Buying Books Not From Amazon

[Betsy]

I get almost all of my books from Amazon. They have almost everything, and it's so easy. Just click!

I know that I can get books from other places and download them to my computer, convert the book to the right format, then connect my Kindle to the computer, then move the book to my Kindle, but I'm too lazy for that.

I have bought a few books from Baen publishing and had them e-mailed to my Kindle, and that works great.

I just had a new experience with another option. I just bought a book from O'Reilly, a big tech publisher. I could have downloaded it to my computer, but they had an option for downloading direct to the Kindle. On the Kindle I opened the browser, navigated to the special page in the O'Reilly site, logged in, then it brought up a link for me to download the mobi version of the book.

It worked great. Of course, the type on web site when connecting with the Kindle was so small I had to use a magnifying glass. Fortunately there wasn't much of it. It worked great, but I'm not sure it's ready for prime time.

[Michelle]

I use the free software Calibre to transer non-Amazon books to my Kindle, and have found that it is very easy to use. Of course, Amazon is the easiest way to go, but with Calibre, I can buy books from places like Smashwords.

[Brandon]

I drag and drop after downloading the file from places like Baen where they offer Kindle format ebooks.

[Denna]

I use the drag and drop too and find it very easy. I like the one click method from Amazon, but it only takes a second to go the other route.

[Brandon]

I love how easy amazon makes it but sometimes other sites have books dramatically cheaper. Baen lots of times has ebooks for $6 even if it just came out in hardback and is $12. 99-$14. 99 on Amazon.

[Patrick]

Michelle wrote: "I use the free software Calibre to transer non-Amazon books to my Kindle, and have found that it is very easy to use. Of course, Amazon is the easiest way to go, but with Calibre, I can buy books ..."

Smashwords includes .mobi format (Kindle) by default, and that should save the step of using other software. Have you found Smashwords' listings that don't have .mobi included? Sometimes authors will opt out of that, but I didn't, and I don't know why anyone would given the numbers.

[Elie]

I try to get my books directly from Amazon whenever possible simply because I need the whispersync option between my devices. I really wish the Smashwords books integrated into Amazon's store like they do with Sony and iBooks; I'm really mmissing out on some small indies who only work through Smashwords.

[Patrick]

Elie wrote: "I try to get my books directly from Amazon whenever possible simply because I need the whispersync option between my devices. I really wish the Smashwords books integrated into Amazon's store..."

Smashwords says they're working on it. But who knows how long that'll be, I suppose.

It was easy enough for me to separately format a book and put it directly on Amazon using Kindle Direct Publishing, though, so indie writers certainly have the ability to make sure their work is available for Kindle.