Question for those with a Kindle

[Brynthe2]

My Kindle has been on order since 12/10/07 and I'm hoping that I'll see it some time this month. Anyway, my question is to those of you who have already received theirs. I've been wanting to read Slings and Arrows and continue reading CoE, but I've been postponing any new ebook purchases until after my Kindle arrives. Since it might be a while, I'd like to go ahead and purchase the stories. Is there a recommended format that is most easily transferred to the Kindle without ruining the formatting? I know it can read Mobi, but not if it is protected, right? Any help on this would be appreciated.

 

[PsychoPere]

The Wikipedia entry for the Kindle says that, yes, it does support unprotected Mobipocket content. Wouldn't it simply be easier, though, to download the Kindle Edition of any eBook you want to read to your primary PC, then transfer those eBooks to your Kindle once it arrives? That should eliminate any concerns about formatting.

 

[Brynthe2]

Ooops.. guess I should have explained in a bit more detail. I'd like to be able to transfer the ebooks to the Kindle once it arrives. It's my understanding that the Kindle versions of the books can only be read on the Kindle, so I wouldn't be able to start reading them on my PC now and finish them up on the Kindle later.

Thanks for the wiki link.

 

[PsychoPere]

Ah, my apologies for misreading. I took a quick look through the Kindle Support page and the Kindle User's Guide, but unfortunately didn't see anything useful at either location. It doesn't seem to me that it would be too difficult to provide software for reading a Kindle Edition on one's primary PC while waiting for the arrival of a Kindle, but I suppose that would somewhat defeat the purpose of the device.

My apologies I couldn't help; at this point, I think I'll bow out and let someone who actually has a Kindle attempt to answer questions.

 

[Lee]

I have a Kindle. No, I don't believe there's any way to buy a mainstream-published ebook now, start reading it on your PC, then finish reading it on the Kindle.

There's no way (at least no legal way) to read Kindle editions on your PC. Kindle does support other file formats, but the problem in this case, as you allude to in your post, Brynthe2, is that any format you buy Slings and Arrows in, for example, will be DRM'd, meaning it will be encoded in such a way as to restrict your ability to convert it to other platforms. So any non-Kindle format of a mainstream-published book will be unreadable on the Kindle, because the only DRM'd ebooks that Kindle will read are Kindle editions. You can read non-DRM'd Mobipocket ebooks on the Kindle, but new or recent mainstream-published books will be DRM'd.

So for now at least, it looks like your options are to either buy the ebook in a non-Kindle format and read the whole thing on your PC, or buy the Kindle edition and wait until you get the Kindle to read it. (Personally I think it's worth waiting, because reading on a Kindle is a much more enjoyable experience than reading on a PC.)

By the way, assuming you're in range of the Whispernet Sprint network, you won't have to do any actual transferring. You can buy Kindle editions of books now at the Amazon site, and your Amazon account will store them up, and when you get your Kindle and turn it on, it will automatically download any books you've ordered and there they'll be.

 

[greenmystik]

Are all of the SCE/COE and the new TNG ebooks available in Kindle format??? I don't have one yet but I was looking to buy one and if the ebooks are DRM'd then I don't wanna waste the money.

 

[Lee]

I would think any new or recent Trek book will be on there. Here's a search of Amazon Kindle editions for "star trek next generation," sorted by publication date.

Here and here are searches for SCE books, I have no idea if there might be more that won't show up in that search due to how their titles are listed.

To know for sure, you'd probably have to go to Amazon's Kindle book page and do a search for each title.

 

[Steve Roby]

greenmystik said:
I don't have one yet but I was looking to buy one and if the ebooks are DRM'd then I don't wanna waste the money.

Pocket's never let anyone sell Trek ebooks without DRM before. Seems unlikely they'd change now just to help Amazon sell more Kindles.

 

[JWolf]

Yes, ALL Kindle format eBooks (azw) are DRM laden. You will not find any Star Trek eBooks without DRM. I've seen Star Trek eBooks in BBeB, Mobipocket, eReader, MS Reader, and PDF. All have DRM. So if you want a Kindle to read your Star trek, then you'll need to go with DRM.

 

[DBR]

I don't know much about this stuff, but I do gather that DRM is some sort of piracy prevention, and I see people bitching about it all over the 'net. What exactly DRM is and how it works, I do not know (and perhaps worse, I don't care), but is there any disadvantage to it in media? Lets say for ebooks (in general, pick a format, any format!): does DRM deny the user any usage you would expect to get out of reading the same--or a comparable--novel from a paper book? This is pretty basic stuff we're talking about here: reading words that are displayed to us, saving our place with a bookmark of sorts, etc.

I guess I just don't understand.

 

[ATimson]

DBR said:
Lets say for ebooks (in general, pick a format, any format!): does DRM deny the user any usage you would expect to get out of reading the same--or a comparable--novel from a paper book? This is pretty basic stuff we're talking about here: reading words that are displayed to us, saving our place with a bookmark of sorts, etc.

It keeps you from moving your books from one device to another, or changing it from one format to another. That is, if you bought all your books as PDFs, even though the Kindle can read PDFs because of the DRM you can't put them on it. Or if you buy a new computer, it's a crapshoot as to whether you'll be able to get your old books working on it.

