I want to get back into reading, so I’m thinking of getting a Paperwhite. But I have no idea if it’s possible to transfer files to it from a computer, and I have no experience with pirating books.
Do I go to the same places I torrent movies and games or are there special places dedicated to E-Books?
EDIT: So many awesome answers on here! You guys have been very helpful. Thanks a lot!
But getting in is not very easy and many torrents are behind a VIP-wall (you can buy VIP for seeding-bonus points). The tracker is focused on audiobooks, but there are also many e-books available.
Dafuq? They run interviews twice a week, and the questions are dead easy.
many torrents are behind a VIP-wall
Which you just have to wait a few weeks to get past the account age restriction and hand over a few bonus points, which are trivial to get. Just bookmark anything you can't get and have a little patience.
Piling on to this, part of what makes MAM great is that you get bonus points for seeding even if no one is downloading. Just keep your torrents running indefinitely and it won’t be long before you have free VIP forever, a 10:1 ration and still end up with more points than you could possibly give away
Piling in to say been a member for 10+ years, it’s my go-to for any books (text and audio), and with the system they have, my ratio is somewhere in the 300+ range. All by keeping around 100 book torrents alive on an old raspberry pi and using the bonus points.
Yeah I second this, it was so fucking easy to get in you just have to look up when the window is each week, jump on their irc, read a minimal amount of rules and then answer some questions on them to prove you read them. It took me about half an hour.
The VIP paywall thing is bullshit too. They do have a points system which was a little confusing at first but if you take the time to read all the introductory posts explaining them then it is an easy system to follow and you can easily amass many freeleech wedges which completely negates the so called VIP wall.
Can’t recommend them enough and so much fucking selection compared to free trackers.
As long as you keep seeding torrents indefinitely, you’re contributing by keeping those torrents alive. That’s a huge benefit to the community, and it’s why you can get upload credit even if you aren’t uploading.
And the fact that ebooks take almost no space means you can indefinitely seed thousands of books even if it’s from a small hard drive.
So don’t feel useless. In fact, I want to thank you for helping out.
Just want to add that if you find a rare ebook not on libgen, do you civic duty and take the time to upload it, it only takes a few minutes and it’s rewarding being able to save some time for others.
And probably the biggest, project Gutemberg. Searching Cervantes gives you only one book, Don Quijote, though in many editions, and both English and Spanish which is a bit limited.
Give Kobo a look, Amazon isn’t the only name in the game. Kobo lets you connect directly to your library and check out books on the device, I absolutely love mine after having a couple Kindles.
Maybe look into an Onyx Boox instead of a Kindle. It will let you download books straight from the web (like standardebooks.org and Project Gutenberg) without having to side load. Also, you can add the Libby and Overdrive apps to it since it accesses the Google Play store. Also, it accepts all files formats so you don't have to convert anything.
As someone buying a color screen boox soon, I think it’s worth a mention that the battery is MUCH worse on boox because it has to run android. Like, the boox may last a day or two vs the Kindle Paperwhite lasting a couple weeks.
It’s not a huge issue if you are home a lot and can charge, but I love the Paperwhite because it feels like it ALWAYS is charged. It just doesn’t have the color screen so I guess I will have both now, one for comics and one for books.
I think I got lucky and got one of the models with improved battery (Onyx Boox Page). I've been reading the Trigun manga on it for over a week now and it's only just getting to the point where I need to charge it finally.
But good point. Some of the older models might have worse battery life to consider. I only have a black and white model too. Color might use more battery.
You would just find the directory location of the DRM locked ebook, put it in Calibre with the DeDRM addon installed and enabled, and hey presto, you have an unlocked clone. (This works on MacOS)
My biggest issue with ebooks in the library, and what led me into more ebook Piracy. Having to wait to check out a digital book. I know the library has to pay like yearly licensing subscriptions to a lot of these books, and it's just so annoying to me that it doesn't cover everybody having access to it. I sit on the library board and one thing we're talking about doing is a graphic novel service for a lot of the youth. And low key, I'm stoked for the graphic novel service too. But that one's unlimited access.
Going into a library is like choosing a movie from Netflix. If you don’t know what you want it’s fine. But if you’re after a specific book, big chances it’s not there.
Example: I’ve read over 100 star Trek books, none of the libraries around me have any in the series, and I’m on a 3M people city.
That seems very odd to me. I’ve never been to a city library that can’t get something they don’t have. Obviously I’m biased by my own experiences.
