Best Source for Chinese Ebooks?

[realmayo]

For what it's worth, I recently tried and failed to set up an Alipay account using non-chinese cards. 

[Luxi]

Alipay stopped working for me last year after some new legislation came into effect. I'm sure there's still a way to use an Alipay account from abroad with a smart phone as a second ID verification, but when I tried it didn't work - perhaps it was going slow at the time, but I never pursued the matter. 

I've been using the Apple store to buy my ebooks in Duokan, Douban and Dang-dang without any problems (so far). I purchase credit vouchers in advance from the Apple store through the e-tailer's app in my device, and use that credit to buy the e-books. You get penalised with a low exchange rate, a fee and UK sales' tax, but the books are still ridiculously cheap and Apple will help if you have any problems with a transaction. At one time, Douban had a link that allowed one to use PayPal, but it seems to have disappeared now.

I don't have any suitable Android device, but these e-tailers have Android apps, and at least Duokan (小米小说) and Douban apps can be downloaded from Google Play, so there may be a way to use the apps to buy credit vouchers from outside China too. Perhaps someone here knows?

This is important: you need to register with each e-tailer so they can identify you and keep your credit, books and notes in sync. I use the Xiaomi account in Duokan (Xiaomi actually owns Duokan) since I already had it, in Douban and Dang-dang I signed up with my Weibo ID to avoid having to create yet more passwords.

 

 

 

 

[LiMo]

That sounds about right, guys. I'm at my wits end. I've spent the past few days signing up to so many websites: I have a basically useless amazon.cn account, an Alipay, and a Taobao account, now Xiaomi as well. What's annoying is that it's been fairly straight forward compared to a couple of years ago and it all seemed as though it would work until it came to the payment options. What's worse is that I seem to have missed a golden window. The options were definitely there at some point, the FAQ pages on Alipay have many different articles for all the aspects of using a foreign card and they say you can use the mobile app too. But now it seems they're all dead ends (I tried the mobile thing yesterday).

 

I suppose next I'll try Douban and Dang-dang, maybe try and get an apple account. I have the Duokan app on my Android phone but there aren't any accessible payment options there. Just Alipay, "Xiaomi pay," and Wechat, none of which accept foreign cards.

 

(Maybe I should just give in and get an iPhone, at least then life will be slightly easier with this whole Chinese hobby )

 

[hejmeddig]

If you have a Chinese friend that you trust, you could transfer money to their bank card using something like Xoom and then have your friend send you money to your WeChat wallet. I transferred 1000 RMB to my friend's bank card and had them transfer me 900 RMB to WeChat wallet, this way I can still buy books or VIP service for music, etc...

[Luxi]

@LiMo, that sounds very sad and terribly frustrating! Hopefully there is a workaround somewhere, I'm sure people are still buying stuff from Taobao and others. Alipay may have dismissed the bookstores as a source of profits and not bothered. I hate to suggest contacting Alipay Support since I have yet to receive relevant answers to my questions from Chinese Support sites, they don't understand the questions and insist on answering as if I lived in China anyway. 

I was able to buy a credit voucher in Amazon cn, it can be used for paper books but not for ebooks. 

You could look for and older iPhone or iPad in EBay, just make sure that the operating system is compatible with the apps, also Retina Display makes a difference for reading. My iPad mini is an older model that I bought reasonably cheap. I think I've already made up for the cost with all the books I got from Duokan. 

Are there any Chinese Android tablets that don't go through Google Play? They may have their own setup for people outside China to buy apps and media.

[LiMo]

@hejmeddig That's an idea, I might try it once I've exhausted my other options.

 

@Luxi

At one point I downloaded some sort of Chinese app-store on my phone so maybe I'll look into that again. Otherwise I'll see what I can do with the apple thing.

[Luxi]

Keep on trying @LiMo , let's hope it's only a temporary situation though it has been going on for several months now. 

