Yes, that’s right. With a few select tools you can use the experimental web browser on your Kindle to access your library, and further, download mobi/prc/amazon formatted books directly to your Kindle’s memory.

Before we get to the step by step, let me make mention that this is going to look complicated. It is not a one step process and involves 3 different programs. However it is easy if you follow the instructions and once it is set up, even easier to maintain.

Part 1 – Setting up your Calibre & DropBox

In order for your Kindle to access your ebook library, it must be online somewhere and it must be cataloged. The easiest way for one to achieve this is to use Calibre and DropBox.

• A. Sign up for a DropBox account
• B. Download & Install Calibre. You can check out a slightly outdated post on why I love Calibre so much here.
• C. Follow these instructions to get your Calibre & DropBox installed and working together.

Now that Calibre is installed and your books are being backed up in your public DropBox folder, you want to create a catalog that you can access using a web browser. Calibre2OPDS is perfect for this, and free, and open source. When we are finished here you will have an online web catalog that is secure and only accessible to you and/or whoever you give the link address to. It will allow you to browse through your books by author, series, cover, tags, etc from anywhere you can get a web connection and will look something like this:

So, let’s get to it!

• Download Calibre2OPDS here. I am using version 2.3 for Macs.
• Install the program and open to configure your options. You should get a screen with three “tabs”, the first being “Main Options”. Here you want to change the “Database Folder” to the location of your Calibre library folder within your public DropBox folder on your computer. You can also change your “Catalog Title” to something more personal. When you have adjusted those sittings, do not hit save or generate catalog, instead click on the middle tab, “Catalog Generation Options”.
  
• Under “Catalog Generation Options” you can customize what your online catalog of your library will or will not show. I am including my settings, however you may want to show the ratings or disable being able to view all books on one screen. Whatever you choose is your preference just remember to keep the “download” options unchecked. Once you are satisfied with these settings move on to the third tab, “Advanced Customization Options”, again do not click save or generate yet.
  
• Under “Advanced Customization Options” you can set the book formats you would like to be included in the catalog. I have chosen only those compatible with the Kindle but you could also include EPUB, LIT, PDB, etc. This is also where you adjust the number of books on a page and other similar details. When you are happy with all of these options, go ahead and click “Generate Catalogs“. Once you do a screen will pop up showing you its progress as it works, this will take some time. Be patient.
  

  

• Congrats! When it is finished you should now have a working catalog of all the books in your Calibre library. I can see you over there, smirking… saying… “Well that is nice, but where is it? Now what?”. Patience grasshopper. It will take a few minutes for your Dropbox on your computer to update the Dropbox on the web server. Go ahead and get some tea and a cookie, when you come back check to make sure your Calibre Library/Dropbox icons have the green check marks indicating they are done updating as shown below.

  If so, now we need to get the url to your catalog. You want to browse to your Calibre library on your computer, find the _catalog folder and within that find the “catalog.html” file as seen below.
  

• Select the “catalog.html” file and right click on it. Select the “DropBox” option and then choose “Copy Public Link”
  

  Go ahead and open a browser window and paste the link into the address bar. You should have a url that looks something like this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/0101011/name_of_your_library_folder/_catalog/catalog.html (Numbers have been changed to protect innocent books, your url will contain your own random numbers). Bookmark this page. That is the website url of your catalog that you may access from anywhere that has an internet connection. You should see something that looks like the very first image in this post and you should be able to browse and look through your library.

  You will want to write the address down, or keep it handy at least, for the next step.

Part 3 – Accessing & Downloading a book using your Kindle

Here comes the fun, nerdgasm, portion of today’s lesson. Warning, these instructions will vary depending on the Kindle you own. I’m giving specifics to a Kindle 3 but other versions should not be too different.

• Pick up your Kindle and turn it on. Make sure your wifi is turned on. Hit the Menu button and choose “Experimental” then tell it to the launch the Web Browser.
• When the browser is up and running, hit the menu button again and choose “Enter URL”. This is the most tedious part, but you only have to do it once! Within the address bar type in the url you found above for your online catalog (ex. http://dl.dropbox.com/u/0101011/name_of_your_library_folder/_catalog/catalog.html). When the page loads you should see your online library looking something like this:
  
• Take a moment and do yourself a favor – hit the Menu button again and tell your Kindle to bookmark this page.
• Now, go ahead and choose a category to browse into using the joystick/navigator on the Kindle. I am choosing “Recent Additions” And then the most recent material.
  
