I read quite a lot—from research papers to books and articles—and, while I love the old-school combo of a book and a hot drink, found myself looking for an E-reader. For me, there are two main benefits: saving space when I travel, and avoiding distractions when I read. Although there are alternatives like Kobo eReaders or the reMarkable tablet, among others, the Amazon Kindle was my first choice.
Like me, you might prefer to avoid relying on Amazon’s ecosystem. Following these steps, I’ve been using my Kindle Paperwhite for three years:
Disconnecting Your Device 🔌
- Don’t connect to a Wi-Fi network.
- Enable Aeroplane mode.
Note: If you have already registered your device, you can deregister it from the “Account” section in your device settings.
Managing Reading Material 📚
- Kindle devices primarily use a file format called AZW.
- calibre is popularly used to convert reading material to AZW, edit document metadata, or transfer it to an E-reader.
Whenever possible, I download e-books in the EPUB file format, because it’s a widely used open standard which supports almost everything. Then, I use calibre to convert the e-book to AZW or PDF.
- You can also access the files on the local storage of your Kindle device directly, via USB.
Acquiring Reading Material 📕
- Standard Ebooks - An open source, volunteer-driven project which curates and distributes e-books in the public domain.
- Open Library - A helpful project by the Internet Archive which aims to create “one web page for every book ever published”.
Happy reading!