when "c" moves to "the big a "

[Andrepartthree]

Hi everyone... just got an email stating that the big c (looks like we're not referring to them by their actual names based on what I saw in Cortys's intro page here ;) ) will no longer let you read purchased comic books on c .... c's parent company the big a (hint, Jeff Bezos is the big a's overlord and master ;) ) will be basically absorbing c completely such that you will only be able to read c purchases on kindle - that is you won't be able to read c purchased comics on c anymore.

Cortys, I know this is one of those "what if" situations where you have to wait and see what happens when this occurs but.. by any chance do you think you'd have time to develop a similar program that lets us download comic books from kindle? Or maybe this existing program could be "tweaked" such that it would work on kindle?

If not I totally get it and I want to say thank you for this wonderful program that let us download our comic book purchases from c for so long :) .. I just hate losing that ability to download and take ownership of the comics that I paid for :(

If anyone else has any insight other than Cortys (in case Cortys is too busy to see this - totally understandable) please I'm all ears ! :)

[ElleKayEm]

For the big river, there's DeDRM.

[Cortys]

@Andrepartthree Hi! Thanks for bringing this up; I wasn't aware since I don't really read comics atm.

I just took a glance at the "new" web reader. Bad news first: Unfortunately, supporting it would pretty much require a rewrite of the extension. The good news is that the "DRM" in the new reader also seems to be fairly easy, if not even easier, to circumvent. So, in principle at least, it should be possible to keep the project going.

However, right now I don't really have the time and motivation to do the necessary work. I'll keep this open as a reminder nonetheless. PRs are, of course, also always welcome. 😉

@ElleKayEm I have not tried using DeDRM with comics yet, but if it works well this might actually be the best solution. Should this extension stop working, I'll then at least add a link to the README.

[Lrs121]

DeDRM is an excellent project and does work for the content I own; limited as it may be. Be sure to use noDRM's fork as the original project is abandoned.

[Andrepartthree]

Thanks to everyone who replied :) .. I did look up DeDRM - it looks like a lot of work :( especially compared to how easy Cortys made it with his chrome plug in, I guess I've been spoiled now :) ... if that's the only option available I will go with it of course... my research shows (I could be wrong?) that you have to downgrade to an older version of kindle and make sure amazon doesn't force an upgrade to a newer version ... it also looks like it works together with calibre ... would it be safe to say that the only option using DeDRM/calibre is to convert the comic book into a pdf? (which I can definitely do I've read comics in pdf format before without any issues :) ) .. or would converting it into say a cbz format be possible?

[ElleKayEm]

There's a method of getting decryptable files from the latest Kindle for PC. Yes, DeDRM works with calibre, and calibre can handle CBZ format. But I haven't tried converting Amazon comics myself so no idea how well that would work.

[Andrepartthree]

That's good to know thanks ElleKayEM :) ... looks like I have my research cut out for me :) ... and thanks again to everyone who responded I don't mean to sound ungrateful with all my complaining :P ... I blame Cortys for making such an awesome easy to use program now I'm thoroughly spoiled :P ... but again thanks everyone :)

[Andrepartthree]

Actually it was easier than I thought sorry for all the whining :) .. I'm not seeing an option to convert an amazon kindle comic purchase to cbz but that's okay pdf works fine for me as far as being able to make the comic book page as big or as small as I would like (effectively being able to "zoom in" if you will, just change from 100 percent to 150 percent or what not on the view window in adobe reader).

Hopefully I will be able to post a link here

https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/

if you scroll down to " Installing the DeDRM plugin for calibre " it more or less walks you through it, had to puzzle and guess through the instructions a bit as they varied from what I'm guessing is the most recent version of calibre but there's enough info there for someone to figure it out.

Here's where the big a gets annoying (and fiendishly clever).. they don't list the name of the comic by it's, well, name.. so for example if you go into your kindle content in your my documents folder in Windows to give an example you'll be greeted with the name " B07V6N9PBC_EBOK.azw " instead of calling it "Vampirella number zero".

Fortunately if you look at the date the file was created that makes it easier... you just look for the file that was created the same day you downloaded it to kindle ... but first apparently you need to sign into your " big a " account, look for "content and devices" under the "my account" drop down menu, click on "books" in digital content, check off the checkmark box next to the book you want, select "deliver to device", follow the prompts to send it to your PC, and it will appear in that kindle content folder I mentioned earlier.

Apologies for the blow by blow explanation here but I was thinking it would help newbies like me who are intimidated by doing something like this, much easier than it initially appears to be :) ..