  That will bring you to another screen showing you the covers of the books within that category. Use the mouse to select one.
  
• When you select your book you are brought to the book’s catalog page, complete with title, cover, description and other useful information.
  
  
  Scroll all the way down towards the bottom until you see the link that says “Download this ebook as MOBI” – use the mouse to click it.
  
• A pop up should appear asking you if you are sure that you want to do this…. (don’t you love those?)
  
  Click yes. When it is finished you should get another pop up confirming the download.
  
• Congratulations fellow Kindle lover, your book should now show up on your Kindle home page and be available for your reading pleasure.
  
• The next time you would like to use this feature, simply open up your Kindle web browser, go to your bookmarks page and find the link to your library. Click it and repeat the download process!

Stuff you should know….

• I did this on both a 1st generation Kindle and a 3rd generation Kindle. I assume it works on a 2nd generation as well but I do not have one to test it on.
• The catalog does not automatically update itself whenever you add a new book to calibre or change something in the library. To update the library you must run the Calibre2osds program again. It will keep all your settings, so all you will need to do is open it and click “generate catalogs” and wait patiently. If you are a smarty pants you can set up a cron job or schedule a task to run it.
• None of this is probably necessary if you only buy your books from Amazon.com. However, if you receive a lot of review books, buy from other stores, or use any of the free book sites, this can be an incredibly useful tool.

Hopefully you got just as excited about this as I did. If you have any questions or problems, feel free to comment and I will help you out if I can!

Related posts:

• Tips & Tricks ~ Backing Up Your Books (Updated 5/14/11)
• Tuesday Tips & Tricks ~ Custom Kindle Font
• Reading library books on your Kindle…

All things Kindlicious

The “big” news of late? Kindle now has a lending feature. Big news is a relative term as it pretty limited, just like the nook lending feature. Both devices now allow book lending between devices and apps following these restrictions:

• A book may be lent once, and only once.
• A book is lent out for 14 days only and during that time is inaccessible on the owner’s device
• Not all books are available for lending and which books are available depend upon publisher restrictions. Currently Barnes & Nobles has about 30% of its ebook stock, which includes public domain free books, as lendable. I have yet to see a number for Amazon.

I was hoping that Amazon would be a little more lenient and allow it to be lent more than once, it would have been a great selling point for those who are in book clubs, but I didn’t expect it.

IReaderReview.com had a slew of really good posts over the last month. A few of my favorites:

• The Race to Zero – a good look at ebook pricing after the installment of agency pricing.
• $55,500 for Indie Author in 31 Days – 5 Independent authors earned over $15,000 and 25 independent authors sold more than 2,500 ebooks in December.
• What else can you do with the kindle besides read? – a great list!

Something that seems to have gone almost unnoticed but I think is far cooler than the lending feature is the ability to side-load your kindle formatted books onto your iphone/ipad/itouch devices. You are no longer restricted to only books in your amazon account while using the Kindle app on your iDevice. Through iTunes you can add mobipocket/prc/azw books onto your device and read them in the Kindle app. This is especially useful for book reviews who don’t have a kindle but like ebooks.

Entirely random but I ran across this graphic from Newsweek and thought it was an interesting comparison. I’d love to see the sourcing but can’t seem to locate it.

Author News

Rachel Vincent announced the details her new adult series. The first book in the Unbound series will be Blood Bound and have a stronger romance theme than the early shifter books. It sounds like a unique world and I am definitely looking forward to it!

The first book in Keri Arthur’s new Dark Angel series, Darkness Unbound is now up for preorder on Amazon.com.

Richelle Mead posted an excerpt from Iron Crowned, the third book in the Dark Swan series, here. I miss Eugenie, can’t wait for this release.

Moira Rogers has the coolest post ever here. I’ve been trying to be better about taking notes and keeping a notebook of series I love and their characters. I appreciate this post so much. Also. Andrew is still mine.

Books Read in December & January so far

• Bayou Moon by Ilona Andrews – 5 stars
• Alpha by Rachel Vincent – review coming
• Total Eclipse by Rachel Caine – review coming
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
• The Girl who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson
• The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Stieg Larsson

Books Added to Kindle This Week…

Music listening to while writing this blog entry…Back in Your Head by Tegan and Sara

Related posts:

• Sunday Sound Off ~ April 10th, 2011
• Saturday (eh Sunday?!?) Sound Off (4)
• Saturday Sound Off (2-27)

Tada…. (click for full resolution)

Thanks to a nifty price match, best buy gift card rebate on a Nintendo DSi purchase for one of the girls, and a $20 reward zone coupon I was able to snag my snazzy new K3 for only $89 plus sales tax.

