I'm considering buying a kindle ebook and just need a bit of advice. Once you've paid to download the ebook you want, is it your's to keep ?

You can more or less keep it but you can't do what you want with it. You're not really buying a book; you're buying a license. As with all digital 'products' the item for sale is actually 'copyright'.

Here's Cory Doctorow sounding off about it: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/12...-cant-kee.html

True, but then it's the same with practically anything these days - films, computer games, books. You're paying for permission to watch/read/play the product - you don't own it outright.

The difference is of course, with a DVD/game/book you can resell it on eBay or the likes, with an eBook you can't.

That said, the advantages of eBooks far outweigh the negatives in my opinion. Once you get over the hangup that you're not getting a physical item for your money, you'll be sold. If you're the type of person that lends a lot of books, either to/from friends, or from a library, an ereader is maybe not the way to go, but if you just generally read books without passing them on, get a kindle.

Yes, re digital works you're buying easy-to-make copies, so the value isn't in the thing materially, it's a digital wrapper for various 'rights'.

I jumped in here as I'm also thinking about getting an ebook reader but I'm concerned about both format restrictions and rights restrictions. For example I have some books & comics in these formats:

.html
pdf
.djvu
.lit
.cbr
.cbz

Are they viewable on a kindle or any given ebook reader? I'm beginning to think there might be more flexibility with a netbook or a tablet pc.

Amazon will convert anything it doesn't support natively for free. Just e-mail it to your Kindle.
Kindle is a lot easier on the eyes than any backlit computer screen and it weighs lot less that any netbook/tablet.

I read of a case where Amazon sold Kindles with e-books that they hadn't cleared the rights to. When it was brought to their attention they just deleted the titles from the hardware of those who had bought them.

If they had been proper books then purchasers would have gotten to keep them.

The books in question were Orwell's 1984 & Animal Farm.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/te.../18amazon.html

It's true that did happen but it was an unusual occurrence to say the least. More of a failing on the part of Amazon than Kindle.
Books from Project Gutenberg and similar places are yours to keep, no one can delete them but you.

That's sort of what I was hinting at earlier. There are plenty of out of print books and my library mostly consists of those, that's part of my concern about format compatibility.

I found this software which claims to convert most formats, & I'm sure others are available: http://calibre-ebook.com/

Project Gutenberg uses several formats including Kindle's .mobi.

My kindle3 reads pdf's. Its not brilliant but if you already have stuff in that format then its hasstle free to plonk them on the kindle.

As regards other formats there are plently of convertors out there. Calibre for instance, just do a search for 'html mobi' and google will give you some ideas.

They've promised they won't do that again.


Calibre is fantastic. It does far more than just converting your books - it does take a bit of 'learning' though.

Thanks for all the replies.What I meant basically was once I've bought it can I keep it on my kindle for as long as I want? I know I don't own the copyright but that I can download it onto my pc if I want.

Yes, you can keep it on your Kindle as long as you want to. In fact you can read your books on multiple Kindles or Kindle apps at the same time (e.g. Kindle for PC, the iPhone app and so on). You can even delete a book from your Kindle and download it again later, as your books are backed up in your Kindle account page, and you can easily see what you've got from there.

CBR is an archive like ZIP, you can unpack the jpg files inside, put them on Kindle and use its image viewer to read them as a book. It's B&W only, of course. Maybe a cheap tablet with a colour display would be better for comics, but Kindle can handle them. Any other text format can be converted to Kindle compatible formats with Calibre.

Brilliant! It definitely sounds like I'd be getting my money's worth with this.

Hope someone can help. My other half gave me a Kindle for my birthday and pre-loaded it with some books that I wanted and a newspaper subscription. To do this he had the Kindle registered on his Amazon account. Does anyone know, if I deregister it from his account and register it to mine, will the books and the subscription be deleted? I can't find the answer to this on Amazon. Thanks!

The books were bought specifically for display on that particular machine so I'd be very surprised if they didn't move over to the new account.
This must be a fairly common occurrence when the Kindle is bought as a gift.

Of course if you want to be absolutely certain, email Amazon.

I was just wondering if anyone has had dealings with people.
I have ordered two books over the last few months, and neither have arrived.
the really bad part though is getting your money refunded- they rarely reply to e mails , and take about 3 weeks to repay you.
Needless to say they take your money immediately.

oops sorry - should have been a new thread

I've no idea why Amazon automatically registers the device to the account that bought it. It's my only annoyance about a great product.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/cust...deId=200496580

it says about deregistering an account...

The terms and conditions do look a bit restrictive when a Kindle is sold etc.

I can understand that subscriptions might have to be stopped along with anything purchased which has not already been delivered by the time the unit is de-registered.

However, the idea that you should be required to purge the kindle of all purchased material is a bit cheeky in my opinion.

I would hope that in the context of a gift within a family there would be some way of sorting this out sensibly.

Thanks for your replies. I think I'm just going to give it a go and see what happens...

You can always re-register to your friends account if you want to retrieve your books.

It's a bit problamatic when kindles are being bought as gifts because they would most likely be registered to the account of the buyer so any books bought would be registered to their account aswell. I think it would be best to buy the device as a gift, but to buy gift vouchers instead of buying books with the kindle. That way the person who recieves the kindle can register it to their own account and then use the gift vouchers to buy books.

Like everyone who posts I love books- the smell , the feel etc etc and swore blind I never resort to e-books or whatever you call them.
But this piece ot kit has got me sorely tempted-nearly every review in the media has been ecstatic, and you can get loads of stuff free.
Is it really that good?