eReading and eBooks

[Lissa]

Search for Calibre - it will convert PDFs into ePub or MOBI files pretty easily and let you read them on any ebook reader.

with Kindle you're locked into Amazon purchases only

It depends what you want - some stores sell books as MOBI files which can be read on a Kindle, Project Gutenberg's vast library is available in Kindle format and anything that's unencrypted can be converted using Calibre.

[Perry Vale]

Search for Calibre - it will convert PDFs into ePub or MOBI files pretty easily and let you read them on any ebook reader.

Thanks Lissa. Have you used it, does it do a perfect job of converting?

[Anthony Williams]

with Kindle you're locked into Amazon purchases only, but the others let you get E-books from anywhere.

That's not strictly true... the Kindle can read all sorts of formats (including PDFs), but if you buy somewhere other than from Amazon, you have to actually (shock, horror!) plug your Kindle into your computer, rather than downloading the book wirelessly

I have numerous Doctor Who books in PDF format on my Kindle, and they work just fine

Ant x

[Lissa]

Thanks Lissa. Have you used it, does it do a perfect job of converting?

It's as good as the source file. It struggles if the pages have a header, footer or page number but if you've got similar PDFs to the ones I've got then they'll be 99% fine.

[SiHart]

That's not strictly true... the Kindle can read all sorts of formats (including PDFs), but if you buy somewhere other than from Amazon, you have to actually (shock, horror!) plug your Kindle into your computer, rather than downloading the book wirelessly

They won't, however, allow library downloads. It's all tied into an amazon agreement with publishers. We've been investigating the whole matter at work with the upshot that we can offer e-books, just not to Kindle users. Amazon don't want people downloading blockbusters or in copyright items for free.

Si xx

[Paul Monk]

I never ever pay full price for a book. I always get them from boot sales or charity shops so a Kindle would be pointless. It would cost so much more for me if I had a Kindle. Also the idea of having thousands of books available all the time is horrifying to me. I have enough trouble choosing a book in the first place. If I had thousands available I'd never get any one finished.

[MinaHarker]

Do the Sony Readers work with PDFs? I have about 90 Doctor Who books in PDF format which would while away a few journeys...

Yes, I have one and it does fine with pdfs.

[MinaHarker]

I never ever pay full price for a book. I always get them from boot sales or charity shops so a Kindle would be pointless. It would cost so much more for me if I had a Kindle. Also the idea of having thousands of books available all the time is horrifying to me. I have enough trouble choosing a book in the first place. If I had thousands available I'd never get any one finished.

I suppose it depends whether you tend to buy very specific books or if you cast around for anything that catches your eye.

As someone who likes specific books, I buy a lot new.

I love my eReader not only because I can carry a lot of books with me, but I can also download a lot of amateur fiction to enjoy on it (I cannot read large blocks of text on a computer or laptop screen without getting a headache).

I can also use my eReader with my head sideways on a pillow

[Paul Monk]

VI can also use my eReader with my head sideways on a pillow

They should quote that as a feature of the device

And yes I'm not someone that buys many specific books.

[Paul Monk]

This is quite interesting.

http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/02/...duction-goals/

[Lissa]

"This price was set by the publisher" - the words that appear more and more often on Amazon's Kindle book pages. It means the Kindle book is more expensive than the physical book, it means Amazon can't discount it or the publisher will remove it from the store and it means we the customers are being ripped off by the greed of the publishing industry. It's as if the publishers want people to download books illegally. They've clearly learned nothing from films and music and are doomed to make exactly the same mistakes. With no printing, materials, distribution or postage an e-book should be at least 20% cheaper than a printed book. Not up to 30% more expensive. There is absolutely no chance I'd ever pay more for an electronic copy than a real book so they're actively killing the format that should be the future of their industry. What utter, utter wankers.

[Rob McCow]

http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat...ve_b8443?c=rss

Here’s our expert’s breakdown of the average book’s cost to distribute and sell online: “The large publishing houses’ cut is generally 45-55% of the book’s list price (this is split with the author whose cut is 15% of list price). Distributors are generally taking 10% or more of list price. Amazingly, the less expensive the book, the distributor cut can grow pretty dramatically because almost all distributors include a minimum charge. DRM providers are generally taking 3-5% (and in the case of less expensive books even more) of list price. The credit card processors, even with micropayments, take 3-6% of the sales price.”

