j-j.co.za

Those who read my post from yesterday will know I was frustrated with the process for buying books on Kalahari.net and with the frustration of having to use their proprietary “Beta” software reader which would only work on my laptop but not on my Kindle. I wanted to read “Killing Kebble” on the kindle and couldn’t (Update 13 July, it’s now on Amazon).  Here is how to do it.

I am a long time fan of Calibre as an “iTunes for Kindle” application that will manage your library of books and covert them into the required format for most devices you can think of. It also handles downloading of web sites and making them into “mini magazines” for you to read any place any time. Really great software.

How does this help?

Well when buying books from non-Amazon stores they could be delivered in a number of different formats. epub is a common format for online publishers. Just be careful though. Not all epubs (or ebooks) are created equal and many that you buy will have embedded DRM that stops you using them when where and as you please.

A case in point, ebooks from Kalahari.net and Exclusive books online make use of an Adobe DRM solution.

There is however a solution. Read the rest of this entry »