Kindle and "E" readers.

[maddafinga]

My wife and I are avid readers. We also live full time in an RV with limited storage space. We often go the used bookstores and spend about $200 on what we like to read every 3 months or so. Her, mystery novels and me, Sci Fi as well as history.

The E book looks to be a real match for us but I am concerned for the cost of the readers (we'll need 2) and more importantly the cost of the books. Is there a "walmart" of E books out there or someplace we can get them at about the same price or less than used paperbacks?

Well on the Amazon Kindle book section there are tons of absolutely free books that are older classic types.  You can also find lots and lots of books for one or two dollars.  Usually the newer ones are about ten bucks.  I have hundreds of books on my Kindle and only paid the full price for a couple of them.  What you can do it look up a book or everything by an author, and sort them by price starting with the lowest.  You'll be astounded by what you can get for free or for a dollar. 

What is really cool also is that your Amazon account keeps track of what you've downloaded, so if you delete them off your Kindle but then later decide to read it again, you just re-download it to your reader.  Very handy.  The books come to your Kindle wirelessly, and take about 30 seconds.  Very handy.

[Ghosth]

Maverick  for Sci-fi you can't beat Baen.
http://www.baen.com/library/



For  Public Domain books I prefer Manybooks.net over everything else.
http://manybooks.net
Sort by genre, author, titles, etc.
Once you find an author you like you can click on his name and get a complete list of all  the books they have by that author. Click on a book, and it will take you to the download page for that book. Often have a short description, picture of the front cover, and a download link that lets you choose what format you want it in.
http://manybooks.net/authors/haggardh.html
I'll use H Rider Haggard as an example. He wrote in the late 1800's and early 1900's most of which are set in England, Africa or both. He was the original Author for King Solomon's Mines.  The list of possible file formats is extensive, but it does vary  some from author  to author. Manybooks get most of their books from Project Gutenberg, but its easier to find what I want at Manybooks.

Many Library's are converting to Ebooks.
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EBook_Lending_Libraries
Most library's tend to use Overdrive or Adobe DRM'd PDF formats.
So if your going to use a library as a source that will effect what reader your going to want to look at.

If you buy a Kindle or to a slightly lesser effect Sony reader, you are going to be at least somewhat tied to their store. Mostly because both of proprietary file types. Granted you can get some files converted for kindle, but I don't think they'll touch a DRM protected library book.

My wife is into the Mystery, Thriller type, and its a lot more work finding her books than it is finding me Sci-fi fantasy stuff. I've got Thousands of books stacked up waiting for me to find the time to read them. For my wife I have at best 3-400 good ones that she'll enjoy. Its a bit of a never ending task.

Again I'll say that if your interested at all in ebooks and ereaders spend some time reading over at the Mobileread forums.
http://wiki.mobileread.com/
Register for a BBS acct, lurk around for a bit. You'll find me posting once in a while in the general discussion, but quite often in the Jetbook forums. (GhostHawk) (yes they have separate forums for different devices, fewer fights)


In my opinion what reader you want to look at, is going to come down to where and how you want to buy your books, and what you can afford to spend for them.

If you want the convenience of buying a book through your device, (3g, wifi, etc) then the new 150$ Kindle would be a great place to start.

If you want  a bit more control, a bit more flexibility then perhaps you should look at the sony line.

If you are just as happy reading Scifi-or old classics out of public domain, and want total control.
Then one of the Jetbook's would be your best bet.

Of all the readers out there Jetbook is the most flexible, in that it reads more formats than any other.
Including: DRM ePub, ADE ePub, ADE pdf, HTML, PRC, MOBI, RTF, TXT, PDF, FB2, (Images)JPG, GIF, PNG, & BMP
# Built-in translators for English, German, Polish, Russian, and Spanish
# Font zoom from 12pt to 32pt
# 5” TFT LCD screen
# SD card expandability up to 32GB
# Battery life for over 23 hours

Feel free to shoot me a PM if you have questions, or would like to know where I found those 20,000 + ebooks I have sitting on my hard drive. (over 10gig's, and more on the way)

[maddafinga]

I'll use H Rider Haggard as an example. He wrote in the late 1800's and early 1900's most of which are set in England, Africa or both. He was the original Author for King Solomon's Mines.  The list of possible file formats is extensive, but it does vary  some from author  to author. Manybooks get most of their books from Project Gutenberg, but its easier to find what I want at Manybooks.

Man, I used to have a very old hard cover H. Rider Haggard book,  it had She, King Solomon's Mines and Alan Quartermain in one large book. I read all three of them probably 5 times each.  He was a great writer.  I loved all three of those books. 

Thanks for the links btw, I'm checking them out now.

[eagl]

I have a kindle and I really like it.  The free wireless is a great feature...  browse for books and buy them without online fees, free wikipedia access, and very very cheap wireless delivery for books you buy elsewhere.  Now that the price has dropped, I think they are great ebooks.

