Kindlerama

Next up for Kindle: Android devices

Chris Walters — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:06:57 +0000

So far we’ve got access to the Amazon Kindle ecosystem on the iPhone and iPod Touch, Windows PCs, Blackberry devices, and naturally Kindles. Next up appears to be devices running Android, the operating system Google developed mainly for smartphones, although other types of gadgets are starting to make use of it too.

The biggest impact will be on phones. If Android gets a Kindle app, then owners of phones like the Droid, the Nexus One, and the original G1 may eventually be able to buy and read Kindle books.

Beyond that, though, are a small but growing number of devices that use Android. The Entourage eDGe, a combo E-ink/LCD dual-screen tablet, uses Android to power the LCD side of things; currently it uses a proprietary bookstore, but it’s possible that in the future an eDGe owner could buy ebooks from Amazon as well. Dell’s new iPod Touch competitor, the Mini 5 (or maybe it’s called the Streak?) uses Android and has confirmed that it will have a Kindle app.

As a side note, the Nook ereader from Barnes & Noble also uses Android to power its mini-nav color LCD section, but somehow I doubt that any Nook owners will be seeing an Amazon Kindle store any time soon.

The main question now, especially for Android smartphone owners, is when will this version be released? Unfortunately even the rumor sites don’t have that information yet, although Dell’s Mini 5 is likely to go on sale within the next 2-6 months.

“Leaked Dell Streak flyer shows multitude of color options, confirmed specifications” [Engadget]

What’s the weirdest book title of 2009?

Chris Walters — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:29:06 +0000

The Bookseller, a UK publishing magazine and website, has an annual prize called the Diagram Prize that it awards to the “oddest book title of the year.” The Twitter network effect led to a tripling of submissions this year, so Booklist has published their “Very Longlist” for the first time ever. Here are all the nominees:

100 Girls on Cheap Paper
A Tortilla is Like Life
Advances in Potato Chemistry and Technology
Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter
An Intellectual History of Cannibalism
Bacon: A Love Story
Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 1741-1845
Bondage for Beginners
Briefs for the Reading Room
Budgeting for Infertility
Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich
Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes
Curbside Consultation in Cornea and External Disease
Cute Yummy Time
Dental Management of Sleep Disorders
Father Christmas Needs a Wee
Fluffy Little Kitten in Fluffy’s Brother
Food Digestion and Thermal Preference of Toad
Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots
How YOU Are Like Shampoo: For Job Seekers
I Stopped Sucking My Thumb…Why Can’t You Stop Drinking?
I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears
Is the Rectum a Grave?
Jokes by the Not So Famous Redneck
Map-based Comparative Genomics in Legumes
Mickey Mouse, Hitler and Nazi Germany
My Hare Line Meets the Brown Rabbit
Obama Guilty of Being President While Black
Peek-a-poo: What’s in Your Diaper?
Planet Asthma: Art and Acitivty Book
Plough Music
Plug-in Electric Vehicles: What Role for Washington?
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Bean Conference
Schoolgirl Milky Crisis
Soft Drink & Fruit Juice Problems Solved
Ten Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing
The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease
The First Home-Built Aeroplanes
The Great Dog Bottom Swap
The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin
The Origin of Faeces
The Quotable Douchebag
The True History of Tea
The Wild World of Girly Men and Masculine Women – And Why Americans Suffer from So Many Other Idiotic Syndromes!
Venus Does Adonis While Apollo Shags a Tree
What Horses Do For Us
What Kind of Bean is this Chihuahua?

I was going to try to link each title to the Amazon store, but it messes up the formatting so badly on the Kindle that I changed my mind. Instead, here’s an embedded search box for web readers:

“Record number of submissions for the 2009 odd title prize” [The Bookseller]

The verdict on the Blackberry Kindle app: needs a large screen to be of much use

Chris Walters — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:03:22 +0000

Now that the Kindle for Blackberry app has been out for a few weeks, it’s been reviewed all over the web. I don’t have a Blackberry so I’ve had to sit this one out, but the summary from elsewhere seems to be:

It provides syncing across devices so you’ll always be at the most recent spot in your book.
As with the iPhone app, it won’t display magazine subscriptions or blogs–you can only read books.
It says U.S. only but you can download it from elsewhere (or at least from the U.K.).
You can buy ebooks directly from the app if you’re in the U.S.–this is a better feature than what the iPhone version offers.
Trying to turn pages with a trackball is risky–it’s more accurate to use the space key (or shift+space to go back a page).
Reading for very long on the Blackberry’s small screen is annoying; this app is best suited for models like the Storm that have bigger, iPhone-like screens.

