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Readmill is Shutting Down – What to do Next

It has nowdropbox readmill been a week since Readmill announced that they were being acquired by Dropbox, and now that the appropriate mourning period is over it is time to consider what to do next.

Exporting Your Account

Long time Readmill users should probably look into exporting their account details, which can be done here.

There’s no easy way to export your entire Readmill history so it can be imported elsewhere, but you can export a reading journal that summarizes the time you spent in Readmill. There are also an option for exporting your review and reading history so it can be imported into Goodreads or Booklikes.

Salvaging Your Library

Once you’ve started the process to export your account history, the next step is to rescue any ebooks you uploaded to Readmill. If you go to the export page and scroll down, you’ll see an option for downloading your Readmill library as a ZIP file.

Click it, and then scroll down a little further and read the instructions on how to transfer the DRM licenses. I for one would not have transferred any DRMed ebooks to Readmill, at least not intentionally, but even so I would still go through the steps to transfer the license (better safe than sorry).

I would also suggest transferring the license sooner rather than later. Readmill isn’t scheduled to completely close until July, if the DRM causes issues then it might take a few tries to get the license transferred.

Where to go next?

Once you have the DRM issue resolved, the next step is to look for a new home. I’m not much of a social reader, so I am going to leave this open to the comment section.

What’s a good alternative to Readmill? I know that both Kobo and the hated Kindle have some social reading aspects, and a couple different reading services similar to Readmill have come across my desk over the past few months: Fastr, Bookmate.

Has anyone tried either Fastr or Bookmate? What did you think?

Is there another service which I have not mentioned?

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Comments


Vikarti Anatra April 5, 2014 um 5:37 am

Speaking of bookmate (I used it a lot some time ago) in comparison with Readmill:
– no APIs
– no PDF (only EPUB or FB2)
– Readmill support Adobe’s ADEPT EPUB/DRM. Bookmate doesn’t support DRM
– if you load book and DON’T check approritate checkbox, book will be added to their library for everyone who paid for subscription to use.
– if you pay subscription fee you can access this library but for some books you will see message that rightsholder doesn’t want you to be able to access this book (I never s
– Bookmate have client apps for iOS and Android which are slightly more configurable than Readmill ones. You also can read in browser on any platform.
– YotaPhone have integrated bookmate client which utilize E-Ink screen.
– In Readmill you can upload as many books as you want at one time. But total limit is about 500 books (this is not specified on site but if you try to add more you will get error and support will tell you about limit). In bookmate you can upload max 5 books at same time but there are no limits (670 books are ok)
– Highlights and quotes are supported but you can see them. or post to VK/FB. And that’s all
– You can make all you library public/share highlights with other users/subscribe to other users
– You can see who reads specific book if user doesn’t hide this information


Fastr Boooks April 16, 2014 um 9:19 am

Fastr Books features a news feed, that is similar to what Readmill has and can be used to see, what are your friends reading now. You can also start reading any paid ebook from Fastr Books catalog and read 10% of its content for free.

Key features in Fastr Books compared to Readmill:
Facebook integration: yes
Following other readers: yes
News feed in the app: yes
Sharing highlights in the feed: no (coming in May 2014)
Adding your own ebooks: yes, from the device, iTunes or Dropbox
Price: free
Availability: worldwide for iPhone, iPad and web (for catalog preview).


Udg June 16, 2014 um 1:08 pm

Fastr books seems to be the obvious destination so far. It retains two very important features from readmilll. Remembers your last read position, and is cross platform (ios and android).
Also you can import your readmilll collection directly into it through the app.


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