Things I want from Smashwords

[elf]

I like Smashwords. I buy stuff there; I get free stuff from there. I like that they have a style guide, even if it's so complicated most authors apparently just ignore it and the ebooks come out as poorly-formatted almost-plain-text with no chapter breaks. I like that they have ebooks in several formats--everything except .lit and ereader. (I don't care about .lit, and I don't currently read ereader PDBs, although I love the format.) What I don't like? Their search engine. Or rather, their lack of search options.

I like that they'll show free ebooks in each category. I don't like that they won't show "Pay what you like" books with the free ebooks, although that's probably going to be obsolete, because those can't feed to other bookstores.

What I want to see at Smashwords:

( Big list of features I want someone else to provide me! )

Calibre Questions

[stormcloude]

I have some dumb Calibre questions I was hoping someone could help me with. I find the mobileread Calibre thread pretty intimidating and too techy to go ask newbie questions, but it seems there's some pretty knowledgeable people here too, so maybe you can help.


First, among the books I've loaded into my Calibre library, there are some .doc files. Calibre is unable to convert these in any way. I assume I have to convert them manually, but what is the best format to convert them to before I add them back to Calibre? Do I have to delete the originals from Calibre entirely and then re-add them and redo all the metadata or is there a better way to just convert the existing files? Anyone know the reason Calibre doesn't do anything related to .doc files? I'd think with OpenOffice, they'd be able to do conversions at the least.

ETA: using the method below(http://ebooks.dreamwidth.org/29142.html?thread=196054#cmt196054) I was able to convert my .docs to epub, with the following caveats: some of the doc files had embedded images and those I converted to filtered html instead of rtf; one of the files had to be manually merged with its original because somehow the title got changed; I haven't looked at them on my ereader to see how they look, but in the Calibre viewer they look fine; I don't really care about file size so I wasn't paying any attention to that.

Second, I'm pretty sure I don't have Adobe ADE installed, just their pdf reader. I have a few secured pdfs I'd like to convert to a different format. I don't have any of the deDRM tools installed because I try to avoid buying DRM'd books, but it would also be nice to get books from the library. Is there any point in me adding the deDRM plugins if I don't want to install ADE or Kindle4PC or any of those type of programs? Is it possible to deDRM library books without installing ADE?


What other Calibre plugins do you use? What do they do and how easy are they to use? (I ask because there are a few plugins that look promising to me, but it seems the most recent edition of Calibre has quite a few bugs and you need to update to that to use them. I'm currently using 7.40)


Next, a lot of times Calibre can't find the metadata for my books using Googlebooks. It is available on Goodreads and I end up cutting and pasting. Is it worth it for me to sign up for an isbndb.com account so Calibre can check there for the metadata? Is it more or less complete than Googlebooks?


Lastly and not Calibre related, has anyone here used the PRS+ hack? I'd like the dictionary function, (I love it on my eBookwise) but if it screws other things up, I'd rather not bother. I'm just wondering if it's more trouble than it's worth or is it something you can't live without.


For the record I have a Sony 505 and an eBookwise.

Old Sony, New Sony

[finch]

So I ended up in the Sony store today looking at the new Sony Pocket (again). I noticed the old 300 is on sale for $80, and when I remarked to the salesman that I had one of those and I was thinking about upgrading to the 350, he mentioned I could trade my old one in for $50 and they will "recycle" it.

I have a bit of a crisis of conscience. I love my 300; he still works perfectly, and it seems... I dunno, wasteful to send a year-old device off to get recycled. I don't want to trash him just so I can get a discount on a new model, but I don't know that I could get $50 for him on Craigslist or something either.

Thoughts? Anybody know what "recycle" means in this context? I'd feel better about it if it's refurbishing or sending them off to poor kids or something than I they're just destroying them.

Edit: Immediate problem solved, as my girlfriend let me trade in her ten year old laptop for a hundred dollar credit instead, and I paid all of $30 for the 350. Thank you all for your advice, though! I'm sort of amazed that people are still paying secondhand for the 300 almost what they're selling for new.

isbndb.com

[jumpuphigh]

If you use calibre, you may have noticed the comment when you fetch metadata regarding signing up for a free isbndb.com account in order to get access to that database for metadata as well as GoogleBooks.  If you are unsure about whether that's something that you want to do, I'm offering a key under my account for you to use to try the database with. It has a limit of 100 look-ups per day.  My only request is that you sign up for your own account if you decide that this is in fact something useful for you and if it isn't, delete the key from your copy of calibre.
 
This is the key:  WRP8AE5G
 
When you look up metadata, you'll get that pop-up screen that gives you options of different versions of a book, or different books if it isn't quite sure what you are searching for.  Enter the key in the text box at the top next to "access key", click "Fetch", and you'll be ready to go.