Mordax et al

My mom’s coworker recently got a Sony ebook, and I offered to teach her how to get pirated books. She bit, so I wrote up this tutorial. Basically all it assumes is that you know how to use the internet at a 5th grade level.

The best site I know of for finding ebooks for direct dowload is filecrop.com. It’s basically a search engine for rapidshare and megaupload. (If you don’t know, rapidshare and megaupload are the most popular of what are known as “file hosts” basically, people upload their files, and then others can download them directly from the server)

When you go to filecrop, you want to search for the title and/or author of the book. When the results are displayed, the link to the file will be on the left and the place where filecrop found the file will be on the right. The link on the left is usually the only link you need. Just click it, it will make you go through a CAPTCHA test to make sure you’re human, and then rapidshare/megaupload will display a short timer. After the timer is up, a link will appear. Click the link and your download will start! Easy! (These timers are in place just to get people to buy paid membership to the file host sites).

Usually when you download an ebook it will be in RAR format. That’s a compressed format you can open with WinZIP or if you use a mac, UNRARX. After you unzip in you’ll have the actual files. Sony ebooks can display PDFs, LRFs, epubs, and rtfs. (It can also read word files provided you save them as rtfs). However, be aware that it can only increase/decrease the size on text PDFs. A scanned image PDF won’t display large enough to read, unfortunately, but you won’t run up against these very often.

Sometimes when you try to unzip a file it will tell you it is password protected. You have 2 options. 1, go to the site where filecrop extracted the file. These are usually message boards with lists of ebooks for download. If you look at the list, they will have the password. If you don’t feel like doing it, just find a different copy of the file from your search.

If you find a file that’s in a format your ebook can’t read you can use a program called Calibre http://calibre-ebook.com/ to change the format. You can also use this program to move the books onto your ereader. Its simple, and user friendly. If you have any trouble working it, the help files are great.

Misc. Tips
-Megaupload files download much faster than rapidshares
-Check the file size before you download. If a file is broken up into chunks, its likely an audiobook rather than an ebook
-you can use filecrop to find music (usually full albums rather than single songs)
-if all this sounds too complicated, just email me books you want and I’ll try to scrounge up the links.

Happy reading!