Dark Artistry

Capitalism sucks and it is very apparent when you buy Amazon e-books. Don’t think locking books you buy down to Amazon and their eBook readers is good for authors. It is for Amazon investors and Bezos, period.

Notice how easy they made if for authors to publish on their platform and the lack of editor review? You are the free editor too. The books are likely printed in another country also to lower their costs using cheap materials when you buy a physical copy. I can’t say for sure that’s true but if it is their greed trumps American labor.

Where does all this greed and control end? I myself don’t like paying for anything I can’t control. If you want me to pay for usage don’t sell it to me, simply require a subscription. I can go elsewhere, even if you are monopolizing the playing field causing me to lose out on some author’s content. But if they are down with this shit, fuck them.

So here is a long boring process to get your books. Open the book in the web browser, Kindle online reader. Set the reader to display as much text as possible. It the OCR software has a lot of textual errors enlarge the text until it is working well. Copy the text and paste into a markdown editor. Each chapter you make H1 in markdown with the pound sign, i.e., #Chapter and ##Chapter heading for chapter headings. This will create the index for you, at least in the software I use. Correct any errors, you are the editor anyway, right?

When done export as html. If you like PDF just save and be done with it. Or, open in epub editor and make any corrections needed then save as ePub. Add to library and if you have a good book manager have it grab all the meta data and cover art. Done.

Here is the software I use and work the best, IMO.

normCap allows you to select text from pretty much anywhere and convert to actual editable text.

MarkText is a markdown editor that has html and pdf export. I love this piece of software! It also has spell check so it has everything you need.

Sigil is an ePub editor and will allow you to create and make changes to an ePub.

Calibre is a book manager and organizer. Yet another amazing piece of software. It will, ironically, grab the meta for your ePab from Amazon as one of it’s sources. It can also convert to other e-book formats if needed.

Lecture

The obvious. I do not condone the resale or sharing of books, even if you payed for it! Don’t be a dick. Writing books is hard. It is a lot of work. People should be paid for their work.

Before considering this process. Try to buy direct from the author or more liberal publisher first.

I do not share any of my e-books. I am not interested in stealing books. I don’t want to hurt authors. I just want the freedom to use what I pay for how I want. I like Amazon’s reader. It’s one of the best but can I use it on a Linux tablet? No. Can I guarantee Amazon will be around next time I want to reread a book I purchased through them? No. Can I guarantee an author will provide their books on other platforms? No.