Question about Kindle, Calibre & Canada

[Bellychaser]

The Kindle has everything i want except Amazon. I don't plan on buying any books from them, I live in the boonies of northern Ontario Canada so I don't even have 3G around here and I already have an extensive library of unread books but most are PDF or EPUB. How much of a PITA is it to use Calibre to convert my books to read on the Kindle and what quality of reading experience should i expect? Also, can someone describe for me the Kindle's catalog features? Can i still use the catalog it if none of my books come from Amazon?

Basically I am leaning toward the Kindle 3 because of the text quality, it's low price and because it appeals to me aesthetically.

Thanks!

[Bilbo1967]

Well, using Calibre to convert is not really much of a PITA, but it can be time-consuming if you plan to convert a lot of books and you do sometimes need to experiment a little to get the best settings for your particular conversions.

I also find that the quality of converted books can be variable, although I think that this is probably due to variations in the quality of the input rather than any failings on Calibre's part. Converting from PDF in particular can be a bit dodgy.

If you don't need the 3G or Wi-Fi, I would suggest that you would be better off with one of the new Sonys (or possibly even a Nook or something else that handles EPUBs, although I have no experience of these so can't personally recommend them).

Of course, if cost is a factor (and when isn't it), then the Kindle is substantially cheaper.

[somecanuck]

I have 50+ read books on my Kindle 3, none of them purchased via Amazon. I tend to handcraft (or tweak) files into EPUB format using a text editor and Sigil, then convert and send it to the Kindle using Calibre. It's flawless every time.

[JeremyR]

I am basically in the same boat. After about 2 months of having a K3, I've bought one book for it from Amazon (I do have a bunch of freebies, though they are unread)

Anyway, I think it pretty much is the best e-reader around, except maybe the Sony 650, which is twice as much money. So it's still a good pick.

Calibre is sort of a pain to use. Not so much it, itself, but the fact that you have to use it at all. Then again, it has its own way of storing books that insists on using and it's kind of slow.

I have gotten most of my books from here or Manybooks or Feedbooks. So I don't bother using it for those, I just download them in mobi and stick them in a folder on the Kindle.

Still, Calibre works pretty well in converting epubs I've made with Sigil. That said, on some of the ones I've downloaded (from here for instance, the Josephine Tey books like Man in the Queue*), it seems to mismanage the left margin, so it takes up 30% of the screen instead of just a little bit. You've got to go into Sigil and delete the epub style sheet (at least that's what I do) and it fixes that.

Haven't tried PDF, some people say the Mobipocket Creator Professional (which is free, I guess from the mobi website?) does a better job with those


* Yeah, I know, I'm not in a life+50 country. But I do own them all in paperback so I can still sleep at night...

[emellaich]

The first question is how tolerant are you for 'issues' with your book? Converting Epub to mobi with calibre usually give me very clean results (assuming no DRM). However, PDF can bring some problems -- usually in the form of page breaks. The problem is that page headers and footers come over to the mobi book. Since the ebook 'page' is different size you find your new book has periodic lines like this: Book Name - Author Page 135.

If you are really tolerant of 'bobbles' in the text you can read right over them. I do this without any problem. However, I like to have my books read to me (TTS) when I'm in the car and working out. For read aloud, these are really jarring.

For removing things like these, Sigil comes in handy. I convert first to epub, which Sigil can handle. Then I use global find and replace with regular expressions to wipe out the headers. Regular expressions are like advanced wildcards that you can use to match against changing text like page numbers. Then I use Calibre to go to mobi.

The point is that it can be done and it works quite well. Once you learn the process its not that bad. However it does take quite a bit of tinkering. If you don't want the Kindle store and don't want text-to-speech (which I find surprisingly important) then I would go with one of the other alternatives that read Epub. This way you cut out one step. If you are highly tolerant of little translation bobbles your job is easier and the kindle is fine. If you are a tinkerer you can get a pretty good pdf conversion and either epub or mobi (Kindle) work.

However, if you are a perfectionist and don't want to spend a lot of time tinkering with a conversion, you might be disappointed.

[cjottawa]

Originally Posted by Bellychaser

The Kindle has everything i want except Amazon. I don't plan on buying any books from them, I live in the boonies of northern Ontario Canada so I don't even have 3G around here and I already have an extensive library of unread books but most are PDF or EPUB. How much of a PITA is it to use Calibre to convert my books to read on the Kindle and what quality of reading experience should i expect? Also, can someone describe for me the Kindle's catalog features? Can i still use the catalog it if none of my books come from Amazon?

Basically I am leaning toward the Kindle 3 because of the text quality, it's low price and because it appeals to me aesthetically.

Thanks!

Bellychaser,
I already had a fairly large epub library when I got the Kindle 3. It wasn't a problem to convert using Calibre and the results are excellent, almost always as good in Amazon's formats (.mobi, .AZW) as as viewing an epub natively.

The Kindle file structure is similar to Gmail, if you use that online. You "tag" books (articles, documents, whatever) with "collection" names. You can tag an item with multiple collection names and it will appear in each collection.

There aren't "folders" perse, just collections.

[Bellychaser]

Wow, you have all been incredibly helpful! Thanks so much. I'm going with the Kindle. Now I just need to find a reputable dealer on ebay (so I can use paypal) who doesn't charge $65 to ship to Ontario. Wish me luck

...actually if anyone can recommend a seller who uses paypal i'm all ears.

[cjottawa]

Originally Posted by Bellychaser

Wow, you have all been incredibly helpful! Thanks so much. I'm going with the Kindle. Now I just need to find a reputable dealer on ebay (so I can use paypal) who doesn't charge $65 to ship to Ontario. Wish me luck

...actually if anyone can recommend a seller who uses paypal i'm all ears.

It's a roundabout solution but...

...perhaps you could purchase one or more pre-paid credit cards or Amazon gift cards (careful - they're specific to Amazon.com or Amazon.ca and Kindle is only on .com).

I'm pretty sure you can pay that way but a call to Amazon customer service will answer all. (paying with multiple cards, for example... which I'm not sure if they're set up to do)

[Bellychaser]

Originally Posted by cjottawa

It's a roundabout solution but...

...perhaps you could purchase one or more pre-paid credit cards or Amazon gift cards (careful - they're specific to Amazon.com or Amazon.ca and Kindle is only on .com).

I'm pretty sure you can pay that way but a call to Amazon customer service will answer all. (paying with multiple cards, for example... which I'm not sure if they're set up to do)

I can purchase an amazon gift card with paypal?

The thing is that I own an online business and my "disposable" income is all in paypal. I'd really much rather use it that my credit card which I use only for business related purchases when necessary. We are a credit card hating family

[Gwen Morse]

Originally Posted by Bellychaser

The Kindle has everything i want except Amazon. I don't plan on buying any books from them, I live in the boonies of northern Ontario Canada so I don't even have 3G around here and I already have an extensive library of unread books but most are PDF or EPUB. How much of a PITA is it to use Calibre to convert my books to read on the Kindle and what quality of reading experience should i expect? Also, can someone describe for me the Kindle's catalog features? Can i still use the catalog it if none of my books come from Amazon?

Basically I am leaning toward the Kindle 3 because of the text quality, it's low price and because it appeals to me aesthetically.

Thanks!

Epub should convert pretty easily in Calibre (as others have posted). For PDFs novels/fiction I use a program called PDF Reflow: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfreflow/

For PDFs with complicated formatting, I don't read them on my Kindle.

I have been enjoying reading comics on my kindle (color comics scanned in, converted to greyscale, and viewed in landscape mode).

Enjoy your new kindle, it's a lovely device.