ebooks

Some news for people who like to de-DRM their ebook purchases:

Apprentice Alf's DeDRM Plugin is no longer being maintained. Apprentice Harper, who took over a few years ago, has also dropped the project.

A fork of Alf's DeDRM Plugin is now hosted here on GitHub by noDRM. It's currently on version 10.0.2 and should be compatible with Calibre 5.x.x. If you have the old DeDRM Plugin installed, your settings should carry over into the new one, once it's installed.

(In case you click on the wrong download link and spend 15 minutes wondering why it won't install correctly, like I did: the actual plugin is on the v10.0.2 release page.)

Tags:

calibre,
drm

apprenticealf posted: Pre-Release DeDRM Plugin Only (v7.0.3) | Apprentice Alf’s Blog

A pre-release of the DeDRM plugin only (v7.0.3) is now available. This release REQUIRES calibre 5.x which utilizes Python 3 for plugins. Since this is the DeDRM plugin only, DO NOT unzip the downloaded file. Load the entire zipped file as is into calibre 5.x.

If you use Calibre and Apprentice Alf's De-DRM plugin to manage your ebook library, there's a compatibility issue with the newest version of Calibre (5.x) and the previous version of the plugin. I discovered this myself when I went to de-drm a purchase today and found my plugin completely gone! Luckily, a new version of the plugin came out yesterday which fixes the main problem.

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Last week I heard the Open Library’s announcement they were lifting limits on how many people can borrow from their extensive scanned book collection "for the duration". Today I was surprised and enlightened to read about opposition from authors.

( 500 words of links & summaries )

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Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen, today announced that by early July 2012, their entire list of e-books will be available DRM-free.

Tags:

anti-drm,
drm

I read ebooks on my computer. I use Calibre and have the plugins from A guide for the perplexed. It says that if you get Kindle for PC, you don't have to customize any of the plugins; the books should be unlocked automatically when you add them to Calibre. Except it's not working--the books is not unlocking. Why not, and how can I fix it? I moved the books from "My Kindle Content" folder to the folder with the rest of my ebooks in it; does that matter? I've tried adding the book with nothing changed in the plugins (although it does already have the PID from other stores). I've tried adding the book with my Amazon password entered where the PID goes; I've tried adding the book with the e-mail associated with my Amazon account there; I've tried adding it with "____'s Kindle for PC" there. (Those are the only three identifying things I can think of or find.) None of them have worked. Help!

Tags:

calibre,
drm

Lendle.me, a site for connecting with people to lend those Kindle books that allow lending (1x per book, for two weeks only) has been effectively shut down by Amazon. (They shut off the API that allows for easy listing of what's available. Lendle could still help people find each other, but it'd have to build its own database of ebooks.) CNET seems to have the most details, including the mention that "According to Amazon, Lendle does not 'serve the principal purpose of driving sales of products and services on the Amazon site.'"

(Insert rant: because of course, people who got to read a book for free would never buy one later--not to get a permanent copy of that book, nor other books by the same author.)

Several other ebook lending sites for Kindle & Nook, have sprung up recently, and they've got to be wondering what's in store for them. Since loaning books seems like a fairly obvious connection to selling books, readwriteweb speculates that Lendle ran afoul of some other aspect of Amazon's Terms of Service.

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Unfortunately for me there isn't an overdrive library near me unless I get a library card in some cities just outside of where I live but...

Harper Collins are forcing Libraries to re-buy new ebook copies after checking them out 26 times.

The link will take you to the story and a video of a library in Oklahoma expressing their dismay over this.

That just seems so wrong. I could see if the epub file got corrupted (in that case I still think the distributor would just send out a new copy to a library. Does HarperCollins think libraries make lots of money? Because I can tell you ... they don't.

[Edit: Seems you guys were talking about this days ago. I really haven't been visiting the journals much these days... so pardon. Although I still found the video kind of interesting.] :)

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So, has everybody heard about HarperCollins gouging libraries for ebooks?

Library Journal:

In the first significant revision to lending terms for ebook circulation, HarperCollins has announced that new titles licensed from library ebook vendors will be able to circulate only 26 times before the license expires.

Smart Bitches blog:

In other words, the publisher sets a limit to the number of times a digital book can be lent, then when that limit is reached, that library must purchase another copy.

But wait! There’s more! That mysterious “publishers” referred to in the OverDrive email also says they want access to patron information.
[emphasis mine]

Cory Doctorow @ BoingBoing:

I've talked to a lot of librarians about why they buy DRM books for their collections, and they generally emphasize that buying ebooks with DRM works pretty well, generates few complaints, and gets the books their patrons want on the devices their patrons use. And it's absolutely true: on the whole, DRM ebooks, like DRM movies and DRM games work pretty well.

But they fail really badly. No matter how crappy a library's relationship with a print publisher might be, the publisher couldn't force them to destroy the books in their collections after 26 checkouts. DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day.

Twitter:

Hashtag #hcod
HarperCollins tweet regarding the mess: We're reading your posts-and listening to our authors. If you want to share longer thoughts with us, email library.ebook@harpercollins.com

Feel free to post additional links in the comments.

ETA: Courtney Milan, author, "On Eating Your Seed Corn":

Publishers, if you make it impossible for young people–those in the “under 25″ category–to support a good reading habit on their own dime, these people are not going to start magically spending money on books when they start making a decent income. No; at that point, they’ll already have started spending their time haunting hulu instead, where they can actually get free entertainment. And when they start making money, they’ll be buying iTunes streams of those shows they watched for free.

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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.

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Following various links for the piracy debates, I came across this blog entry. It tells you how to combine some scripts with calibre to strip DRM off of your books purchased from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. etc. It doesn't work for LIT books or iBooks with DRM. I've installed it and used it and it is quite easy.

ETA: If you don't enter the correct information for the plug-ins, you will have to remove the books that still have DRM, fix the information for the plug-in and then, re-add them to calibre in order to remove the DRM.

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~~I have found~~ ~~this program~~ which removes DRM from epub files. It has worked on everything that I have tried it on so far (only 2 files). The demo requires you to shut down and restart for each file which is a hassle. I haven't paid for the full version so I don't know what other options it may have. The site has other programs for other ebook-related actions that I haven't yet tried. If you've been looking for a way to remove the DRM from your ebooks, you may want to give this program a try.

ETA: This program is unfortunately only for Windows.

ETA2: I completely missed that the demo version removed pages from the books when it removed the DRM. I apologize for getting up people's hopes.

Tags:

DeDRM Plugin/DeDRM_tools v.10.0.2

Signal Boost: Pre-Release DeDRM Plugin Only (v7.0.3) | Apprentice Alf’s Blog

Authors Push Back Against Open Library Ebook Scheme

Finally, Another Publisher Is Going DRM-Free

de-DRMing Kindle books

Amazon shuts down Lendle

Wow...[edit]

HarperCollins Anti-Library Ways

Calibre Questions

DRM Stripping

DRM Removal

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