eBook Stores and Sources in 2017/2018

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by issybird

I suspect many if not most went through a freebie phase. I was lucky, I suppose, in that most of the freebies were from Amazon and I've never had a Kindle, so the freebies languished since it wasn't worth the bother of doing anything with them. I also didn't grab everything and I came to my senses relatively early on at that, decided to make my Amazon library more muscular and did the big purge. Then you could only delete books from your Amazon account one. book. at. a. time. and it was an excruciatingly slow process. (Even now it's pretty slow, but at least you can do ten books at a time.) It was a salutary lesson and I was lucky at that, since I know for many their Amazon libraries are irretrievable in any useful sense.

Even now, I'll take a quick look at my Amazon library occasionally and see what can go. I wish it were smaller still. The two major areas remaining for the chopper are the public domain books I "bought" to get Whispersynced priced classics and the Open Road Media books from a year ago. The first, of course, should go because they'll always be free somewhere, and with the second, while I restricted myself to authors I've liked and books of interest, the reality is that most will never be read. I've done some purging, but I need to be more aggressive. As for the PD books, which I do expect to read (listen to) at some point, I figure they do no harm and are an easy way to access the content since they're already in my library.

IIRC: One poster here said it took several weeks to delete the freebies.
I know mine took many many hours.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

IIRC: One poster here said it took several weeks to delete the freebies.
I know mine took many many hours.

I never really went through a freebie stage. I got the 5 or 6 free PD books on the Sony store when I bought my original Sony, but for the most part, I never have downloaded a bunch of freebies that I never read. I have downloaded PD books from here, PG and other locations, but I generally only download books that I actually plan to read. Most of my unread books are more along the lines of partially read books. I start reading them and it doesn't catch my interest, so I move on to something else. I do have a fair number of those.

[Gardenman]

Originally Posted by svenlind

To answer my own question:

Go to Preferences -> Adding Books -> Automatic Adding

Here you can specify the folder that K4PC uses to place the books.
I have only checked Check for duplicates when adding files

Please note that Calibre deletes all files that are imported from the specified directory.

I started with deleting all files in the specified directory.

It will not be practical to use K4PC as an ebook reader, but that is of no concern for me.

It works very well. Buy a book from Amazon and let K4PC be your Amazon standard reader. The book appear auromatically in Calibre and the apprentice has done his magic.

I have not tried it but I assume you could download epub books from other book sellers to the same place and the same thing would happen.

[Gardenman]

Originally Posted by svenlind
To answer my own question:

Go to Preferences -> Adding Books -> Automatic Adding

Here you can specify the folder that K4PC uses to place the books.
I have only checked Check for duplicates when adding files

Please note that Calibre deletes all files that are imported from the specified directory.

I started with deleting all files in the specified directory.

It will not be practical to use K4PC as an ebook reader, but that is of no concern for me.

It works very well. Buy a book from Amazon and let K4PC be your Amazon standard reader. The book appear auromatically in Calibre and the apprentice has done his magic.

Originally Posted by Gardenman

I have not tried it but I assume you could download epub books from other book sellers to the same place and the same thing would happen.

I tried it and it works.

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I never really went through a freebie stage. I got the 5 or 6 free PD books on the Sony store when I bought my original Sony, but for the most part, I never have downloaded a bunch of freebies that I never read. I have downloaded PD books from here, PG and other locations, but I generally only download books that I actually plan to read. Most of my unread books are more along the lines of partially read books. I start reading them and it doesn't catch my interest, so I move on to something else. I do have a fair number of those.

Pretty much the same for me. I have a few books I started and didn't finish, and I'd guess I have a fewer than a dozen completely unstarted/unread books at any given time.

I also read a lot of Overdrive library books which of course will expire if I don't read them.

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

IIRC: One poster here said it took several weeks to delete the freebies.
I know mine took many many hours.

Mine took many hours when it was "one at a time allowed".

Nowadays it is ten at a time (at least on amazon.ca) so I was able to do it piecemeal, like, if I bought a book, I'd go to my "Content and Devices" and get rid of more than one that I wanted to cull, rather than making it a big chore. (the first time was a big chore)

Yes, I had more than one "oh joy!" freebie phase, and it took me twice to learn my lesson. Nowadays I actually choose, rather than just clicking everything with the word "free" on it.

[Katsunami]

I'd do it exactly the same: buy a book where it's cheapest, or in case of free public domain classics, where the layout is best.

Because most, if not all tools are geared towards creating and editing EPUBs, I immediately convert each book into that format, and clean it up/edit it with calibre and its editor. Yes... even if I buy a book at Amazon, for reading on a Kindle, I STILL make an EPUB out of it, clean/edit it where necessary, and then convert it back into AZW3 for use on the Kindle.

