Posts Tagged ‘kindle’

Today Kris brought up something that I had never thought about over on her blog…insuring your ebooks. I never considered the possibility because I am a paranoid person, I back up EVERYTHING. Well most of the time at least. When it comes to books tho? I never delete an ebook unless I hate it and I always have a backup. So, let’s talk about the ways you can back up your ebooks from your ereading device.

#1 – Trust the webstore you bought it from

Most ebook retailers keep a bookshelf of all your purchases so that you can re-download them at any time. Amazon for example will let you re-download books to your Kindle directly from the Kindle using your Content Manager. You can also login to Amazon.com from your computer and from your digital library resend your files to your computer hard drive or to the Kindle. This is certainly an easy to do it if you buy all your books from one or two select stores that offer this.

#2 – Keep a copy of your ebooks on your hard drive

I believe that all ereader devices offer the ability to plug your device into your computer and download your books from the device to a folder on your hard drive. This essentially gives you a copy on your ereader and one on your computer. This may be enough for some people…. it isn’t for me. I don’t like to keep books I have already read or am not reading currently on my Kindle. Instead I keep all of my library on my hard drive and only put on the Kindle things I am reading or going to read in the next few weeks. It keeps clutter down… it makes me happy. If you are this type of person too, you want to combine this method with an alternative backup system like one of the ones below…

#3 – Make a second copy of your library on a portal drive or DVD

If you keep your library on your computer you can always duplicate that by copying it to an external hard drive such as this or by burning your books to a DVD. A DVD is like 4gb work of space so it will hold a lot of books. The problem with this is that you have to remember to back up when you add new books…. I am just not that on top of it. I do burn my books to DVD about twice a year but it isn’t my main backup plan.

#4 – DropBox
DropBox.com is a online storage service that will sync with your computer. You get up to 2gb with a free account and that is plenty of space for an ebook library. I have well over 600 books in my library and have only used 30% of my space. All you do is sign up for an account and then install a bit of software onto your computer. This bit of software will allow you to specify a “drop box folder” on your computer. Anytime you make changes to this folder it will update your online storage account with those changes, ie. you specify your calibre library as your dropbox folder and you edit the Metadata of one of your books… the dropbox software will see that and update the same files you changed in your backup files located on dropbox.com

Because of the automatic syncing it works extremely well with ebook libraries. I mentioned Calibre in the example above… I bet some of you are still not using this software. If not, why?? It is the easiest library software you will find and just had a major update that lets you add custom columns so you can mark books read! Go, download it. now.

Making Calibre and DropBox play nicely
Ok, now that you have Calibre, let’s talk about how to make DropBox and Calibre share a library folder. easy

• Step 1 – Sign up for a Drop Box account.
• Step 2 – Follow the DropBox instructions and install the software. The software will ask you to place a folder called “DropBox” on your computer somewhere and within this folder is where your library will be. Think carefully about where you want to store your books, you should obviously choose a spot where you have at least 2GB of space if you think you will fill your drop box. Unsure where to put it? Generally, your “My Documents” folder would work fine. You can see mine is put inside a partition on my hard drive called “Storage”. It has a green check on the folder because it has been synced recently.
  

• Step 3 – Once the software is installed and you can create a NEW folder within the “DropBox” folder that will be your ebook library. This folder is “mostly” public on Dropbox.com – if someone has your user id or you gave them the link they would be able to browse inside of it. You can call the folder whatever you like – I used “MyBooks” as an example, mine has a secret name

  Current Calibre Users – You do not need to recreate a library folder. At this point you can move your current Calibre folder from it’s former location to inside the dropbox folder. Example, if you have a “Calibre Library” folder in your “My Documents” you want to copy the entire folder and then paste the entire folder inside your “DropBox” folder. You can rename it if you want as we will have to tell Calibre where the folder has moved to anyway.
  

• Step 4 – Set your Calibre preferences. Open up Calibre(if you were a previous user it may give you an error saying your library is missing or it may just open up and all your books will be gone. DO NOT WORRY!). Once Calibre is open, hit the “PREFERENCES” tab along the top menu bar. Under the General tab you are going to specify the location of your ebooks, this is where you want to browse to find your “MyBooks” folder within the “DropBox” folder. Once it is set, click OK. You are done! Once you do that, if you had a previous library all of your books should now be visible in Calibre again tho it may take some time or it may take a restart of Calibre depending on your system.
  
