Downloading and converting Free Books (was part of Free Book sticky thread)

1118 Views 6 Replies 7 Participants Last post by koland, Apr 10, 2009

Rhiathame

Discussion Starter · Apr 8, 2009

This is both a free books thing and a tips and tricks thing so I leave it to the moderators to move

I saw this article yesterday but didn't have time to post.

http://cnettv.cnet.com/8301-13415_53-10214394-11.html

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Jeff

· #2 · Apr 8, 2009

Rhiathame (member 2790) said:
This is both a free books thing and a tips and tricks thing so I leave it to the moderators to move

I saw this article yesterday but didn't have time to post.

http://cnettv.cnet.com/8301-13415_53-10214394-11.html

Thanks for the tip. Let's see if Betsy lets us discuss it here. (I like her hats anyway.)

Rather than struggling with the Kindle experimental browser as shown by CNET, you can download free books from feedbooks to your computer or mobile device and then transfer them to your Kindle via USB.

http://www.feedbooks.com/

http://www.feedbooks.com/mobile

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Betsy the Quilter

· #3 · Apr 8, 2009

Tips are fine! If you want to DISCUSS the tips, I'll split it out into a thread.

Also check out the Book Lovers' Links for free book sites.

Betsy

--For Jeff

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Meemo

· #4 · Apr 9, 2009

Jeff said:
Thanks for the tip. Let's see if Betsy lets us discuss it here. (I like her hats anyway.)

Rather than struggling with the Kindle experimental browser as shown by CNET, you can download free books from feedbooks to your computer or mobile device and then transfer them to your Kindle via USB.

http://www.feedbooks.com/

http://www.feedbooks.com/mobile

Better yet, at least for me, you can download the download guide onto your Kindle & download via Whispernet, and update it periodically. Just delete the older version when you download an update. Lots of times I'll check for what's new on the computer, then download via Whispernet on the Kindle.

http://www.feedbooks.com/help/kindle

You can do the same thing for downloading from the mobileread forums (another excellent source for downloading free content directly to your Kindle via Whispernet). The download directions for the feedbooks guide works for the mobileread guide as well.

http://www.mobileread.com/mobiguide

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webhill

· #5 · Apr 9, 2009

CS said:
From Books on the Knob:

Random House has put Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America, up as a free PDF download on their For High School Teachers web site. In addition to the full text of the book, the free download also includes: a letter and two essays from the author, a Teacher's/Discussion Guide for Funny in Farsi and an excerpt from Firoozeh's latest book Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of a Global Citizen (not yet available for Kinde).

http://www.randomhouse.com/highschool/this_just_in/free_book_download.html

FWIW, I downloaded the book, which I was able to open and read just fine with Preview on the Mac. Then I tried to convert it to Mobi format with Calibre and got an error stating that there was DRM on it and it couldn't be done. So I told my Mac to print it, and chose "print as PDF" as my output, and then imported THAT PDF into Calibre, and now it is happily on my Kindle. I'm not sure what was up with THAT. There is nothing anywhere on the website that says you can't put it onto the ebook reader of your choosing. It just says you can't give away copies...

-h.

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CS

· #6 · Apr 9, 2009

webhill said:
FWIW, I downloaded the book, which I was able to open and read just fine with Preview on the Mac. Then I tried to convert it to Mobi format with Calibre and got an error stating that there was DRM on it and it couldn't be done. So I told my Mac to print it, and chose "print as PDF" as my output, and then imported THAT PDF into Calibre, and now it is happily on my Kindle. I'm not sure what was up with THAT. There is nothing anywhere on the website that says you can't put it onto the ebook reader of your choosing. It just says you can't give away copies...

-h.

Odd. I was able to convert it to Mobi without any issues (I think I just sent the file to Amazon's free address for conversion, then tweaked it with Mobi2Mobi). I haven't put it on my Kindle yet though, so I don't know if I'll run into any DRM complications there.

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koland

· #7 · Apr 10, 2009

I've had problems with Calibre as well - a PDF ARC I just received, it claimed had DRM, yet Adobe was happy letting me print it out, if I wanted. I imported it into MobiCreator instead with no problems at all. I think Calibre is misinterpreting a flag in the PDF and thinking it has DRM or it just has problems with some files. Personally, I like the additional control you have in MobiCreator anyway.

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