#e-books

[libraford]

Hello, everyone! By popular request, I'm making my Good, Clean Dirt series available through Draft2Digital. The first book is now ready to go on a bunch of different e-book platforms. The next two will be soon to follow.

Do you like small town mysteries where stuff gets kinda weird? How about characters who could be described as 'sad wet cat of a man?' How about dirt gods?

You'll probably like this one.

[autolenaphilia]

As a former librarian, the whole "don't pirate books, you are taking money authors need to feed their starving children, just borrow from the library instead :) " makes me angry.

Because e-book prices for libraries are insanely high. Like I've heard the jokey meme about how "if libraries were proposed today, they would be condemned as some socialist infringing on intellectual property rights."

Well, the rights for libraries to lend out paper books were negotiated almost a century ago in most western countries, while the rights for libraries to lend out e-books and digital audiobooks were negotiated during the present neoliberal era where corporations are very powerful. And It fucking shows.

The prices for libraries to buy e-books are insane, and that's not even counting the circulation fees. And the books are frequently restricted by licensing to a certain small number of loans per book, after which the e-book is destroyed and the library has to buy a new one to the exorbitant prices the publishers give.

Like the advice about how piracy is some great evil cutting into author's profits and how you should just borrow from libraries instead is so infuriating in that context. Like listen to actual librarians talk about e-book pricing for libraries. It's a major drain on library funds, and in the era of neoliberalism and austerity those budgets are strained as it is. And libraries inability in the face of these costs to provide digital content is used as justification for further cuts.

Librarians have boycotted major publishers over their ridiculous e-book policies and have talked about how ridiculous prices are for years, and for good reason.

This is fucking corporate robbery of library funding, of tax payers money to further their own private profits. Any moralistic bullshit about the evils of book piracy should be put in that context. If the ordinary person is stealing the publishers precious book sales profits, those publishers are already robbing that person's tax dollars.

It's a fucking hypocrisy to justify the present system of copyright and intellectual property with "well, if you are poor it's still wrong to pirate because you can get books for free legally from libraries". Because book publishers are already using their strong intellectual property rights to bleed libraries dry of funds, killing them in the process like the fucking vampires they are.

[sage-pantony]

Zines!!

Little self-promo moment, but did you know I have the following titles available for Pay What You Can?

Art Is for Fun and Zines Are Imperfect: A Handwritten Perzine About Overwork, Rest, and Play

Community, Empowerment, Social Change, and Zines: Wasted Ink Zine Distro

Zines as Empowering Adult Education Tools: A Presentation Zine

The Educational Power of Zines: On Making Academic Research More Accessible Through Zine Making and Reading

How to Keep Making Art: A Zine for Writers and Other Creative Types

Check em all out here: https://ko-fi.com/sagepantony/shop

[atelierverbum]

your body is not a waiting room vol. i - a project pride zine (made in collaboration with the olive branch and queering healthcare)

a central division release cover design and layout by nirdishtha raj sapkota <your body is not a waiting room vol. i> is a queer health-centered zine made in collaboration with the olive branch and queering healthcare, and is presented by Atelier Verbum’s Project Pride Initiative, which aims to showcase Nepali LGBTQIA+ writers and their works to the community and beyond! Not only does this zine…

your body is not a waiting room vol. i - a project pride zine (made in collaboration with the olive branch and queering healthcare)

[aesthetic-chills]

Tried Jailbreaking my Kindle Oasis...

And succeeded!

So, this video is making the rounds and I'm not surprised because it's really well done and the Kiki cover caught my attention immediately. Since Amazon removed the option to download the books we buy I'm always ready to give them the middle finger and decided to try.

In my case the Jailbreak was a success like I said before and I'm loving KOReader (which is what I'm using now to organize and read my books). The video is simple but I did find a few bumps in the road for my device so I decided to share a few things in case anyone else wants to do this.

I have a Kindle Oasis (2019 Ver.) with the latest Firmware which for this model is 5.17.1. Please beware the updated pinned comment on the video and the warning on the Kindle Modding Wiki "Mesquio does NOT work on firmware 5.18.1 and beyond" (at least for now).

My device did update while I was trying to Jailbreak it but (I guess) due to the Oasis model being discontinued I didn't get the 5.18.1 firmware, so I was able to go ahead.

This is the wiki that explains step by step and with images how to Jailbreak the kindle and how to install KOReader. Everything is there, just read carefully. You can find your kindle serial number on the "device info" settings.

Even with careful reading I downloaded the wrong KOreader version the first time lol, is not the end of the world.