  

Now whenever you update your calibre library, it will update your online library of books…. giving you 2 complete backups of your ebooks. If you get a new computer or lose your hard drive all you have to do is download dropbox again and it will create the folders and put all your books back into them.

If you want to go a step further and create a viewable web catalog of your books that you can can browse on your phone, check out Dear Author’s post on creating a cloud. I admit I have done it, but being a Kindle owner it would require me to keep both kindle format and epub in my library to read with stanza. Because of that I never read on my iphone unless through Kindle for iPhone. I keep mine set up tho because I like being able to browse the covers of all my books.

I hope that helps and feel free to ask any questions you may have or contribute any other backup ideas you have!

The writing duo of Moira Rogers is kicking off a brand new contest in celebration of the release of their new books, Sanctuary Unbound and Safe Harbor. What is so kick ass about this contest? Its taking place across all of your favorite blogs and YOU could win a brand new Kindle. Check the bottom of this post for more details.

This will probably not come as a surprise to anyone, but I am declaring myself, Team Werewolf Bootlegger. Why you ask? As if I need to explain. Bree and Donna, of Moira Rogers, happen to write the best damn werewolves I have ever read. They never fail to disappoint me in all the growling dominant ways that matter. But for your sake, I thought I would do a quick list of why werewolves are better than vampires.

Werewolves are always better than vampires because….

• They are alive. Yes, blood pumps throughout their body and i mean ALL of their body, if you know what I mean.
• When they growl, they mean it. Its so natural and authentic goosebumps will pop up along your arms and your body will tingle in all the right places.
• It is part of a werewolf’s nature to protect you and the family, you will always feel safe.
• Want to go out shopping at 2 in the afternoon? Have no fear, your werewolf will be there hold your purse while you pop into the dressing room to try something on. No pesky sun allergy to deal with. (As a side note, this also means afternoon sexy time is possible…bow chicca bow wow)
• Werewolves eat real food, not blood. Why is this important? First, drinking blood is gross. Second, It means they can make you breakfast… I am thinking waffles. Bonus points if you get the werewolf to make you waffles but you never get around to eating them because he is too damn sexy to not jump upon and have your evil ways with, on the kitchen floor. Yes Derek…. this one is dedicated to you.
• If you ever get cold, your shifter can simply change to wolf and cuddle up with you for hours of warmth and fuzziness.
• Werewolves have super strength, I am going to assume super stamina has to go along with this….Stamina is important ladies
• If your particular werewolf is a bootlegger….. you get free booze. +10

Now for a few of my favorite Moira Rogers werewolf quotes…. as if you need further proof:

Connor

The voice in his head protested. He ignored it and reached into her pocket, plucking out her key. He held it in front of her as he bent close to her ear. “Do you want to go upstairs with one of them, or with someone who knows what the geeky slogan on your T-shirt means?”

She leaned into his caressing fingers with a soft noise of pleasure. “A hunky brilliant techie werewolf with a dirty mind…” I’m in love. “That’s pretty much the hottest thing ever.”

Zack

When Zack didn’t thrust all the way into her, she growled and whipped her head around, not bothering to stop the giddy flood of power that spilled from her along with her challenging words. “I can take anything you can give me, so fuck me already.”
He tugged her head back with a low growl and slapped her ass with his other hand. “If you ask nicely.”

Derek

One hand dropped to her ankle, and his large fingers encircled it easily. “Tell me to stop.”

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. “No.”

Derek dragged her ankles apart and dropped to his knees between her legs. He tickled his fingers up her calves as he jerked his gaze to hers again. “Put your hands over your head.”

Sheer primal instinct drove her to obey.

What team are you on?

This post is a part of Moira Rogers’ Creature Feature Kindle Throwdown Contest. By leaving a (meaningful) comment, you will be entered to win a Kindle from Amazon.com, or an alternate grand prize of $275 to spend at an online book retailer. For a full list of rules and more ways to win, visit the contest page.

Ever wished your kindle books had a differenet font? Well lucky for you, they can. You can change the default font on your kindle with a simple hack. Only stipulations are that this ONLY works for the K2, specifically those with 2.3 version software. If you have a K2 and have turned on your wireless anytime in the last few months, chances are that includes you. You should also make note, that with any future Kindle software updates you may need to remove the font hack, update and then reinstall the font hack. I will include uninstall info below as well.

