I was wrestling with posting this as I don't know how it falls within the copyright area of media, but here it goes. I own a Kindle. My brother and sister-in-law gave me two $25 gift cards to google play. However, Google's ePub format is incompatible with the kindle and amazon has done everything it can to restrict access to non-mobi formats. I did a little search on the internet to find how I can get ePubs on my kindle. Viola! Calibre. It's a converter for the kindle and designed so it can move the books to the kindle on your behalf. I did hit a snag when the ePubs came DRMd, but there is an add-on to Calibre that will remove the DRM. So, now I can buy on Google and read on my kindle again. I do not make the books available to the public, but I am removing the DRM so I can have it on my kindle, so I don't know how this falls within the legal area of copyright. I'm not going to sweat it though. Anyway, if you guys and gals have this problem, you might want to look into Calibre. It's been one of the best tools I've found for my kindle.
I should point out that Calibre is good all-purpose eBook software. It is going for managing book files, converting between a variety of formats, and opening various formats. In other words, it has plenty of legal uses (yes, removing the DRM is illegal, at least in the U.S.) and if you're going to self-publish, it is probably one tool you'll wish to have in your box.
I've been using Calibre since it was just a wee tiny ap. I very much dig it. I started ebooking on an iPad and when the eyestrain became too much, I got a Kindle 4. I figure since I did pay for the iPad-friendly .epub books, converting them to .mobi for the Kindle should be covered by fair use. @Steerpike? (clearly this excludes DRM'd material)
This is where I believe unchecked capitalism hurts people more than it helps companies. I will not buy another reader, I love my kindle, and if it blows up in my face, I will stop using google completely in favor of amazon's native format.
Easy thing to do - get something like a Nexus 7. You can put the Kindle app on it, and the Nook app, and other readers. Then you can read various formats on the same device, and it is more fully functional than the Kindle to begin with.
I may do that in a year or two. Tablets are not cheap. I got my kindle as a refurb that had 20% off, so the price was just a hair over $100. A nexus 7 is $229.
If you look at all the Fair Use factors, it certainly looks like they go in your favor. And from a practical matter, there is nothing to really worry about. Even if you had to remove DRM for your own purposes there might, in theory, be a decent Fair Use argument, but that has been precluded by federal statute in that particular instance.
Makes sense. I have a few different devices I've acquired over the years - Kindle w/keyboard, Kindle Fire, Kobo Reader, and Nexus 7. I do some ebook creation and formatting for clients, so it is nice to be able to pull them up on all of these devices, as well as the various apps available, to ensure formatting is consistent across platforms.
