Best Source for Chinese Ebooks?

[Shelley]

@timseb If you scroll up a bit you will come across a post from me starting with - Try Project Gutenberg.

 

Have a read of that post. There are hundreds of free ebooks, lots in traditional Chinese characters.

[Insectosaurus]

11 minutes ago, Shelley said:

Have a read of that post. There are hundreds of free ebooks, lots in traditional Chinese characters.

 

Thanks, I saw that. The books I'm after are much more modern and the requests very specific since it's about specific books I have in my shelf. ☺️

[Geiko]

Did you have a look at Haodoo? Books are not txt but ePub/mobi, but you can convert them.

[ZhangKaiRong]

Has anyone tried purchasing books from Amazon.cn with a non-Chinese IP address recently? Back in 2014 when I bought a Kindle for my girlfriend, I linked my amazon.cn account to it, so we can read Chinese ebooks, but our account has been flagged by the customer service and was temporarily banned, the reason being that the Kindle's IP address was located in Europe and not in China. After some e-mail exchanges, my account has been unbanned, but to be on the safe side, going forward we only purchased books and connected the Kindle to WiFi when we were in China. This year all China-based trainings and business trips were cancelled due to Covid, so this also means that no new books in our library. Would it be safe to buy books now from Europe or would it cause any issues? Does the same apply for downloading books directly from amazon.cn and transferring it to Kindle?

[Luxi]

27 minutes ago, ZhangKaiRong said:

purchasing books from Amazon.cn with a non-Chinese IP address recently?

 

The limitations are imposed to Amazon by the country/area that licenses them to sell Kindle ebooks in their area. Amazon has little choice, if caught breaking the rules they may stand to lose their license to sell Kindle books and devices in China. They're probably being more careful than ever now. They allow customers to temporarily buy from outside their residence country when travelling, but, as you noticed, in the current situation it'd be difficult to use that trick more than once. 

 

Some years ago, a Norwegian woman was banned from Amazon for life for doing just that (she was allowed back in months later, I think). I wouldn't risk it, but living in a rural area I am entirely dependent on an Amazon account.

 

There are alternatives to Amazon for ebooks, and you can still find plenty of txt or pdf to upload to your Kindle (don't take this for granted!!!). Besides which, Amazon.com also sells Chinese kindle ebooks now, Amazon.co.uk is starting too, prices used to be outrageous but lately I've seen a few more coming down to match local UK ebook prices. If you still want Chinese prices for Chinese ebooks, there are alternatives (see above) and if you can use a tablet to read, you may discover that the alternative readers that other ebook sellers give you are now easier and faster to use than Amazon's Kindle.

 

[jannesan]

4 hours ago, ZhangKaiRong said:

Has anyone tried purchasing books from Amazon.cn with a non-Chinese IP address recently?

 

I have bought 4 books on amazon.cn over the past year, all from the Netherlands.

The account is not linked with a Kindle device, I download the books through an old Kindle for Mac client to circumvent DRM and then convert to epub.

So far it has all worked out for me.

[jiaojiao87]

I haven't seen others recommend this, but I just use 微信读书.  If you haven't heard of it, it's kinda like a social version of Kindle Unlimited.  It's essentially free, as long as you have other friends using the app, or ridiculously cheap if you don't. You can also access and read books on your Kindle, which I enjoy using to read.  Selection of books is pretty decent, but not all-encompassing.

[Luxi]

Amazon seems to be slowly but surely adding at least part of Amazon.cn Chinese ebooks stock to Amazon.com and other regional branches, including UK. It is work in progress and not very well organised yet, but the kindle eBooks are available to purchase and download legally. You may be able to find them searching by title in Chinese or by author, if chaotic transliterations allow --- for instance, Lao She may be listed as Se Lao, and several alternative variants, and hard to find as 老舍.

 

Alternatively, you may browse the Amazon.com Kindle store, which seems to be the better organised using any of these search terms:

 

Chinese eBooks / Chinese (Simplified) eBooks / Chinese (Traditional) eBooks

For instance, you get 400 pages searching for :

https://www.amazon.com/s?bbn=154606011&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A!133141011%2Cn%3A154606011%2Cp_n_feature_nine_browse-bin%3A18327576011&dc&fst=as%3Aoff&qid=1597088836&rnid=3291435011&ref=lp_154606011_nr_p_n_feature_nine_bro_4

 

The UK Kindle store gives 20 pages for the same search with lots of textbooks and all sorts of extraneous items listed where they shouldn't be, but it doesn't mean that the book you're after isn't there. If you have selected the Kindle ebook you want in Amazon.com, and you'll now get a link for that ebook in your regional Amazon in a message like this (not sure if this needs having a separate account for Amazon.com):

 

"Kindle titles are available for UK customers on Amazon.co.uk.
Continue shopping on the Kindle Store at Amazon.co.uk."

