Amazon should never been allowed to buy Goodreads.
Amazon should not be able lock authors into exclusivity contracts with Kindle Unlimited either, but who's gonna stop them?
My wife lost her amazon account (with all her ebooks) twice and she still buys ebooks there. I managed to import a Kobo from Paraguay to try and get her off the hook but it only worked for like 3 months as almost everything is amazon exclusive these days.
(both times she lost the accounts for disputing credit card charges that were not tied to her account)
You should check out Anna's Archive you can download whatever from there and upload it to her kindle using Calibre. Just make sure to use the links from Wikipedia for Anna's Archive.
I was never a heavy GR user because it felt like homework for reading, but I used to really enjoy reading user reviews on books I particularly disliked. Some of the reviews were more well written than the thing being reviewed. It makes me so upset that amazon is now profiting off of the dedication of the GR community.
Idk, I've run into several garbage audiobooks (garbage from the writing) that are reviewed highly on Goodreads
I would love to have https://joinbookwyrm.com/ capability. That would be fun. You finish a book, and bookwyrm would auto tell you were finished. Give users the option to post about it.
Bookwyrm looks really neat. Thanks for mentioning it.
And then some other evil corporation buys story graph and we are back to square one, instead of building these proprietary integrations why don't companies just build open systems and people can setup the integrations on their own. If you need ebooks on windows Microsoft doesn't have to build a direct integration with some book tracking website because a computer isn't a locked down hardware device, it's a open platform that gives the user the freedom to do whatever they want. In 2026 most devices should be running open platforms.
"why don't companies" Profitable open source making corps exist):
Red hat anyone?
Kobos are already owned by a giant megacorp, but because it's Japanese most of the west hasn't heard of it
Kobos are just running Linux, albeit somewhat stripped down. You can run open source software on them just fine.
Where do people who use kobo readers buy their ebooks? Is there a reliable non Amazon e-reader shop that sells from free books? (Besides humble store)
Kobo has it's own ebook store, plus it connects with Overdrive (outdated version of Libby) to handle library checkouts.
Kobo is also really easy to sideload books on to, so you can, you know, just get them from wherever...
To expand on this a tad: Calibre allows you to manage your digital library. And Calibre-Web allows you to access an existing Calibre database via your e-reader. Once it’s set up, your Kobo can download books directly from your Calibre instance.
There are a few good ebook stores that offer DRM-free versions of ebooks, which you can add to your Calibre instance. Or Calibre has an (unofficial, not technically supported) extension that will automatically strip DRM from files when you add them.
My friend Anna was telling me about some Archive or something she found online. I wasn’t really paying attention as they were serving dinner.
who cares about your friend? stop bringing her up! ... but yes, I too use her book recommendations with my kobo + caliber
I’ve started using it due to some recommendation from other people on here (as opposed to z-lib, libgen) and noticed there are quite a few low-quality books that sneak in. We’re talking broken TOC, bad OCR, unclosed spans, etc… It’s obviously great as an archive, it has more than any other site, combined. But I can’t see myself using it for most books anymore. Could be a user issue though.
what other sites do you recommend? I've had similar issues and my ereader is really picky with formatting
wink
Oo,hey, hehe...
Oh, the books! You were winking about the- Yep, got it now.
I’m personally a fan of buying a physical copy, and acquiring a digital copy.
They have a lot of DRM-free options and let you download a clean epub, but like with other stores, it's up to the publishers whether (and/or when) they can sell them without DRM BS.
I like being able to download the epubs directly so I can put them on my Calibre-web instance and pull them to my Kobo or my phone or whatever I want to read on.
Assuming you meant drm free books
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/p/drm-free
Not every book on kobo is drm free from what I remember so keep an eye on that
By preference (at least for me):
I try really hard to give authors money in some way....but sometimes Yoho is all you got if they have an amazon exclusive contract.
Its been 14+ years with this combo and I cant say I have ever had issues getting books.
My boyfriend has a Kobo, and he has an integration with his library that allows him to borrow ebooks.
I'd have to ask him how it works exactly, but it sounds pretty convenient.
It's through Overdrive, a service that lends books to library patrons. Overdrive's current interface for mobile devices and browsers is known as Libby. At one point in time, both Kobo and Overdrive was owned by the same company.
Note, libraries only offer a small selection - the selection mine offers is a lot different from the library up the street from me. It's all curated from organization to organization.
Edit: Overdrive also operates Kanopy, a library video streaming app; as well as Sora, an K-12 reading app.