I’m in Montréal (2-4M depending on how the library system is set up) and star wars has 1,099 hits. Video games, mangas, movies, tv shows, books illustrations, audiobooks, lego building guide ebooks, comics, etc. There might be some inflation in the figure for how some titles handle multi-lingual copies.
Karen Traviss is my favorite star wars author, followed by Timothy Zhan.
The best way to get back into reading is to go to your local libray, get a card, set up an the library app for ebooks, have the librarian recommend you something based on what you like, and start reading it. I got back into reading a year ago, have read about a dozen books, and haven’t spent any money so far just by heading to the library. I personally like to have a book with me but if you keep your e-reader around and just read it during the times you’d usually check social media or your phone you’ll get back into it in no time. I wish you luck!
I’m not sure if Danish libraries do E-Books. I could check after work, though. But the fun part is I already have a library card; the health insurance card all Danish citizens get counts kinda like an everything card, including lending books. ^^
Anyway, I got some authors on my radar already. Like for instance I have only read a fraction of what Terry Prachet wrote, and I never finished the Hitchhiker’s trilogy.
That’s awesome what a great idea! Nice Pratchet’s books and the Hitchhikers series are great! Hope you find some stuff you enjoy. Getting back into reading has been one of the best things I’ve done in years and has helped my life in a lot of ways. I found what helped me get back into the habit was just keeping something to read with me when I had time to kill like waiting for food or an appointment, reading on my work breaks to give my eyes a rest from screens, and reading around an hour before bed to help my sleep quality. You’ll be surprised how fast you’ll go through a book I usually would end up reading about 30 mins to 90 mins today. Also if you don’t like something by like 100 pages in just drop it. Trying to force myself to read things to the end I wasn’t enjoying killed my desire to read. By dropping books I actually ended up reading more than before. I hope you enjoy some wonderful stories! :)
Librarians are not always (but in fact, are very rarely) Lit enthusiasts who’ll know the best choices whenever you ask them. Most of them are just doing their jobs.
Anna’s Archive, Libgen, Mobilism, IRC (I use a self-hosted service called OpenBooks for this). I use Calibre for metadata sorting, plug Kindle in and move books that way and keep it on airplane mode.
Also, new Kindle jailbreak for <= 5.16.2.1.1 if anyone’s interested. Managed to get KoReader on my 10th Gen Basic.
But if you do jailbreak a Kindle, you’ll be able to install third-party apps like KOReader, which bring support for eBooks in formats that aren’t natively supported by the stock Kindle software, such as EPUB and CBZ files
I wonder when they did that. I’ve never updated my kindle, it’s never even been on the internet so I’m stuck in 2021/2022.
Either way I have KOreader now and it’s amazing. Just reading that I can connect it to the internet for more features and reading how to do that while blocking amazon. I still might not connect it or I’ll put it on my IOT wifi that doesn’t have internet access.
I didn’t have ads either but being able to use KoReader is a good enough motivation for me.
You can customize it a lot to your own liking and they do something clever with page changing that it seems a lot more responsive.
Another thing is I used to have to convert epubs to KFX to get nice hyphenation and good typography but on KoReader you seem to be able to customize all those typography things with whatever epub you throw at it.
Also, I have a local Calibre OPDS endpoint, you can add that in KoReader and download books over wirelessly. WiFi needs to be on when doing that but with a few tweaks you have read only root partiton so Kindle shouldn’t update.
Overall there are a lot of steps to it, if you’re comfortable with your current setup it’s not worth the hassle/time.
Kindle jailbreaking isn't strictly required, especially if all you want to do is sideload books. It's more about if you want homebrew, other customisation options or you just wanna get rid of ads without paying.
The airplane mode is because Amazon has a habit of updating the kindle without your permission.
I got ads removed on mine by asking chat support. The only caveat is it needs to be registered to an account. If you get a patient employee and ask kindly that the ads are not appropriate for children, it usually works.
Amazon’s logic is you paid a subsidized/cheaper price that is offset by included ads. You can buy it without ads (more expensive, obviously) from the start.
I don’t turn airplane mode on and I haven’t jailbroken it. I download all my books from Anna’s archive on my phone and then send them to my kindle email address. The books appear on my kindle in seconds. No DRM issues. I have the oasis because I’m a big reader and I highly recommend it.
As others have said – nope. You can get a cheap enough Kindle without ads (and yes, it is absurd that there’s an ad-version in the first place), and sideloading is a piece of piss. Either use Calibre or set up a Kindle email address. I mostly do the latter these days. The only downside (and the main upside to using KoReader, I would think) is that you don’t get the full range of typography options sending over EPUBs this way – you would have to do a KFX conversation first (again possible with Calibre, but a bit of faff).
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