When you go to the page to get the KOReader files, if you have the same Kindle Oasis as me you need to scroll down till "Assets", click "show all assets" and then download this one "koreader-kindlehf-v2025.04.zip".

If the Installation of the jailbreak seems to not be progressing at some point you probably have to turn off airplane mode at that stage (this seems obvious but this part of the tutorial was a bit confusing on the wiki, at least for me).

The video says that the process takes 10 min, but being honest it took me around 40 because of some mistakes on my part and I spent like 5 hours just deciding what pictures I wanted for the screensavers, so depending on how tech savvy (and obsessive) you are try to set more time aside for this just in case (I spent a big part of my Saturday doing this and it kept me busy while sick in bed with a cold so this was a welcomed entertainment).

To create my covers exactly how I wanted them (filling the entire screen or at the center) I used Photopea (is like photoshop but online, it has ads on the side but in my case I don't care, they need money somehow and I refuse to use Adobe products).

I created a new file with the Kindle Oasis resolution (1680 x 1264px and 300 DPI) and then just pasted the images I wanted there, resized and moved till I was content, and saved them as Jpegs on a folder called "ScreenSavers".

This folder can then be dragged to the kindle when is connected to a computer and KOReader will be able to use it as source for the sleep screen images. This was the result:

Now, I've seen some comments about KOReader not being aesthetically pleasing but I think it comes from the first look we get from it since all the folders there look like this:

KOreader is extremely customizable though, so I just created a folder called "Home" and chose it as the default Home folder. Now every time I click the Home button it takes me to my "Library".

You can display the books in lists, grids, etc., and customize basically all the info you want them to show (or not), how many books appear pear page, if you want to order them by series, author, etc.

You can also create collections.

Honestly, the amount of customization is endless (I was playing with all the menus for a few hours, but now everything is as I wanted it and I can just read and relax).

One thing I love is that you can look up terms or phrases from a book on Wikipedia and they come with images + you can download the Wikipedia articles to read offline later as an epub.

You can also customize what info appears on the cover screen (or remove this). In my case some book names are too long and make a double line so I decided to show just the % I've read on my latest book and the battery.

You have to write the words "read" and "left" yourself, or any text you want to add. The text for what my cover is displaying looks like this:

The progress bar is also fully customizable and you can choose what to display and in what order:

There's a LOT you can do with KOReader in terms of spacing, styling, fonts, etc. Stefan Svartling has many YouTube videos showing what's possible.

Now, how do I get my books into this thing? KOReader can connect with calibre so you can wirelessly send all your books to the Kindle or connect the device to a computer with a cable and drag the books.

Where do I buy books? Calibre comes with a "Get Books" function that allows you to search from different vendors or in the case of Public Domain books it lets you fetch them from places like Project Gutenberg for free.

In my case, I'm getting new books mostly from ebooks.com, they tend to be cheaper there than on Amazon. For example, Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne is 5,49€ on ebooks.com and 10.67€ on Amazon.

Please be aware, a lot of e-books are now sold encrypted with Digital rights management (DRM). This means you can only open them in certain devices and can't copy them to others. You can add plugins to remove the DRM and then send them to KOReader, but this is illegal in some countries, so always check what's the copyright law were you live.

ebooks.com has a DRM-Free (legal) category, so you can search if the book you are looking for is there.

Pros of Jailbreaking the Kindle:

All things mentioned above.

You can still access the Amazon books you had if you exit the KOReader interface.

If something goes a bit wrong you can factory reset the Kindle and it will be practically brand new, then you can re-download your books from your Amazon account.

Cons of Jailbreaking the Kindle:

It doesn't work right now on new devices with the latest firmware.

You void the warranty.

If something goes extremely wrong you could brick the device.

You could get malware if you download resources from untrustworthy websites.

If you have any questions feel free to ask!

[francesgow]

Women Who Lead

I don’t know about you, but I love a good story with a strong female lead. join me this month to explore a curated list of for fantasy, sci-fi, and dystopian stories featuring female main characters who drive the story. Discover romance, action, rebellion, survival, and leadership. Click here for FREE downloads for the whole of June!

View On WordPress

[the960writers]

Who Really Owns Your E-Books? Switching from Kindle to Kobo

The Nonsense-Free Editor

Aug 19, 2024 I had an eye-opening experience transitioning from an Amazon Kindle to a Kobo e-reader. It became obvious that people like Louis Rossman aren't far off when they warn companies like Amazon are removing the concept of ownership all together.