:

http://m.gutenberg.org
http://m.feedbooks.com (Some good, free, nicely formatted books here)

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Dear Jack; this is EXACTLY the BS I was warning the original poster about. Please re-ignore me.

Calibre does EXACTLY the same as Kobo Desktop, Windows Explorer, xcopy, linux cp, and any other program. It calls an O/S API on the host to create a file on a storage device.

The storage device is the same in all cases; the file system exported via USB by the Kobo to the host O/S.

There is NO magic that one means of moving data to it gets that another does not.

Sorry dude this is bs. There are issues with it and it is not even supported by kobo, kindle, sony or any other ereader on the market. Sorry you feel this way. But thats your opinion and unfortunately its not reflected by the facts. As you can see that calibre even posts the problems and the fixes that it has implemented. Bear in mind your limited use of Calibre with your own devices do not reflect the thousands of users out that. That also includes my limited use of Calibre with my own devices. You nor my self are the end all of end all answers to Calibre bare that in mind. Also Calibre does interect the meta data on the readers. so its not a simple drag and drop it here answer. Infact here is another link to some rather interesting news about Calibre

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...-with-calibre/

again as its freeware there is no support beyond the original calibre author, something that needs to be noted for any users expecting techincal support from the ereader manufacture.
While Calibre is a preety darn good program for maintaining ones library it was not created by Ereader Manufacturers and certainly is not recoomended nor supported by any Ereader Manufacturer.



Regards

Jack

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by GeoffR

I find the mobile version of some websites easier to navigate when using the reader's built-in browser:

http://m.gutenberg.org
http://m.feedbooks.com (Some good, free, nicely formatted books here)

I did not know they had mobile sites. Thanks for pointing that out.

Regards

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by jackastor

Sorry dude this is bs. There are issues with it and it is not even supported by kobo, kindle, sony or any other ereader on the market. Sorry you feel this way. But thats your opinion and unfortunately its not reflected by the facts. As you can see that calibre even posts the problems and the fixes that it has implemented. Bear in mind your limited use of Calibre with your own devices do not reflect the thousands of users out that. That also includes my limited use of Calibre with my own devices. You nor my self are the end all of end all answers to Calibre bare that in mind. Also Calibre does interect the meta data on the readers. so its not a simple drag and drop it here answer. Infact here is another link to some rather interesting news about Calibre

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/20...-with-calibre/

again as its freeware there is no support beyond the original calibre author, something that needs to be noted for any users expecting techincal support from the ereader manufacture.
While Calibre is a preety darn good program for maintaining ones library it was not created by Ereader Manufacturers and certainly is not recoomended nor supported by any Ereader Manufacturer.

Yes, there have been problems with calibre and the various ereaders. And the problems get fixed. And you are right that none of the big ereader companies officially support using calibre. But, they know about it. And I can tell you that while Kobo will not officially say to use calibre, they know people are using it and they pay attention to any problems that people are seeing. There has been at least several problems fixed because of the calibre driver. They weren't problems caused by the driver, just much easier to reproduce or cause when using it. They also have asked questions the calibre driver and have given help with it.

You comment about calibre's bugs and that they publish the bugs they fix: GREAT!!!! Most software companies don't or make it hard to find. Kobo don't. I know of at least two bugs fixed in the latest firmware that have no mention in the release notes. And they change function without saying anything.

The link to the article about Amazon rejecting calibre created books is interesting. But it is six months old and includes a recommendation to not use the new Kindle format until the calibre generation of it has been finished. I know I have seen something more about this in the last few weeks, but I can't be bothered hunting it down. If you are that worried about books converted by calibre, you won't be buying many. Just about any ePub I have purchased shows signs of having been through calibre. And if they don't, they show signs of being created with Sigil. Another freeware application not supported by any big company.

As to the calibre interaction with the metadata on the readers, yes, it does. It reads the metadata to work out what books are on the device. For some, there isn't a database of metadata so it reads each book. This is not going to affect the device. For the devices that have a visible metadata database, that is used. Along with the actual book files.

Does calibre update the metadata database? Sometimes. It depends on the driver used and the options. As far as I can tell, all drivers default to not updating the database. This is the case for the Kobo Touch/Glo/Mini driver. It will not update the devices database with the default options. The user has to go in and change the options to cause this to happen. That makes it is a conscious decision to accept the risks.

For the Kobo devices, the driver does certain things and there are certain things it won't do. And NEVER will. The primary one is updating the device database to add a new book. This is always left to the device. The driver simply copies the book to the device. It then leaves it there for the device to detect the book and add it to the database so the user can see it. Yes, if certain options are checked, the other things are done. These have been done after a LOT of investigation and testing. If you can find a bug in it, please tell me so I can fix it. I use the driver it so if something is broken I want it fixed for purely selfish reasons.

If you don't trust the drivers that come with calibre for the devices, disable them. Then calibre won't attempt to read the device at all. You can still use calibre to put books on the device via the "Save as" options. Save the book to the USB drive. The only difference to manually doing the copy is that calibre updates the book to have the latest metadata in it.

Lastly, did you read the bug you linked? If you actually read it all you would have seen that it is a firmware bug. Copying the book to the device by other methods had exactly the same problem. The last response in it is mention of the firmware release that fixed the problem.

I think that is it. My apologies to the OP for getting of topic. Apparently I felt like good rant Maybe that will get it out of my system before visiting the in-laws for Christmas.