EpubPress, turn web content into ebooks(epub.press)
epub.press
EpubPress, turn web content into ebooks
https://epub.press
53 comments
If you're the kind of person who likes the ability to tweak your environment and get things set up just right for you, I'd recommend getting a Kobo and putting KOReader[1] on it. It has the classic OSS problem of bad defaults, but it's very flexible and can be a uniquely nice experience once you get it configured in a way you like. It's mostly written in Lua and has responsive maintainers, so if you're a developer you can extend it even further.
It has great PDF support, including good reflow and note taking support (highlights and text notes). And export support to text/json/html/Readwise.io for those notes.
It also has the best UI I've seen to visualize the structure of a book you're reading.[2]
The biggest downside is that you have to do more file management of your ebooks, since it isn't hooked into a nice cloud like Kindle. I use Calibre for this, and set up an OPDS server for some basic cloud downloading.
[1] https://koreader.rocks/
[2] Book Map and Page Browser: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/releases/tag/v2022.01
It has great PDF support, including good reflow and note taking support (highlights and text notes). And export support to text/json/html/Readwise.io for those notes.
It also has the best UI I've seen to visualize the structure of a book you're reading.[2]
The biggest downside is that you have to do more file management of your ebooks, since it isn't hooked into a nice cloud like Kindle. I use Calibre for this, and set up an OPDS server for some basic cloud downloading.
[1] https://koreader.rocks/
[2] Book Map and Page Browser: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/releases/tag/v2022.01
You can also put KOReader on Android devices (or jail broken Kindles). Personally I'm not a fan though. It like every other open ePub reader I've tried also has limited to no support for ePub 3, so no vertical writing, no right to left page turns in manga, etc. I'd rather use Kobo's renderer than KOReader, better UI and better rendering IMO.
> It like every other open ePub reader I've tried also has limited to no support for ePub 3
Is there an open issue for that feature gap in KOReader? I'm always curious whether it's just "we haven't gotten there yet" versus "we don't want to do that"
Is there an open issue for that feature gap in KOReader? I'm always curious whether it's just "we haven't gotten there yet" versus "we don't want to do that"
Yeah there is for vertical writing (https://github.com/koreader/koreader/issues/4353) at least. It seems like it's a limitation of their engines so I don't blame them.
I have a couple Boox devices right now and have had Kobo and Kindle devices in the past as well as iPads but I kinda feel those go in their own category.
The Boox devices are fast, easily the fastest eInk devices I've used and are extremely flexible thanks to the fact that they just run Android. You do have to fiddle a bit with the app optimization settings because apps aren't typically designed with eInk in mind so you need to filter out animations and set refresh modes. But it is super nice to just have whatever available. The Kindle app, Libby, Google Play books, Pressreader, etc. The built in software is very good for PDFs especially in comparison to the junk Amazon and Kobo put on theirs. It's OKAY for ePubs/AZW3 but it has some rough edges and bugs but you can just use another 3rd party app so it's not a huge deal. Note taking software works well IMO too.
Kobo still has a better built in ePub reader in terms of rendering but devices are slower and it's more annoying to get books on and off. As for Kindle there's very little reason to buy one unless you're certain you're going to play in their store and are happy with their limited font and formatting options. Send to Kindle is probably the best feature but you can only send ancient KF7 mobis or like txt files. You can put PDFs on a Kindle but it's a horrid experience, Kobo is slightly better especially on the new models.
I've heard Remarkable's suck at ePubs and it seems like it from videos and I wouldn't use an iPad for reading books as it's just too distracting IMO.
If you mainly want PDF support or want flexibility with regards to what you can do and are okay with some rough edges get a Boox, if you want good ePub support and it to "just work" get a Kobo.
The Boox devices are fast, easily the fastest eInk devices I've used and are extremely flexible thanks to the fact that they just run Android. You do have to fiddle a bit with the app optimization settings because apps aren't typically designed with eInk in mind so you need to filter out animations and set refresh modes. But it is super nice to just have whatever available. The Kindle app, Libby, Google Play books, Pressreader, etc. The built in software is very good for PDFs especially in comparison to the junk Amazon and Kobo put on theirs. It's OKAY for ePubs/AZW3 but it has some rough edges and bugs but you can just use another 3rd party app so it's not a huge deal. Note taking software works well IMO too.