First impressions? O.M.G. Love. Seriously. I want to fornicate with it. I didn’t think I could love a Kindle more than I already did, but I was wrong. Now, do keep in mind… I upgraded from a 1st generation so the improvements on a K2 probably aren’t as dramatic.

So, my most loved upgrades?

• The size. Ironically with the K2 they increased the length and with the K3 brought it back down the original size, but made it thinner and lighter. Its like a freaking feather…. so easy to hold in one hand. I have always read my K1 inside its leather cover but I think to read the K3 in a cover would be wasting its incredibly comfortable size.
• The page turns. I never thought my K1 was slow until I turned the page on a K3.
• The chapter marks and percentage bar. Oh how I love. Not that it will keep me from staying up til 3 am to “finish this chapter” but… its nice to see.
• The screen. Better contrast and I get absolutely no glare from the lights overhead at the gym. I always had glare on my K1 and it drove me nuts trying to find the right angle.
• Text to speech. I don’t buy audio books but I can admit I’ve used the text to speech a few times already. At the gym when I want to jog instead of walk, for example.
• Landscape/Portrait Mode. This goes along with the text to speech gym thing. I was on the treadmill thinking to myself… Damn, I’d really like to be able to plug in headphones and listen to this book right now but the audio plug is on the base of the Kindle. I can’t plug it in, keep it resting on the ledge of the treadmill, and still follow along on the page. Then I remembered the landscape mode….. I turned it sideways, adjusted the text mode, plugged in my headphones, and was able to read/listen while working out. *happy sigh*

Things I’m not in LOVE with.

• Number keys. I miss having number keys on the keyboard. It is a bit awkward to remember to hit the “sym” button when I need a number.
• The “joystick” is nicer than my K1 scroll wheel but it takes some getting used to if you don’t have tiny fingers.

All in all, well worth the upgrade. As for why I chose the wifi version over the 3g version? Well I rarely use my 3g on the K1… I just don’t find it that necessary. I buy books on the computer and transfer them via the usb cable 9 times out of 10. The only time I use the 3g is to get netgalley books and I could work around that if I needed to, but I don’t see why I would have to. I am happy to load up my kindle via wifi and or computer once a week and be done with it. If I traveled a lot I’d consider the 3G but otherwise I think the wifi only version is plenty for most people.

Just as I expected when I first read about the Kindle 3s, Amazon has really upped the game with this release. Many people will still complain about its lack of color, but for those who just want a book reading device, you can’t get much better than a Kindle. Color comes with a cost, both money and convenience wise. I held the Nook Color and was disappointed in both its battery life and the sheer weight of the device. I will choose my black and white, easy to hold above my head, Kindle over that any day of the week.

Related posts:

• Want to read Kindle books but don’t want to buy the Kindle?
• Kindle vs Nook – IReader Review’s take
• Your wishlist and Kindle books can be friends!

I am obviously biased, but I absolutely can not wait to get my hands on a new Kindle 3. I’m still debating if I need the 3G or not and am willing to wait til this winter to order since technically nothing is wrong with my Kindle 1. But I am itching to click “buy now” on it. You should be too! Absolutely great new features and the lowest price yet!

Related posts:

• Kindle Vixen’s E-reader Comparison Chart
• Kindle Price Drop
• Tips & Tricks ~ Downloading to your Kindle from your online library

#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.
  

• Note! There has been several Calibre updates since this tutorial was written. Below are screen shots for previous versions of the software (version a) followed by current version screenshots (version b).

  Step 4 (version a)- 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.

  
  

  Step 4 (version b)- 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, look to the top menu bar and look for a book count tab situated between the “Convert Books” and “Save to Disk” options. Your top menu may look different! I believe I’ve customized my top tool bar, but you are basically looking for a link that drops down to show your library options. Under this library tab you want to choose the “Switch/Create Library” menu item. This will open up a pop up that will inform you of your current library location and allow you 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!

Related posts:

• Tips & Tricks ~ Downloading to your Kindle from your online library
• Tuesday Tips & Tricks ~ Custom Kindle Font
• Tuesday Tips & Tricks ~ Screen Savers