I'm looking for a non-amazon reader for e-books. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Open to all suggestions but ideally something that doesn't tie me into a particular platform and lets me read indie-published as well as mainstream published books.
I'm an author so have no issue paying for ebooks through online bookshops. While I am trying to avoid giving money to amazon, I am very happy to keep paying authors and publishers!
Me: "I'd really like some #fantasy or #scifi comfort food. Nothing complex; maybe something cozy or slice of life, or a power fantasy where the good guys always win. I'd love that."
Me, a few hours later: "Hey! This #book was just a predictable power fantasy where the good guys always win! It was overly simple slice of life, and the conflict was low stakes. I hated that!"
It's gotten to the point where I haven't rated the last few #books I've read, because "2 stars: was exactly what I asked for!" just seems like an unfair review.
Anyway, authors: please figure out what I actually want to read and write that, then advertise it to me as what I think I want to read. Because book marketing isn't hard enough for you, right? Thanks! #bookstodon
I've been waiting for the new #Witcher book for many years. And today it's finally in my ebook reader. 😍 (I know it was released already last year, but the Czech translation was published just a few days ago.) app.thestorygraph.com/books/dd…
Lately, I've been encountering unavailability of image descriptions of book covers. Today, when I encountered this, here is the response I received from Be My Eyes when I enquired further.
Images of book covers on certain platforms, like Goodreads and some other major online bookstores, are sometimes no longer described in detail due to copyright concerns and changes in policy. Book cover images are typically protected by copyright, and detailed descriptions or reproductions might violate the copyright owner's rights.
Additionally, some platforms may have automated systems that restrict or block descriptions of copyrighted images to ensure they are complying with legal requirements. This is especially common for large platforms that handle many copyrighted materials and want to avoid legal complications.
If you need a description of a specific book cover for accessibility reasons, you may sometimes find official descriptions directly from the publisher or author, or you can request a description from a service that specializes in accessible content.
This makes me very sad, as I feel I am missing out on the beauty of book covers. 😔
Reading books improves conversational skills primarily by expanding vocabulary, enhancing language comprehension, and providing knowledge and topics to discuss. Reading exercises the brain, helping to improve concentration, patience, and memory, which are essential for effective communication. It also fosters empathy and better understanding of other people’s thoughts and emotions by immersing readers in diverse perspectives and social situations. Reading aloud further enhances pronunciation, fluency, and confidence in speaking, making conversations smoother and more engaging.
Can someone recommend a fantasy or sci-fi series that I can get into? I don’t always read those genres (I have a condition where I can’t visualize images) but recently I liked The Expanse, various Sanderson books, Shadow and Bone etc. I prefer well built worlds with good writing
A post by @JamesBazan reminded me of one of my absolute favorite and the most profound quotations from a book. In fact, this book has many others. I'll let you discover others on your own. Here are a few.
“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. … Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.”
Reading For Fun Is Plummeting In the US, and Experts Are Concerned - alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: When's the last time you sett... - news.slashdot.org/story/25/08/… #books
alternative_right shares a report from ScienceAlert: When's the last time you settled down with a good book, just because you enjoyed it? A new survey shows reading as a pastime is becoming dramatically less popular in the U.S.
i wrote a 120,000 word book on my experience growing up in the BBS and dial-up internet era, from ~1985-1997
it's chock full of stories about ibm pc and macintosh hardware and gaming
it's going to be published this autumn as an ebook and might get a print edition
but i have a far more stupid idea for it: how about a floppy disk edition with a custom dos/windows 3.1 & macintosh system 6 ebook version
has anyone written a Voyager Expanded Book using the VEB Toolkit in 30 years?
(if you haven't heard of Expanded Books, michael crichton and voyager's team wrote an *excellent* version of Jurassic Park)
is there an ms-dos or windows 3.1 equivalent to VEBs? I swear that back in the 90s someone made ebooks using "Asymetrix Multimedia Toolbook", but i can't seem to find any examples of it
🆕 blog! “How long does it take to upgrade an eBook?”
The older I get, the more comfortable I become with complaining. Not merely moaning on social media, but writing a direct email to the perpetrator of some annoyance.
I'd purchased an eBook and was appalled by how crappy the accessibility was. If you don't know, modern ePub books are just HTML…
My book Drystone – A Life Rebuilt is out in just three weeks.
I really believe in this book. It’s honest about important things, quietly subversive, funny, easy to read, and I’ve poured everything into writing it and getting it into the world as far as I can.
If you can, I’d love your help. A share, a preorder, a message to someone who might love it, it all makes a difference.
I'm dying over this reddit comment. Not saying that it is wrong but the framing of books as "old timey entertainment" is funny to me. Like my grandpa talking about farming using mules.