 

Prices are generally higher than prices for the same ebooks in China, but not as absurdly expensive as they used to be and they are now comparable to ebooks published in Europe or US (presumably the result of agreements between Amazon and Chinese publishers/authors).  There are some bargains too. I just bought 苏东坡全集 , all 1730 pages of it, for £0.99. Bargains are mainly on classics that are out of copyright and actually free online, but it's nice to have them in the kindle too.

 

[roddy]

Just back from the Promised Land, folks, with thanks to @markhavemann

Douban (豆瓣) - register with UK mobile, yes
Pay with a foreign card, yes, via Apple app, haven't tried any other routes
Convert to .mobi and by extension other formats, yes, with the Chrome extension in the above linked topic. 

[Guest realmayo]

On 8/10/2020 at 9:00 PM, Luxi said:

Amazon seems to be slowly but surely adding at least part of Amazon.cn Chinese ebooks stock to Amazon.com and other regional branches, including UK.

 

Excellent! This https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/digital-text/4222358031/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_digital-text goes to the top 100 Chinese kindle bestellers on co.uk.

[Luxi]

On 8/1/2020 at 4:38 AM, jiaojiao87 said:

I just use 微信读书.  If you haven't heard of it, it's kinda like a social version of Kindle Unlimited. 

 

Thank you @jiaojiao87 ! I tried it this morning, it's really impressive. It's truly multi-platform so you can take your books with you wherever you go, I signed in scanning with my WeChat account and downloading the Reader app (from the Apple / Android Store), it then required me to manage my library from my iPhone, but then I can read the books on the desktop or any other device where I have installed the reader. It didn't ask me to share with WeChat friends, books and subscriptions are paid via the Apple / Android / Google Play store. I have to explore more and read their long T&C but I think it may be possible to download one's books in epub format. They are offering a free trial of their VIP card, I'm quite sure I'll be unable to resist their annual card (£32 for a year of limitless reading, and if I'm not mistaken you get to keep the books. Not a bad deal when facing a long lockdown at home.

 

The web address (much better for browsing than one's phone) is: https://weread.qq.com/

 

The selection for modern Chinese literature seems as good as any, I was very happy to find some books by Yan Lianke I wanted to read (though not his best novels) , but experienced  cold shudders when I looked for Sheng Keyi (盛可以) and it was as she had never existed. 

[rickardg]

Since I am tired of scouring the underbelly of the internet for badly OCR:ed e-books I wonder if there are an e-book store with downloadable files (traditional or simplified) and decent selection accessible from Europe?

 

My goal is to use some combination of calibre/Chinese Text Analyser/Pleco/Lingq to organize my reading and I'd like to have the option use an e-ink reader because I have the attention span of a goldfish. 

 

 

[Guest realmayo]

Amazon, as mentioned above?

[rickardg]

On 11/7/2021 at 10:17 AM, realmayo said:

Amazon, as mentioned above?

Did I mention I have the attention span of a goldfish? ?

 

Seriously, I'm sure I'm missing something, but the selection on amazon does not seem to be particularly good. I just made a very unscientific test and found no Zhang Ailing, no Lu Yao, no Sheng Congwen, no Qian Zhongshu, no Wang Shuo, no Yan Lianke and that's just of the top of my head. Admittedly I just spent a few minutes searching but it is consistent with my previous experiences.  The underbelly seems better organised to me...

 

I'd love to be proven wrong, though; Amazon is an evil company but really convenient... ? Perhaps I'm not searching properly?

[Guest realmayo]

The Chinese amazon site has plenty, but it may be challenging setting up an account from outside China (you may need to provide a Chinese postal address, it might also be tricky registering an outside-China credit card). It used to be easier.

 

There is also the piracy route which these forums rightly disapprove of but can be surprisingly helpful if there's no other way of getting hold of a text outside China.

[wibr]

Has anyone bought ebooks from books.com.tw?

 

In their FAQ it says:

Quote

Currently, we don't provide download and export services for the book's digital files. Any e-book/e-magazine purchased from Books.com.tw website can only be read by using Books.com.tw e-book  App or Books.com.tw e-bookshelf.

 

Is that true?

 

Edit: some ruby script to download as epub, haven't tried it yet: https://github.com/lostfilm/books-dl

[Jan Finster]

Douban!

 

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/60437-chrome-extension-to-download-douban-豆瓣-e-books-that-youve-bought/#comment-485272

[Thaddeus Collins]

I bought a few books on Chinese Amazon without VPN.

[MoonIvy]

China now has lots of easily accessible (sometimes completely free) services and apps for reading digital books, both published novels and complete + ongoing webnovels. Check this page for more details https://heavenlypath.notion.site/Native-Digital-Books-and-Webnovel-Services-47bda15631ed466ca04c75aaa1edf54b

 

We're currently working on a new page about Android eReaders that works with all these Chinese apps, for those that are interested in a paper-like experience.

[Phil0110]

Thanks! I'm thinking about ebooks, it's more comfortable for me.