Kobo still has a better built in ePub reader in terms of rendering but devices are slower and it's more annoying to get books on and off. As for Kindle there's very little reason to buy one unless you're certain you're going to play in their store and are happy with their limited font and formatting options. Send to Kindle is probably the best feature but you can only send ancient KF7 mobis or like txt files. You can put PDFs on a Kindle but it's a horrid experience, Kobo is slightly better especially on the new models.
I've heard Remarkable's suck at ePubs and it seems like it from videos and I wouldn't use an iPad for reading books as it's just too distracting IMO.
If you mainly want PDF support or want flexibility with regards to what you can do and are okay with some rough edges get a Boox, if you want good ePub support and it to "just work" get a Kobo.
I second all of this. I've had a B&N Nook, Kindles from basic ones in 2010 through to the 2019 Oasis and for the last 18 months I've had a Boox Note 2. I have no regrets. My use cases other than recreational reading for 30-60 minutes a day is academic research and/or whitepaper reviewing.
I run the Kindle app on it, as well as an Adobe reader and the main reader is great for anything without DRM. I use an Android App (Autosync) to sync instead of the built in sync client. My ebook folder in NextCloud is in sync on the Boox and my laptop, both ways so annotated PDFs come straight back to my PC.
I read a lot of PDFs of A4/Letter pages so the larger size screen is a godsend. I can't imagine going back to a smaller device now.
I run the Kindle app on it, as well as an Adobe reader and the main reader is great for anything without DRM. I use an Android App (Autosync) to sync instead of the built in sync client. My ebook folder in NextCloud is in sync on the Boox and my laptop, both ways so annotated PDFs come straight back to my PC.
I read a lot of PDFs of A4/Letter pages so the larger size screen is a godsend. I can't imagine going back to a smaller device now.
I have a reMarkable, but can't recommend it for this or any other use case. The hardware's great, and deserves better than the software it has - which barely exists, and mostly doesn't work well.
Kobo has the best eink renderer and has the best support for modern standards. iBooks is the best renderer on tablet/iOS. Kindle is an ereader made by people who hate books.
There's really not a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone. The options you listed seem to be larger devices with pen support, so is that what you're in the market for? I ask because the best pure ebook reader device is not necessarily the best device for PDF reading/annotation. Bigger screens are better for those--you really need at least a 10-inch screen if you want to comfortably read or edit PDFs. As close to a standard 8.5x11" piece of paper as you can get, ideally, because the majority of PDFs that you would be annotating will likely be physical paper scans.
But if all you're reading are ebooks in formats that support text reflow (EPUB,MOBI,etc.), you can get away with the normal 6" readers, with the advantage that they're smaller and more portable, and cause less fatigue to hold in your hands for extended periods.
Of the smaller e-readers, I personally favor the Kobo. The Clara HD had slightly better specs than the equivalent Kindle Paperwhite when it came out, in addition to better supporting the things I care about (like STANDARD ebook formats, Pocket integration, and Overdrive integration). So that was the right decision for me. But for my family, I've just recommended they get the Kindle Paperwhite, because most of them don't care about trying to pull their books out of the Amazon ecosystem.
But if all you're reading are ebooks in formats that support text reflow (EPUB,MOBI,etc.), you can get away with the normal 6" readers, with the advantage that they're smaller and more portable, and cause less fatigue to hold in your hands for extended periods.
Of the smaller e-readers, I personally favor the Kobo. The Clara HD had slightly better specs than the equivalent Kindle Paperwhite when it came out, in addition to better supporting the things I care about (like STANDARD ebook formats, Pocket integration, and Overdrive integration). So that was the right decision for me. But for my family, I've just recommended they get the Kindle Paperwhite, because most of them don't care about trying to pull their books out of the Amazon ecosystem.
I have a Kindle Oasis. I _mostly_ like it. The yellow light feature that they added is amazing, and I like the page turn buttons.
