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!
Not exactly piracy, but if the book in question is public domain, my favorite site is Standard eBooks! Very high quality books, with proper formatting and translations.
Hey, just wanna shout out to your local library. Overdrive (Libby app) is amazing, but only works on kindles in the USA. Double check if kindle supports overdrive in your country and if it doesn’t you may want to get a Kobo or a third party e-reader instead.
Either that or you can use DeDRM to strip the adobe digital editions drms to keep the library books after they expire.
Libby works on any Android and iOS device, so if you consider those E-Reader then no you didn’t miss understand.
However on proprietary E-Readers like Kobos and Kindles, Overdrive needs to be implemented by the manufacturer . It’s not an issue for Kobo, as Overdrive is baked in, but on Kindle it only works with the USA’s Library system if I understand it correctly (not from USA).
With that said since Overdrive relies on Adobe Digital editions it’s not the end of the world since you can remove the DRM and use calibre to cover the ePub to Mobi then move it onto a Kindle.
But getting the right device makes it less of a hassle.
Kindles allow loading epubs nowadays btw. You can even add epubs from one of their websites. I like to sideload mine to get features that kindle epubs have that sideloaded ones don’t, like scrolling the text instead of having to flip pages
Yeah and they’re constantly adding phenomenal user requested features in their updates (even for the original kickstarter device that I have). A libgen app would be convenient!
The cool thing about that is that you can use it on iOS simply by visiting the Audiobookshelf instance directly on the web. So technically, it’s available on every platform that has some kind of browser.
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).
Regarding the sources for books, you've gotten a lot of recommendations already. Loading them onto the kindle is super easy. You cannot only transfer via USB, your kindle even gets it's own mail address you can then just mail your books to and have them converted and transferred by Amazon.
Yeah, you can sideload pirate ebooks onto a Kindle. There are some restrictions with file formats, most people use Calibre if they run into issues with them. For ebooks I just grab mine from libgen most of the time.
I was thinking about epub support, but apparently they do now but dropped mobi support. I haven’t used a Kindle in awhile so no idea if there are any caveats. Here’s the full list for anyone interested:
Kindle no longer supports MOBI for their send to kindle feature (as of Nov 1). Not that it really matters, most people should be using EPUB nowadays anyways.
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