Do you know you can still 'buy' Duokan's free e-books? They have many in the 'Promotions' section (精品免费). If you're interested in older stuff, buried under several pages of free school and home books, they have loads of older literature, classics, history and poetry books. They publish a series of free e-books called 多看文库 that I would have paid a lot of money for in the past, if I'd been able to find them in Amazon UK. They're very good quality with annotations and even human voiced audio for some of the poetry books. If you're interested in Qing Dynasty novels like "The Scholars" (儒林外史) or "The Travels of Lao Can" (老残游a), that is a place to look into first.

[大块头]

Douban Books used to have a Paypal account balance recharge option, but I'm not seeing it anymore...

[Gracious]

益书网

www.kindbook.cn

I recently found the website, which was pretty good. You can choose equb,PDF ,mobi etc. It seems that the ebook can also be sent to your kindle but I haven't tried this yet.

[books]

- Found this site two weeks ago, haodoo.net is a free book site, tons of Chinese book (not the newest titles but many fun books to read).  I downloaded many to Kindle.

- I joined Douban about two weeks also, the PayPal option still available (min 100 chinese dollars to use the PayPal option).  By the way, just check the PayPal option few minutes ago, still there.  The platform to read: Apple devices and android devices, no Kindle (I tried and tried, there is no way to do it)

- Joined DouKan also, via iPod(yes iPod).  There is no other ways to pay for book.....only if you have a Chinese credit card or bank account or know someone who can do it for you if you don't have a iTune account.  Android phone works also, I believe the phone will ask to establishing payment method when adding the DouKan app.  Reading platforms are Apple devices, android devices and KINDLE!  However, I haven't figured it out how to download books to Kindle, so any help ?

 

- Tried Dang Dang, I think the only way to register is via Apple phone, iPad or iPod not MacBook Air or Pro.  Got Dang Dang on iPod also, not sure is the correct app because of tons of ads showing up.

 

I have iPhone, Android phone, iPod and Kindle.  Use iPhone for work so don't want to use it to read book, so my option are Android phone, iPod and Kindle.  I have books in three different devices.....my eyeballs hurts just thinking of reading via iPod....   

 

[books]

@Luxi, do you mind letting me know how do you install the Kindle software to Kindle from DuoKan?  I spent 2+ hours downloading some kind of software from DuoKan into my MacBook; but I have no idea to get it into Kindle.  I moved the files to Kindle, that is it.  

 

thanks.

[大块头]

20 hours ago, books said:

- I joined Douban about two weeks also, the PayPal option still available (min 100 chinese dollars to use the PayPal option).  By the way, just check the PayPal option few minutes ago, still there.

 

Really, where? I guess they changed the website around. I looked around for longer than I care to admit and I didn't see it again...

 

Besides the nice glare-free display, is there some other advantage to reading Chinese books on the Kindle? I have one, but I've always read Chinese stuff with my phone because it's much easier to look stuff up with Pleco.

[LiMo]

@Luxi 
Thanks I'll check those out. I'm still in the early days when it comes to reading long form books in Chinese, but I'll give have to give them a shot eventually.

 

@大块头

I've actually recently signed up to Douban and I can confirm that as of yesterday there was a paypal link as described. It may well be that the website is poorly designed. I haven't bought anything yet but the only way I got to that link was by attempting to buy an ebook, then clicking on the very small button beneath the Alipay/Wechat things called 充值. I'm then taken to a screen which shows my current account balance, and there's a brown button next to the balance displayed called 人民币账户充值, after clicking on that you get the option for the top ups and paypal is there alongside Alipay and Wechat.

 

[Luxi]

45 minutes ago, 大块头 said:

 

21 hours ago, books said:

- I joined Douban about two weeks also, the PayPal option still available (min 100 chinese dollars to use the PayPal option).  By the way, just check the PayPal option few minutes ago, still there.

 

Really, where? I guess they changed the website around. I looked around for longer than I care to admit and I didn't see it again...

 

FOUND the way! The link to PayPal is there but you have to make it appear. Here's how I did it (not saying it's the only way, but after searching all over, this is the only way I could find):

- Dumped a book in my shopping cart.

