trying mightily to move books from Kindle App on Macbook (Mountain Lion) to Calibre

[ljrkrispes]

New to Calibre and this whole DRM thing. Just trying to move books from Kindle App on my MacBook (running Mountain Lion). I have spent most of the day searching various places for help but am not successful thus far. I am running most up to date Calibre. I can't seem to get the book files from the Kindle App to move. I have gone to Kindle/Preferences/Content Folder/Change and tried to drag the BOOCBYQ5C_EBOK line to the Calibre App and Calibre Icon. No joy. I must be missing something simple, but it's been about 6 hours so far....begging for help..Linda

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by ljrkrispes

New to Calibre and this whole DRM thing. Just trying to move books from Kindle App on my MacBook (running Mountain Lion). I have spent most of the day searching various places for help but am not successful thus far. I am running most up to date Calibre. I can't seem to get the book files from the Kindle App to move. I have gone to Kindle/Preferences/Content Folder/Change and tried to drag the BOOCBYQ5C_EBOK line to the Calibre App and Calibre Icon. No joy. I must be missing something simple, but it's been about 6 hours so far....begging for help..Linda

Detailed help with DRM removal isn't permitted at MobileRead. However, since some books at Amazon are DRM free, I think it's fine to tell you how to copy those books from the Kindle for Mac application into calibre.

And the answer is that you don't do it from the Kindle for Mac application itself, but from the Finder. You just need to open the folder where Kindle for Mac stores the ebook files, and drag the .azw files onto the calibre window.

Mountain Lion probably tries to hide the default Location from you. I suggest changing the location in the Kindle Preferences to somewhere easily accessible, like {user folder}/Documents/Kindle Content.

Mountain Lion might also be hiding the file extensions from you, making it hard to be sure which files are the books, and which are the support files. I suggest going to Finder/Preferences/Advanced and checking the "Show all filename extensions" checkbox.

With those two changes, you should have no more problems getting your (DRM-free) ebooks into calibre.

[MelBr]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Mountain Lion probably tries to hide the default Location from you. I suggest changing the location in the Kindle Preferences to somewhere easily accessible, like {user folder}/Documents/Kindle Content.

No need… you can just hit Shift+⌘+G in Finder and paste this in:

~/Library/Application Support/Kindle/My Kindle Content

And it will take you to Kindle's default content folder.


Or you can type this in:

sudo chflags nohidden ~/Library/

into a Terminal window and Library will be permanently visible from Finder.

[ljrkrispes]

I used MelBr's kind assistance to find my Kindle Content folder and successfully moved the books into Calibre. But what is a Terminal window so that I can use the second suggestion to make my Library permanently visible?

And thank you as well to pdurrant for the helpful suggestions. I am retiring in a few years and moving to an RV--need to gain some control over the extensive (and ruthlessly curated) library.

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by ljrkrispes

But what is a Terminal window so that I can use the second suggestion to make my Library permanently visible?

A Terminal Window is one that opens when you run the Terminal app and that allows you to run commands via the text based Command Line interface to OS/X. It is often used when you want to do something that the GUI of OS/X does not easily support.