Eager to get my eSlick

I’m gearing up for my FoxIt eSlick.  My eSlick won’t arrive for quite some time but I’m still gathering information on converting ebooks to PDF. So far my biggest sources of ebooks are text files from Project Gutenberg, CHM files from O’Reilly books (apparently PDFCHM.com keeps a database of books that come with free PDFs and CHMs), journals, and now DRM unwrapped Adobe Digital Editions books.

The library software I’ve downloaded to keep track of my growing ebook collection is called Calibre. I haven’t messed with it very much but it has an iTunes-like coverflow view, a web front end, an iPhone app and considerable conversion features.

As for converting my favourite sources, it’s not strictly necessary in the case of Project Gutenberg books  since they can easily be read as TXT files on the eSlick. If you want chapter bookmarks and pretty formatting then I suggest GutenMark combined with HTMLDOC.

CHM files are easy to convert on Linux, but a bit of a pain to convert on Windows depending on how the CHM decompiles. I’ve written a short guide on how to convert CHM to PDF while preserving hyperlinks.

Journals are straightforward, they’re just unencrypted PDF files usually.

I’ve already written about unwrapping DRM from Adobe Digital Editions books.

This is also a good opportunity to announce the new guides section of the website, linked to on the top menu. There isn’t much there right now but it’ll grow.

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