You can’t find the app on Blackberry’s App World, so if you want to try it out you need to make sure it will work on your phone and then head over to Amazon to download it.

RELATED
“Hands On: Kindle for BlackBerry” [PCMag.com]
“Amazon Kindle for Blackberry review” [Electric Pig]

Why you can’t shop within the Kindle iPhone app

Chris Walters — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:52:17 +0000

The next time you go to buy a Kindle book on your iPhone and get frustrated that it has to close the app and open the browser to go to Amazon, blame Apple. Or blame Amazon–it’s really a business decision by both of them not to cooperate with the other too much.

Business Insider reported last month that when the original Kindle iPhone app was submitted last year for approval, it had in-app purchasing functionality the way you’d expect. Apple requested that Amazon remove it before approval, though.

Before you blame Apple too much, note that Apple demands a 30 percent cut of anything sold on the App Store, including in-app purchases. That means that most likely, Apple would have allowed Amazon to sell books from within the app if Amazon was willing to give Apple 30 percent of the revenue.

Seeing as how it’s unlikely Amazon–or any company worth its reputation–will ever willingly give up its profits to another company so easily, you can see why it agreed to pull out the functionality.

“Apple Stacks The Deck Against Amazon’s Kindle App” [Business Insider via TeleRead]

175 free woodworking books

Chris Walters — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 15:47:38 +0000

Time to get your carpenter on: Evenfall Studios (www.evenfallstudios.com) has a collection of 175 old public domain woodworking books, mostly scanned via Google’s book scanning project, that cover everything from carving, to upholstery, to using hand and machine tools. Most are rather old and might be more interesting as historical records, but here are three from the military that were published recently:

Carpentry I (PDF)
Carpentry II (PDF)
Use and Care of Hand Tools and Measuring Tools (PDF)

All of the books are in either HTML and PDF, so you might have to convert some of them before they’re readable on your Kindle. Check out our Formats page for help on which formats work natively. If you do want to convert them to a Kindle-friendly format, as always I suggest Calibre, the free software that lets you manage non-Amazon ebooks using an iTunes-like interface.

“Woodworks Library” [Evenfall Studios via OpenMaterials.org via MAKE]

Do-it-yourself stand for Kindle 2

Chris Walters — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:38:30 +0000

I’m what you might call an “enthusiastic” crafter–you know, when someone isn’t good at something but keeps doing it, so others feel compelled to say something nice so as not to ruin his fun. “Well, you’re certainly enthusiastic! Good for you!”

That’s about all the intro I need to give before I show you my homemade stand for the Kindle 2:

I reviewed a much nicer, professionally designed stand earlier this month, and it made me realize I wanted a stand of my own. Being cheap, prone to occasional insomnia, and in possession of a box of Sculpey from previous craft projects, I solved the problem a few nights ago.

It’s easy to make, and easy to customize using more Sculpey, paint, or whatever you can glue to the thing. (Nobody said crafting was pretty.) Just be sure to wrap the bottom of your Kindle in plastic cling wrap before pressing it into the clay.

Below is a slideshow in case you want to see it in more detail and try it out for yourself. If you can’t see it, you can visit the Flickr set.

How to tell whether you have a U.S. or International Kindle

Chris Walters — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:29:52 +0000

If you bought your Kindle 2 used or received it as a gift, you might not have any idea whether it’s the original U.S. wireless version or the later International wireless version. Heck, even if you bought it from Amazon you might not know. Here’s how to tell.

1. Look on the back of the Kindle for the serial number.

2. If it starts with B002, it’s the original U.S. model (uses Sprint’s 3G network).

3. If it starts with B003, it’s the newer international model (uses AT&T’s 3G network, at least in the U.S.).

Normally you won’t need to know this, but you will if you plan on installing your own custom screensavers or replacing fonts on the Kindle 2.

