I want to get back into reading, so I’m thinking of getting a Paperwhite. But I have no idea if it’s possible to transfer files to it from a computer, and I have no experience with pirating books.
Do I go to the same places I torrent movies and games or are there special places dedicated to E-Books?
EDIT: So many awesome answers on here! You guys have been very helpful. Thanks a lot!
And probably the biggest, project Gutemberg. Searching Cervantes gives you only one book, Don Quijote, though in many editions, and both English and Spanish which is a bit limited.
The best way to get back into reading is to go to your local libray, get a card, set up an the library app for ebooks, have the librarian recommend you something based on what you like, and start reading it. I got back into reading a year ago, have read about a dozen books, and haven’t spent any money so far just by heading to the library. I personally like to have a book with me but if you keep your e-reader around and just read it during the times you’d usually check social media or your phone you’ll get back into it in no time. I wish you luck!
Librarians are not always (but in fact, are very rarely) Lit enthusiasts who’ll know the best choices whenever you ask them. Most of them are just doing their jobs.
I’m not sure if Danish libraries do E-Books. I could check after work, though. But the fun part is I already have a library card; the health insurance card all Danish citizens get counts kinda like an everything card, including lending books. ^^
Anyway, I got some authors on my radar already. Like for instance I have only read a fraction of what Terry Prachet wrote, and I never finished the Hitchhiker’s trilogy.
That’s awesome what a great idea! Nice Pratchet’s books and the Hitchhikers series are great! Hope you find some stuff you enjoy. Getting back into reading has been one of the best things I’ve done in years and has helped my life in a lot of ways. I found what helped me get back into the habit was just keeping something to read with me when I had time to kill like waiting for food or an appointment, reading on my work breaks to give my eyes a rest from screens, and reading around an hour before bed to help my sleep quality. You’ll be surprised how fast you’ll go through a book I usually would end up reading about 30 mins to 90 mins today. Also if you don’t like something by like 100 pages in just drop it. Trying to force myself to read things to the end I wasn’t enjoying killed my desire to read. By dropping books I actually ended up reading more than before. I hope you enjoy some wonderful stories! :)
Yeah, you can sideload pirate ebooks onto a Kindle. There are some restrictions with file formats, most people use Calibre if they run into issues with them. For ebooks I just grab mine from libgen most of the time.
Kindle no longer supports MOBI for their send to kindle feature (as of Nov 1). Not that it really matters, most people should be using EPUB nowadays anyways.
I was thinking about epub support, but apparently they do now but dropped mobi support. I haven’t used a Kindle in awhile so no idea if there are any caveats. Here’s the full list for anyone interested:
Send to Kindle for Web
Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX)
HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
RTF (.RTF)
Text (.TXT)
JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
GIF (.GIF)
PNG (.PNG)
BMP (.BMP)
PDF (.PDF)
EPUB (.EPUB)
Send to Kindle from the Kindle App for iOS and Android Devices
PDF (.PDF)
Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX)
HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
RTF (.RTF)
Text (.TXT)
Images (.JPG, .JPEG, .GIF, .PNG, .BMP)
EPUB (.EPUB)
Kindle Personal Documents Service
Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX)
HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
RTF (.RTF)
Text (.TXT)
JPEG (.JPEG, .JPG)
GIF (.GIF)
PNG (.PNG)
BMP (.BMP)
PDF (.PDF)
EPUB (.EPUB)
Send to Kindle Desktop Applications
Microsoft Word (.DOC, .DOCX)
PDF (.PDF)
Text (.TXT)
Images (.JPG, .JPEG, .PNG, .BMP, .GIF)
RTF (.RTF)
HTML (.HTML, .HTM)
EPUB (.EPUB)
Regarding the sources for books, you’ve gotten a lot of recommendations already. Loading them onto the kindle is super easy. You cannot only transfer via USB, your kindle even gets it’s own mail address you can then just mail your books to and have them converted and transferred by Amazon.
Give Kobo a look, Amazon isn’t the only name in the game. Kobo lets you connect directly to your library and check out books on the device, I absolutely love mine after having a couple Kindles.
Going into a library is like choosing a movie from Netflix. If you don’t know what you want it’s fine. But if you’re after a specific book, big chances it’s not there.
