Tuesday, December 13, 2011

iDevices & Kindle: Want all your ebooks in one place?

Updated 12.14.2011 @ 3:03pm: This also works for converting most iBooks (ePub) to Kindle ... =D 

There are lots of different apps available for reading, but this blog post is not going to discuss them, rather it is a how-to for getting all of one's books regardless of format in one place, Kindle.

One may ask why not iBooks, well, I don't like the iBooks interface, that's why. Ok, I'll give: It's the lack of theme customization. Yet, some may be thinking about Stanza which is a very sweet program, but it's not working in iOS 5 plus I buy most of my leisure books from Amazon so.....Kindle, it is.

The program that makes all this possible just happens to be Stanza Desktop (which seems to be not available at the moment). Stanza desktop not only does it allows one to read books on their desktops, but - and this is its magic - also allows one to open and convert most ebook formats to most ebook formats. In other words, it can open most ebook formats and convert that format to any of the others. Wicked slick!!

Here's a snapshot of the export menu:





Notice the second format - Amazon Kindle?!

Here's the process:

Step 0: Open desired ebook in Stanza Desktop.
Step 1: File | Export file as... Choose Amazon Kindle.
Step 2: Save exported file in Dropbox, SugarSync or box.net.
Step 3: Launch the program (Dropbox, SugarSync or box.net) on your iDevice.
Step 4: Download exported file.
Step 5: In top right hand corner tap the "open in" icon.
Step 6: Select Kindle.


Technical notes: Once the converted file is in Kindle one cannot change its name, description or any additional details. So before one exports the file from Stanza Desktop, one can make all those changes here:


Which pops up this dialog box:


Now, if only Kindle allowed for categories or collections...other than author, title or recent....


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