Which brands are generally more piracy-friendly? Do you suggest any specific model? Or maybe there are products that are easily customizable at the OS level? Thanks!
TLDR
Probably anything will serve, but I would recommend either a Kobo or a Pocketbook for they seem more open (or maybe Onyx, I don’t know this one!). I only ever dabbled with two devices though so I won’t claim I know a lot about the subject. You want to read books with ideally the epub format.
How to read pirated books
Download the book, connect the e-reader via USB (maybe can be connected in other ways but wtv), copy and paste file, done. (Or use Calibre to manage your library and not do this “hard” step manually).
When you open your device, you will find the book there and you can read it. For any practical purposes this is the most straight forward and means it may not matter that much what you choose. This is to say, provided you find the books you want to read somewhere online, you shouldn’t have troubles reading it in an e-reader. This works in all e-readers as far as I know.
E-book formats
Kindles used to support less formats, specifically not epub which is a book format. They did support mobi which was a good alternative. I read a while ago that they were going to start supporting epub but no idea if it’s the case or not.
Epub is the open format that I go for and probably the best and most compatible. You can edit epubs by modifying HTML and CSS actually, if you know how to open them (hint: Calibre). This, to say, I considered supported book formats to be relevant but maybe they’re not a big problem either.
Edit: Looking at this, it seems that Kindles still don’t support epub. They do support mobi though and like @boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net said, we can convert epub to mobi fairly easily, so it’s not a deal breaker, just one restriction that I would personally not want to bother with.
Openness/customization (KOReader)
KOReader is a third-party software that you can install on e-readers to provide a more customizable experience. I’m not going to try to convince you it’s good or not, nor that you should install it. I installed it only a couple of months ago.
I’m mentioning it first of because you may be interested but also to point out at its installation method in Kindle, Kobo and Pocketbook. (They also have installation method for Android which I’ll leave out because Android, and Cervantes and reMarkable which I’ll leave out because I don’t even know what these are).
Kindle has to be jailbroken, Kobo seems fairly straightforward with maybe a minor annoyance step and Pocketbook seems straightforward. I have a very old Kindle that I don’t know if it’s supported (didn’t check, cba), and a Pocketbook Touch HD 3. I delayed trying KOReader for a long time because I assumed that it would replace my Pocketbook’s stock software and it serves my purpose well, but on a second glance more recently I realized that the installation steps (copy + paste) didn’t override a single file in my device and KOReader lives side by side as an app in my reader.
For that reason I would suggest either Kobo or Pocketreader.
I forgot about Onyx which @neshura@bookwormstory.social mentioned - I only became aware about these recently. I suggest you take a look into this as well, it looks decent but I don’t know anything to comment.
Models
I don’t have specific models in mind.
For my more recent Pocketbook purchase, I wanted something closer to 6-7 inches, 10 is too much and I wanted to have physical buttons to turn pages and not just a touch screen. The button requirement limited my choices heavily. Looking back in hindsight I don’t use these buttons, I don’t need them, but my first device had no touchscreen so… :).
I didn’t like the position of these buttons on the Kobo Libra 2 or whatever (and maybe it was also too big?), and those were pretty much my concerns.
My model of the Pocketbook was already an “old” model when I got it. My only concern mildly related to piracy was: Does it support epub?
Pretty well written post.
On Kindle and epub: it’s pretty annoying, but once you set up Calibre to automatically convert on sending to device, it’s effortless.
Thank you!
Ah yes, I forgot this was a feature Calibre has! When I had only my Kindle I managed to always find mobi for the books I wanted so I only converted one or two books, those for which which I thought the version I found was not good enough.
Assuming the source epub is decent, how good is the converted mobi? Does it ever screw up?
Things like, a chapter heading or paragraphs losing their spacing and/or alignment.
I never really compared the source to the converted mobi, but overall I can’t really complain.
Usually if the formatting is a little screwed up I assume it’s the source’s fault. :)
Almost every book I read nowadays is an epub converted to mobi.
Honestly, the bigger issue I have is the inability to put the sideloaded books into a series “folder”.
Instead I had to set Calibre to add “<series> <number> <book title>” string to the book tile in the metadata. :/
Yes, Kindle does now support epub. Annoyingly, it no longer supports mobi. I mean, I can still read all the mobi files on my ancient Kindle Keyboard and on the Kindle phone app, but any new book files have to be in epub format. I have a massive amount of mobi files, now have to convert them with Caliber if I want to add them to my Kindle.
I mostly use the ReadEra app on my phone, it does pretty much everything. My favourite feature is that you can control screen brightness by touch while reading, without ferreting around in settings.