Example: I’ve read over 100 star Trek books, none of the libraries around me have any in the series, and I’m on a 3M people city.
That seems very odd to me. I’ve never been to a city library that can’t get something they don’t have. Obviously I’m biased by my own experiences.
I’m in Montréal (2-4M depending on how the library system is set up) and star wars has 1,099 hits. Video games, mangas, movies, tv shows, books illustrations, audiobooks, lego building guide ebooks, comics, etc. There might be some inflation in the figure for how some titles handle multi-lingual copies.
Karen Traviss is my favorite star wars author, followed by Timothy Zhan.
My biggest issue with ebooks in the library, and what led me into more ebook Piracy. Having to wait to check out a digital book. I know the library has to pay like yearly licensing subscriptions to a lot of these books, and it’s just so annoying to me that it doesn’t cover everybody having access to it. I sit on the library board and one thing we’re talking about doing is a graphic novel service for a lot of the youth. And low key, I’m stoked for the graphic novel service too. But that one’s unlimited access.
Yeah and they’re constantly adding phenomenal user requested features in their updates (even for the original kickstarter device that I have). A libgen app would be convenient!
Just want to add that if you find a rare ebook not on libgen, do you civic duty and take the time to upload it, it only takes a few minutes and it’s rewarding being able to save some time for others.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
⚓ Dedicated to the discussion of digital piracy, including ethical problems and legal advancements.
I still use z-library. https://singlelogin.re/ has nearly all books.
https://annas-archive.org/
I love it especially for multiple languages (I Read English and German books)
Underrated answer
I recently found out about this and at random searched for a Brazilian author, obviously expecting in Portuguese. I was not disappointed.
Most answers and places are heavily biased to English books, it seems to not be the case here.
Though I’ll add a couple of my favorites for works that are free of copyright already
Wiki source. For example, Chekhov page has kinks to both English and original Russian texts https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Anton_Pavlovich_Chekhov
And probably the biggest, project Gutemberg. Searching Cervantes gives you only one book, Don Quijote, though in many editions, and both English and Spanish which is a bit limited.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=cervantes&submit_search=Search
Never heard of it, that looks really cool!
I use zlibrary’s tor mirror, i know it’s never down
The best way to get back into reading is to go to your local libray, get a card, set up an the library app for ebooks, have the librarian recommend you something based on what you like, and start reading it. I got back into reading a year ago, have read about a dozen books, and haven’t spent any money so far just by heading to the library. I personally like to have a book with me but if you keep your e-reader around and just read it during the times you’d usually check social media or your phone you’ll get back into it in no time. I wish you luck!
Librarians are not always (but in fact, are very rarely) Lit enthusiasts who’ll know the best choices whenever you ask them. Most of them are just doing their jobs.
I’m not sure if Danish libraries do E-Books. I could check after work, though. But the fun part is I already have a library card; the health insurance card all Danish citizens get counts kinda like an everything card, including lending books. ^^
Anyway, I got some authors on my radar already. Like for instance I have only read a fraction of what Terry Prachet wrote, and I never finished the Hitchhiker’s trilogy.
That’s awesome what a great idea! Nice Pratchet’s books and the Hitchhikers series are great! Hope you find some stuff you enjoy. Getting back into reading has been one of the best things I’ve done in years and has helped my life in a lot of ways. I found what helped me get back into the habit was just keeping something to read with me when I had time to kill like waiting for food or an appointment, reading on my work breaks to give my eyes a rest from screens, and reading around an hour before bed to help my sleep quality. You’ll be surprised how fast you’ll go through a book I usually would end up reading about 30 mins to 90 mins today. Also if you don’t like something by like 100 pages in just drop it. Trying to force myself to read things to the end I wasn’t enjoying killed my desire to read. By dropping books I actually ended up reading more than before. I hope you enjoy some wonderful stories! :)
A lot of Danish libraries have ebooks, but its a proprietary system and requires a compatible ereader. That basically means it only works for kindles.
I haven’t used it at all, I don’t bother
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Yeah, you can sideload pirate ebooks onto a Kindle. There are some restrictions with file formats, most people use Calibre if they run into issues with them. For ebooks I just grab mine from libgen most of the time.