Anyway, here we go. Remember, it may seem complicated but if you do it step by step its easy peasy!
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I haven’t blogged about my Kindle in a while and thought that I would take the occasional Tuesday to go over my favorite tips, tricks, and hacks. Our first trick? Getting your own custom screen saver on your kindle. If you are wondering why you would want to do this…. I give you exhibit A…. my Kindle loaded with some of my favorite yummy men as screen savers. (note the lighting is bad so the pics are darker/off color than they are in real life…. sorry, It seems some troublemakers have hidden my camera!)

With that eye candy in the back of your head, let’s get started. Remember, it may seem complicated but if you do it step by step its easy peasy!
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No Saturday Sound Off today…. too much news to post about! Before I get to the explosion of ebook drama all over twitter today, I had saved up a few reaction posts to the Apple IPad I wanted to share. First – the IPad? Really? *sigh* I am an apple fangirl, but even I can’t swallow that name and say it with a smile.
Links of Interest:

Now that we have the initial Apple IPad reactions out of the way, let’s get to the ebook drama that exploded on the web last night and continued over to this morning. A condensed timeline of events:

So what does this all mean? For the time being if you own a Kindle, you can not purchase books published by any author under the MacMillan name. Additionally, you can not buy new copies of these books from amazon.com unless you are willing to go through secondary sellers.

Many seem to be jumping to attack Amazon.com for being a bully or throwing a tantrum, yet I want to point out, it seemed obvious from Steve Jobs’ comments that book publishers were getting ready to do exactly the same thing. Withhold books in an effort to get what they wanted, higher e-book pricing. Amazon simply beat them to the punch, instead seemingly taking the consumer’s side on this one and saying NO. That is not to say that Amazon is doing this for the good of you and me, lets be realistic…. they are all about profits as much as publishers are. They are just more in the know with how to make profits from Kindle users….. we buy more books when they are priced lower and easily accessible. Pulling the sales of print books in addition to kindle books may seem like an unrelated move, but we must remember that Amazon sales volume is their negotiating tactic in this.

Being a Kindle lover, I find myself siding more with Amazon on this. This issue ties in with my previous post about publishers making users wait for Kindle releases. Once again I find myself thinking, major book publishers simply do not understand their various customer bases. I will not pay 14.99 for a new release, even if the print is hardcover, to read on my Kindle. Not when they still come loaded with overreaching user agreements and the horrible atrocity known as DRM. If you give me an ebook that I can own, transfer to any device I want, resell, and be able to lend in some way…. then I will happily pay “dead tree book” pricing for that ebook. Until then, 14.99 or more for an ebook is overinflated and unjustifiable.

Have I spent that much on e-books in the past? Absolutely… for authors I love and don’t want to wait for. But those are rare instances and if all e-books were that price you would loose a great many sales from me. Especially when I can head over to Fictionwise.com and MBaM and get great authors like Moira Rogers, Keith Melton, and Josh Lanyon for far less than that… and without DRM. Lower priced e-books give readers the chance to try out new authors without worrying about spending too much, without risk! Publisher’s need to figure this out and run with it. I can not even begin to understand why they don’t have someone in their marketing department who does not see e-books as the death of the publishing! Author Carolyn Jewel nailed it on the head with this:

Publishers need to hire someone who actually understands technology. Someone who grew up with it or enthusiastically threw themselves into it when the world changed. And it did, people, it did. And then they need to actually LISTEN to that person. Any C-Level employee who didn’t personally take a look at Twitter when the buzz started is automatically disqualified from this position.

The sad part about this entire situation is that the readers and authors are the ones stuck in the middle and ultimately taking the most harm. Just as we readers aren’t able to buy books at a reasonable price from Amazon during this time, authors are going to lose a what I imagine is a large chunk of royalties from Amazon sales. Let’s all cross our fingers that Amazon and MacMillan find some way of working this out quickly.

Update

While I was writing this post, there was an update to this article about the situation.

Motoko Rich, my colleague, spoke with a person who had a direct conversation with a person at Macmillan familiar with the conversations with Amazon. Macmillan offered Amazon the opportunity to buy Kindle editions on the same “agency” model as it will sell e-books to Apple for the iPad. Under this model, the publisher sets the consumer book price and takes 70 percent of each sale, leaving 30 percent to the retailer. Macmillan said Amazon could continue to buy e-books under its current wholesale model, paying the publisher 50 percent of the hardcover list price while pricing the e-book at any level Amazon chooses, but that Macmillan would delay those e-book editions by seven months after hardcover release. Amazon’s removal of Macmillan titles on Friday appears to be a direct reaction to that.

There now appears to be confirmation of this here.
Wow. *shakes head* I’m Team Amazon.