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FINDING AND READING eBOOKS

by Bob Parvin


eBook Formats
Major Free eBook Distributors
Major Commercial eBook Sellers
Audiobooks
eBook Reading Devices
Downloading eBooks
The Bottom Line

The age of ebooks may be here at last due to the interest generated by amazon.com's Kindle ebook reading device and their support for the iPhone and iPod Touch. A lot has changed since I wrote the first version of this Web page less than two years ago, and some of the things I say here in March, 2009, will soon be outdated. To keep up on new developments that are comming fast, go to Teleread: Bring the E-Books Home or go to blogs such as MobileRead News.

An ebook is a digital computer file containing a book that can be downloaded from the Internet to a computer or directly to an ebook reading device, which may also sometimes be referred to as an ebook.

Ebooks are an important breakthrough in the history of the book. They can be published and sold at a much lower cost than paper books (not always reflected in the ebook prices), there are no returns to the publisher, they are instantly procurable without shipping costs, they can be easily updated or corrected by the author, and they don't go out of print.

Many claim that reading an ebook is not as satisfying as holding and reading a paper book. Not me. I would rather hold an ebook device because they are lighter than hardcover books and easier to handle. You read on a single screen, whereas with a book one must open it, which doubles its width making it harder to hold and it may not stay open to your page. On a device you go to the next page with a click or touch instead of turning it over to the other side. I like the portability of the devices. Some such as the Kindle are handbag portable and some such as the iPhone are shirt pocket portable. You carry with you not one book but your whole ebook library.

I prefer to read a book on a device such as Kindle or iPhone especially because one can change the font size and in some cases the style and because one can search for words or phrases. How many times have you paged through a book trying to find something you read? Also, many devices have a built in dictionary.

I like multipurpose devices like the iPhone/iPod Touch with WiFi because in addition to reading a book one may be able to make a phone call, send and read email, listen to music or an audio book, play games, organize your schedule with a calendar, make an arithmetic calculation, record a note, look at a map and with WiFi find your location or find a restaurant or whatever, and surf the Internet using WiFi. (WiFi availability is spreading rapidly. For eample, the Meraki company has a goal of providing free WiFi to everyone in San Francisco, and they are now serving about 150,000 people out of the population of 860,000. See Meraki teams with San Francisco for free Wi-Fi. For a nation-wide directory of free WiFi spots go to Wi-Fi-FreeSpot Directory . Also see WiFi FreeSpot FAQs.) These devices are backlit so they can be used to read in poor or no light. I have never had a problem with eye strain in reading for an hour or two. I do turn down the intensity of the back light.

With some devices you can have ebooks downloaded directly to your device--no waiting for days or searching bookstores for your book, which I really dislike doing. Ebooks don't take up space, get dog-eared or damaged, or become smelly. They are also easier on the environment because no trees are cut, no smelly paper mill is required, and there is no disposal problem. No printing plant is needed, and there is no trucking. The devices can also do many of the things you do with books. You can bookmark, underline, or annotate the text. Does the ebook looks like the wave of the future or what?

eBook Formats

You need three things to read ebooks: (1) hardware, which is the computer, PDA, or dedicated device to download and display the ebook contents, (2) reader, which is the software that tells the hardware how to display the text. (To confuse matters, the hardware device is often called a reader.), and (3) ebooks, which are the digitized books. The ebook format must be compatible with the reader, and the reader must be compatible with the hardware operating system.

This is not as complicated as it may sound. To read a basic plain-text or ASCI file, all that is needed is a text editor like WordPad, which is included with the MS operating system, or a word processor. To read an HTML file, your browser is all that is needed. To read ebooks in proprietary formats, it is necessary to download compatible reader software unless it is already installed in the reading device as it is in Kindle and other dedicated devices.

Important readers, which come in different versions for different platforms (almost all have versions for Windows PCs), are as follows:

To illustrate the format issue, here is the wide variety of formats for ebooks offered by Fictionwise:

Toward the goal of a universal, standard format, IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum) has developed the new .ePub standard. It will be interesting to see to what extent it will be adopted by publishers. The big guns with proprietary formats are not likely to support it although Sony and Adobe are on board. Google has made half a million public-domain books available in the .ePub format to the Sony ebook reading device.

Major Free eBook Distributors

Here are places to look free books on the Web:

Major Commercial eBook Sellers

Here are some ebook sellers:

Here are some publishers who sell ebooks directly:

Here are some ebook directories:

For a good discussion of ebook pricing go to What Price Ebooks?.

Audiobooks

Audiobooks are of interest here because many come in the MP-3 format, so you can listen to them on your MP-3 player such as the iPod/iPhone or Zune. We're talking here about recordings made by human readers rather than computer generated speech as in the case of Kindle.

Here are some sources of audio books: Audiobooks,iTunes and Audio Books For Your iPod(audible.com), which is a "book club" selling memberships and has been acquired by amazon.com.

For guides to free audiobooks go to Free Audio Books and The Best Sites for Free Audio Books.

For sites offering fre audiobooks go to AudioBooksForFree.com, LibriVox, LiteralSystems.org, BooksShouldBeFree.com, LearnOutLoud.com, and Open Culture.

