Will ebooks from Amazon work on other ereaders?

Question

I received an ereader for Christmas, but not sure where all I can download/purchase ebooks from. Will Amazon Kindle books work on other ereaders? Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Amazon's DRM'd ebooks can't be used on other devices (unless you crack the DRM, which is a great nuisance), but their non-DRM'd books can be used on anything that reads .mobi. The way to check is the ebook's "Device Limit" number--if it's "unlimited," the book doesn't have DRM.



You can get started with free ebooks from a lot of sites:

http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Free_eBooks has lists of dozens of free ebook sites, both downloadable and read-online ebooks.



Some of the largest are:

http://www.munseys.com

http://www.feedbooks.com

http://www.manybooks.net



Baen Books has a free library of science fiction ebooks at http://www.baen.com/library/



Sci-fi author & copyfight activist Cory Doctorow releases all of his books as free ebooks at http://craphound.com/



http://www.teleread.org/free-ebooks/ is Teleread's list of free ebook resources.



http://www.smashwords.com is a self-published ebook store, but it has a lot of free and "pay what you like" books.

Answer 2

Only if you (1) can download and install to it the Kindle app (i.e. an iPad or hacked Pandigital Novel, or any other type of tablet or smartphone) or (2) learn how to remove the DRM from any Kindle book purchased at Amazon so that you can then read the book in any .mobi compatible device or can convert the book to another format (i.e., epub).



You can buy ebooks from other etailers like Diesel Ebooks, Fictionwise, Books a Million, and Kobo. Amazon is not the only game in town, though it does tend to have some of the best prices and bigger selection.

Answer 3

Kindle uses a proprietary file format. Other eReaders mostly have gone with an open standard.



I looked up a review for your Skytex. It too went with the open standard.

Answer 4

IIRC, the Kindle books that you buy from Amazon can't be used on any other ereader, but you can download .mobi files from anywhere and read them on the Kindle or pretty much any other ereader.