[ElleKayEm]

That first part of the file name is its ASIN which is listed on its Amazon page. Current development on DeDRM is here: https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools

[Andrepartthree]

Thanks ElleKayEM that ASIN info is super helpful making a note of that :) ...

additional note - even after following the steps I mentioned above as far as logging into the big a account you may still need to right click on the comic in your kindle library and select the "download" option.

Also as you might be able to guess from what I mentioned above you're looking for an "azw" file.

Also unfortunately the quality of the results varies :( ... for a single comic it did a beautiful job of converting it to a pdf file... for larger comics like say a graphic novel (in this case a collection of five comics together in a single volume) not so great... calibre inserted a blank page after each comic book page and it looks slightly distorted when viewed as a pdf.... results are somewhat better if you view it within calibre itself as an ebook reader in terms of removing the distortion of the scanned comic book panels, but you still have that blank white page appearing after every comic book page. This happened even after I went to the link ElleKayEm helpfully provided and installed what I think is the most recent version into calibre (thanks for that ElleKayEm :) )

(further edit and update - tried it on a second graphic novel , about six comics or so bundled together - no blank white pages inserted but still slightly distorted and stretched out lengthwise compared to the original far as the comic book panels )

So unfortunately still not as good as Cortys's wonderful program, at least in my experience :( ...

[ElleKayEm]

DeDRM just removes the DRM on import to calibre. Conversion may involve a learning curve -- calibre has a lot of things to tweek. And depending on what Amazon format you're dealing with there may be other plugins that can help.

[Andrepartthree]

ElleKayEm my apologies I just clicked on your profile and saw that you contributed to the same DeDRM project I was whining about... so my apologies no offense intended ! And I do get what you're saying, Calibre has problems with conversion itself ... did some google research there are others who report stretched images and tinkering they had to do .. but from what I can see looks like the tinkering doesn't always work, I tried one tactic recommended on the Calibre forum page with no luck... so looks like Jeff Bezos wins I'm stuck with amazon kindle come February when they roll out the changes :( (cripes isn't the big a ... well BIG and powerful enough to begin with? Why couldn't they just leave comixology alone as is?) ... but again ElleKayEm thanks again so much for all the comments and advice and attention :)

[ElleKayEm]

No worries. I prefer Cortys's program for this myself. I suspect Amazon may be responding to publishers' paranoia about digital rights.

I really haven't messed with conversion myself, but I'd think there'd be a way to preserve original aspect ratio. If nothing else, you might be able to pull the page scans out and zip them up into a cbz once DRM is removed. The demand for some solution will be bigger than ever. So hopefully someone will figure it out and share.

[saltmanz]

So I've been using Calibre and DeDRM for a long time. Not too long ago, I tried playing around with using it to convert Kindle comics (downloaded as AZW3s) to CBZs or PDFs, but had no luck. (The convert to PDF option is right there, but never works out: I always get a big white border around everything, and it takes forever to run.)

I may have just figured something out, though: I used Calibre to convert to a ZIP, then when you open up the ZIP directory, there's a folder ending in "_files". Opening that up gives an images folder containing all of the pages except the cover, which is in the _files folder. Extract the cover (rename it 00000.jpeg) along with all the images, then zip them all back up and rename them to a CBZ, and you're done!(*)

Compared to a DRM-free download (from IDW) the image sizes are smaller (looks like Am**** tops out at 1920px, where IDW downloads from Co******** are 3056px) however, that stills put them larger than what the plugin gave me (1650px) and they're crisp and clean without any of the muddiness from JPG compression.(**)

I want to play with this a little more, but it looks like I may have found my solution.

(*) See my comment below: it's sufficient to just rename the converted ZIP to CBZ if you don't mind some extraneous files.
(**) After doing a lot of these conversions, there are still some quality tradeoffs, but I'd say the image quality is more-or-less equivalent to the downloader extension. I've seen some issues look much sharper and cleaner, and I've some look a little muddier. It likely all depends on whatever method Amazon used to compress the images for each individual comic.

[Andrepartthree]

Thanks so much for this Saltmanz this worked for me :) ... as you said the image sizes are smaller which means the resolution and how "nice" the individual comic book pages look in a comic book reader program is "lower" and hopefully someone will come up with a co***** style program for kindle similar to Cortys's that can do a similar scan at the higher resolution but - that's not a complaint by any means I'm just grateful you brainstormed something that works so at least we have an option as opposed to being forced into using kindle whenever we want to read our comic purchases ... again thank you ! :)