Thanks to kindleboards for this tip!

(Photo: ToastyKen, David Sifry)

Publishers should add value before raising ebook prices

Chris Walters — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:47:17 +0000

When it comes to ebook pricing, I’ve changed my position on the matter almost weekly; sometimes I side with publishers, sometimes with retailers, sometimes with consumers. But I think this week I may have finally realized something that forces me into a more permanent point of view on the matter. It’s this:

Most publishers want to maintain the traditional business model and slow the growth of the ebook market.

Most publishers, in fact, are trying to intentionally slow the uptake of ebooks by consumers. I think that’s what the whole pricing issue is really about–driving away customers as much as possible, because ebooks don’t easily fit into the existing business model of the average publisher.

Last week, an industry insider circulated talking points among publishing types, instructing them on how to frame the debate in the media in order to convince consumers to accept higher ebook prices. This in itself is offensive–if your approach to innovation is to act like a political group, and to deliberately strategize how to abuse language so that you can confuse the issue, you’re sending a clear message that you don’t want to have an honest conversation with your customers.

In response, I posted a piece on Consumerist.com that explains the issue in plain language for publishers: if you want to raise prices, make the ebook worth the price. It’s that simple. Add value, raise the price.

I also pointed out four things that publishers should take under consideration immediately, instead of memorizing talking points:

Stop calling consumers cheap; they want fair value.
Stop hiding behind industry inefficiencies. Innovate.
Stop asking consumers to trust you; demonstrate that you want the ebook market to grow, or be honest and admit that you don’t.
Stop saying lower prices will destroy author incomes and modern culture; it derails any meaningful discussion.

Most complaints you read from publishers commit at least one of the above four sins. Why, take a look at this email I received from a publisher earlier this week when I suggested that she might sell more copies of a novella (a novella!) if she would price the Kindle version lower than $10 on Amazon:

What I think consumers don’t understand is there is still a decent amount of cost & time we as publishers have to put in to offer a book on Kindle (or B&N, etc.)…So, it wouldn’t be fair to us or the author to charge much lower. All publishers struggle to make ends meet and the majority of our authors certainly aren’t making a living off their book royalties, so for this reason I don’t think we can discount books — print or ebooks — any further.

Look at that: she implies Kindle customers are being cheap (as opposed to asking for fair value), she blames the industry for barely being profitable as it is, and she says authors won’t be able to make a living. Three in one paragraph!

So I finally get it. When publishers say they want to maintain a competitive marketplace, or they don’t want ebooks to cannibalize print sales, or they need to recoup the cost of publishing, what they’re really saying is simply: we want to make sure ebooks don’t take off, because we have no idea how to make that work within our current business model and we’re reluctant to try to innovate.

What they’re not saying is that they’re taking authors or readers into consideration. There may be a more profitable model out there for publishers and authors–one that includes lower prices for consumerst, in fact–but it won’t be discovered by one of the existing big companies. And the next time you read a publisher’s complaints about ebook pricing, make sure you’re not just being fed talking points.

“Consumerist: If publishers want more money for e-books, they should offer something worthy of the price” [Consumerist]

(Money photo by aresauburn™)

Amazon releases BlackBerry app

Chris Walters — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:05:12 +0000

If you’ve got a BlackBerry and you don’t mind reading on it, welcome to the Amazon Kindle family. Today Amazon released their free mobile app for Blackberry devices.

The app works for the following BlackBerry phones:

Bold 9000
Bold 9700
Curve 8520
Curve 8900
Storm 9530
Storm 9550
Tour 9630

The best thing about mobile Kindle apps (and the PC app) is they let you buy and read Kindle books without investing hundreds of dollars in a Kindle. If you know a BlackBerry owner who wants a Kindle but can’t spend the money right now, this is an easy and free way to get started.

You can download it from Amazon, or type amazon.com/kindlebb into your BlackBerry browser.

More on Mirasol, the full-motion color screen from Qualcomm

Chris Walters — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:00:39 +0000

Qualcomm’s new color screen technology that it first revealed back in January–imagine the Kindle’s E Ink screen but higher resolution, in full color and with full motion–has popped up again this week in a couple of new demo videos.