 

[JoeZhang]

I'm not going to lie - I've broken the DRM on a number of .lit types (I have not shared those with other people) - this is because when I swopped from windows mobile to a nokia device, I was unable to take my books on the go - so I had to break them to convert to .pdb - which I can read on my e61.

 

[Steve Roby]

DBR said:
I don't know much about this stuff, but I do gather that DRM is some sort of piracy prevention, and I see people bitching about it all over the 'net. What exactly DRM is and how it works, I do not know (and perhaps worse, I don't care), but is there any disadvantage to it in media?

Why do you think people are bitching about it? In the ebook world, DRM is used, among other things, to prevent people from printing ebooks out, from copying and pasting passages to another document, and from freely copying the ebooks they've bought from one computer to another. You may also be tied to a particular version of a particular program.

When you buy a print book, you can read it anywhere, anytime. It's yours, period. No, you can't photocopy the whole thing and sell it, but you can read it now and read it again twenty years from now without worrying about whether it's in a format that's no longer supported. You can pass it around to your friends, who can read it. You can sell it to a used bookstore and someone else can buy it, and repeat the process over the decades.

If you have a print version of a book, it doesn't matter if the publisher or the software producer goes out of business, it doesn't matter if your computer crashes and you replace it with one running another operating system, or if your credit card is stolen and you need to replace it. The print book will still keep on working. That's not necessarily the case with ebooks using DRM.

 

[JWolf]

DBR said:
I don't know much about this stuff, but I do gather that DRM is some sort of piracy prevention, and I see people bitching about it all over the 'net. What exactly DRM is and how it works, I do not know (and perhaps worse, I don't care), but is there any disadvantage to it in media? Lets say for ebooks (in general, pick a format, any format!): does DRM deny the user any usage you would expect to get out of reading the same--or a comparable--novel from a paper book? This is pretty basic stuff we're talking about here: reading words that are displayed to us, saving our place with a bookmark of sorts, etc.

I guess I just don't understand.

The way the Kindle DRM works is that each Kindle as a unique ID. Each eBook you purchase can have up to six different Kindle IDs inside. If you try to read any of these eBooks on a device that does not have the same ID it won't work. Currently there is no way to remove the DRM from Kindle eBooks.

 

[JWolf]

Brynthe2 said:
My Kindle has been on order since 12/10/07 and I'm hoping that I'll see it some time this month. Anyway, my question is to those of you who have already received theirs. I've been wanting to read Slings and Arrows and continue reading CoE, but I've been postponing any new ebook purchases until after my Kindle arrives. Since it might be a while, I'd like to go ahead and purchase the stories. Is there a recommended format that is most easily transferred to the Kindle without ruining the formatting? I know it can read Mobi, but not if it is protected, right? Any help on this would be appreciated.

You cannot read Kindle (azw) eBooks on anything other then the Kindle. Amazon has not seen fit to create computer based reading software.

 

[FalTorPan]

Steve Roby said:
Why do you think people are bitching about it? In the ebook world, DRM is used, among other things, to prevent people from printing ebooks out, from copying and pasting passages to another document, and from freely copying the ebooks they've bought from one computer to another. You may also be tied to a particular version of a particular program.

When you buy a print book, you can read it anywhere, anytime. It's yours, period. No, you can't photocopy the whole thing and sell it, but you can read it now and read it again twenty years from now without worrying about whether it's in a format that's no longer supported. You can pass it around to your friends, who can read it. You can sell it to a used bookstore and someone else can buy it, and repeat the process over the decades.

If you have a print version of a book, it doesn't matter if the publisher or the software producer goes out of business, it doesn't matter if your computer crashes and you replace it with one running another operating system, or if your credit card is stolen and you need to replace it. The print book will still keep on working. That's not necessarily the case with ebooks using DRM.

Yup, which is why paper is the final frontier. Screw eBooks, and let the Kindle be kindling.

 

[Steve Roby]

Ebooks aren't the problem, DRM is.

 

[FalTorPan]

Steve Roby said:
Ebooks aren't the problem, DRM is.

True, but it doesn't look like eBooks and DRM will be anything but joined at the hip anytime soon.

 

[Steve Roby]

The music industry is becoming more open to selling DRM-free mp3s, so there's some hope.

 

[JWolf]

FalTorPan said:

Steve Roby said:
Why do you think people are bitching about it? In the ebook world, DRM is used, among other things, to prevent people from printing ebooks out, from copying and pasting passages to another document, and from freely copying the ebooks they've bought from one computer to another. You may also be tied to a particular version of a particular program.

When you buy a print book, you can read it anywhere, anytime. It's yours, period. No, you can't photocopy the whole thing and sell it, but you can read it now and read it again twenty years from now without worrying about whether it's in a format that's no longer supported. You can pass it around to your friends, who can read it. You can sell it to a used bookstore and someone else can buy it, and repeat the process over the decades.

If you have a print version of a book, it doesn't matter if the publisher or the software producer goes out of business, it doesn't matter if your computer crashes and you replace it with one running another operating system, or if your credit card is stolen and you need to replace it. The print book will still keep on working. That's not necessarily the case with ebooks using DRM.

Yup, which is why paper is the final frontier. Screw eBooks, and let the Kindle be kindling.

I am sorry your mind is so closed.