I’ve got a lot of ebooks, mostly from HumbleBundle, that are stored on my home server.
I was thinking it would be nice if I could load books to my Kindle wirelessly, similar to how one can check out ebooks from a library, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to do that.
Is that something that’s easily/cheaply done? Since installing the books via USB cable isn’t a big hassle, I don’t want to invest much money into this; it was something I thought would be fun to set up.
I’m not familiar with HumbleBundle, but there may be copyright issues.
so basically, you want to setup an ebook server that sends the files via a wireless connection, is that correct?
If so, there’s probably already a program (app) for that. If the kindle ecosystem is at all like android’s, you’ll install a client from the kindle app store, and that apps page will include a link to the server software you have to download and install on your pc.
Run calibre server?
That is what i use, it is free
There are several issues…
First is copyright. If the book is in public domain, then it’s already in the Gutenberg website’s downloadable files. If it’s not, then you have to have permission.
Which brings up the second issue - if I want to download a book from your library, presumably I have to download it. So… assuming you have copyright permission for lending one book at a time, how do you guarantee that the book is deleted from my computer before you lend it out to someone else? One option would be a form of software checkout/check-in. However, history is shown that given a challenge, hackers will happily figure out how to defeat copy protection, just on principle. Even if you require me to read it from your website instead of download - someone could still create a screen-scrape/text recognition system at the most extreme. Or even use a digital camera to photograph each page…
(IIRC there were some companies that tried the “we’re just renting software for the month” routine back in the early days of internet. This was just a cover for distributing pirated software for cheap, since they had no way to guarantee you erased the install when your lease was up. it was eventually rules as piracy.)
So as you can see, you would need specialized software for a website to hand out books, plus manage the membership and check-in-check-out process.
If you don’t care about copyright (It’s just for me and my tablets, phone and PC) then a very basic FTP or website would suffice. This presumes, of course, that however you download your book it will go into the reader. But, your Kindle content, for example, may be DRM’ed and require all your devices to be activated. There are obviously limits. I haven’t gotten rid of old tech, so between me and my wife we have 4 iPads, 5 iPhones, 3 Mac’s including an Airbook and the Mac attached to our TV; plus 3 PC’s not counting the dead junk in the basement.
Simplest is anything not in Kindle (MOBI) file format, I use Calibre to convert to Mobi and then email I to my Kindle library. Then any of my authorized devices can download it from the cloud when I want.