Why Jeff Bezos Is Not Like Petyr Baelish
And why you can still read many books (all of mine) on your Nook, even if you can only buy them at Amazon.
Once upon a time, a great and powerful wizard named Jeff locked a slew of "independent" authors' books into his harem with the magic Exclusivity spell.
This appears to be only one small aspect of Amazon's drive to provide everything to everybody – and everybody to Amazon.
Don't get me wrong. I love Amazon. I've loved Amazon since 1996 when I realized I could order my textbooks on line and have them delivered to my door without having to wait in line forever at my college bookstore – and get a discount in the bargain.
Amazon is the only reason I'm able to write books. The bills must still be paid. I joined Select because I feel I have no choice. I want the promotional tools Select offers. But I hate, hate, hate and believe it is very wrong to deny Nook readers the ability to read books on their readers – or Kobos or Sony readers, for that matter.
The spirit of Lord Baelish to the rescue!
If you've seen or read Game of Thrones, you know that Petyr Baelish would act exactly as Jeff Bezos has done. Lord Baelish would charm the most beautiful of the beauties into his harem to ensure that the most powerful men of the realm (of course men, in Martin's world) came to him for their pleasures.
But Baelish would also offer a back door, so to speak, to those who couldn't – or wouldn't – enter through the front.
I believe, in this situation, Lord Baelish would tell such people about the free program called Calibre.
He'd say to non-Kindle users, go ahead and buy your books at Amazon – and get all the free ones Amazon offers too! Download them into Kindle for PC, the free reader utility Amazon offers for your computer.
Then run the Calibre ebook management program. Click "Add Books" in the upper left hand corner and browse to the Kindle Content subfolder which Kindle for PC will have created in your Documents folder. Open the book you want (which will be identified by its Amazon ASIN number).
Click on Convert Books. A big menu comes up that allows you to do fancy things, but near the bottom click EPUB output and then okay. In the lower right corner, you'll see a clocky sprockety thingy spinning while it converts.
Then you can send the .epub version of the book from Calibre to your Nook. I don't have a Nook, but I'm pretty sure the "send to device" button is involved! And here's a thread I found that should solve the mystery.
http://calibre-ebook.com/download_windows
http://calibre-ebook.com/download_osx
