Kobo disses Linux

The day before Thanksgiving, I had found a great deal on something I had been pining to get ever since my cousin got one: an ebook reader. Now, I had ebook reading apps on my Android phone and Linux desktop, but the phone's screen is too small for proper book reading compared to tablets and ereaders like the Kindle. So I was stoked to find that Dollar General was selling this ebook reader for a jaw-dropping $50 on Thanksgiving Day only(I should have waited a week as it's now $45 for Christmas). So I ordered it online on Thanksgiving and received it in the mail on Monday.

After fiddling around with it a bit, I figured out how to add ebooks to it via USB to my Linux desktop PC. An easy affair, but today I wanted to give the Kobo bookstore a try, since the ereader's maker claimed that it worked with Kobo.

Unfortunately, Kobo failed me here. It turns out that Kobo follows the "iTunes/iPod" model when syncing to ereaders that lack internet capability. The ereader I bought did come bundled with the Kobo Desktop app, but only for Windows and Mac. There's no Linux version at all(officially at least), and when I got an ebook via the Kobo webstore, it doesn't give the option to download the ebook for USB transfer to the reader. So I'm left with no way to put Kobo-bought books on my device.

But instead of slamming Kobo for this, I'd like to suggest a solution for this lack of Linux support(I'm aware there is an "unofficial" Debian-based port of Kobo Desktop, but it's 32-bit only and won't install on my 64-bit machine): Make an OS-agnostic web version of the Kobo Desktop app. Or at the very least enable USB syncing via the web bookstore. Until such a solution is made, my only options are getting non-DRM ebooks elsewhere or get a different ebook reader with better Linux support(meaning either way that Kobo loses my business).

Update: I have installed the Windows version of Kobo Desktop via Wine, and it works great except that the app won't recognize the ereader when I connect it via USB . So I've made some progress, but the main complaint still stands.

Down to the old (e)Pub instead

Lately I've been thinking about writing a book or two. Nothing serious or professional. Just for fun. And since digital distribution to mobile devices(smartphones, Kindle, Nook, etc) seems to be a good way to get out there without a dead tree publisher, I want to make ebooks in the open and mobile-friendly EPUB format.

The first step on my digital publishing journey was to find and grab a decent open source ePub creation program. Dredging through Synaptic on Ubuntu shows only the Calibre ebook management and conversion program. I'm not looking for a converter. So I hit up Google and I get hits for eCub, Sigil, Feedbooks and some others that I won't mention because they're not available for Linux.

First on the list was eCub. I had quickly downloaded and installed it, but then I noticed it isn't open source. So eCub gets the uninstall from me.

Next up is Sigil. I download and ran the .bin installer and get "You must be root to run this installer". My response: Why? I absolutely hate .bin installers that insist on getting root when the application it's meant to install doesn't need root access to run. A local install within the $HOME directory should be perfectly fine for .bin installers. So Sigil isn't getting installed unless they fix their installer or provide a proper .deb package.

Finally, there's Feedbooks. Feedbooks is primarily two things: a place to download public domain ebooks and a web-based epub creation and publishing tool. I've bookmarked it, but I'm looking for an offline creation program.

So, where does this leave me? Well, I said "screw it" and wrote up my own epub creator based on the Wikipedia entry on ePub. It's a menu-based shell script that can be used to create ePub books from start to finish.

The script(called "Skelepub.sh") is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPLv3 or later and can be downloaded here.

Update: I've also made a GUI-fied version of Skelepub for those who are averse to command lines. They're both functionally equivalent, but the console version is more portable across Linux distributions.

Now, what to write for my book... hmm, that's gonna take a lot longer than two days to figure out...

Note: If you read the title of this post and thought "Hey, isn't that the name of a song by singing comedian Stephen Lynch?", you are indeed correct, laddie: