[ExI] Ebooks Formats and ebook readers

[F. C. Moulton]

I am changing the Subject line it has drifted away from
     Re: [ExI] FW: Larry King wants to be cryopreserved

On 12/09/2011 08:24 AM, Darren Greer wrote:
> 2011/12/9 spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> Darren, is your book available as a PDF download to the computer?  I am a
>> primitive savage who still has no kindle or whatever the kids have these
>> days.  I will likely get one if you have a recommendation.
> 
> Spike: The kindle edition is available on Amazon.
> http://www.amazon.com/Still-Life-with-June-ebook/dp/B0053DLIF0. No pdf that
> I am aware of, for sale or for pirate. My advice is to order a second-hand
> copy from Amazon for peanuts. If you look at the U.S. edition (St. Martin's
> Press -- it has an upside down dude on the cover) there is one there for
> fifty cents, though if I can find the seller, he's a dead man. :)
> 


A couple of things to remember about Ebook formats and Ebook readers
1. Some are tied to various degrees to particular vendors
2. Some can only read a limited number of formats
3. Many ebooks have DRM which in my opinion is a very bad thing
4. There are ways to get rid of DRM (google for the answer)
5. There are programs such as calibre which formats such as pdf to epub

Points 1 and 2 are why I did not buy a Kindle (there are also other
reasons).
Point 3 describes the problem and point 4 gives the path to the answer.
>From the statistics I have seen I buy more that average ebooks and I buy
them without DRM if practical however if they only way to get them is
with DRM then immediately after getting them I strip the DRM out so that
I have a clean no DRM version.
Point 5 is a reminder that if you have something in one format and you
want it in another then calibre does a fairly good job of converting
formats.  I even used it once when I had a MOBI ebook which did not
display properly so I used calibre to convert it to EPub and it was much
better.

In general if you are getting either a dedicated ebook reader or a
tablet make sure it as a minimum can handle common ebook formats such as
Mobi, EPub, RTF and regular simple text.

I hope this is helpful.

Fred