The Mirasol screen requires even less power than an E Ink screen, but like E Ink it can be read clearly in bright light (outside, for example). It works similar to how a butterfly’s iridescent wings display different colors depending on the angle of light.

Qualcomm says the screen will be used in an ereader device hitting the market this fall, but won’t say anything else. Would you be willing to upgrade to a new Kindle model if it could handle full-motion color video, high resolution photos and illustrations, and had a longer battery life?

Below are the two demo videos.

From the Los Angeles Times:

From Slashgear (if the video doesn’t appear, try reloading the page–there seems to be a bug in the way it’s embedded):

Review of Arkon Kindle Stand

Chris Walters — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:30:49 +0000

SUMMARY

Attaches directly to Kindle 2, provides ability to stand Kindle 2 upright at different angles.
$19.95 + $7 shipping from www.arkon.com.
Same price on Amazon through a third-party retailer.
Arkon provides a 90 day warranty, but you will have to pay $9 for a replacement product.
For purchases directly from arkon.com, there is a 30 day return policy, and shipping fees will not be refunded.

Pros:

lightweight and relatively unobtrusive
sturdy, easy to clean
easy to attach and remove
can attach to a wall

Cons:

can’t leave on if you use a case
very noisy when you adjust the legs
current buying options make it slightly expensive when you factor in shipping

MY EXPERIENCE

A stand that attaches to your Kindle 2 and lets you prop it upright is pretty self-explanatory. But why would you want or need such functionality in the first place? Before I tested this model, I tried to come up with real life scenarios: sitting in bed, recuperating in a hospital, nursing a baby, eating.

The one category from that list that I could test was eating (sorry, my iPhone comes to bed with me), so I used it to read while I ate lunch. I found it surprisingly nice–it doesn’t cover any buttons or stand out obnoxiously, so I could forget about it and enjoy hands-free reading. Having your Kindle upright and facing you is indeed slightly more ergonomic than leaning over it and reading while you eat. Sure, it’s only a slight advantage, but I can see the appeal.

Arkon makes dozens of different contraptions to hold your smartphone or GPS unit in place, whether you’re at your desk, on a bike, or in a car. Most of their stuff is thick and black and chunky, but the Kindle Stand throws out that “bulky=sturdy” asthetic and goes with a translucent, slightly frosted plastic that blends in nicely with the Kindle. It’s also just big enough to do its job, so you don’t feel like you’re adding unnecessary bulk to your device.

There are two things I didn’t like about the stand, however: it’s noisy, and it doesn’t play well with cases.

First, the noise. If you buy this, get used to hearing clak-clak-clak-clak when you adjust it. Hold on, that wasn’t realistic enough. Try this:

CLAK!CLAK!CLAK!CLAK!

The legs open and close using a hard plastic ratchet method, as you can see. I imagine this approach will prevent the legs from ever getting too loose, and I also imagine that the sound will lessen slightly over time as you break it in. Still, you’ll probably never want to use this in a library or study hall. If you’re the type who hates to draw attention to yourself in public, you probably won’t even use this on an airplane. My cats ran out of the room every time I adjusted it.

Second, I was hoping that the stand would be minimalistic enough that it could remain attached even when the Kindle was in a case. It is thin and lightweight, and practically invisible when you’re not thinking about it, but the added thickness is going to cause problems if you try to leave it attached all the time. More problematic is that the stand covers up the top slot on the edge of the Kindle 2, which ruins any chance of using a case that takes advantage of the new slot design. If you want to use a case and use this stand, you’ll have to carry the stand around and slide it on whenever you need it.

I didn’t dislike the device, though. It worked as advertised, and if you’re the type who keeps your Kindle in one location, or who doesn’t use a case, the case problem becomes a non-issue.

I also found one other interesting feature: there are two slots on the back that seem designed for hanging the case on a couple of nails. This means you could use this case to hang your Kindle on a wall or cabinet door. I’ve never found the Kindle very useful as a cookbook due to formatting issues, but if I stored recipes on it, this ability to hang it on something would be highly welcome.

