I like the idea of Kindle books in theory, in practice, not so much. Digital books certainly save forests even as they ruin our eyes.
I have never downloaded a Kindle book without have to seek support from Amazon. They don't make that support easy to access, particularly if one is in a foreign timezone.
Problem number one: Amazon hides the books you've paid hard money for. Their proprietary AZW files are hidden by [ASIN]_EBOK rather than a more sensible convention like, um, the name of the effing book, maybe!
If you mess with this AZW file at all, renaming it, moving it, adding it to a folder, Kindle won't open it. Furthermore, if one prefers a different format, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, for instance, AZW is impossible to convert.
Amazon's whole proprietary system is opaque. I'm an author with 31 books but I think Sonny Bono is a dick. Authors get pennies & readers--the people we want to enjoy our books--get screwed.
So I'm seeking advice on how to break out of Jeff's prison. Does anyone here know how to read AZW books on any application other than Amazon's awful Kindle? And is anyone savvy as to how to convert those AZW into the far more user-friendly PDFs?? TIA!
I have never downloaded a Kindle book without have to seek support from Amazon. They don't make that support easy to access, particularly if one is in a foreign timezone.
Problem number one: Amazon hides the books you've paid hard money for. Their proprietary AZW files are hidden by [ASIN]_EBOK rather than a more sensible convention like, um, the name of the effing book, maybe!
If you mess with this AZW file at all, renaming it, moving it, adding it to a folder, Kindle won't open it. Furthermore, if one prefers a different format, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, for instance, AZW is impossible to convert.
Amazon's whole proprietary system is opaque. I'm an author with 31 books but I think Sonny Bono is a dick. Authors get pennies & readers--the people we want to enjoy our books--get screwed.
So I'm seeking advice on how to break out of Jeff's prison. Does anyone here know how to read AZW books on any application other than Amazon's awful Kindle? And is anyone savvy as to how to convert those AZW into the far more user-friendly PDFs?? TIA!
