Read all your ebooks on your tablet

When you buy a paperback book, it’s yours to read anywhere. Kat Orphanides reveals how to get this kind of freedom with heavily restricted ebooks

If you’ve read the news lately, you’d be forgiven for wondering what rights – if any – you have over the digital media you buy.

In October 2014, UK citizens were finally allowed to copy their MP3S, CDS, DVDS and ebooks – but just eight months later in June 2015, the law was rolled back. Now we’re not even sure if we can rip a CD for itunes.

Amazon may seem restrictive with its proprietary formats, but its range of apps makes it easy to read ebooks legally on almost any tablet, phone or PC.

Read Kindle ebooks on your tablet

First, let’s examine one key reason why you may want to read ebooks on your tablet: the quality of illustrations. Simple drawings, tables and charts look much better on a tablet screen than on a Kindle, while intricately drawn comics don’t work on the latter at all. Take the Asterix comic books, which we loved when young and still dip into now. The Kindle’s E-ink can’t display these, but they look great on an ipad or Android tablet (see screenshot right).

Amazon wants us to look at these pictures, which is part of the reason why it offers a Kindle app for Android ( www. snipca.com/17677), IOS ( www.snipca.com/17678) and Windows Phone ( www.snipca.com/17739 - Windows 10 required). All these apps support Kindle-format ebooks, whether they have illustrations or not.

You can also read online using the Kindle Cloud Reader ( https://read. amazon.com; free account required) and by downloading the free ‘Kindle for PC’ program ( www.amazon.co.uk/kindleforpc). Most of these apps (IOS aside) let you carry on reading where you left off, look up words, read excerpts before you buy, and read newspapers and magazines.

Beat Apple’s unfair restrictions

While the Android version of the Kindle app lets you buy ebooks from Amazon, Apple won’t allow you to do the same thing. You can search for Kindle ebooks and add them to your IOS wishlist, but you can’t actually buy them.

The solution is to use Apple’s Safari browser ( www.apple.com/uk/ safari), which is pre-installed in IOS. Go to Amazon’s UK website ( www.amazon.co.uk) using Safari, log in, find the book you want, select it for delivery to your ipad and buy it using 1-Click payment, which is the default. Now go back to the Kindle app, and your book should be waiting for you.

If it hasn’t downloaded automatically, first make sure you’re connected to the internet, then at the bottom of the screen tap the tab marked Cloud and re-sync your library. The book should appear, ready for you to download and read.

Sync ebooks between devices

One of the best things about the Kindle is that it lets you sync your progress through a book on all your devices. You could finish reading your Kindle in bed at night, then

www.snipca.com/ 17684.