My biggest complaints are: (1) the battery life is terrible, compared to my previous Kindle - recently I've been reading a lot but I have to charge it every couple days rather than like once a week, and it's absolutely mandatory to keep it in airplane mode. (2) the metal casing is an extremely questionable product design choice, it gets VERY cold in the winter, though I suppose if I bought a case to go with it this would be less of a problem (I don't want a case, the point is to have a lightweight device). Would much prefer a plastic chassis. (3) This one is a bit more esoteric, but: while you can switch the buttons between page forward & back, you cannot map them BOTH to forward, so if you like to frequently reposition how you hold the device, too bad, it's very inconvenient to remap the buttons as you move your hands. (Since you rarely press page back, I'd rather use the touch screen as designed for page back, and have both buttons be page forward.)
My biggest complaints are: (1) the battery life is terrible, compared to my previous Kindle - recently I've been reading a lot but I have to charge it every couple days rather than like once a week, and it's absolutely mandatory to keep it in airplane mode. (2) the metal casing is an extremely questionable product design choice, it gets VERY cold in the winter, though I suppose if I bought a case to go with it this would be less of a problem (I don't want a case, the point is to have a lightweight device). Would much prefer a plastic chassis. (3) This one is a bit more esoteric, but: while you can switch the buttons between page forward & back, you cannot map them BOTH to forward, so if you like to frequently reposition how you hold the device, too bad, it's very inconvenient to remap the buttons as you move your hands. (Since you rarely press page back, I'd rather use the touch screen as designed for page back, and have both buttons be page forward.)
I feel like you might like the Kobo Libra 2. Bigger battery, similar size and shape with same screen resolution and size, still has yellow light, plastic case, there's a patch to make both buttons go forward. Weighs 30 grams more though.
I have the Boox Note Air 2, and it's great. Only complaint: time from picking it up to reading is too long, because it has to boot up and doesn't remember which book you were reading, though it does remember your place. Other than that, I enjoy everything about it. The display is beautiful and the software has been stable for me, despite what I've read in reviews.
That's easily fixed. In the power settings just change Power-off timeout to a day or never then it will just sleep and you can easily be back at whatever you're doing. I haven't had a huge power drain while sleeping so I'm not sure why they're so aggressive about turning it off by default.
I just assumed that they set it to such a short timeout by default for a reason, so I never tried it. Huh.
Kindle Paperwhite continues to serve me well for ten years of daily reading. I upload pdfs, various doc formats and all my ebooks to it all the time by simply emailing the file to Amazon’s whisper service which you get automatically with the kindle purchase.
No, it is not a note-taking device although short notes for highlighted text may be done. It is a reading device. And I highly recommend it.
No, it is not a note-taking device although short notes for highlighted text may be done. It is a reading device. And I highly recommend it.
I love the eink technology and have been happy with a reader bought about ten years ago. However, nowadays, I find myself mostly using the ReadEra app[0] on my phone (no affiliation).
It being an app on my phone means that I always have my book with me and can read during any break time in the day. Plus, it deals with pdfs very nicely which turns out to be surprisingly useful when reading other things such as scientific papers and technical books.
[0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.readera
It being an app on my phone means that I always have my book with me and can read during any break time in the day. Plus, it deals with pdfs very nicely which turns out to be surprisingly useful when reading other things such as scientific papers and technical books.
[0]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.readera
I switched over to eReader Prestigio because of TTS feature. When I go running or do some mindless task I use TTS and put the fone in my pocket and still absorb information.
I have a remarkable. Know that the device is designed almost exclusively for writing. It is extremely bare bones when it comes to reading. PDF's an eBooks with code can become a formatting nightmare and it lacks many of the tools that most e-readers come with. It is however, fantastic for writing, and decent at reading if you hack in some custom apps like koreader. You have to remove DRM from amazon epubs though, which I haven't yet done. and can't comment on.
I bought a Pocketbook 301 from 2007 for 13€ recently, as it is one of the few ebooks without internet connection. It has buttons, an SD card slot, it reads all common formats (FB2 works best), and it has an audio jack plug. You can use it for reading, and that's it. Probably the best product I ever bought.
No note taking obviously.
No note taking obviously.