COMPETITORS

Arkon isn’t the first company to introduce a stand for the Kindle. After looking at the competition, however, I have to say it’s probably the most conventional, which depending on your tastes is a strength or weakness. The squiddish FlexStand from M-Edge is a goofy bendy-arm contraption with bulbous ends and looks kind of like an IKEA reject. The other stand for sale on Amazon is a weird, chunky thing that looks like the cousin of one of those carrying trays you get when you order too many drinks at Starbucks. Arkon’s stand certainly wins the beauty portion of any contest with those two.

When compared gainst the wood-composite, adhesive-backed $15 stand from Cyncronix, it’s a tougher call. The Cyncronix stand is smaller, more portable, and can work with your existing case. It’s also kind of strange-looking, which again may be good or bad depending on your tastes. It also comes with a longer warranty.

If you want a case and a stand, you might want to look for a combo-case like the $30 Platform Jacket from M-Edge. (Do an Amazon search for “kindle case stand” to see other options, including some average-looking solutions if you own the original Kindle.)

VALUE & BUYING ADVICE

At $20, I think the Arkon Kindle Stand is affordably priced, but I’m unimpressed with the company’s shipping fees and warranty period. As a small company, I realize it probably can’t come up with ultra-low shipping offers the way a behemoth like Amazon can. On the other hand, the $7 shipping fee adds 35% to the cost of the stand. The FlexStand I made fun of above costs just under $25, but if you bundle it with another purchase on Amazon you can get free shipping, making it ultimately cheaper. And the stick-on Cyncronix easel thing I mentioned above is even cheaper at $15 with shipping included. The Arkon stand isn’t overpriced, it’s just not a bargain.

More worrying to me is the warranty period. I can’t imagine any situation where a user could break the stand through neglect, but the toughness of the ratchet mechanism made me worried that I was going to snap the legs in half every time I adjusted it. Maybe the plastic is so tough that such a disaster is impossible, but I keep thinking I would want to know that if those legs snap in six months, the company would replace it. A 90 day warranty period is too short for my tastes. You also have to pay $9 for a replacement, bumping up the total cost of the stand. Hey, maybe it would never break, but I think you should factor warranty and replacement costs into the overall value of an accessory.

Would I consider buying it?
I would if Amazon sold it so that I could get free shipping.

VIDEO & PICTURES

Everyone loves videos and photos, so here comes the multimedia portion of this review.

Find more cases and accessories listed under the Cases section of the site.

The good and bad news from the pricing war between Amazon and publishers

Chris Walters — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:59:04 +0000

For readers, there is one easy win to come from the current fight between Amazon and publishers over how to price and sell ebooks, and it is that at least one of the publishers demanding a change in terms has said that it will stop delaying ebook releases if it can practice variable pricing.

Young said the company would release e-books simultaneously under the new model–Hachette USA had been one of a number of US publishers to window new releases because of the price they were being offered for sale on Amazon.com’s Kindle device.

The second bit of good news, although this is more for authors, is that the new model gives authors and their agents room to demand higher royalty rates for digital sales. Publishers Weekly reports that Macmillan has already announced it will bump up digital royalty rates from 20% to 25% moving forward.

The bad news, which you already know, is that the next new ebook release from Macmillan or Hachette might be $15, as there’s no guarantee that Amazon will be the cheapest ebook store in town anymore. Unfortunately, thanks to digital rights management (DRM) across the marketplace, for now at least you won’t be able to comparison shop from your Kindle.

“Hachette moves to ‘agency model’ in the US” [The Bookseller]
“Sargent Says Deal is Closer; Macmillan Royalty Rate to Rise” [Publishers Weekly]

(Photo: Jandro S)

Two of the best explanations of the Amazon/Macmillan book battle

Chris Walters — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:50:24 +0000

This whole issue of how ebooks are priced, what they’re worth to consumers, and how to make money off of them is actually pretty complicated. It’s also fascinating, at least to someone like me; for the first 18 months after I bought a Kindle I demanded that no publisher ever go above the $10 mark. (I’ve since softened my stance somewhat for new releases, although personally I don’t buy ebooks over $10 regardless.)

