I’m going to buy a kindle paperback (I’ve never had one), and I’m sure I’m not going to buy any books for it. What mods/steps/other stuff do you guys suggest to set it up?
Set it to airplane mode the day it arrives and never let it go online with the stock firmware if you value privacy - these beasts even send amazon the page you are reading currently on. Calibre is the best tool, it autoconverts anything if needed. It also has an RSS-to-newspaper feature that can create a custom newspaperlike magazine from your favorite feeds for you. Reading manga on Kindle is really fun.
I jailbroke my old Kindle paperwhite a while ago and installed Koreader on it and just read Epub through that without having to convert anything. No internet, no amazon and you can get second hand Kindles for cheap.
Kindles can read epubs now anyway. You literally don’t have to do anything.
That’s nice if you want to update I guess, but Koreader is such a better experience that I’d never bother using the stock reader anyway.
Seconding the Calibre recommendation!
if you want to jailbreak it, there’s a spreadsheet somewhere detailing which models to avoid
but honestly, before i figured out i could jailbreak mine, i was just using it in airplane mode 24/7 and transferring stuff over usb with the EXCELLENT software Calibre. highly highly recommend! the only benefit i get from the jailbreak is that i can use a more customizable reader (fonts, margins, night mode), and that i can now transfer stuff from Calibre over wi-fi without having to create an amazon account. bliss!
airplane mode 24/7
Highly suggest people do this if they are transferring books using calibre. Connecting to WiFi removes book covers, keeping it in airplane mode should prevent this!
It also helps to reduce battery usage in my experience, but that might be a coincidence
You can also email your ebooks straight to it which can be really useful.
Kindles support ePub now, the most common ebook format. Finally!
Amazon has a computer app Send to Kindle that makes it effortless to send eBooks to your kindle. Just grab whatever book you want from Anna’s Archive, open in send to kindle and send it to your device.
Later on you could even automate with readarr. Set it to look at your Goodreads to read list and automatically send those books to your kindle.
Thanks everyone! Glad to hear that I won’t need to use anything other than calibre. Can’t wait to get the kindle!
Highly recommend getting a Kobo instead.
I have so much trouble getting DRM free epubs on to a Kobo. I can transfer the files easily enough (Kobo is sadly lacking an email to device option though) but then once I start reading them, the page turn gets gradually slower and then eventually the device freezes… Doesn’t seem to matter whether the are EPUB or kpub.
i wish. It isnt available where i live.
I owned several Kindles… I got a different e-reader, and I’m not going back to Kindle. Do some research and see if there are any alternatives.
As others said Kindle has the feature of loading pirated ebooks using Calibre or Amazon’s kindle email…
Is there anything that can convert the Amazon kindle files to EPUB? Seems like a big barrier to using Calibre if I can’t get my already bought books.
Calibre Books is your best friend here. It can convert without much trouble between epub, pdf and mobi.
Calibre can do the conversion already. You just need to remove the DRM. And there is a Calibre plugin to do that too.
That did the trick. Thanks for the link!
Get a Kobo instead? Kindle are annoying as shit.
