When you buy a paperback book, it's yours to read anywhere. Kat Orphanides reveals how to get this kind of freedom with heavily restricted ebooks
If you’ve read the news lately, you’d be forgiven for wondering what rights -if any - you have over the digital media you buy.
In October 2014, UK citizens were finally allowed to copy their MP3s, CDs, DVDs and ebooks - but just eight months later in June 2015, the law was rolled back. Now we’re not even sure if we can rip a CD for iTunes.
Amazon may seem restrictive with its proprietary formats, but its range of apps makes it easy to read ebooks legally on almost any tablet, phone or PC.
Read Kindle ebooks on your tablet
First, let’s examine one key reason why you may want to read ebooks on your tablet: the quality of illustrations. Simple drawings, tables and charts look much better on a tablet screen than on a Kindle, while intricately drawn comics don’t work on the latter at all. Take the Asterix comic books, which we loved when young and still dip into now. The Kindle’s E-Ink can’t display these, but they look great on an iPad or Android tablet.
Amazon wants us to look at these pictures, which is part of the reason why it offers a Kindle app for Android (www.snipca.com/17677), iOS (www.snipca.com/17678) and Windows Phone (www.snipca.com/17739 - Windows 10 required). All these apps support Kindle-format ebooks, whether they have illustrations or not.
You can also read online using the Kindle Cloud Reader (https://read.amazon.com; free account required) and by downloading the free ‘Kindle for PC’ program (www.amazon.co.uk/kindleforpc). Most of these apps (iOS aside) let you carry on reading where you left off, look up words, read excerpts before you buy, and read newspapers and magazines.
Beat Apple's unfair restrictions
While the Android version of the Kindle app lets you buy ebooks from Amazon, Apple won’t allow you to do the same thing. You can search for Kindle ebooks and add them to your iOS wishlist, but you can’t actually buy them.
The solution is to use Apple’s Safari browser (www.apple.com/uk/safari), which is pre-installed in iOS. Go to Amazon’s UK website (www.amazon.co.uk) using Safari, log in, find the book you want, select it for delivery to your iPad and buy it using 1-Click payment, which is the default. Now go back to the Kindle app, and your book should be waiting for you.
If it hasn’t downloaded automatically, first make sure you’re connected to the internet, then at the bottom of the screen tap the tab marked Cloud and re-sync your library. The book should appear, ready for you to download and read.
Sync ebooks between devices
One of the best things about the Kindle is that it lets you sync your progress through a book on all your devices. You could finish reading your Kindle in bed at night, then pick up from where you left off on your tablet by the sofa the next day, or on your phone while you’re waiting for the bus.
You can even sync ebooks you’ve imported from elsewhere. To give this a try, we bought a collection from Humble Bundle (www.humblebundle.com/books), an independent online store that sells ‘bundles’ of ebooks. After we emailed them to our Kindle app, they were automatically added to our Kindle library, ready to download and sync.
However, before you do likewise, bear in mind that syncing Kindle ebooks can only be done from an email address that you’ve authorised. To add an approved email address, visit Amazon’s ‘Manage Your Content and Devices’ page (www.snipca.com/17682), sign in if prompted, then click Settings.
If your ebooks won’t automatically sync, you may need to do so manually. To do this, make sure your devices are connected to the internet via either Wi-Fi or mobile data (usually 3G/4G). Next, tap the centre of the reading screen to bring up the menu icons, tap the icon with three horizontal lines, then tap ‘Sync’. Do this before you start reading, and after you finish.
The magic of the spoken word
Amazon has a clever service called ‘Whispersync for Voice’ (www.snipca.com/17683) that lets you sync audiobooks with ebooks. This means that an audiobook picks up where you stopped reading on an ebook.
You will need to sign up for an account with Audible, though, which is owned by Amazon. There’s a one-month free trial (three months if you’re a Prime subscriber), which you can sign up to at www.snipca.com/17684. After that it’s £7.99 for one book a month, or £14.99 for two books a month.
Use your Amazon account to log in when you sign up for Audible. You’ll get a free audiobook and can then cancel your subscription - your account will remain active, but you won’t be charged and your audiobook will still be yours.
Now, when you browse Amazon’s 30,000 ‘Whispersync for Voice’ ebooks (www.snipca.com/17724), you’ll be given the option of buying a companion audiobook. There are some real bargains here, with prices reduced by as much as £20.
More than just Amazon
When you think ‘ebooks’, you may automatically think ‘Kindle’, but there’s far more choice. Sony, Bookeen and Kobo, along with the ebook stores run by WH Smith (www.whsmith.co.uk/ebooks) and Foyles (www.foyles.co.uk/eBooks), all use the free and open EPUB format, protected by DRM (digital rights management) provided by Adobe Digital Editions (ADE, www.snipca.com/17686).
Now for the bad news. ADE is harder to use than Amazon’s, mainly because syncing is tricky. You have to make sure your purchases from different retailers are all linked to the same account. However, it does at least give you the chance to shop at multiple retailers, rather than being forced to use just Amazon.
You can read any ADE EPUB ebook on your tablet using Adobe’s own Digital Editions app for iOS (www.snipca.com/17688). But much better is MobiSystems’ Universal Book Reader app for Android (www.snipca.com/17689). If your ebooks are DRM-free and, like us, you prefer Amazon’s interface and syncing features, then you can use Calibre to convert them to MOBI format and email them to your Kindle app.
EBOOKS, DRM AND THE LAW
There's an ongoing legal debate about what we should be allowed to do with the digital books, videos and music we buy.
Some publishers don't use DRM on their ebooks, letting you convert them to read on multiple devices. To do this, you'll still need some third-party software. The gold standard is Calibre (www.calibre-ebook.com), which is open-source, and therefore should always be free. It also lets you transfer your ebooks to a range of e-readers in different formats.
Amazon supports AZW and MOBI formats, while most other readers use ASCM and EPUB. Almost all e-readers support PDF, but ebooks are hard to read in this format.
Even when British law allowed you to copy your ebooks, DRM removal was still a grey area legally due to a lack of test cases. However, the popularity of DRM-removing plug-ins for Calibre surged (such as Apprentice Alf's DeDRM Tools: www.snipca.com/17690).
Elsewhere in the EU, users have more rights, with most countries allowing personal backups. Some, such as France, even ban manufacturers using DRM to force users to use certain hardware (Kindles, for example).