ebooks?

General
1

With the recent availability of the Amazon Kindle in Europe and the price drop of e-readers in general, I wondered if it would be a good idea to make it a combined effort to create free ebooks out of the stories on this forum, and to publish them right along with the normal forum/text version.

I understand the copyright problem, especially considering that some of the authors might not be around to agree or disagree with a conversion of their works into a different electronic format, but it would be great if we could at least find a solution for the new stories being posted where the author would actually like their story to be converted and distributed, possibly only under certain conditions (examples: distribution only via this board, with/without username/realname as author in the ebook metadata, not/only in specific ebook formats, etc).

The software for this is free, btw (I’m thinking of calibre here, because it seems to be what everybody uses), and creating and distributing the ebooks here would probably make the stories more available, the author/additional information more accurate, the rights of an author more enforcable and above all the whole ordeal a little less redundant than the probable (well, ok, maybe the chances for it aren’t that high :wink: ) development of personal AB/DL ebook sharing circles or the creation of personal .doc archives with mixed up author names and incomplete stories

Thinking big, it could even mean the creation of something along the lines of a big AB/DL story library.

So, what do you all think about doing something like this? Can come up with a good way to solve the “problem” of authors actually permitting the creation of ebooks out of their stories but forgetting to add that crucial information to their stories to make it possible? Or are there other, unavoidable reasons that make this idea pretty bad?

(Please excuse any spelling/wording errors, I’m not a native speaker. It took me pretty long to write this, actually :P)

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Re: ebooks?

I have a Kindle, and I love it, but I really don’t see any need for this. There are far too many stories here to really be worth the effort. If people want certain stories in ebook format, it’s very easy for them to pick and choose the ones they like and make files for just them. If an author wanted to do this for their own stories and offer the links to them here, there certainly wouldn’t be any problem with that, but I just don’t see the point in actually trying to archive the entire forum’s worth of stories that way.

I have Calibre, though I can’t say I’ve ever used it to make an ebook… I guess it probably can since it can do everything else. I use Sigil for that, myself, and it’s quite easy. I don’t have a ton of AB/DL material on my Kindle, but I’ll use that for longer stories that I don’t want to spend hours staring at my computer screen to read. I’ve also used it to make collections of short stories, since you can use the Table of Contents to set bookmarks for each story (or chapter). Sigil makes epub files, which most e-readers can handle, but, unless you install some hacks, the Kindle can’t, but that’s where Calibre comes in handy. I imagine it might be different if you get really fancy with the formatting, but all the files I’ve made have converted to mobi format (which the Kindle does read) beautifully.

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Re: ebooks?

You know what’s odd? I was actually thinking about doing a site for something like this awhile back, just haven’t had time to work on it much. :slight_smile:

I will say that Sigil is far better for ebook creating than Calibre. Calibre is really not meant for mass creation of ebooks, it’s really meant more for managin existing collections.

That being said, I actually use a modified version of Docbook to generate all the ebook versions of my short stories, but it’s definitely not for the faint of heart :slight_smile:

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Re: ebooks?

I suppose the only reason I wouldn’t would be because I can’t pin-lock my Kindle from other people…

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Re: ebooks?

I write other stuff too and I really don’t want people putting my identity here together with my other writing identity elsewhere. I don’t know if you could obfuscate my identity from readers.

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Re: ebooks?

Elizabeth: Sigil looks pretty neat, it’s probably the ‘right’ program if you want to really publish an ebook. Calibre doesn’t really give me that many options, it just eats .txt files (or other formats) and creates an ebook in the format I chose (.mobi) with it.

I only know of Duokan to read .epub files on the kindle, and it might take a few releases until some special characters work properly with it, it seems. Other than that, I agree that epub is probably the best choice when it comes to ebook formats.

Purged_User: I guess that ebooks would also attract people with a more consumer oriented mindset, although I’m pretty sure that reading well written stories makes people want to write some themselves (Though personally, I don’t think I’m inventive enough to actually attempt to. That’s why this idea kind of came to me, as it would be a way to give something back to the community, even if it was only a few hours of my time by making some (probably pretty basic) ebooks out of some finished stories).

Making a new site + getting the permission from the authors is an option, especially because I get the notion now that this would not be seen as an attempt to stir up bad feelings or somehow split the AB/DL story writing community :slight_smile:

hostmaster: I actually played around with docbook before when I had to find a software to create some software documentation with. Would you mind showing me a sample project (+output)? Would it actually be possible to automate ebook creation using docbook and a scripting language, or is there much to be done for every individual ebook?

Nemo: I password-protected my kindle after I uploaded two stories onto it via usb. Maybe the first and second kindle didn’t support that, but as it’s connected to the amazon store, I’d guess this option should be available for every version, isn’t it?