Worth noting that if you’re in the US, your state likely has a statewide library as well. For instance, in Texas, the Houston Public Library gets a special grant to offer ebooks to the entire state. So anyone with a Texas address can sign up for free. Most states have similar programs.
Someone should make a youtube sketch where a woman keeps getting suspicious of her boyfriend cheating on her.
And the bf IS being secretive, and dismissive. The girlfriend isn't being paranoid, or crazy. The boyfriend IS giving her legit reason to think he's hiding something. Every Tuesday he won't return calls. Gets dodgy about asking where he was. So she decides to follow him.
And when she follows him turns out he goes over to a guys house. And then, men and women keep showing up. Gotta be 30 people in this house. So now she's thinking her boyfriend is doing sex cult shit. Like in eyes wide shut.
So when she finally breaks down the door, and goes in, turns out he's just in an ereader book club of the month. They all read the same book, at the same pace. And then discuss.
So when she asked him what he was doing those days, he told her that "she wouldn't understand", he just meant that she was illiterate and wouldn't understand reading. And when she asked where he went, and he said "It's a secret", that's just the name of their book club. And when she asked who's perfume she smells on his jacket, he said "That's just Julie. I eat her pie, while staring at her rack." He just meant she brings baked goods for all the book club members, and they look at the book rack for the next book the club will read.
And then when she's finally relieved, and all the confusion has been sorted, she asks if she can join the book club. So he says "You can.....but I don't know if you're the type of girl who would want to participate in the late night post book reading orgys."
for that amount of set up I should have expected the punchline
I just load PDFs and what not directly onto mine. Project Gutenberg has tons of free ebooks.
Overdrive is cool too.
I'm not a kobo owner, but I've bought multiple hundreds of dollars of fully legal ebooks off Humble Bundle. Some of these collections are actually sourced through the Kobo ebook store for the backend delivery. Other collections are non-DRM epubs. I'm currently reading through the Martha Wells collection (Murderbot, Ile-Rien series). It was $18 for 14 of her novels/novellas. Prior to that was a collection of Hugh Howey (Dust, Sand) and Neil Stephenson (Seveneves) There's currently a Robert Silverberg collection of 32 books for $18 I'll probably pick up.
Oh crap I forgot humble bundle does ebooks! I'd dismissed it as soon as I saw it was a thing as I can't stand reading ebooks on a phone or computer. So now that I have a kobo Humble Bundle is an option again!
If you're up for self-hosting, you can also use something like Calibre-Web or Stump, they have Kobo Sync support AFAIK. I just use OPDS with KOReader though
You can buy ebooks on your reader from the Kobo store. I have a Kobo with the "plus" subscription which allows you to rent certain books too.
The biggest problem I have with Kobo isn't even really something that's their fault or that they can do anything about. Amazon through their Amazon Unlimited program has locked a bunch of major authors into exclusivity contracts where they're contractually barred from distributing their ebooks on other platforms. That in turn means a bunch of major authors are just completely unavailable anywhere but Amazon, and of course Amazon ebooks exclusively only work on Kindle devices. It's a vicious feedback loop where authors refuse to leave Amazon because it's the market dominator by a large margin and consumers refuse to use anything else because all the authors are only on Amazon.
If you can make do with non-Amazon sources of ebooks it's great to do so and we really need more people doing exactly that in order to convince authors that the Amazon shackles aren't worth it, but it's definitely a struggle sometimes.
I ran into this exclusivity thing and sent a message to the author. He promptly gave me a copy of his book (since he is prohibited from selling it to me). So I sent him a tip on ko-fi for the amount of the book.
No promises every author will do this, but it went pretty well for me.
If an author is Amazon exclusive I don't feel bad getting the book from other sources, and just put it on my Kobo.
If I want to support them, I will buy the book either as a physical book or on Amazon, and read the otherly-acquired book on my Kobo anyway.
I'm getting more and more convinced to buy an ereader from this company.
Also, can I upload my own books via wifi?
I have been using Storygraph for about 4 years and I love it. It has so many good filters and options when you are looking for a book to read. Even the automatic recommendation engine is pretty good. I picked up quite a few books from there. I have never done that on goodreads.
Only thing I am missing from Goodreads are Author's pages. When you click on an author's name on Storygraph, it just shows you their name and all their books in infinite scroll and in random order. Not even chronologically or alphabetically sorted, or even by series. No, nothing and you can't change that. There is no photo of an author or their bio either.
I really hope they view change that.
I would never let mine online, but still that does sound neat.
Yaasssss love Storygraph and Kobo!
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