My library contains books that originally were LIT (from the old BAEN free CD's), MOBI (some of my very first purchases at Amazon, some from the BAEN CD's IIRC), AZW3 (later purchases at Amazon), and EPUB (mostly Kobo, but also other stores that are gone now).

All of them are freed from DRM where necessary, converted to EPUB, cleaned, edited, tagged with metadata, and shelved in the calibre library.

I therefore don't care what native format an e-reader uses, as long as calibre can convert to it... if not, I don't buy the reader. For a pure EPUB reader I'd obviously not convert. For my Kindle, I convert to AZW3, for the Kobo I convert to KEPUB because I like it better than the EPUB handling.

[GlennD]

I actually did restart my collection a few years ago...bittorrent was my old source of ebooks. I felt justified when it was mostly user-scanned books being shared, but when ebooks became widely available and the actual published versions started being pirated I saw the light, purged my collection, and went legit.

Nowadays Amazon is my first stop (same reason as everyone else: ease of Alf. Also, I'm most confident they'll be around for my lifetime.) Baen, Humble (and other) Bundles, Phoenix picks. eReaderIQ is my new best friend. And for public domain works, Mobileread is my first stop of course.

[Apparition B5]

I am amused but not surprised that no one yet has mentioned Barnes & Noble. Back around 2009 and 2010, everyone I know in the U.S. that reads for pleasure was giddy about their Nook eReaders.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Celestial

I am amused but not surprised that no one yet has mentioned Barnes & Noble. Back around 2009 and 2010, everyone I know in the U.S. that reads for pleasure was giddy about their Nook eReaders.

I'm slightly giddy about their current reader. But yeah, B&N has shot themselves in the foot one time too many to be a primary source.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I use both because, although Amazon generally have the best selection and prices, from time to time there's a good sale at sites like Kobo (or other ePub bookstores) that I take advantage of.

I do exactly the same, but the other way around.

For me (in the Netherlands) Kobo is generally cheaper, with more working coupons for the books I want to buy, but sometimes I buy a book at Amazon if Kobo or the other EPUB stores such as Feedbooks or Ebooks.com don't have it.

[Hemmi]

I buy from Kobo and Google Play mostly. Smashwords occasionally. Up until this year I'd buy from B&N also. That only ended because we changed insurances at work and I can no longer get free giftcards to B&N.

The rest of the ebook stores I used to buy from don't exist anymore. I download everything immediately and de-DRM it no matter the source.

[library addict]

I buy mainly from Kobo. Sometimes Google Play. And rarely BAM or Amazon.

I always forget to check Smashwords though I do have an account there.

[PurpleStar]

Mostly Kobo for me. Sometimes I buy the bundles from Baen.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by GlennD

I actually did restart my collection a few years ago...bittorrent was my old source of ebooks. I felt justified when it was mostly user-scanned books being shared, but when ebooks became widely available and the actual published versions started being pirated I saw the light, purged my collection, and went legit.

Nowadays Amazon is my first stop (same reason as everyone else: ease of Alf. Also, I'm most confident they'll be around for my lifetime.) Baen, Humble (and other) Bundles, Phoenix picks. eReaderIQ is my new best friend. And for public domain works, Mobileread is my first stop of course.

Quite a few of my original ebooks were user-scanned, most of them by myself and a few from friends. I still have flashbacks of tweaking OCR programs to try to improve the results and reading the shredded books while checking the OCR results. Some of the best results were from using a Xerox MFP and their Docushare program. I've replaced most of those with purchased copies over the years but still have a few of my originals left where the ebook has never been released. I never felt this was piracy as none of those books had any prohibitions about not scanning, storing, etc. It was a book that I had purchased and so could do what I liked with it.

Unlike one recent ebook purchase where the opinion I received from a lawyer was that by downloading the ebook to my computer and then copying it to my ereader without first obtaining the required permission in writing, I had violated the terms embedded in the ebook. Admittedly I was working on the law firms network at the time and I wasn't charged for the opinion so it may be worth every penny I didn't pay for it. She also suggested that I email the publisher just to see what their response would be.

I had to admire the answer I got from my email to the publisher. Basically, I was told that while downloading the ebook and then copying the ebook to my ereader did, technically, violate that boilerplate text, they would not take action against any person who downloaded a copy to which they were entitled and I could consider this email as permission to make one copy of the book for my use.

You've likely seen that boilerplate or it's cousins quite often. The one that reads: No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system - except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper - without express written permission from the publisher.