- Went to the shopping cart window. Clicked on 'Settlement', a window pops-up

- The new Window only has obvious links to Alipay and Wechat, but below those 2 big labels there is a discrete line of links in small print, with a 'Recharge' ( 去充值) link on the right。Click it.

- Another window opens, with a button saying 'RMB recharge' (in Chinese, of course). Click it.

- Yet another pop-up Window, this tie with 3 buttons: Alipay, Wechat and...PayPal. But the PayPal button is rather faint and not active...suspense mounts...

- Above those buttons there are small radio buttons next to various amounts of RMB...you select 100 RMB or over and, lo and behold, the PayPal link light up and welcomes you with open arms !!! 

 

There you are. That's how it can be done...Phew

 

I am not sure how good the set-up is to keep you linked to your credit, you definitely must be sure that you're logged in Douban and your account is recognised. It may be better to buy a cart-full of books at a time and use up as much of your credit as you can, in case the balance gets lost in translation. I haven't had any problems with Duokan and the Apple store, but I must admit I haven't been monitoring all that closely. 

 

...You beat me to it LiMo, but I wrote a lot more and nicer too 

 

[Luxi]

22 hours ago, books said:

how do you install the Kindle software to Kindle from DuoKan?  

I used the method that I posted on p.5 of this thread on June 13, 2015. It worked at the time, and I still have the software installed in an old Kindle, but since then Duokan changed the method, my Duokan books and links recently disappeared - Edited to say but now appeared again, must have been a glitch in the system, one gets paranoid dealing with the Great Firewall.

Duokan may not want to have a 'dual-system' for their software and bookstore in a same device with Amazon's or other (I have reasons to think it's the result of further tightening of Internet control). So now, it looks like you have to remove the Amazon software and links before you can install Duokan's. I haven't tried because other than the lack of glare to read outside, the Kindle reader is way inferior to Duokan's combined with Pleko. Among other things, I've been unable to find a Chinese dictionary to use with Duokan's Kindle reader (there used to be, but it disappeared)

@books, I think you may just be missing the last steps to install the Duokan software. Since it is still working, try to install it following the instructions in this page: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Duokan_2014_Installation Particularly this :

Quote

 Connect the Kindle to the PC with the USB cable.
   Unzip the downloaded file to a known location
   Copy the DK_System folder inside the extracted folder to the root folder of your kindle (/mnt/us/)
   Open the "KindlePaperwhite_°²×°·¨" folder and copy the update_kpw_$(cd .. etc ).bin file to the root directory
   Then choose update you kindle (home, menu, settings, menu, Update your kindle)

Reboot your Kindle after updating and see if Duokan appears in it. I never installed KUAL or rooted the Kindle, it just worked straight away.

[LiMo]

@Luxi

Haha, I know. I was quite bitter about for a second there, but I decided to be a grown up and upvote the offending comment regardless 

[Luxi]

...you know how it is @LiMo, you type for about 20 minutes, look up to post the message and someone has posted the same tip barely a minute earlier....

 

[LiMo]

Indeed indeed. Chinese forums is a hard life. 

[Luxi]

On 5/4/2017 at 5:48 PM, books said:

 

I have iPhone, Android phone, iPod and Kindle.  Use iPhone for work so don't want to use it to read book, so my option are Android phone, iPod and Kindle.  I have books in three different devices.....my eyeballs hurts just thinking of reading via iPod....  

 

You only need to use the Apple device to be able to pay via the Apple apps store. You can then read the books on any other device where you can install their reading app and log into your account, including your PC (even from Apple to an Android device)  It is all synchronised: your books, notes, bookmarks. It's like with Amazon between the Kindle and the Kindle app for PC. Unfortunately, only Duokan has software that allows you to use a  Kindle. 

 

[books]

@Luxi, thanks for the instruction. I am stuck at "Root", don't know where to find it, haha.  I don't see the directory at all (usb connects to Kindle), not sure it is because I got the most current paperwhite or I am using Mac.  It is easier to side load Kodi to Fire TV than "root" the Kindle (I am pretty much technically challenged at this point, still new to Kindle).  I need to find some articles on how to jailbreak kindle 2017....LOL.