What makes Libreture a great Dropbox alternative

Dropbox is a file hosting service founded in 2007 and is used by over 700 million people. It brings files together in one central place by creating a special folder on your computer. The contents of these folders are synchronized to Dropbox's servers and to other computers and devices where you've installed Dropbox, keeping the same files up-to-date on all devices. Dropbox uses a freemium business model, where you're offered a free account with a set storage size, with paid subscriptions available that offer more capacity and additional features.

Libreture is an ebook cloud library for all your digital reading. You can store your DRM-free ebooks, digital comics, magazines, and RPGs, no problem. There's all the space you need. You can also track your reading, in a fairly low-key, non-competitive way. But by far the best by-product of using Libreture is that you can discover new favourite reads. The secret is in how you use it. When you display where you bought your collection, you help other readers discover DRM-free bookshops new to them. Libreture offers 500MB of storage space for free and access to all features straight away. If you want to upgrade storage, you can, at any time - up to an unlimited amount.

  • Libreture vs. Dropbox comparison: What are the differences?
    • What happens when you upload your ebooks
    • Types of business
    • Sharing news about your reading and your books
    • Track your reading
  • Why is Libreture a great Dropbox alternative?

Libreture vs. Dropbox comparison: What are the differences?

What happens when you upload your ebooks

Dropbox is a handy place to store your ebooks. You get a lot of storage space for free, and you can expand it by recommending it to others or by paying a subscription. Dropbox recognises ebooks and will even display their content so you can read them online, but the results aren't especially pretty or necessarily well formatted, so they can be difficult to read. One interesting issue is that Dropbox doesn't process an ebook's metadata. Ebooks in ePub and Mobi formats contain metadata that usually includes a book's title, author, description, ISBN and cover art, so when it isn't processed by the storage service, you'll have to depend on the filename to know which book it is.

Libreture gives you less storage space for free than Dropbox, but because it's dedicated to books, it uses the metadata to process each book you upload to your cloud library. This means you don't have to manually type in or rename file names (as long as the book has its metadata correctly included), which can save you plenty of time both when you upload your books and later when you come to choose a book to read. Not only that, because your ebook's cover art is part of the metadata, Libreture displays the covers of your books. You get a pretty library with beautiful books, instead of a plain filelist. Find out more about how Libreture works.

Types of business

Dropbox has an approximate annual revenue of US$1.9 billion. In 2015 Dropbox moved its international offices to Dublin, Ireland. Like many large corporations, Ireland is an attractive location due to its low corporation tax rate.

Libreture is an independent, family-run business in the UK. We pay our taxes, and have signed up to the Fair Tax Pledge. We spend our income as locally as possible in the community and county where we live. We direct hundreds of readers a month to independent DRM-free bookshops to buy their ebooks, digital comics, magazines, and RPGs.

Sharing news about your reading and your books

Dropbox is great for sharing files with individuals and groups, but you probably already know that sharing ebooks like that is illegal. It constitutes piracy and theft and reduces sales that help authors and publishers stay afloat. When it comes to showing off your books and recommending them to your friends, Dropbox just isn't designed for that. It was primarily created for file storage and management, so sharing tools - such as sharing statuses to Facebook or Twitter - aren't available. Since Dropbox is primarily for file storage and management, it doesn't include tools to share information publicly about what you're reading or recommend to others.

Libreture is designed from the ground up to support ebooks and digital comics, and promote sharing information about them and where they can be bought in DRM-free formats. You can choose to make your library private or publicly visible, but even though your public books can be seen by anyone, every ebook is safe and cannot be shared or downloaded by someone else. At the same time, information about your books, your collection, your recommendations and your reading status lists absolutely can be shared. This is not just about kudos and looking good - it helps other readers discover ebooks and the bookshops that sell them.

Track your reading

Dropbox makes it easy to upload and download files in a conventional way. You can sort files into folders or use tags to categorise them. It's exactly like using any filing system since 1998, and will likely seem very familiar even if you haven't used it before.

Libreture also makes it easy to upload and download files. You can select each book's reading status and bookshop - or even upload a Zip file of books from a single bookshop and apply a reading status to all at the same time. It's not easier or harder than using Dropbox, but once your books are displayed in the relevant lists you'll see the difference straight away. (Think covers!)

Why is Libreture a great Dropbox alternative?

Libreture offers readers not only a place to store your ebooks and track reading activity, but also:

  • No need to input additional information when you upload your files. Your ebook files do all the work, but you can always edit details later.
  • A back-up and archive of all your ebooks with a stunning library showing off the covers of your beautiful books.
  • Easy book discovery, with direct links to independent bookstores for each book.
  • Easy access to your books on any device, no matter where you are, and an OPDS feed so you can access your books from any compatible reading app or service.

Readers are storing 16,528 DRM-free ebooks with Libreture!

Prefer paper books? Find your perfect book tracking service with our huge list of Goodreads alternatives.

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Readers are storing 16,528 ebooks, digital comics & magazines with Libreture.

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