I have given up on trying to import an ebook. I just cannot get it work the way I want it to. So I have begun looking for books in my target language that I would be interested in reading. My question is, do some of you fellow language learners read regular books and do you try to keep track of unkown words so you can import those as vocabulary words? I ask that because that seems to be my only option since I cannot get ebooks to work.
By “regular books” are you referring to paper books? No I only read on LingQ. You can’t import an ebook? are you getting a copyright error or something? Which format?
Importing ebooks is a bit tricky but doable once you figure out how to remove DRM from a purchased title.
1.) Use Calibre software with DRM removal plug in (google should tell you how)
2.) Hunt down an older version of Amazon Kindle App, since the newest versions make DRM removal impossible (for now)
3.) If that doesn’t work, try Google Play book store. There are a couple of extra steps involved in removing DRM from those books, but it’s not version dependent so it’s doable.
4.) If the above doesn’t get you results, I’d try experimenting with other retailers such as Kobo etc. (I don’t know enough about these)
If you can’t make any of the above work, I’d recommend just using a Kindle with its built in dictionaries, which allow you to look up works similarly – though nowhere near as effectively as LingQ.
If you do comparative reading – getting both native and target language editions of the same book, at least in the beginning – your word acquisition will be very fast. (Target language on the Kindle, accompanied by an English language [used] paper[back] version from Amazon is usually the best / cheapest combination for me.)
I used to do Kindle w/ audio + comparative before I figured out how to import to LingQ. Though LingQ is way better, faster, etc etc. Doing it the other way is still fun and it will still teach you the language.
If you’re using paper books, doing comparative reading with “old school” dictionary lookups is also a good way, but of course this is the slowest of the options. (However, this is how most people used to do it ten, fifteen years ago.)
In my opinion, there is little use for keeping track of words or reviewing and flash carding if you’re reading a lot, because they will pop up often enough to make them stick. The only time I did any sort of notations for words was when reading a paper book in Korean – jotting down words that were specific to the subject matter of the book itself helped with speed up process, but that was partially because of the unique writing system.
Hope this helps.
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WikiSource has a lot of free books in different languages, so if nothing else works it might be worth trying to get your books there. I haven’t found a way to download them there though, so I’ve been meticulously importing each chapter seperately to a course
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I am reading a printed book on LingQ using Google Translate on my phone. G Translate’s settings are target language → own language. I can choose between pasting a text snippet from another app, dictation, and OCR from the camera. I import the book page by page. Target language in this case is Greek, which causes a little trouble because from time to time the OCR module misinterprets Greek letters as Latin letters. I copy the completed text into LingQ’s import module and voilà I have a new lesson 
Sounds complicated, yes. But it’s fun