Received the following question. I certainly don’t know the answer. To paraphrase the email:
One can read a Gutenberg mobi ebook on the Kindle by simply emailing it to the Kindle’s address and having it sent to the machine. However, you can’t use this method to email a Gutenberg mobi ebook to the Kindle software on your iPhone or iPad. How can you get the Gutenberg ebook to the Kindle software on the iPhone or iPad – other than by buying the book from Amazon.
The reason for this is to be able to keep the book in sync between the Kindle and the iPad , so the option of using Stanza on the iPad wouldn’t work.
If it’s Gutenberg, I would think that an epub version of the book would also be available – and that file can be emailed and opened in Stanza (and maybe iBooks too, not sure)
Would it not be the same as downloading a mobi book to your Kindle App for a Mac or PC?
I have my Browser-Firefox>Preferences>Applications tab set to use Kindle for Mac for mobi files.
When I click on download Kindle file on either the main Gutenberg site or the Mobile site the book is imported directly into the Kindle App for Mac.
I don`t have an iPad but I imagine you can do something similar to that.
You can’t. Its the nature of Apple apps (and probably Amazon is okay with it as well) that the iOS version of the Kindle software is a closed system.
…and I apologize for skipping over the “no Stanza” limitation. However, Amazon’s syncing feature only works on the titles that they sell, so even if you managed to get your mobi doc on the Kindle for iOS app it wouldn’t sync with your Kindle or your PC/Mac installation.
…and I apologize for skipping over the “no Stanza” limitation. However, Amazon’s syncing feature only works on the titles that they sell, so even if you managed to get your mobi doc on the Kindle for iOS app it wouldn’t sync with your Kindle or your PC/Mac installation. christopher.walters@gmail.comChris Waltershttp://booksprung.com1
The Apple store has a lot of free Gutenberg tiltles that you can read in iBooks.
Try Calibre for ebook management. It finds my iPod Touch, so I’d imagine it would let you manage an iPad as well.
It wouldn’t sync, as Chris pointed out, but you could use the “location” number to cross reference. That’s what I do with my Droid and Kindle (and my iPod Touch prior to having my Droid). As is the case with Apple, if you want the freedom to load whatever you want into whatever application you want, it requires some hacking. With a jailbroken iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, a person can access the file directory (I used a program called iPhone Browser) and then browse to the Kindle folder, which is where the user will want to load the books. The trick is getting access to the file system, and that can only be done with jailbreaking. Once that’s done, though, it’s really not that hard.
… I’m not sure what happened to my comment, maybe I didn’t hit submit?
It is half-possible — it is possible to move the files over, but not possible to synch, and you don’t have to jailbreak. First, here is some background:
1) The iPad does not have a universal file system. Each app has its own storage. In order to read an app in the Kindle app, you have to get it into the Kindle storage area. This makes it a real pain when you want to get files from one app to another.
2) As designed, the Kindle app wants you to get all of your books from Amazon. Therefore, you will need to turn to a third party in order to place books into the Kindle app.
3) The procedure described below works, but once I got just above 450 books, the Kindle app would not accept any more. This means that I couldn’t put my entire library on it.
Anyway, the solution is to download a free application to your PC — it is called iPhone Explorer, but it does work with your iPad. Google for it, and I’m sure you will find it. Here are the steps for using it.
1) Install it on your PC, you will also need iTunes, but I’m sure that you will have that if you have an iPad. Make sure you find the latest version (2.1 as of today) since the earlier versions did not work with Windows.
2) Connect your iPad to you PC using USB.
3) Open iPhone Explorer. You will see a file-explorer style view of your ipad. Browse to the Kindle document location using the following path: apps > com.Amazon.Lassen > documents > ebooks
4) Now, in a separate window find the books on your PC and drag them to the location in (3) above.
5) Remember, that the Kindle app seems to have a limit of 450 or so books using this method. Also before you disconnect, go to iTunes (it will probably be open) and make sure it has finished synching your iPad. Finally, this always seems to work if I do it in one step. However, if I am grabbing multiple batches of books and dragging them over to iPhone Explorer, I find that sometimes iPhone Explorer seems to lose its connection to the iPad. In this case, close down iPhone Explorer and reopen it. It is pretty quick, so this doesn’t take much time.
No syncing, so why bother with kindle for iPad?
Calibre + Stanza + Dropbox is winning combination.