TTH convenient for ebooks

[classicdrogn]

Checking back at Twisting the Hellmouth for the first time in a while, I find that the "whole story" links now also include epub and mobi files, at least the latter of which when downloaded by my Kindle G3's web browser are not delivered as .zip files like... um... I forget which site, but anyway, they're ready to go right away. Also, TTH does not load up on the scripting until my poor little decade-old device can't handle the RAM requirements and crashes out of the browser.

In the immortal word of Ash Williams, "Groovy."

[batzulger]

You can also grab whole stories as straight up plain text or minimally formatted html...

[classicdrogn]

You can, and importing those via Calibre would probably end up more space efficient, but just having the ability to hit the site on the device's browser and grab some stuff to read offline, for better battery life and for being offline away from a network hotspot, is really quite helpful indeed.

[Bob Schroeck]

You must have been away from TTH for quite a while, CD. They've been offering mobi and epub options for at least as long as I've had a Kindle, which is going on eight years now, I think.

[classicdrogn]

Mmm, not entirely away from it, but I haven't actively browsed there since 2008-ish, and didn't have a Kindle to look for or even care about mobi availability until three or four years ago. More recently I've generally only dropped in every few months at most to check what might have updates among my tracked fics (and mostly just say "meh" and put off even them) or when something that sounds interesting gets linked.

[batzulger]

there's also the fanficfare plugin for Caliber that lets you grab stories and ebookify them from tons of websites including the Pit and SB.

[Bob Schroeck]

Where's that at? I use the FanfictionDownloader, but its retrieval of AO3 and a couple other places is buggy at best, and it can't handle SpaceBattles at all.

[classicdrogn]

I found it earlier by opening Calibre and going to settings->plugins->get new plugins, or something like that. Just type it into the search bar provided.

It has the nice feature of checking for updates to your fic ebooks and marking the added chapters with "new" in the TOC, apparently - I haven't tried that yet, obviously, but if it works as it appears to that's very useful.

[batzulger]

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showth...p?t=259221

[Bob Schroeck]

Thank you! I've never bothered with Calbre plug-ins because it's always done what I wanted already.

[ECSNorway]

A question for more experienced caliber users.

How do you manage transferring books to your mobile devices?
What app do you transfer them to on what kind of device?
Do you use the Caliber Mobile app?

[classicdrogn]

I only use a Kindle with it, and for that you plug it in via USB, Calibre sees it, and you can just hit the taskbar buttons to transfer things to and from the device. I do have an Android tablet, but don't know what I'd use to read ebooks of any sort on it aside form the web browser for HTML, and its battery life isn't great anyway.

[M Fnord]

I use Calibre to move stuff from my laptop to my Android tablet, it works pretty well doing simple file transfers & since it outputs mobi and az3w I just use the Kindle app for reading. It doesn't recognize my potato of a phone and the OS is too outdated to use any of the Calibre native apps to grab stuff out of my library, which is kind of a pain at times.

[Bob Schroeck]

Same here. Calibre sees my Kindle when I attach it to the USB cable I have permanently hanging off my tower, and I just tell it to send new stories to main storage, usually with a right click and the context menu.

[Jinx999]

I copy my files across using windows explorer. I don't plug my Kindle in when Calibre is running, it took this as a reason to start to sync the devices or something and I don't trust the software with my privacy. I also never take my kindle out of flight mode. Not since it decided to "update" the software with a really crappy and slow system that assumes you think keeping your reading material in the "cloud" and trusting Amazon with your privacy is a good idea.

[ECSNorway]

Hmm. I'm using a mix of readers on iOS 10 - iBooks, Marvin, and Kindle app - I try to keep the Kindle app for books purchased from Amazon's kindle store, and keep everything else (Baen, etc) in epub form in Marvin, except fanfiction and PDF-format stuff goes into iBooks... mostly. It's a bit of a mishmosh, really, but I like being able to have multiple books in progress so I can swap between them as the mood takes me. I'll often have something fairly light and fun in one, and a more serious book in another, and a fanfic in the third...

[batzulger]

I use wifi and android's Caliber Companion to transfer to my phone.

[ECSNorway]

What I'm looking for is an easy way to manage the books on my ipad and to move books to it without having to side-load.

Caliber's media server makes it easy for one book at a time, but is not terribly convenient to access when I'm away from home.

My understanding of the Caliber iOS app is that it keeps the library in its own storage on the tablet, and can then be accessed by other apps to open books from it. Looking to see if anyone has any experience with that.

[batzulger]

That's the way it works on Android