Get a Kindle or Kobo and a 13” iPad or Quaderno. The Kindle or Kobo is ideal for reading books and the 13” tablet is what you want for PDFs. The Remarkable and other 10” devices are nice but it’s too small for PDFs. If they made a 13” Remarkable, I would probably recommend that.
I have a Kobo Libra H2O which I'm quite happy with. I find the 6" screens feel just a bit too cramped for me, but 7" is okay for my reading habits.
I also found the Pocket integration surprisingly useful for reading web articles.
Calibre is your best friend for managing the content on your ereader.
I also found the Pocket integration surprisingly useful for reading web articles.
Calibre is your best friend for managing the content on your ereader.
e-ink is definitely worth it if you enjoy reading.
For reading linear text, get a kindle or a kobo. By "linear," I mean not a text book or reference text that you skip around a lot in.
I have had a kindle for over 10 years now and use it all the time.
I would suggest trying to get your hands on a kindle and a kobo to see which one feels and reads the best to you. My kindle feels great.
I hate being essentially locked into the amazon ecosystem, but it's not that big a deal. I can e-mail books to myself but it's not as seamless as I want. Once the books are on there, it's great.
I also have a remarkable and think it has potential, especially if you read a lot of research papers or technical books.
For reading linear text, get a kindle or a kobo. By "linear," I mean not a text book or reference text that you skip around a lot in.
I have had a kindle for over 10 years now and use it all the time.
I would suggest trying to get your hands on a kindle and a kobo to see which one feels and reads the best to you. My kindle feels great.
I hate being essentially locked into the amazon ecosystem, but it's not that big a deal. I can e-mail books to myself but it's not as seamless as I want. Once the books are on there, it's great.
I also have a remarkable and think it has potential, especially if you read a lot of research papers or technical books.
im using a boox nova 3 at the moment. i mainly went with this device because it uses android as the OS which makes it easy to install syncthing and sync my books folder to it. i can add or remove books / long form articles to the syncthing folder on my phone or laptop and everything is synced across later on
You can put your own PDFs on Kindles using Calibre.
Somewhat related: Push to Kindle https://www.fivefilters.org/push-to-kindle/
Related: A command-line tool I wrote a while ago called Erudite that pulls articles from Instapaper or Pocket and converts them to an ebook format (uses Calibre as the conversion tool, all processing runs locally on your machine (aside from the calls to Instapaper or Pocket, of course)).
(It even has Hacker News integration that includes URLs for corresponding posts!)
https://github.com/evmcl/erudite
(It even has Hacker News integration that includes URLs for corresponding posts!)
https://github.com/evmcl/erudite
OMG, i am so disappointed!
apologies for the double comment. the other one is still useful to me. but this plugin fails miserably with the javascript's "please accept these cookies" prompts.
try it on this link i had on my unread bookmarks: https://web.dev/streams
apologies for the double comment. the other one is still useful to me. but this plugin fails miserably with the javascript's "please accept these cookies" prompts.
try it on this link i had on my unread bookmarks: https://web.dev/streams
Shameless plug: I'm building something similar and looks like it's working correctly. Can you give it a try, link below:
https://ktool.io/read-on-kindle?url=https://web.dev/streams/
https://ktool.io/read-on-kindle?url=https://web.dev/streams/
I haven't installed the extension yet, but perhaps you could try https://remove-js.com/https://web.dev/streams/ instead? I'd guess that that would work, but I'd be curious to know.
I wrote something similar: https://github.com/maoserr/epublifier
It's more geared towards longer web novels with 50+ chapters (I've used it on novels with 500 chapters before). Instead of opening each page as a tab, it fetches chapters from a Table of Contents page.
It was written for jnovel/cnovel/knovel site, but it can handle any generic page that has a list of links.
It's more geared towards longer web novels with 50+ chapters (I've used it on novels with 500 chapters before). Instead of opening each page as a tab, it fetches chapters from a Table of Contents page.
It was written for jnovel/cnovel/knovel site, but it can handle any generic page that has a list of links.
I also wrote an alternative solution (not a public repo), but I found that relying on site maps and other link lists generally gave unsatisfactory results. Instead, my solution navigated as a user and actually used next chapter links. While that slowed it down (+ 10 seconds between requests to be polite), it could handle very large books, with the largest I used being 700+ chapters at the time (5000 pages).