Taking those numbers into account, our expert concluded that these overhead costs will keep driving e-book prices higher and hurting e-book retailers:


“When 65% of list price is already spoken for by the publisher, the distributor, and the DRM provider, there is not a whole lot of room left. I’ve heard that the average discount on eBooks is 15%. The only person who feels the pain of that 15% is the retailer. So when you add in (lets use a round number) 5% for credit card processing, you are talking about a best case 15% margin on eBooks. Add in the costs of support personnel and a general staff, you’ve got to sell a lot of books to even break even as an eBook retailer.”

It's not just the publsihing houses that are greedy. Everyone owns a slice of the E-book pie.

With regards to carbon footprinting, I think e-readers will generally be better for the environment, provided the retailers can resist the temptation to sell us a newer, shinier, whizzier e-book every other year.

Damn.

[Lissa]

Those numbers are interesting and show some of the hidden costs but they don't excuse what's going on. The publishers are deliberately making the digital price higher than the physical price. The costs are either (a) already accounted for (credit card processing is a normal part of Amazon's business) or (b) within the publishers' control (their 45-55% cut). This is price fixing, pure and simple. And if a giant like Amazon can't stop them doing it then no one can.

[Captain Tancredi]

Looking at the price of a few e-books lately where the publishers have dictated the sale price, in some cases I've found it's simply been the Amazon list price plus VAT. In other cases, I suspect that it's just a case of Amazon being able to reduce the paperback and the e-book version not keeping up. But I think it's a case of the way the publishing industry works- perhaps less so now than a generation ago, but there's still an ethic of publishing being a cosy, gentlemanly trade where open competition with your rivals is bad form.

At the moment I would also imagine that the whole industry is waiting to see how big an impact e-books have in the next few years. Publishers will be very wary of pricing e-books so cheaply that they kill off the last few independent booksellers, but if they do then it's a waste of resources printing physical books for a few outlets. Amazon would have more leverage if they weren't trying to sell the Kindle at the same time as the e-book, but at the moment the publishers know that Amazon need to be able to offer the most popular books to persuade people to change to e-books.

What interests me as somebody who does a few hours in a charity bookshop every few weeks is how quickly the arrival of the e-book is going to make a difference. I think last Christmas was probably the watershed because readers were on sale around the £100 mark, but it'll be interesting to see whether the number and quality of books we get in starts to tail off as people start to buy their new books in a non-physical (and non-resaleable!) format.

[Paul Monk]

What interests me as somebody who does a few hours in a charity bookshop every few weeks is how quickly the arrival of the e-book is going to make a difference. I think last Christmas was probably the watershed because readers were on sale around the £100 mark, but it'll be interesting to see whether the number and quality of books we get in starts to tail off as people start to buy their new books in a non-physical (and non-resaleable!) format.

This is almost entirely how I get hold of books. I very rarely buy book new. I love secondhand book shops and I reckon there will always be a market for them. You can't sell ebooks secondhand. Also I'm not sure that once I get an ebook I would want to keep it. I very rarely read books again so it would just sit pointlessly on my reader.
Plus if I drop my kindle in the bath its gonna cost me a lot of money, whereas a paperback in teh bath isn't such a big deal.

[Rob McCow]

From tech site The Register:

Amazon is preparing a new service called Kindle Lending Library that will allow users of its popular e-reader to check out Amazonian ebooks from 11,000 neighborhood and educational libraries.

"We're excited that millions of Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from their local libraries," said Amazon Kindle headman Jay Marine when announcing the service, which is scheduled to launch later this year, and which will be available to all generations of Kindles, plus other platforms running Amazon's Kindle software.

The Kindle Lending Library effort will be powered by OverDrive, a digital-content provider that currently provides ebook services to those aforementioned 11,000 libraries, and which provides ebook library-lending services to owners of the Sony Reader, a petite device far less successful than Amazon's Kindle.