What are they? The only thing I can think of is that pdfs kinda suck.
Kindles only support AZW3 or MOBI. Converting isn’t a huge hassle (thanks Calibre)
Kindle no longer supports MOBI for their send to kindle feature (as of Nov 1). Not that it really matters, most people should be using EPUB nowadays anyways.
I use epub on mine, after downloading it from z-lib using my phone. Then I just send it to Kindle and have never had any issues.
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I was thinking about epub support, but apparently they do now but dropped mobi support. I haven’t used a Kindle in awhile so no idea if there are any caveats. Here’s the full list for anyone interested:
Send to Kindle for Web
Send to Kindle from the Kindle App for iOS and Android Devices
Kindle Personal Documents Service
Send to Kindle Desktop Applications
I never knew they didn’t support epub.
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Regarding the sources for books, you’ve gotten a lot of recommendations already. Loading them onto the kindle is super easy. You cannot only transfer via USB, your kindle even gets it’s own mail address you can then just mail your books to and have them converted and transferred by Amazon.
Give Kobo a look, Amazon isn’t the only name in the game. Kobo lets you connect directly to your library and check out books on the device, I absolutely love mine after having a couple Kindles.
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I use library genisis. Great for scientific papers and adequate for fiction.
Anna’s archive is a catalogue which goes through multiple databases including libgen, therefore it’s preferable
First time i’ve heard of it. I’ve just checked it out looks like it’ll be my new goto-site, thanks :)
My fav place to get books is libgen.is. They usually have what I want in multiple formats. I read on my phone, so I always have a book with me.
Just because no-one has mentioned it yet.
Your local library. You probably don’t even have to go in, once you’re account is set up you can check out books online.
Going into a library is like choosing a movie from Netflix. If you don’t know what you want it’s fine. But if you’re after a specific book, big chances it’s not there.
Example: I’ve read over 100 star Trek books, none of the libraries around me have any in the series, and I’m on a 3M people city.
That seems very odd to me. I’ve never been to a city library that can’t get something they don’t have. Obviously I’m biased by my own experiences.
I’m in Montréal (2-4M depending on how the library system is set up) and star wars has 1,099 hits. Video games, mangas, movies, tv shows, books illustrations, audiobooks, lego building guide ebooks, comics, etc. There might be some inflation in the figure for how some titles handle multi-lingual copies.
Karen Traviss is my favorite star wars author, followed by Timothy Zhan.
My biggest issue with ebooks in the library, and what led me into more ebook Piracy. Having to wait to check out a digital book. I know the library has to pay like yearly licensing subscriptions to a lot of these books, and it’s just so annoying to me that it doesn’t cover everybody having access to it. I sit on the library board and one thing we’re talking about doing is a graphic novel service for a lot of the youth. And low key, I’m stoked for the graphic novel service too. But that one’s unlimited access.
Fair enough, maybe it’s just the size of my library/library conglomerate, but I’ve never waited for an ebook.
That’s fair. I live in a very rural town
Personally I would recommend a Remarkable. It’s more expensive but soooo much more useful with a pen.
You can load books onto a Kindle, but format conversion is required and the results are not always pretty.
The remarkable is so dreamy
It really is. Shit, I don’t fawn over tech purchases, but the remarkable is so damn useful.
Pretty easy to homebrew on too, no jailbreak required. I’m tempted to make a libgen app for it.
Yeah and they’re constantly adding phenomenal user requested features in their updates (even for the original kickstarter device that I have). A libgen app would be convenient!
I’m still learning to code for the thing, so let’s see how it goes!
IRC is where it’s at. In the many years I’ve been using it to download books there’s only been a handful of books I’ve been unable to find.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/2oftbu/guide_the_idiot_proof_guide_to_downloading_ebooks/
Just want to add that if you find a rare ebook not on libgen, do you civic duty and take the time to upload it, it only takes a few minutes and it’s rewarding being able to save some time for others.
I’ll keep that in mind.
Awesome advice, this becomes more important by the day
But the libgen upload interface is cumbersome, requires way too many details and has regularly denied my uploads whenever I tried.
That do audio books too?
Shoutout to project Gutenberg as well. It’s a massive free archive of books that are in the public domain.
Lib gen https://libgen.li/