Write And Left: I’m in the same boat as you. It’s unkown what Amazon or other ebook reader manufacturers will do with the data on those devices in the future, so I’d not want my non AB/DL-nickname anywhere near a story with diaper or ageplay content. (My kindle isn’t connected to my amazon account for the same reason, btw). If the ebook just had a generic ‘AuthorABDL_XXXX’ as an author name when the author doesn’t want his or her nickname used in that field it wouldn’t matter, though, right? (But the sorting algorithm would still work and you could find stories by the same author easily)

To make this post come to an end: Thanks for the input so far! There’s probably no way around asking every writer individually if they’d permit the creation of ebooks out of their stories (especially since they might dislike having their nicknames in some kind of corporate database when Amazon or Google decide that they have to scan the ebook readers or ebook reader software of their users)

I’ll probably play around a bit more with the software mentioned in this thread, and in the future I might individually offer to add them to some kind of collection available in a thread on here or on an extra site/wiki, if the author likes the idea :slight_smile:

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Re: ebooks?

I can’t for the life of me recall their names, but there are two programs other than Duokan that can read epubs on the Kindle. I remember one of them required a restart in order to go back to the normal Kindle firmware, but the other could switch between the two without that. Like I said, I don’t remember their names, but if you look around the Mobileread forums, I’m sure you could find them. For my part, I’ve never really been interested enough to bother trying to install them, because converting them to mobi format has always worked for me.

If someone really wanted to keep AB/DL stories on their Kindle and keep it a secret, instead of making a bunch of individual files to have to hide separately, it might be easier to compile them all into a single file. Then you just have to think of one fairly uninteresting sounding title to hide them all behind. With a well-done Table of Contents, you could still easily jump between stories, and you could have separate bookmarks for each story, if you’re reading more than one.

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Re: ebooks?

hostmaster: I actually played around with docbook before when I had to find a software to create some software documentation with. Would you mind showing me a sample project (+output)? Would it actually be possible to automate ebook creation using docbook and a scripting language, or is there much to be done for every individual ebook?

Well, for a sample project, pick any standard docbook project (my test case is actually the FreeBSD handbook from FreeBSD documentation project). The modifications just out put the proper .opf and .ncx files using the meta data in the documents instead of the normal HTML TOC.

Elizabeth, the hacks for the kindle to enable epub reading are actually pointless, the epub standard is the original v1 .mobi format, that’s why it’s so easy for software like calibre to convert them to .mobi format. It basically just unpacks the original epub and repacks it in the current .mobi standard :slight_smile:

The only way to get a more accurate translation for a kindle is to convert the .epub document to the kindle modified version of .mobi using the kindlegen program from Amazon :slight_smile:

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Re: ebooks?

For converting ebook formats (and also for reading on my Mac), I use Stanza Desktop from Lexcycle. There are also windows and universal versions of the app.

http://www.lexcycle.com/download-macintosh

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Re: ebooks?

I never thought about putting an abdl story on my Kindle. Now I am afraid to if Amazon can tell what is on my Kindle. My Kindle is attached to my Amazon account and I frequently buy books from there. I have even bought books on my Kindle while shopping at Borders. (My friend said that is why Borders is going out of business.)

What I meant is that my ABDL stories and my non-ABDL stories share the same writing style and I really want to limit the audience of those stories to ABDL readers that come to the two websites I frequent to read my stories.

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Re: ebooks?

Yeh - turns out that not only is my Kindle password protectable, I can actually access this forum from it on the 3G. Still no need for ebooks then :stuck_out_tongue:

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Re: ebooks?

Nemo: If you’re going to browse the board using 3G on it, use this URL: http://m.abdlstoryforum.info

It’ll redirect to the normal board index URL, but it’ll force the board into the mobile skin which is much more kindle friendly (especially on 3G :slight_smile: )

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Re: ebooks?

To be honest, I’m not, but this will make blackberry life easier…

Cheers

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Re: ebooks?

It should switch to the mobile view on blackberry devices without that URL if you’re using the built in browser (if it’s not, there’s something wonky in the mobile browser detection code).

Although speaking of blackberry devices, do you know of a decent ebook reader that runs on OS 4.3 that supports both .epub and .mobi formats? All the ones my fiance has tried either suck, or claim to support OS 4.3 but use APIs that didn’t exist until 4.5.

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Re: ebooks?

I am a mobile developer and it is a common problem when writing software. On the Palm OS it was horrible. If you didn’t check the version number before making an API call, you crashed the handheld if the API wasn’t supported on the hardware.

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Re: ebooks?

I’m painfully familiar with the PalmOS development, particularly with the OS version used on the IIIe and LifeDrive models :slight_smile:

That’s actually one thing I like about Blackberry, they’re actually pretty good at telling which APIs are supported by which OS versions usually. Heck the only reason I don’t have a BB development license is they’re too damn expensive for an app that’ll never be used by anyone but one person :stuck_out_tongue:

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Re: ebooks?

I do not, sorry.

And the major issue with the browser in BB OS6 (well, one of at least 3), is that a lot of sites don’t detect it as a mobile browser and then it totally fails to load the full site.

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Re: ebooks?

Darn, guess I’ll have to keep searching then.

Regarding the BB browser, I’m going to send you a link via PM in a moment that may help shed some light on why the board doesn’t properly detect it :slight_smile:

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Re: ebooks?

What a bloody good idea. I started with the Jennifer Laura/Lorraine stories because they’re easy to wrangle (PDF is also available since the word processor I use to generate the ePubs does that too). Nab the Jennifer Laura compendium here. (Holy crap she wrote a lot.)

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Re: ebooks?

Worth noting that if you’re a kindle user you can email the doc with the subject “convert” to your kindle and amazon will handle it for you.