Kindle without Amazon?

[Clair]

[quote user="woolybanana"]Good heavens, what will they think of next, rice pudding made with baby milk.[/quote]

Baby milk? [8-)]

Do you mean ... BREAST milk? [:-))]

[woolybanana]

Yes, dearie, milk for babies which comes from the chruns which Nature thoughtfully allowed ladies to carrying round their chests.[:P]

[Clair]

[quote user="woolybanana"]Yes, dearie, milk for babies which comes from the churns which Nature thoughtfully allowed ladies to carrying round their chests.[:P][/quote]

Arghhhh!

What a terrible image! Need to bleach my brain NOW! [:D][:D]

[woolybanana]

Well, Nature could have put them in so many other places!

[Quillan]

I have a question about the Kindle and the Calibre software which I have now installed. After installation it wants to set its self up and the first question is about your device. I have a Kindle but once you select that you get to choose which one i.e. Kindle DX, Kindle Fire, Kindle PaperWhite and Kindle Touch/1-4. Well I have just the basic Kindle so which one do I select?

[AnOther]

AFAIK all Kindles use the same .mobi format so it shouldn't make any difference but then why ask the question ?

Why do you think you need Calibre ?

[Quillan]

Exactly, why ask the question. I was also thinking along the same lines myself.

I have some books in non Kindle file format and apparently it will convert then to run on a Kindle.

[Jay]

[quote user="Quillan"]I have a question about the Kindle and the Calibre software which I have now installed. After installation it wants to set its self up and the first question is about your device. I have a Kindle but once you select that you get to choose which one i.e. Kindle DX, Kindle Fire, Kindle PaperWhite and Kindle Touch/1-4. Well I have just the basic Kindle so which one do I select?[/quote]

I presently use a Kindle (basic). Calibre is a far superior program than the Kindle PC software and it recognises the Kindle when you plug it in. It will automatically convert any  ebook to the Kindle format before transfer. If you have not got past the choice section I would plump for Kindle Touch/1-4.

[AnOther]

You can convert virtually any ebook format to another here:

http://www.convertfiles.com/convert/ebook/EPUB-to-PDF.html

I have no idea why you would want any PC software for a Kindle, it appears in Explorer as a drive and you drag and drop files to it - job done !

[Quillan]

I think there is a big difference between your link and Calibre in that Calibre is far more than just a conversion tool, it is library as well. I am no expert yet but have just spent a few hours playing with it and understand now why you get the question about model, it's do with page size. When Calibre converts it uses built in default parameters to re-size the pages to fit your particular size Amazon screen. Whilst the format of Amazon Ebook files are the same the number of lines per page of the default setting varies between models. On the Fire range for instance pictures show the that it displays the cover of the book. The cover photo comes in different sizes depending on the device it will be loaded on (Kindle or other devices) so it needs the resolution for the the correct display which it works out automatically. There is the issues of list of content etc and how it is produced that differs from one make of device to another. I short Calibre does all this for you and gives you the ability to tweak these parameters if you want although leaving them at default seems OK at present.

It also finds the cover photo ISBN number etc if it's not included in the file and will put the correct genre in as well. As Derek says it really seems to be the 'must have' app if your sourcing books from places other than Amazon plus it organises and stores your books on your computer but the best thing ever of course is that it is free. If I were you Another I would download it and give it a try, you can always remove it afterwards.

By the way the answer to my own question is to either have your device attached before you install then it will work out it's settings automatically or if not select PaperWhite which is the same size and resolution screen (or the closest ) and it works fine.

[Clair]

Q,

Once you get more familiar with Calibre, you can try adding plug-ins to enhance some of the features.

For instance, there's a plug-in which will download all the recipes from a BBC Good Food search and make a single book of them.

Say you're looking for "chicken thighs", you get 134 recipes listed. The plug-in will put all these in a single book, in whichever format you prefer, in your library, with a Table of Contents linking to each recipe in the book.

You can download any RSS feed (newspapers, magazines, blogs...) automatically into Calibre with Fetch News and also download tags and book covers from a variety of sources, which, for me, makes a search easier than looking at a list of titles or keywords in Windows Search.

