Tag: kobo

Short Links for Your Books

Just a little reference post for those who deal with making links for books, like I, and many of my friends, do.

Each site has a long, complicated URL for your title… but most also have a short, nice looking one too.

Amazon

Amazon will add the entire text to the Magna Charta onto your URL if you don’t watch it.

LampLight, Volume 3, issue 1, Kindle:

http://smile.amazon.com/LampLight-3-Issue-Yvonne-Navarro-ebook/dp/B00NPJY10I/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1411750626&sr=1-1

LampLight, Volume 3, issue 1, print:

http://smile.amazon.com/LampLight-3-Issue-Yvonne-Navarro/dp/1502431580/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411744718&sr=8-1&keywords=1502431580

The easiest way to get a good link is to click the email link in the share option, and just copy the link from there. You can make it as such:

For Kindle:

amazon.com/dp/(ASIN)

Where you get your ASIN from the product details.

For Print:

amazon.com/dp/(ISBN 10)

In both cases, you’ll see the number you need in the URL, next to the DP.

so, for our examples, we have the following:

Kindle:

http://.amazon.com/dp/B00NPJY10I

Print:

http://amazon.com/dp/1502431580

Barnes and Noble

barnesandnoble.com is already a long URL, add on the remainder, and it gets a bit unwieldy.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lamplight-jacob-haddon/1118943137?ean=2940044832688

But that’s ok! There is also BN.com. Add on a short cut, and you can get nice, clean URLs for your books:

bn.com/s/(BN ID)

Which is that ean= number at the end of the URL, so for this example:

http://bn.com/s/2940044832688

For your print book, the formula is the same, just one detail is different—the EAN number is your ISBN-13, not the BN ID

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lamplight-volume-1-issue-1-jacob-haddon/1117505311?ean=9781493585915&itm=1&usri=9781493585915

reduces to:

http://bn.com/s/9781493585915

Kobo and Smashwords

Unfortunately, neither of these has a good way of doing links. For both, simply copy the link for the book.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/258702

http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/lamplight-vol-i-issue-2

iBooks

Apple presents a few challenges for links with its iTunes store. Thankfully, they have a link maker—just search for your title and poof!

http://itunes.apple.com/linkmaker/

So, not nice and tidy, but they are easier to find, at least. These links will go direct to iTunes if installed, or show a web view if not.

Updated – 2024 Feb

removed references to AMZN.com as they no longer work. Now updating all my old websites…

The Kobo Mini Review

(Edited on 10 August with some fixes)

I am a gadget geek, but that is not news to anyone. Since starting my publishing endeavors, I’ve been looking into all the ebook reader options, not just the Nook or Kindle. With the advent of eBooks, we are in a situation where the tactile experience of our books are independent of the intellectual one. As such, I am enjoying exploring all that is offered to see how different companies tackle this same issue.

I recently picked up the Kobo Mini and it is fantastic.

What is it? it is a small (5 inch) epaper reader

What isn’t it? anything else

This thing has one purpose in mind: read. And for that, it does a great job. The size is really the killer feature with this reader. It is about the size of a paperback book. The screen is responsive and the device is easily held with one hand. And light, it is nice and light.

The software is responsive, and reasonably customizable. They have an achievements type system built in which marks your accomplishments: number of books finished, number of pages read, etc. Not essential to any experience, but can be fun to look at.

It works well with Calibre, which I use to organize my ebooks from Smashwords or Storybundle, allowing me to read on whatever device I want.

I found my only real complaint is that it is difficult to operate left handed because of where on the screen the “next page” regions are. A small softer customization on this part would make it fantastic. There are three options for the screen on how to change the pages on the Kobo. While none of them are what I’d prefer, it is set up so it can be used either left or right handed. After changing the setting, this became much better to use.

Small, light, great battery life, this reader really is a fantastic single minded gadget.