[1Boner]

Thanks for all the input guys, I knew I could count on you.

The bride said "I can't find any good info online, and only got one response on Yahoo answers".

I said, watch this, and I started this post.

Thanks again guys.


BTW, she bought a new 3g Kindle at Target today.

[Vudak]

How do these eReaders work?  I understand that a book shows up on its screen - but a few questions:

1. Can you use multiple bookmarks with information on them (for research, I often have a few dozen sticky notes in each book I'm using for a paper or such)
2. Is there any way to write in the margins, if needed?

I don't have too much space and I have too many books, but I'm also one of those people who almost has to print large things off of the internet instead of trying to read them on a computer screen.  I just hate reading from the PC (although in fairness, this is because I'm stuck there, where I wouldn't be with a kindle).  I also NEED to be able to bookmark them in an infinite number of places, and label those bookmarks (Yeah, I know there's an index, but trust me, this is quicker - some things have twenty entries).

Would a kindle or such work for me, or should I stick to paper?

[eagl]

How do these eReaders work?  I understand that a book shows up on its screen - but a few questions:

1. Can you use multiple bookmarks with information on them (for research, I often have a few dozen sticky notes in each book I'm using for a paper or such)
2. Is there any way to write in the margins, if needed?

I don't have too much space and I have too many books, but I'm also one of those people who almost has to print large things off of the internet instead of trying to read them on a computer screen.  I just hate reading from the PC (although in fairness, this is because I'm stuck there, where I wouldn't be with a kindle).  I also NEED to be able to bookmark them in an infinite number of places, and label those bookmarks (Yeah, I know there's an index, but trust me, this is quicker - some things have twenty entries).

Would a kindle or such work for me, or should I stick to paper?

The kindle has a keyboard and you can make bookmarks, add annotations to text, etc.  The primary danger there is that Amazon has pulled a couple of books back without notice (they were published illegally so Amazon immediately pulled them from all kindles and refunded the purchase price) but when that happens, all the annotations and bookmarks vanish along with the book.  It is extremely irritating but I don't think Amazon has come up with a better process for taking back books without being destructive.

Of course you can always just keep the wireless turned off, but you never know which of your books might vanish the next time you turn on the wireless.  I think this is the one major failing of the kindle, the fact that Amazon has no solution for how to take back books without deleting bookmarks and annotations, and without offering any way to save them off first (let alone notifying buyers ahead of time that it is going to happen).

[Vudak]

Thanks Eagl,

Do you happen to know if there is a limit on the number of concurrent bookmarks?

[Saxman]

 Although I think its cool, and I thought of the idea years ago (me and probably a thousand others) I prefer real paper books. They look better on the shelves too

QFT. The only "reader" I need:



The feel of a REAL book int your hands is something special that Kindles and all the other E Readers can't replace.

[eagl]

Thanks Eagl,

Do you happen to know if there is a limit on the number of concurrent bookmarks?

I don't know that, sorry.  I don't do much serious reading with my kindle so I haven't experimented with bookmarks or annotations.  I'll get around to doing that eventually but just haven't yet.

[eagl]

The feel of a REAL book int your hands is something special that Kindles and all the other E Readers can't replace.

Yea, but my REAL book collection weighs over 1000 lbs and I can't fit any more into the house.  So I have a kindle and now any time I anticipate having an hour or more time to waste, I bring my kindle and about 80 e-books with me.  I don't own a backpack big enough to carry 80 REAL books around, and none of my REAL books let me look up references on wikipedia no matter where I am.

Don't misunderstand, a real book is very nice, and a library full of real books is much easier to browse through than an e-book library with dozens of titles to scan through.  I never would have discovered most of my favorite authors if my school libraries were only electronic.  But no matter how much I like paper books, e-books have become just as important to me because I want to be able to buy books and take them with me, and I simply can't do that anymore with paper books.  I have too many already that I don't want to get rid of.

[Saxman]

Wait, who reads 80 books in an hour, anyway?

[Ghosth]

Saxman, why would you want to hold in some cases, several pounds in your hands for hours at a time, smelling dust, mold, and mildew often enough when you could hold a small device, weighs about half a pound, and feeds you a new page every time you push the button?

Paper cuts, stuck together pages, garbage on pages obscuring words, all a thing of the past.

After all, without innovation and trying new things you'd still be living in a cave banging 2 rocks together.

[maddafinga]

I like actual books as much as anyone.  I had hundreds upon hundreds at one point too, but then there was this apartment fire that destroyed all my stuff.  I probably have a hundred or so now too, as it's been about three years since the fire.  The Kindle though, helps keep my house from filling up with books like the last one did.  I still get paper books for a lot of things, but the bulk of my reading I do on the Kindle now. 

Also Ghosth, thanks for that manybooks link, that site is fantastic!

[Ghosth]

Your very welcome Mad, I think I've pulled over 600 ebooks from that site over the last year.
And I still go digging around for new old authors.