Two of the best explanations I’ve found come from published writers who have an obvious interest in what Amazon and publishers end up doing:

Read “Amazon, Macmillan: an outsider’s guide to the fight” by Charles Stross

Read “Why my books are no longer for sale via Amazon” by Tobias Buckell

Bonus! Read “Kindle Numbers: Traditional Publishing Vs. Self Publishing” by Joe Konrath for an alternate take on earning money from ebooks if you’re a midlist writer.

Set aside 10-15 minutes and read these two (or three) guys for some great insights, for example on Amazon’s reasons for holding to the $10 price point (hint: it’s not really for our benefit), on how much it costs to publish a high quality ebook, and on how to price more efficiently to take advantage of what different customers are actually willing to pay (hardcore fans are usually willing to give more support to their favorite authors).

(Photo: kretyen)

Amazon buys touchscreen company, merges it with Kindle division

Chris Walters — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:09:16 +0000

It’s probably safe to assume there will be a touchscreen Kindle some day, but it’s been hard to make any educated guess as to when. Adding touchscreen capability is a matter of finding technology that’s affordable, that can work with the current screen/display technology, and that isn’t locked down by a competitor via patents. Amazon has possibly found a way to meet all three requirements with its acquisition of Touchco, a startup that began as a project at New York University.

Nick Bilton at the New York Times wrote a feature on Touchco in January, before anyone knew about Amazon’s acquisition. He describes demos he saw at their offices, including the one in the video below where a Touchco employee manipulates a desktop interface using a touchscreen prototype.

Touchco GUI example from Nick Bilton on Vimeo.

If you’re not a gearhead you might not know what the big deal is. Here’s how Touchco described their tech before they pulled everything off their website:

Unlike traditional capacitive sensors, our patent-pending system can detect any object — not just a finger — and can determine how much pressure is being applied to every point on a sensor simultaneously. IFSR sensors are natively multitouch, use less power than capacitive sensors, and are much less expensive to produce, making them a highly disruptive technology with widespread market applications.

So to recap, Touchco’s solution can:

register multiple touches at once;
register pressure for each individual touchpoint simultaneously;
register any contact, not just fingertips; and
is much cheaper than current touchscreen technologies.

Whether this ever makes it into a future Kindle is anyone’s guess. Amazon may just be buying the company to prevent it from being licensed to competitors, or it may use it to replace the keyboard, or it may decide it just doesn’t fit with future Kindle plans and put it out to pasture. At any rate, Amazon now seems to have access to a touchscreen solution in-house should it decide to somehow add it to future Kindle models.

“Amazon Said to Buy Touch Start-Up” [New York Times]
“Is Amazon Building a Superkindle?” [NYT Bits Blog]

(.Larry Page)

Best ebook library manager: Calibre

Chris Walters — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:19:12 +0000

Sometimes something seems so obvious that you forget to mention it, and that’s what keeps happening with Calibre. I’ve suggested it in passing in other posts, but it finally dawned on me that I’ve never come right out and said, “You should use this program to manage your ebook library.” So…

You should use Calibre to manage your ebook library.

The simplest way to describe it is that it’s an iTunes for ebook files–you can organize your ebooks, and then connect a device to your computer and automatically copy them over.

But Calibre’s secret weapon is that it’s got crazy ninja formatting skills, and can convert all sorts of files into all sorts of other files. For Kindle owners, this means you can convert unusable file formats into the .mobi format that Kindle likes. If you own multiple devices and need different formats for each one, Calibre will let you do that. If you’re handy with a computer you can even get Calibre to serve your ebook library to devices over the Internet–fancy!

It’s not as pretty as iTunes, and because it’s free and open source, it can sometimes be a little rough around the edges. But it’s still the easiest, most cost-effective way to manage your growing library of ebooks.

One of the program’s main developers wrote a handy guide to using Calibre over at Teleread.org. (If the first part starts to scare you off, just scroll down to the “Download” section for hands-on advice on how to install and use the program.)

One final note: since Amazon sells its files with DRM copy-protection attached, you have to use Amazon’s Kindle for PC application to manage those books. They won’t work in Calibre, unfortunately.

Calibre [calibre-ebook.com]
“The ABCs of e-book format conversion: Easy Calibre tips for the Kindle, Sony and Nook” [Teleread.org]