This is almost the same aproach I used for Bloxp[0]. I have some common Previous Post link markups and I try to navigate from the last post in a blog, one by one, to the first. I also allow to manually indicate the HTML markup to use for crawling a given blog, in case it is not matching any of the common ones.
I uploaded the site 10 years ago (at first I did it because it was useful to me) and I have made almost no changes since then but many people still use it as a simple way to export a full blog into an ePub.
[0] http://www.bloxp.com
I uploaded the site 10 years ago (at first I did it because it was useful to me) and I have made almost no changes since then but many people still use it as a simple way to export a full blog into an ePub.
[0] http://www.bloxp.com
Yea I also had that idea before, but I didn't want to maintain a bunch of different "next chapter" finder logic.
But I do agree it would be a more reliable way of doing things.
But I do agree it would be a more reliable way of doing things.
I've written similar scripts to do this, but lncrawl replaced most of them https://github.com/dipu-bd/lightnovel-crawler/
Thanks for releasing this cool tool.
Some feedback: The plugin (via Chrome v100) could not render this HN post, thus the epub download was not useful.
Screenshot feedback: https://i.imgur.com/q1T0Hd0.png
Some feedback: The plugin (via Chrome v100) could not render this HN post, thus the epub download was not useful.
Screenshot feedback: https://i.imgur.com/q1T0Hd0.png
Err, did you also email [email protected] as they requested? I know "support via HN" is a thing, but ...
I have used a similar tool before: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/saveasebook/
I sometimes like to read on paper so I've used this to collect articles into an epub and then I can convert it to a PDF for printing. However it would be nice to find a faster solution for collecting articles and removing unnecessary pictures.
If you are looking for a good site to test it on, try https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_toc.html
Would really love to get this working on my site: https://fiction.live
A lot of my users have been requesting this.
A lot of my users have been requesting this.
> Would really love to get this working on my site
Whilst this isn’t my extension, the underlying generation of the EPUB is using a fork of my Nodepub library.
If you are using Node on your site, or are familiar enough with it to code a small wrapper around the library, then you should be able to create ebooks of your site user’s fiction pretty easily from your own codebase without needing an extension.
It’s at https://github.com/kcartlidge/nodepub and is also on NPM under the name Nodepub.
Note that it is EPUB 2, not 3. So you get modern ebooks including images and metadata, but the main omission is Javascript support embedded in the books; it isn’t something I want to encourage given the security issues endemic in tech.
Whilst this isn’t my extension, the underlying generation of the EPUB is using a fork of my Nodepub library.
If you are using Node on your site, or are familiar enough with it to code a small wrapper around the library, then you should be able to create ebooks of your site user’s fiction pretty easily from your own codebase without needing an extension.
It’s at https://github.com/kcartlidge/nodepub and is also on NPM under the name Nodepub.
Note that it is EPUB 2, not 3. So you get modern ebooks including images and metadata, but the main omission is Javascript support embedded in the books; it isn’t something I want to encourage given the security issues endemic in tech.
I've used the dotEPUB extension for Chrome now for several years and its generally excellent. Can be config'ed to save to epub or mobi.
Cool I've used Calibre in the past to convert a webpage to epub but the quality is always poor. I'll need to give this a try.
Not to shamelessly Spruik, but if you're willing to run the web-page via Pocket or Instapaper then Erudite might be useful to you. See my other comment[0] on this post.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=31048089
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=31048089
The pinned icon doesn't contrast well in the Brave (Chrome based) browser's dark-mode.
Looks really cool and fits my use-case. Will definitely install and try it.
I have needed this for years! Thank you for this site/tool!
Definitely some good use cases for this.
This is cool tool, thx!
for those who made that decision recently, what ebook reader did you get? i am quite torn between: kindle, i-pad, and e-ink devices (remarkable 2, boox note air 2, kobo elipsa, quaderno.)
i heard e-inks are good on your eyes, which is always good. kindles would not support uploading your own PDFs or taking notes on them. the quaderno looks fantastic but quite big (i like a book-sized device). the remarkable 2 wants you to subscribe to services...
so, have you got one of these recently? which one?