Kindle users will not only be able to borrow ebooks that will be Whispersynced to their devices, but will also be able to add annotations and bookmarks to the loaners. Those additions won't be seen by other borrowers of the same title, but if you should choose to later purchase a previously borrowed book from Amazon, your additions will appear in it.

Amazon's new library-loan service will be another advantage over such competitors as Apple's iBook service, which Amazon is soundly trouncing.

One of Amazon's strengths has been that not only are its Kindle books readable on its eponymous e-reader, but can also be read on Windows PCs and Macs, as well as Windows Phone, iOS, and Android devices, and BlackBerries.

Barnes & Noble comes close to Amazon's Kindle-software range, providing software not only for its own Nook readers, but also for Windows PCs and Macs, the iPad and iPhone, plus Android devices. Books purchased for the Sony Reader can also be read on Windows PCs and Macs.

Apple's iBooks, by contrast, are only readable on iOS devices – and no, you can't check out an iBook from your local library.

I wonder how they're going to make this work. And what the hell is a Whispersync, if it's not a device to ensure that Chinese Whispers doesn't actually work.

[Philipnet]

And what the hell is a Whispersync?

It's what the Whispermen speak in


In other news,

For many, there's nothing quite so comforting as cracking open a good book. The texture of the pages combine with the smell of ink and paper, as the writer pours their imagination and soul into a world that's apart from your own. While e-books have won over a number of people, the latest stats from The Publishers Association suggest that the majority of Brits still prefer the printed form, which accounted for 88 percent of all book sales during 2012. The winds of change are working in the background, however, as digital sales -- consisting of e-books, audio downloads and digital subscriptions -- now account for 12 percent of the pie; an increase from 8 percent just one year ago.

As a whole, the UK publishing industry shows modest signs of growth, with combined physical and digital sales rising by 4 percent to reach £3.3 billion ($5.1b). Meanwhile, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but e-books continue to gain popularity and show tremendous promise. Here, consumer e-book sales have risen 134 percent in 2012, which now account for a £216 million ($336m) share of the UK publishing industry. Regardless of whether you prefer print or digital formats, we reckon that all readers deserve a hearty slap on the back

http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/02/2...sales-figures/

So, are you still a book reader, or have you made the switch to ereaders?
And what about reading on tablet devices (and which size of tablet)?

[SiHart]

I'm both these days. I love my Kindle, which is perfect for travelling, but I resent having to buy things for it to read on it, so I still borrow books for free from the library (that is after all my job!). The things I put on my Kindle tend to be books I've bought as a holiday treat, or something I can't get hold of at work. Just like I would when I bought books more regularly.

I do still buy books- mostly Doctor Who books!

[Rob McCow]

I'm 100% Kindle. I bought a Kobo to try to stick it to the Man (The Amazon Man) but the Kobo broke very quickly. So I plumped for the evil-tax-dodging-enterprise-squashing bastards.

They sell a good product though. It's really hard to get hold of a wide range of books over here, there's a big shortage of decent book stores, so it's very handy to have access to virtually every book you'd want to read instantly to download. Plus it saves on about 17kg of luggage every time I travel.

[Jon Masters]

I look forward to a day when someone produces a tablet with a screen as big as a piece of A4 paper, that weighs no more than a magazine, so that I can read e-versions of all my favourite journals and RPG books.

Come on boffins !!

[Perry Vale]

It'll be here one day soon thanks to the discovery of Graphene....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ne/9491789.stm

"You could theoretically roll up your iPhone and stick it behind your ear like a pencil," Professor James Tour, of Rice University, told the Technology Review.

[Paul Monk]

As the owner of a Kindle Fire and a complete ebook convert (well apart from some of the cost) I found reading my comments earlier in the thread quite amusing.

[Paul Clement]

I'm still using my Kindle and now Treena has one. Rhiannon & Kieran have ebook apps on their tablets too.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

[Jeff]

I'm still almost 100% a traditional book reader. Reading classics on my web browser from Project Gutenberg when there is downtime at work is the only exception.