If you want to learn a foreign language while you are driving or exercising or whatever, go to Pimsleur Language Learning .

eBook Reading Devices

Since an ebook is simply a computer file, we need an digital device of some kind with a screen to display the ebook content. Here are choices of hardware to read ebooks:

Downloading eBooks

For lengthy and detailed instructions for downloading readers and ebooks go to Simple-to-follow instructions for the computer novice on how to download E-Texts and E-Books to your PC.

Different distributors sell ebooks in different formats, and they may have different procedures for downloading their books. So our first step is to understand the requirements of our reading device. Then we should carefully read the instructions given by the ebook distributor for downloading. Fictionwise has excellent instructions for downloading and installing different readers (the material is a bit old). Go to Fictionwise Support.

Downloading ".txt" File eBook

To download to my computer a free plain text ebook by Charles Darwin, I went to the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog to look for Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. I downloaded the zipped version. I had already installed the automated version of WinZip on my computer and unzipped the book, and then I followed these steps:

  1. I opened the ebook in WordPad. (I could have opened it in my browser, but I couldn't bold the text to make it easier for me to read since my vision is somewhat impaired by cataracts. I also could have opened it in a word processor, but I prefer WordPad because it doesn't have pagination so there are no gaps between pages. Using a word processor has the advantage, however, that you can save your preferred font preferences.)
  2. I enhanced the font. I clicked Ctrl-A to select the text, then Format, and Font. I kept the Courier New font, changed the serif font style to Bold, and increased the font Size to 15, which I can read easily without glasses and which is also the limit without lines being wrapped to a second line. I now often increase it to 23, and the second line is of equal length. I could also have changed the Font if I had preferred another such as a sans-serif font like Arial, which I read without bolding.

By using WordPad I can find words, chapter numbers, or markers by clicking Edit and Find. For example, I can mark where I finish reading by typing something like :: and saving the text. Then next time I can search for that marker to find my place and then delete it. I can also add notes and give them a marker if I like.

To cursor down the page, simply use the Page Down key.

Downloading ".pdf" File eBook

Before choosing a book in the PDF format, I downloaded the Acrobat Reader 8.1.0.

I went to KSL Digital Book Collection and searched for A Fleece of Gold by Charles Stewart given in PDF format. The book is a scan of the original book, and it opened with a "magnification" of 284%, which gave a font size that is very easy for me to read without glasses. To cursor down, I clicked the Page Down key. (Sometimes I had to push Esc when first using the Page Down key.) The book opened in my browser, so to save it, I went to My Documents folder and saved it in my "ebooks" folder.

Downloading ".html" File eBook

I opened the The University of Adelaide Library and clicked the Alphabetical list of Authors and chose Charles Darwin and selected The Descent of Man, where I had the choice of "read" or "download." It is formatted in .html, and the text appears in a very good font for me to read in my browser. I use the Mozilla Firefox browser, so to change the font size, I only needed to press Ctrl- or Ctrl+. The pages have wide enough margins so that I can increase font size substantially, but the lines will run off the screen with very large font sizes.

Downloading ".mobi" File eBook

I opened Mobipocket and downloaded Mobipocket Reader Desktop 6.2. It suggested "Save to disk" and I clicked OK. A file appeared in Desktop file called "mobipocketreadersetup.msi," which I right-clicked and chose install." The Windows Installer Package took over and suggested installing in the Program File.

Then I went back to the Mobipocket page first mentioned and cursored down the left side to Free Downloads and clicked Download free eBooks. I found Aesop's Fables and clicked Download Book. It asked, Open with Mobipocket?" OK. Title page of my book appeared. I clicked the + icon at the top of the page to increase font size. I clicked the A- icon and chose a background color, a line-spacing of 1.25, and Extra Large margin. The arrows in right margin are page down arrows. The ones in the left margin are page up arrows. I use the Pasge Down key. One can add a bookmark or a note.

Downloading Other Proprietary Readers and eBooks to Various Platforms

For information on downloading Microsoft Reader go to Downloads.

For an excellent page on eReader including information on downloading, go to FAQ.

To download Mobipocket Reader and ebooks to your desktop and to another device, go to Mobipocket Reader Desktop 6.2.

The Bottom Line

Even though the situation in ebook land is maddening, it's time to check it out. There are a lot of ebooks available (in several formats, unfortunately), and if you have a computer or a PDA, you have a device that can read them.

The pricey Kindle provides a super-easy way to select, order, and download ebooks; however, downloading to your computer and then to another device is not much more difficult once one gets the hang of it.

The ability to put Kindle books on an iPhone or iPod Touch is a game changer. If you already have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you have a powerful reading device and a very large and growing number of ebooks available to read. Some people may prefer the Kindle screen and the ease of ordering ebooks, but they may not feel like spending about $400 for the privilege especially if they have an iPhone or iPod Touch or plan to buy one.

All of you bookworms take note. The ebook reading device market has become exciting, and more developments will be coming rapidly. So, stay tuned.

Your feedback will be welcome. Please send an e-mail message to me, Bob Parvin: bandcparvinXhotmail.com (Substitute @ for X. I'm trying to hide my address from spammers.)

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