Comments on: Needing multiple reading apps — problem or not?

By: Ana

Ana — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 22:02:58 +0000

Well, Greg M., about not worrying with removing DRM, if you don’t pretend to read the books in the future that’s OK, but technologies change, books or bookstores disappear, and then you can’t read THAT book again… I’ve been through 3 closing bookstores and one change in formats, and fortunately I had my ebooks available in my PC, free of DRM. I’m not going to trust any one my ebooks.

By: pidgeon92

pidgeon92 — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:05:04 +0000

I, too, liberate all of my ebooks. They are all cataloged in calibre. Most often I then load them onto my Kindles; but occasionally I’ll put one on my iPad, or my husband’s iPad.

By: Juli Monroe

Juli Monroe — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 13:18:28 +0000

Greg, I agree with you. I’ve got to get a really good deal, like a book for $2.99 that’s $9.99 elsewhere, to go through the hassle. Which is why Amazon gets most of my business. I’m pretty confident their prices are competitive.

By: Greg M.

Greg M. — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 17:39:38 +0000

Despite being a programmer and owner of different gadgets, I tend to stick with one app and device. It makes things easier. I could, of course, buy on the cheapest platform then remove DRM, convert, and transfer, but that ‘s a lot of work to save a few bucks. I suppose it could all be automated with scripts, but it is just as easy to hit the buy button and not worry about all that other stuff.

Every now and then I’ll go outside my default reader source, but it isn’t often.

By: Autumn

Autumn — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:48:37 +0000

I buy books wherever they are cheapest and keep track of where they are with goodReads. Sometimes the print copy of the book is cheapest and I don’t always remember if my copy is print or ebook (let alone whether the ebook is from B&N, Amazon, or so on).

By: Vonda Z

Vonda Z — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:56:54 +0000

I think the answer to this question depends on whether you have a large TBR list or not. If you buy and read right away and don’t intend to go back and read again, then you don’t really need to keep track of what book is accessible from which store/account/app/device. However, if you are like me, and buy books when the mood strikes or the price is right, acquiring a large number of books in the To-Be-Read pile, then you don’t want to have to go searching through all your accounts to find the book you want to read next.

Until publishers and booksellers remove DRM from their books, those of us who buy more than we can read will either resort to stripping DRM and using Calibre to organize our books or we will just stick with the retailer we like the best so we don’t need to deal with it.

By: Juli Monroe

Juli Monroe — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:36:42 +0000

ShellBell, and the search for the “one app to rule them all” continues. I haven’t found one either.

By: ShellBell

ShellBell — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 09:41:09 +0000

I’m like Ken, I use Calibre and remove the DRM from any book I’ve bought that has DRM. I have ShuBook and Marvin on my iPad. I’d actually prefer to have all of my eBooks loaded into one app but the differences in my eBooks and the features that each app has makes it necessary for me to have two. Unfortunately there is no one single app that meets my requirements and allows me to have all of my eBooks stored there. I certainly wouldn’t want more that two. I don’t want to have a separate app for each bookstore that I purchase my eBooks from. That would just be far too confusing for me!

The majority of my eBooks are loaded on to the ShuBook app – currently over 2500 eBooks. With that number of eBooks the ShuBook app meets all of my requirements for a large number of my eBooks. I also have around 100 eBooks loaded on to the Marvin app – these are my non-fiction eBooks (biographies, recipe books, text books etc) as Marvin seems to have a better display for photos, diagrams etc.