[AnOther]

[quote user="Quillan"]If I were you Another I would download it and give it a try, you can always remove it afterwards.[/quote]Thanks for the suggestion Q, I'll pass but bear it in mind for if or when I find that I need 3rd party software to do something on my own particular Kindle, so far I haven't.

I copy books to it, read them, then delete them, and I need nothing but

Windows Explore for that, besides, I have any number of far more

interesting things queued up and competing for me to squander time on

[:D][:D][:D]

If you and others find it useful that's great but personally I'm at something of a loss to come up with a reason why I might need things like cover photos or ISBN numbers and genre is automatically predetermined by me when choosing what to load onto it !

[Quillan]

I know what you mean about squandering time especially when you have so little left. [:D] [:D] [:D]

I tried your website, takes to long. Downloaded all Lee Childs books, converted them and loaded them in 4min 26 seconds of which I only spent about two minutes in finding them. I would probably be still converting them via the Internet using your system. [;-)]

[AnOther]

If you'd spent a couple of minutes more looking you would have found somewhere to download them already in Kindle format [;-)]

[Clair]

Please you two, don't start measuring the length of your apps![:D]

One likes it, the other doesn't need it! No need to prove anything to each other!!

It's NOT the end of the world!

[Ivor Nidea]

Sorry to wake up this section.....but I have a bit of a thing.

There is nothing I like better than to browse bookshops when I visit the yookay. I like to gaze at the covers, pick up the books (HB) and open ones that take my fancy to see if the text size and shape "grabs me". Ones that do, I buy.

Now back to my point. I now have a Kindle Fire, not the HD, the Fire. It was given as a Noel present, much like the mobile phone was about 5 years ago that now sits in my man drawer alongside the screwdriver, batteries, sellotape and assorted Christmas cracker plastic thingy's. Oh!... and the sunbed springs?

Hopefully the K thing will be useful as a book storage thing. Not visiting the Yuke much I buy books from Amazon UK using my ingerlish card, coz that's how I like to to do it. It would appear that I cannot download books from the A-Uk but have to do it via A-Fr. In a nutshell is that correct?

I have trawled through the search function on here and have read about all the other ways of downloading books but for many reasons (mainly age related) I prefer to keep things simple so only want to deal with Amazon.

So, to cut a long story short. Is there a way to download books from A-Uk just as I do with mail order?

I may end up like this man.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtXWWRyJLPw

[woolybanana]

Back to Calibre, please.  If I happened to have a manuscript what I woz preparin fur electronic publication, could I download it to Calibre as a word file, get it converted for Kindle, download it to MY Kindle only and thus test out the layout etc?

[Clair]

[quote user="woolybanana"]Back to Calibre, please.  If I happened to have a manuscript what I woz preparin fur electronic publication, could I download it to Calibre as a word file, get it converted for Kindle, download it to MY Kindle only and thus test out the layout etc?[/quote]

Yes.

You can drag and drop the Word file into Calibre, convert it to Mobi or AZW3 (Kindle) format, test it and re-jig the Word file, tweak the conversion process...

Please note that the Word file you drop into Calibre can be edited independently from your original Word file.

Once it's imported in Calibre, it is a new (copied) file and any edit you make on that file will only affect the Calibre copy.

If you want to edit your original Word file, you should edit it, then drop/drag it into Calibre for conversion.

[Quillan]

[quote user="Ivor Nidea"]

Sorry to wake up this section.....but I have a bit of a thing.

There is nothing I like better than to browse bookshops when I visit the yookay. I like to gaze at the covers, pick up the books (HB) and open ones that take my fancy to see if the text size and shape "grabs me". Ones that do, I buy.

Now back to my point. I now have a Kindle Fire, not the HD, the Fire. It was given as a Noel present, much like the mobile phone was about 5 years ago that now sits in my man drawer alongside the screwdriver, batteries, sellotape and assorted Christmas cracker plastic thingy's. Oh!... and the sunbed springs?

