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0 Subject: Ebooks and external drives

Posted by: Perm Dude
- [201027169] Sun, May 05, 2013, 18:49

As many of you know, I work in book publishing (specifically, literary publishing) and my home office has upwards of 5000 poetry volumes plus a few hundred books each of short fiction, plays, essays, and other literary works.

I just took on a client with a backlist of just over 600 titles, and I've just run out of physical room.

I'm thinking of trying to get their books as ebooks, and store them on an external drive. Anyone have any experience in this area? External drives look pretty cheap, and if I can ensure easy access to the books that would be a real shelf-saver.

Also, I often mark up my books with information (such as poem line counts, copyright information, etc.). I'm told that Kindle allows you to mark up ebooks in this fashion as well--it this the case? I see a free Kindle download for the PC which might be something to shoot for.
1DWetzel
      ID: 59149910
      Sun, May 05, 2013, 19:43
No idea on the marking-up bit, but I can't see how some sufficiently large USB external hard drive isn't the perfect solution here.
2Frick
      ID: 432501512
      Mon, May 06, 2013, 15:15
What do you need the books for exactly? The problem with e-books is fragmentation and DRM (Digital Rights Management). Some books can only be read on a specific device (e.g. Kindle) while others have to connect physically (USB) rather than being downloaded wirelessly. The physical connection shouldn't be a problem for you, but you might have some issues if the files have DRM. You can often strip the DRM, but that can be technically illegal in the US.

Google DRM removal and you will find walk-thrus on how do to it. Once you have the DRM removed, you should be able to save the files as PDFs or ePub, and save them to an external drive. Adobe products are expensive, but Adobe Acrobat Pro probably has all of the abilities that you were referring to.
3Perm Dude
      ID: 201027169
      Mon, May 06, 2013, 21:19
The books would be published by clients of mine. In theory, I would have full rights on the titles but getting the reader(s) to understand that might be problematic.

Earlier today I was told I can get the titles as plain pdf's, but I'm not sure I would then be able to electronically mark them up as needed.

By way of example, sometimes a client might only control the US rights on a title--if someone wants to use the book and they need rights outside the US, I would usually write right on the book the referral information for the other rights so it is clear what my client's limitations are for that book.

I don't use Kindle, but my wife does and tells me that most Kindle books are markable in that way. And while I know Kindle can read plain pdf's, it isn't clear if I can mark them up.
4Frick
      ID: 432501512
      Tue, May 07, 2013, 11:41
Where do you write the information? On the book itself (i.e. editing the PDF) or as a note (which is what I assume you meant by marking in the Kindle.

I don't believe that the Kindle has that ability natively, but you might be able to get an app. Regardless, depending on how long the notes are, you might prefer doing it with a keyboard, in which case using Adobe Acrobat gives you the ability to do both (I believe). As I said, it isn't a cheap program. Reader is a similar program, but is free because it only allows you to read PDFs, not edit or mark them up.
5Perm Dude
      ID: 201027169
      Tue, May 07, 2013, 13:27
Working on this still.

Looks like I can open native pdf files in Kindle for PC and mark notes on them. Yay! Unfortunately Adobe Reader doesn't pick up on those notes, so it might be that I have to go with Adobe Pro to make those notes "stick" across reader platforms.
6Frick
      ID: 432501512
      Tue, May 07, 2013, 13:55
That doesn't surprise me. I believe that notes you make on the Kindle are stored on the Kindle (or Amazon's cloud service) not on the PDF. Are you using the default Kindle reader? Or did you try a PDF editor on the Kindle?
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