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Killer content for my Kindle - The Economist with no need for an iPad - yipeee!

I admit it, I was jealous of someone's iPad. They were reading The Economist, for free, as they were a print subscriber.

I'm a print subscriber too. However, I don't have an iPad or an iPhone, just an Android phone and a Kindle. As soon as I got the Kindle, I looked up how to get The Economist on it. £9.99 per month. Hmmm, twice as much again as my print subscription and I wanted to maintain the print subscription. No way Amazon.

Fortunately some nice person wrote similar comments on The Economist subscription for Kindle, but added a very important additional nugget of information. There is no need for a Kindle subscription, as a print subscriber you can just use the free Calibre e-book creation tool.

So I downloaded it, searched for The Economist online 'recipe', entered my login name and password (part of my print subscription) and off went Calibre to screen scrape every single article from the Christmas 2010 issue into a .mobi file, complete with front cover image and full indexing.

It's wonderful. Truely wonderful. Every section individually indexed, with each article separated and all inline images preserved. It even feels wonderfully retro, back to the days when The Economist only used black and white images.

So many thanks to the guys behind Calibre and The Economist recipe creators. Finally, I have the essential Kindle content that it's been crying out for.

UPDATE 6 January 2011

At first I thought I could only ever view the latest edition of The Economist that I had copied over.  Even though they were hand copied into differently named folders under documents only the latest edition appeared in the main list. Silly me, if you go to the end of the list of documents there is a Periodicals folder, and in there are all the previous editions of The Economist. It just gets better.

Print | posted on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 2:16 AM

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# re: Killer content for my Kindle - The Economist with no need for an iPad - yipeee!

left by Dave at 12/28/2010 4:18 AM Gravatar
You can get kindle free for your droid as well so you don't have to lug another device around.

# re: Killer content for my Kindle - The Economist with no need for an iPad - yipeee!

left by Liam Westley at 12/28/2010 5:37 AM Gravatar
@Dave Indeed you can get Kindle for Android, but it will only display books purchased from Amazon, so you cannot just side load content. There are other e-readers in the marketplace which would do the job, but I prefer the larger screen on the Kindle and the better reading experience of eInk.

# re: Killer content for my Kindle - The Economist with no need for an iPad - yipeee!

left by Katerina at 7/26/2011 11:37 PM Gravatar
I am trying to use the same trick to get The Economist on my Kindle but something is not working. At which stage do they ask you for your login details?

# re: Killer content for my Kindle - The Economist with no need for an iPad - yipeee!

left by reader at 7/29/2011 10:53 PM Gravatar
Hi, very useful - I also subscribe to both the FT and the economist and I was unhappy to find out that you would still have to pay for a separate Kindle subscription. For the FT, there is still no way around, but getting the Economist would already help a lot. I have two further questions:
1) I could not figure out what you mean by searching for the Economist recipe - how would you do that? I have never used the Calibre software
2) Do you have to manually transfer an issue of the Economist or is there a way to tell calibre to download from the economist every week and send on to kindle?
Many thanks!

# re: Killer content for my Kindle - The Economist with no need for an iPad - yipeee!

left by reader at 7/30/2011 12:40 AM Gravatar
Hello, I fixed all issues with the help of an online forum - what a wonderful suggestion. Made my day. Many thanks

# re: Killer content for my Kindle - The Economist with no need for an iPad - yipeee!

left by Andy at 8/21/2011 11:10 AM Gravatar
Hello. I cannot understand how you can access past editions of The Economist. I am a print subscriber to The Economist. I just purchased a Kindle. I was able to download the latest issue of The Economist to my Kindle.
How do you download past issues?
In your Update, dated Jan. 6, 2011, you refer to a "main list," "list of document," and "Periodicals folder." Where do you find the Periodicals folder? Would you please explain to me how to access past issues.
The developer of Calibre says that you can download only the latest issue of a magazine. Thank you for your help.

# re: Killer content for my Kindle - The Economist with no need for an iPad - yipeee!

left by Liam Westley at 8/23/2011 2:22 AM Gravatar
@Andy,

At first, when downloading the latest issue I believed that the past issues were overwritten.

The update was added when I discovered that the previous editions had been preserved in the 'Periodicals folder'. These past editions were downloaded one week at a time though, not retrieved by Calibre from some back issue service.

I have noticed that the new Android application does allow past issues to be downloaded though.

# re: Killer content for my Kindle - The Economist with no need for an iPad - yipeee!

left by Robin at 12/25/2011 10:43 AM Gravatar
I still don't understand the answers to any of the questions asked by previous commenters. I am a print subscriber and have just purchased a Kindle. I downloaded Calibre, searched for and found the Economist (q1: is this the same as searching for a 'recipe'?). It downloaded and "emailed" to the gmail address I had given it and also made sure that my Kindle was set up with.

However, at no point was I asked for an Economist.com log in. Also, the content hasn;t appeared yet in my Kindle "Personal Documents", which is, I believe, where I am supposed to find it...

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

# re: Killer content for my Kindle - The Economist with no need for an iPad - yipeee!

left by Liam Westley at 12/27/2011 10:02 AM Gravatar
@Robin,

I actually installed Calibre on a new laptop just before Christmas and discovered there was no need for a user name and password which surprised me.

As for placing the converted Economist mobi format file onto the Kindle, I just plug the Kindle into a USB port and let Calibre sync the item across.

If I actually need to get hold of the mobi file I found that if I highlight the converted item, and select Open Containing Folder I can then access the converted files directly.

Hope that helps

Liam

# re: Killer content for my Kindle - The Economist with no need for an iPad - yipeee!

left by Crazy Skier at 1/26/2012 11:25 AM Gravatar
Actually if you have a Kindle Fire there is an even easier way. The economist android edition which was written for Android 2.2, which the fire is on a modified version, can be side loaded onto the Fire and it works. It also works on Android 4.0, but not on 3.2 (Honeycomb).

It's Thursday the 27th and the copy of the 28th edition just automatically downloaded. I will not get it in the mail till Monday.
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