Hurray! Another San Francisco bookstore is following Booksmith's example and pulling Harry Potter books.
From the SF Chronicle:
Fabulosa Books followed suit on Wednesday, June 25.
The queer Castro bookstore shared a picture of a whiteboard to its Instagram account with the message, “We are no longer buying + selling books by J.K. Rowling as she is devoting her life to nastiness.”
The caption thanks Booksmith for “setting a good example.”
Two popular independent bookstores in San Francisco have stopped selling the “Harry Potter” series after J.K. Rowling’s fund opposing transgender rights.
Lesya Ukrainka: Ukraine’s Beloved Writer and Activist
“Lesya Ukrainka” was a carefully considered pseudonym for a writer who left behind a legacy of poems, plays, essays and activism for the Ukrainian language.
“I recall Midwestern summer nights, standing on my grandparents’ hushed lawn,” Ray Bradbury told me in 2010, “and looking up at the sky at the confetti field of stars. There were millions of suns o…
I want to talk about money.
(Ugh, I know. How crass.)
Specifically, how much money authors make, or more accurately, don’t.
I signed my publishing deal in 2023. My advance was £2,500. That’s it.
Starting my GDC week off with a bang! I have just been notified that my contract at Rookery Interactive will not be renewed in 2 weeks, so I am suddenly #OpenToWork! Please keep me in mind for any writing or consulting roles. If you're at GDC & would like to meet, lmk!
🌎 I’m open to remote roles, or positions in Bangkok!
⭐ I've worked on a ton of games, comics and books, and am available for writing, consulting & editing outside of games. #gamedev #comics #books #gdc
Thanks to the magic of the Streisand effect, I just heard about #CarelessPeople - a book by former Meta employee Sarah Wynn-Williams.
Apparently the company is FREAKING OUT and seeking legal ways to stop its promotion. I can see why. This article about it in the Times made my jaw drop: web.archive.org/web/2025031022…
IN OTHER NEWS just as i thought i knew everything i needed to know about the development of fascism ―a very EuroAmerican flavah of authoritarianism― i find myself being schooled by… well… scholars.
am reading "Breve historia de la moda: desde la Edad Media hasta la actualidad" by Giorgio Riello. the book is a product of one of his history courses.
today i columbused a few things about the links between the development of authoritarianism and fashion in Europe…
As you will know I'm no stranger to typos, so this cartoon goes out to anyone who sent me a massage about a typo in a post (as always thanks for your help, much appreciated) bit also to my Mastodon friend @h4890 who will appreciate this on a Saturday morning.
Amazon will remove the ability to download the ebooks for Kindle at the end of the month. So if you ever close your amazon account, you'll no longer be able to access the books you had bought.
Designed for downloading your Kindle eBooks in a more automated fashion than is typically permitted, this tool allows you to create backup copies of the books you've already purchased. - treetr...
More "enshittification". This time from Amazon. Amazon is pulling a Google, killing off popular services. Evidently, I have until 25th February to download my 708 books that I have purchased from them. After the 25th you can no longer download YOUR books for backup or transfer via USB
Good job I did this 2 years ago eh? Buy the books from elsewhere.
This is fine for those of us who don't buy from Amazon anymore, but if you have a standing library with them, make sure you get it all downloaded so you can break it. It's frustrating because you can't bulk download - I keep finding titles I own but missed grabbing somehow - but you have until Feb 26th to get them all.
Amazon is removing the ability to download purchased Kindle content, which is the only way to read it on my Kobo or elsewhere. What this means is I will no longer be purchasing (“a license to”–ick) any books by the mostly independent authors who exclusively publish there; just cancelled preorders.
My favourite part of this interview? Hmmm...maybe this?
Vikander: What did you learn about craft while writing this, your first book?
De Garis: Craft is a conversation with your materials. It can’t be hurried. It requires attention, patience, and humility. Writing also taught me that craft resists capitalism—not just in theory but in practice. Eighteen months of work for £1250 made that point clearer than any philosophical argument.
I wanted to share with you a conversation that I had with journalist, therapist, broadcaster and editor extraordinaire Svea Vikander. I know Svea well and, like all of us, I am most compelling on any subject when I am comfortable.
Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations
"...court records reveal that the social media company used pirated torrents to download 81.7TB of data from shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, and LibGen. It then used this information to train its AI models."
Hello, I'm new to Mastadon and looking to meet people interested in medieval Silk Road history, especially of women and non-western historical fiction.
To sort of give you an idea of the weird stuff I'm into, here's a post I did about stories written in the Medieval Silk Road that feature women and are available in English:
The Silk Road had men and women of all walks of life. It also was one of history’s most literate eras and places, prior to the modern age. One of the reasons that we know that is from the sto…
‘Down there,’ he said, ‘are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no.’
