Comments on: Digital books for your mobile device

By: Recent Links (2/23/09) « The Whippersnapper

Recent Links (2/23/09) « The Whippersnapper — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:59:17 +0000

[...] Digital books for your mobile device Oh, SWEET. The iPhone app Stanza supposedly has books on the iPhone, and other apps/companies are getting this functionality in the hopper. Doesn’t give you the same quasi-page-turning functionality as the Kindle, but it’s something… [...]

By: Rue

Rue — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 02:19:20 +0000

I downloaded Stanza to my iPhone and was disappointed to find that you have to pay to get current reads. There’s a Sophie Kinsella book on there I want to read but it’s $25! Might as well just buy the real book in paperback for $12 and stick it in my bag.

By: V. Higgins

V. Higgins — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 18:15:57 +0000

My hubby downloads books onto a Micro SD card which he can put into his Nintendo DS (via an adapter) and read books on his DS. I don’t know the tech specs on it but I’m sure you can Google it.

By: Ross

Ross — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:33:40 +0000

Another fan of mobipocket here. Not only can you convert the .txt/.html files to something that will work on your device (works on Windows Smartphones as well as Palm formats and others), but the options within the program are nice. I can increase/decrease the font size with a touch of a button for different reading conditions and it doesn’t mess up the spacing/pagination of the book. You can also set it to auto-scroll at whatever speed you want so you don’t have to continuously push buttons to turn pages.

By: Tabatha

Tabatha — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 20:12:42 +0000

its just not the same as holding a book in your hand and turning the pages…

By: sueradley

sueradley — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:20:26 +0000

dailylit.com is a great site. They have a number of new and old books. They send the text of the book in email form and you can select the length and frequency of the emails. I have a blackberry and this system works great for me.

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 05:27:36 +0000

Baen books (mostly sci-fi & fantasy) offers a large collection of free books through their free library (http://www.baen.com/library/). Additionally, they (and a few other publishers) sell electronic copies DRM free and at reasonable prices through Webscription (http://www.webscription.net). Webscription runs a shelf server that, in combination with the Bookshelf (http://www.iphonebookshelf.com/) reader program for iphones allows you to access any books you’ve purchased straight from your phone.

In case you couldn’t tell, I love it.

By: Cliff

Cliff — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 02:04:41 +0000

Google ugly. Unjustified. Text space “rivers” and “lakes” would inadvertently appear. There’s more to laying out the inside of a book than just letting the text flow from start to finish.

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:43:47 +0000

I use InstaPaper (http://www.instapaper.com/) a lot on my iPhone. Whenever I come across an interesting article on the net, but it is a bit long to read at the time, I put it in instapaper. Later when I am waiting somewhere I call up instapaper, and read my marked articles (Instapaper also strips out most of the site make up, so I just have the text there).

By: another grandma

another grandma — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 22:26:54 +0000

Thank you to those who gave handy, helpful hints. I do so appreciate it.

By: infmom

infmom — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:19:43 +0000

I get tons of free e-books from mobipocket.com to read on my Palm Tungsten E3.

By: Dorothy

Dorothy — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:16:33 +0000

@Sarah, you beat me to the shout-out for Project Gutenberg. I’m always surprised that discussions of e-books routinely neglect the oldest, broadest and, in my never-humble opinion, best content source, the grand-daddy of them all. Virtually any “classic” in English (and most other Western Languages) is available completely free via PG. You could easily read great books for the rest of your life and the only cost would be any donation you made to PG.

And PG’s texts are generally of substantially higher quality than the versions for sale. PG has superb copy-editors (who apparently are volunteers). Many of the Kindle-versions of books I’ve paid for are so full of typos they’re almost unreadable — and annoying at the prices charged. I just read two RosettaBooks versions of Pat Conroy novels. The name of the daughter of the protagonist in BEACH MUSIC is Leah and about half the time the e-text reads as “Lean”. It appears they simply scanned in a paper copy of the text, didn’t bother to copy-edit or spell check it (there are also plenty of errors that are not actual words) and spit it out for unsuspecting reader to buy.

Three cheers for Project G!

Dorothy

By: Joanna

Joanna — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 19:45:28 +0000

PDFs are terrible because the text does not reflow very well on smaller screens. I prefer plain text like Project Gutenberg which I can then convert to the format of my choosing. I use STanza in my iPod Touch and also eReader because I buy books from Fictionwise.com They have a lot of sales and often if you buy a new book at full price, they will give you 100% of it back in store credit. So I buy a lot of new books I would normally get from the library and it is like getting it for free because I have the credit to spend on other books. eReader is free software available for mobiles plus desktop machines. And you can download ereader formatted books for free from Manybooks.net

Anothergrandna, what I would do is download free ereader software for your computer, then download free ereader formatted books from manybooks.net Should keep you busy for awhile

By: Jack

Jack — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 19:22:27 +0000

@another grandma If you’re just asking if you can read books on your computer, if you can read this site, you almost certainly can. Whether you can use Stanza on your iPhone or read books on your mobile depends on whether you have one and how fancy its data plan is.

By: Coffee Nuht

Coffee Nuht — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:01:37 +0000

And don’t forget–PDAs are around, so if you have one of those, you don’t need a specialized book-only reader.

Programs that convert text, HTML and PDF files for free are out there, too (eReader, MobiPocket, etc). I don’t really like Microsoft’s eBook program because you MUST have explorer on your computer, and you can ONLY download books in their format from Explorer.

I’ve leaned to Mobibook because of the ease of converting my own files into their format (and I can keep the original version of the .txt or PDF file, too) and load all the books, and the program, onto an SD card on my PDA. They also have adapted their program to cell phones, also (though not the iPhone, yet, I think).

No, I don’t work for their company. I just really really like their product.