Kindle question

[emmagrant01]

For those of you who have a Kindle, how easy is it to put, say, fanfic on it? I am imagining that I could c&p fics into txt files or even download them as pdfs, and then put them on a Kindle to read wherever. That would be amazingly awesome. :-)

I'm having a little trouble finding an answer via google, oddly. Can anyone advise?

ETA: My flist knows all! ♥

Comments

[foi-nefaste.livejournal.com]

I just got a Kindle last week, so... experience is brief but so far positive.

I've just been saving fics as PDFs and then dumping them onto the Kindle, and that works just fine. The only thing I'd like to point out, specifically, is that you need to make the font size big enough that you read it easily on the smaller kindle screen - it takes a bit of getting used to! (Archive of our Own PDFs print too small to comfortably read on Kindle, for example)

That said: very handy way to read fic on the subway! :)

[lalaith-niniel.livejournal.com]

I find it's really easy.

I c&p into Word, adjust the page size to 4x6, remove the margins and save as a pdf. If the Kindle is connected to your computer it's as easy as dragging and dropping onto the Kindle drive. The whole process takes me 5 minutes as long as I'm not worried about formatting.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Good to know, thanks. I'm imagining reading fic at the gym, during lunch, on an airplane... :-)

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Awesome, thanks for the specific instructions!

[thalia]

You can do just what you've said. The thing is, though, PDF reading isn't that great on a Kindle; it works a lot better with e-book format. You can use Calibre (or probably other software) to make .mobi files, or you can download them directly from Archive of Our Own. (And how much do I love AO3 for that feature?)

Basically, it's one more step, but it's really easy, and it makes reading a lot more pleasant.

[longtimegone]

I prefer to save as a txt file and drop in the "documents" folder on the Kindle. I've never been particularly impressed with the way the Kindle handles PDFs. It's not a nightmare, but the txt file is easier to read I've found.

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Is this the same e-book format that's been around for years? I used to convert directly from MS word to e-books, but that was years ago. I wonder if I could find another plug-in to do that, Hmmm...

Thanks!

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Oooh, good to know. Thanks!

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

Oh god. This is like, all I do with my kindle and the whole base of my Kindle love, so I'm going to write a comment here, and then I'll go make a post about this because there are good ways to do this (.mobi) and painful ways to do it (.txt and .pdf) and more people should know the good ones, because .mobi is far, far easier to read and deal with than trying to format text size and deal with line breaks in .pdf.

Okay, here goes:

1. Anything that is on A03 can (usually) be automatically downloaded in a Kindle (and a Nook!) friendly format. Go to the top of the page, click 'download', and select the .mobi format for Kindle and the .epub formal for any other ereader. Save, and then mail to yourself or upload via USB. Easypeasy.

2. This is an online text to .mobi converter. It' awesome... but the text of the site is in German. Paste your fic into the box, click the "mobipocket e-book" button at the bottom, and type the Title into the box that pops up. Save, send to Kindle. WAY easier than .pdfs and will handle even hugenormous chunks of text.

3. If you DO have a .pdf already made (or a full text file) here is an online converter to convert your file to a .mobi version. Click, save, send.

Bonus: If you read lots of short fic -- or fic on dreamwidth, where everything is on one page -- you can make very good use of Instapaper and their 'read later' feature, which will send everything that you bookmark to your kindle either once a day, or whenever you go to their website and tell them to. (I use this a lot when I'm really into something I'm reading and we have to go take the kids somewhere. Hit 'read later', go to instapaper, tell it to send to my kindle, and I can finish the porn in the car. Win!)

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Oooh! This is exactly what I was hoping for! Thank you!!!

Is it sad that I would pretty much ONLY be putting porn on my Kindle? LOL...

[thalia]

There are about a zillion e-book formats. The one the Kindle likes is .mobi... well, technically it gets converted to .amz, but you don't have to worry about that part. And I think Palms used .mobi, so if you had a Palm you might have run into it.

I find Calibre easy enough to use that I haven't bothered to look for anything different.

[thalia]

Ooh, thank you for mentioning Instapaper! I've seen the iPhone app, but I didn't know it worked on the Kindle as well. Fantastic!

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

Oh, I have tons of fanfics on my Kindle! It's so easy! I think the new ones are even easier. Mine is the first generation. Here's what I do. I downloaded the Fanfiction Downloader and save quite a few fics that way. It puts them into a file in my documents folder. Then I downloaded a program called Calibre. It is a program that converts your fics into the proper format and uploads them to the Kindle. When you download Calibre, you should take the 10 minutes to watch the tutorial video of how to utilize it. I thought I'd be real smart and not need to watch the tutorial and I was so wrong. It's real short and easy to understand.

Anyway, when you are in Calibre you upload your fic and hit Convert. It puts the fic into the necessary format for Kindle. Upload fics in pdf, rtf or epub. The Calibre program converts them to Mobi and when you plug the Kindle into the USB port and hit transfer to Kindle, it automatically loads it. Then you unplug the Kindle turn it on and it's there! Love it! I think the new Kindles may be even easier. The only thing I've learned is not to upload in Mobi to Calibre because when it transfers to the Kindle it removes all of the spacing that is formatted into the fic and it's all run together. Upload in pdf or epub and it will convert to mobi and then it retains the formatting and proper spacing. Hopefully, this makes some sense to you. Just load up Calibre and watch the tutorial and you'll have no trouble.

[foi-nefaste.livejournal.com]

Also, if that helps at all... I just realized that AooO also lets you save as .mobi, and those read well... so, yay! Win!

This will make a week-long internet-less trip south much more entertaining!

[belleweather.livejournal.com]

Um. No? Because that's pretty much all I use mine for, and it's SO AWESOME, OMG! My over-exuberant Kindle love is totally based on my ability to read smut while I take my kids to the bouncy castle. ;)

(Oh, and cookbooks. There are a lot of free ones, and the Kindle works oddly well for that...)

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I really need to catch up on this new technology! :-P

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I am SO going to be reading porn while the kiddo is playing in the park... :-D

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Fanfiction Downloader? I haven't heard of that. Is it software?

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

Oh, that reminds me! Kindle also has an app that works for the ipad, ipod and iphone. You can access your Kindle files easily on the ipod anytime with the free app.

[wivern.livejournal.com]

As others have said it's really easy, especially from AO3, just choose the 'mobi' option.

I actually bought my Kindle mainly to read fic and I'm very happy... more so than reading books on it oddly enough. *g*

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

I'm so relieved I'm not the only one who is wanting a Kindle for this purpose. ;-)

[essie007.livejournal.com]

I only really use my kindle for fanfic. Essentially in order to put anything on your kindle you email the document to your kindle. And the kindle downloads and converts it to kindle format when you connect it to the internet. What I usually do is c&p the fic into a word document. Save that, then email the doc in an attachment to my kindle. It works really well. It is however a lot of steps.

The one thing I will say is that if you send a pdf the proportions are not always automatically converted, so you may have to play the zoom in game to read it.

[wivern.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. I have read your post but can't comment there. *g*

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

OMG! I've been using it for 2-3 years. Google it! I use it to grab fics from numerous sites. Some archives have the option to view a whole multi-chaptered fic a single page and you just scroll to read. Some archives don't have that option. If you want to C&P a long, multi-chaptered fic it can get crazy. That's where Fanfiction Downloader or FicSaver comes in. Give it a try! I like the old version of the FFD, but I think the bugs are mostly worked out of the new version. It's an awesome program. A German guy wrote the program and it's the coolest thing ever.

[celestlyn.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, it's not really software. It's just a free program that you download in about 2 minutes.