

Show HN: Turn Your Blog Into a Downloadable Ebook - shantanubala
https://www.ebookglue.com/

======
ig1
The problem with all of these services doing Blog RSS -> ebook is that the RSS
feed typically only has the last 20 items and doesn't include comments, hence
the value is relatively limited.

Given almost all blogs run on a handful of services (i.e Wordpress) it
probably wouldn't be hard to make custom scrapers that capture everything.

~~~
Turing_Machine
"RSS feed typically only has the last 20 items"

In Wordpress, at least, this is an easy configuration change. In Blogger, you
can just add ?max-results=500 (or whatever) to the feed URI to get as many as
you want.

~~~
pseingatl
Adding this to the ebookglue URL yields the same result, only 20 entries.

~~~
Turing_Machine
It must be some limitation in the ebookglue code. For example:

[http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-
resu...](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=500)

produces a helluva lot more than 20 entries. :-)

------
mikecane
I was going to try it, stopped at the Persona (who?) log in. I'm not going to
create Yet Another Damn Account I have to remember the password to. Then I
read here that it's based on RSS, and that kills it for me altogether. BTW,
I've tried other blog->book services and they usually choke to death on my
blogs. This one probably would too. Next!

~~~
StavrosK
Did you expect that you would be able to use it without an account? That's not
really a reasonable expectation, at this day and age.

If not, why did you balk at creating an account with a centralized provider
that lets you log into multiple websites with the same account, claiming you
don't want "Yet Another Damn Account"?

Hell, I logged in _just because_ it supported Persona and I already have an
account there (and love it).

~~~
mikecane
>>>I already have an account there

Good for you. I would have tried it if I could have logged in with Twitter or
my WordPress account.

------
shantanubala
Hi! I made this as a side project to play around with Elastic Beanstalk and
scalable ebook conversions, and it's now evolved into something a little
bigger.

I'd love some feedback, and it's still pretty experimental, so there will be
some bugs, but I've got it working for _most_ full-text RSS feeds.

Currently, the interface is very simple: you give it the URL of your blog,
RSS, or Atom feed, and it will give you a link you can use to share it. This
"share link" contains downloads for ePub and Mobi files, and the downloads
will always stay up to date with the latest content (I use Superfeedr to poll
the feeds on the backend).

Let me know if you have any questions.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I think it is a cool idea, I suggest you negotiate with a blog owner and
create example files from their blog which potential users could see.

What is your business model with respect to the book after it is created? Is
it a 'percentage of sales', 'one time fee' ? Your terms document wasn't very
clear :-)

And what is your position on someone using the URL/RSS of a blog they haven't
written. So lets say someone puts the RSS link for Ars Technica in there, sort
an instapaper on steroids, and then downloads the epub, how does that work?

~~~
shantanubala
Thanks! I'm happy to hear you like it.

I'm still working on the details, but I want to create an easy way for someone
to sell their blog's content as an ebook subscription that works on any
eReader and isn't locked into a single platform (I'm working on adding PDF
output and some more formats soon!). There are two models that are possible:
monthly fee, or percentage of sales. I think I can do both -- percentage of
sales for people who are just starting out, and a monthly fee for heavy users
who want a volume discount on their sales. I apologize if this is a bit vague,
but I'm still trying to figure out what will be the most fair and sustainable
way to do pricing.

I'm also working on the terms, right now I just prohibit using this for
anything illegal, which would include redistributing content you don't own or
isn't under the Creative Commons. This is a _very_ nuanced issue: I think it
is perfectly fine for someone to use my service for a feed like Ars Technica
as long as they don't _redistribute_ the ebooks that I generate for them. In
other words, it's fine if you use my service as a "RSS Aggregator for
eReaders" if that's your intended use case, but it's _not fine_ if you post up
a Mobi file of Ars Technica's content to The Pirate Bay or something like
that.

Let me know if you have any questions :-)

~~~
jacquesm
> right now I just prohibit using this for anything illegal

Forbidding such use doesn't limit it though.

If you're going to profit from this in some way make sure you don't
accidentally set yourself up as a prime target for a lawsuit based on
contributory infringement.

This means that before you get into the money stream you have to make 100%
sure that the content you profit from was acquired legally.

~~~
shantanubala
I'll definitely be getting some legal advice before setting up any kind of
paid service, but do you have any specific advice or guidelines to follow?

I'm assuming that right now, I can just say, "this is an RSS aggregator like
Google Reader, and it's up to users to comply with copyright laws," but it
would definitely be tricky once I begin charging.

In general, would some kind of automated verification like Google Apps (DNS
records or sending an email to the owner of the domain name) suffice?

Anyway, thanks for the help!

EDIT: The nature of my app is very similar to Stitcher Radio
(<http://stitcher.com/>). They seem to have a really detailed signup page for
podcasters (<http://stitcher.com/contentProviders.php>). That seems to be the
best way to protect against infringement.

------
akkyakimoto
It is an interesting service. I tried to ebook-ify my (Japanese) blog but
noticed the contents body are all garbled.
[https://www.ebookglue.com/share/Qiu-Yuan-
saibouzurabopurogur...](https://www.ebookglue.com/share/Qiu-Yuan-
saibouzurabopuroguramaburogu)

The index are fine so there might be some missing or mistake of encoding
notation around the body part.

~~~
shantanubala
Thanks for the feedback! I looked at the resulting ebooks, and it looks fine,
but it may be a character encoding issue that is specific to your ePub or
Mobipocket viewer or reader -- which device or software are you using? I'll
look into fixing it.

------
shantanubala
The site is down. Unfortunately the "yellow" status of AWS elastic load
balancers in my region have affected this as well -- I'm working to get it up
and running in a different region, but I'm also waiting on a response from
Amazon.

------
evolution
I tried logging in -- persona sent me email of confirmation, when clicked it
redirected to ebookglue which alerted 'login attempt failed'. you might want
to look into that.

~~~
shantanubala
I'm sorry about the trouble with Persona -- many people have been reporting
issues, and it's unfortunately not been as stable as I would have wanted it to
be. I'm looking into whether it's my own implementation (though I followed all
the recommended best practices quite closely), or an issue with Persona
itself.

EDIT: It's a known issue with Persona and third party cookies:
<https://github.com/mozilla/browserid/issues/1352>

Unfortunately, this is a situation where a lot of people on HN probably
disable third party cookies (though perhaps a larger percentage of HN readers
already have Persona accounts?). Anyway, I'm looking into rolling out my own
authentication with email/password soon.

~~~
rogerbinns
I'd like to try it without logging in at all. The first question everyone will
have is if it works on their own site or a site they are familiar with and to
see the results. Having to create accounts/login just impedes that process.

~~~
shantanubala
I understand -- there's a bit of a problem when trying to prevent abuse,
though, and relying on the Persona identity provider makes it easier to
prevent abusive behavior upfront, especially since the conversions themselves
consume a lot of resources.

I'm still working out the optimal solution, but thanks for the feedback!

~~~
rogerbinns
In what way does Persona prevent abuse? All you validate is email receipt
which can be trivially fudged using mailinator.

It is far better to deal with this sort of thing at the "transaction" level -
eg use a captcha or similar for the second and subsequent conversions from a
particular IP address.

~~~
shantanubala
It's just a rough barrier before I set up something a little better, though I
already have logging at the transaction level set up. Even using Mailinator
requires a little bit of work, so I figured Persona was a good starting point
-- I'll look into adding a "try it out" area on the home page that doesn't
require you to sign up though.

------
pseingatl
Internal server errors.

