Amazon aaarrrggghhh

knightstyle

So I got a Kobo reader and an Amazon voucher for my birthday. Just wanted to know if I can purchase ebooks from Amazon to use directly on the Kobo.
Amazon sent me to their Kindle site, then kept saying books purchased from the Kindle store won't work but it took several emails to get the answer from them, will ebooks purchased from Amazon work???....NO! That is all I wanted!
Yes, now I will look at downloading a program to sort this out.

alanalea

I use Calibre to convert my ebooks- It's brilliant free software

Calibre here

MultiCat

knightstyle wrote: »

So I got a Kobo reader and an Amazon voucher for my birthday. Just wanted to know if I can purchase ebooks from Amazon to use directly on the Kobo.
Amazon sent me to their Kindle site, then kept saying books purchased from the Kindle store won't work but it took several emails to get the answer from them, will ebooks purchased from Amazon work???....NO! That is all I wanted!
Yes, now I will look at downloading a program to sort this out.

A Kobo reader is a WHSmith product so you would have more luck buying ebooks from their site. Unfortunately the combination of the Kobo and the amazon voucher wasn't the best one.

What you can do though, is use a program called Calibre which will convert ebook files (and pdfs) into the correct format for your Kobo reader. However, if the books from Amazon are DRM protected (if someone knows if they are, feel free to jump in) then it won't work.

That's the best option I can see at the moment. Good luck.

EDIT: Beaten by alanalea. :P

tberry6686

Most books on amazon are drm protected. But there is software available that will remove the drm - not sure of the legality of doing so though.

mikemaple

I believe that Kobo - reads Epub.

If so then some good options for you without converting are :-

http://www.kobobooks.com/
https://www.booksonboard.co.uk
http://waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/browse/ebooks/4294964587/
http://www.tescoebooks.com/tescoweb/home.aspx

Try to avoid PDF formatted books (quite rare) epub is much better.

Apollonia

The good news is that if your local library offers an ebook lending service then you can use it with your Kobo but not with a Kindle.

I tend to warn people away from Kindle because of the issues with ebook formats.

Zedicus

This whole business of multiple ebook formats with (possibly) no legal way of converting is very bad news.

tberry6686

I agree that the lack of conversion is bad news. I have both a sony reader (about 3 years old) and a Kindle and not being able to move books between them is a pain. Surely these companies can agree to support all the formats.

missesther

I have stripped a kindle ebook of it's DRM and converted it (I did pay for it so I figured I was ok) and it was a faff. Can be done and is good if you can only find the book in Kindle version and none others but it's not something you'd want to do a lot.