Hopefully the K thing will be useful as a book storage thing. Not visiting the Yuke much I buy books from Amazon UK using my ingerlish card, coz that's how I like to to do it. It would appear that I cannot download books from the A-Uk but have to do it via A-Fr. In a nutshell is that correct?

I have trawled through the search function on here and have read about all the other ways of downloading books but for many reasons (mainly age related) I prefer to keep things simple so only want to deal with Amazon.

So, to cut a long story short. Is there a way to download books from A-Uk just as I do with mail order?

I may end up like this man.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtXWWRyJLPw

[/quote]

I didn't have that problem and I don't know why. Perhaps it is because I opened my account on the .co.uk website years ago even though my address is in France and I use a French bank card.

I did buy an e-book from Amazon (UK) some time ago and down loaded the reader from them to read it on my PC. It obviously deposits books somewhere as when I first registered my Kindle it automatically downloaded it. I now have about 350 books and only paid for one thanks to Calibre, you would be surprised whats out there for free.

I have to say it took a few hours to get used to reading from it, I guess that is because we are 'programed' to read from an actual book but after that it's OK. I can't sit on beaches like Mrs 'Q' and do nothing so my boat has about 100 books on it. Last week I took them all home because I only need the Kindle. Mind you that's a bit of a mistake as Mrs 'Q' is already looking around to buy things to fill up the empty shelf space. [:'(]

I do have a question about Kindles, a tad off topic I know. Reading from a Kindle does not make me so sleepy as a real book. I read in bed to 'send me off' and a chapter is usually just about enough but I find with a Kindle I can read almost a whole book before feeling tired. Is it me or has anyone else noticed this?

[Quillan]

[quote user="woolybanana"]Back to Calibre, please.  If I happened to have a manuscript what I woz preparin fur electronic publication, could I download it to Calibre as a word file, get it converted for Kindle, download it to MY Kindle only and thus test out the layout etc?[/quote]

No problem using MS Word.

You need to set the page size to Create a new document in Microsoft Word, 9cm wide, 10.2cm high, with 0.5cm margins to emulate the size of the Kindle. You can select 'Custom'  page size Only use font sizes 10 (most common for normal text), 12, 14 and 18 all others will be ignored by the Kindle and re-sized to its nearest equivalent.

Once you have created your document save it as an html document then import it into Calibre. There will be no need to convert as Kindles can read html files.

An alternative is to use Adobe Acrobat to create your files, Kindles read pdf files without problems. There are quite a few templates for pdf files and Kindles around. Actually there is a plugin for Adobe specifically for creating e-books for Kindles (and other readers).

[Clair]

[quote user="Quillan"]... Reading from a Kindle does not make me so sleepy as a real book. I read in bed to 'send me off' and a chapter is usually just about enough but I find with a Kindle I can read almost a whole book before feeling tired. Is it me or has anyone else noticed this?[/quote]

I've read something recently, along the lines of e-reader screens stimulating brain activity... Something about bright screens and daylight simulation...

Try google for "e-reader and insomnia"...

[Quillan]

Well what do I know then. Trouble is they are saying to turn down the backlite but the basic Kindle is passive and has no backlite i.e. you can't read it in the dark. See IPads came in for a bit of a slaughter on this one although I am thinking personally that this is because Ipads are more common at the moment and that you would get the same result from any tablet.

[Clair]

When reading in darkness on the iPad, I prefer the black background and the lowest screen brightness.

[Ivor Nidea]

Thank you Q for attempting to help with my K Fire.

At my age I should be tucked up in a comfy chair with a nice tartan rug wrapped around my legs, not getting all steamed up inside like a raging volcano about to erupt.

The <whisper> Kindle is now in the drawer alongside the sun-bed springs, batteries (some used) and cracker plastic toys.

[Quillan]

[quote user="Ivor Nidea"]

Thank you Q for attempting to help with my K Fire.

At my age I should be tucked up in a comfy chair with a nice tartan rug wrapped around my legs, not getting all steamed up inside like a raging volcano about to erupt.

The <whisper> Kindle is now in the drawer alongside the sun-bed springs, batteries (some used) and cracker plastic toys.

[/quote]

Ivan I have sent you a PM.