Oolite Bulletins

Hi all, I'd be grateful for a bit of advice regarding e-readers...

I've been enjoying reading some of the oolite fiction as pdf's on my computer which works o.k. but reading on the fairly bulky laptop is not ideal.
I've also pledged for a couple of E:D fiction kickstarters that will be published in an electronic format. In the case of Elite:encounters there is a choice as to which format the book comes in and it got me thinking about what the best format and method for viewing the works.

I'd like an e-reader as it'll be easy and convenient to carry about but I'm not sure which one is best - I'm also not sure which format is best to order the works in.
What I'm most concerned with is buying something like a kindle or nook then finding out that it gives unsatisfactory results in some formats (like pdf's) or won't run a decent format at all.

Do any e-reader owners have any recommendations as to an e-reader and publishing format?

Cheers!

This was my main reason for offering different formats.

Pdfs can be full colour, graphic heavy beasts, so something with some professing power and good screen is best. Kindle fire, ipad mini or a cheaper android tablet are good options. For plain text or greyscale gfx a kindle is good but for complex images it might not be the best. Epub readers are probably about middle of the road, and are widely supported on a variety of devices.

For encounters in its full glory pdf is probably best, but I'll be customising the book for each format, hopefully. Plain text novels are most convenient in kindle or epub format.

Hope that helps a bit.

Whilst I don't have a handheld reader, I can highly recommend that you install a copy of Calibre on your main computer, as it will not only enable you to load/unload ebooks on the reader easily, but you can easily convert any ebook format to any other format, as well as perform many other ebook management tasks. It's available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

Selezen wrote:

For encounters in its full glory pdf is probably best, but I'll be customising the book for each format, hopefully. Plain text novels are most convenient in kindle or epub format.

Thank you Selezen. I've been thinking about this a bit and I'll be using the device to view monochrome books only. Your work is a bit of an exception as it sort-of-is and sort-of-isn't a book and I'll definitely be ordering it on .pdf!

Diziet Sma wrote:

Whilst I don't have a handheld reader, I can highly recommend that you install a copy of Calibre on your main computer....

Thanks Diziet Sma. Calibre looks like a handy piece of kit for managing the device especially the way it can change the format. It also looks to have a viewer with it too so I'll give it a go to see how I find the different formats.

I'm not an e-reader owner, but I would offer a small word of warning as regards dedicated e-ink e-readers like the Nook or the Kindle, as opposed to tablets: I don't think they're going to last, as a technology. Like MP3 players, they're pieces of kit that only do one thing (display text and monochrome pictures, in this case). Although reading text on an e-ink display is better than reading text on a screen, you can't use them to make phone calls, surf the web, play games, or watch streaming video. The only thing they do is display text.

Dedicated MP3 players are rapidly disappearing, with their function being taken over by mobile phones. Everybody (almost) already has a mobile phone, so if it can act as an MP3 player too, who needs a separate MP3 player? Granted, the e-ink displays are easier to read, and the battery life is much longer, than an LCD screen (although LCDs have the edge in resolution, which helps when reading e.g. PDFs not specifically made for one set screen size), but reading is a minority interest (there are more households in the UK which own two cars than there are households which own two novels). Reading text is too much of a minority interest, I think, to sustain the existence of a separate piece of mass-market technology. So if you buy an e-ink e-reader, you may find yourself owning a piece of equipment that's hit a dead end, with their function subsumed into tablets and phones. That shouldn't really matter, ultimately, because it is to be hoped that future e-readers will be able to read older formats ... although this isn't guaranteed: there are archivists who could tell you, tearfully, about their attempts to establish a standard with long-term (i.e. several decades, at least) viability.

This last point is something to bear in mind, about any digital media, not just ebooks. Consumers want to buy things that they can use all their lives; but at the moment the industry is only selling (or rather, more often renting) products which are not guaranteed to last. Ever since the music industry discovered that people would buy on CD things they already owned on vinyl, this re-purchasing has been an enormous cash cow (similarly, re-buying on DVD things which were owned on VHS). So there's strong commercial pressure in favour of built-in incompatibility. The best way to avoid being trapped by this would be to avoid proprietary formats, like Kindle, where possible.

Wise words indeed.

Disembodied wrote:

(there are more households in the UK which own two cars than there are households which own two novels)

Am I the only one who finds this shocking, even frightening?

Is this really so?

Commander McLane wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

(there are more households in the UK which own two cars than there are households which own two novels)

Am I the only one who finds this shocking, even frightening?

No, you are not.. and from what friends tell me, I daresay the situation is even worse in the US.

Commander McLane wrote:

Am I the only one who finds this shocking, even frightening?

Is this really so?

It's the sort of thing that publishers tell each other, moodily, as the evening wears on and the level in the bottle falls. It's a statistic I've seen quoted about the book trade in the UK - I have to confess though I don't have the attribution for it, and it may not be based on concrete data. But it's not beyond belief: there are huge numbers of households where reading matter doesn't stretch beyond the occasional magazine (there are also a great many households here where parents are skipping meals to make sure their kids have clothes, or shoes, or food: books are not their first priority).

Disembodied wrote:

I'm not an e-reader owner, but I would offer a small word of warning as regards dedicated e-ink e-readers like the Nook or the Kindle, as opposed to tablets: I don't think they're going to last, as a technology.

The big difference is that tablets must use screens that can update very fast and needs a processor, capable of high speeds. Both lead to heavy power consumption.

Dedicated e-readers only need to refresh their screens once in a while. That allows for using low power consuming screens. With that, you can build readers with a small battery (light-weight) that last long without recharging. I don't see that technology being replaced by tablets fast. With a tablet on the beach, you are not able to read the whole day on one battery charge.

Cheers disembodied. It was the proprietry file format thing that i was most trying to steer clear from. I also agree that a reader is dead end tech but I do prefer (and i'm probably in the minority here ) to have 1 device for each purpose rather than 1 device that does everything - I think I'm too old / dim to get my head around any other way! (although I do have a record player with an ipod dock ) In particular I detest tablet computers and prefer a computer to have a proper keyboard.

Ultimately I feel that paper books are the best way of reading but more and more the books I like to read are becoming electronic distribution only and for reasons that I totally understand - there's no way that any of the oolite fiction amongst thousands of other works could be published if we relied on paper distribution only and the world would be a worse place for it. Electronic self publishing is as important to the written word as the printing press was in the past.

Anyway, philosophy aside I've had a further think on the subject, whipped out the soldering iron and repaired an old netbook. Its now running callibre on linux mint and I've converted coyote by ElViejo to epub so that it saves my page insted of me having to write it down on a post it stuck to the back! The other bonus is that I'm replying to you using it so I've got an internet ready e-reader for the cost of 10mm of solder (and I'm currently downloading oolite)

I'll consider an e-reader later as a long battery life is vital and this little netbook just munches its way through the battery.

I've retired my Kindle in favour of a Nexus 7 for the reasons above.

Cheers,

Drew.

Eric Walch wrote:

The big difference is that tablets must use screens that can update very fast and needs a processor, capable of high speeds. Both lead to heavy power consumption.

Dedicated e-readers only need to refresh their screens once n a while. That allows for very low power consuming screens. With that, you can build readers with a small battery (light-weight) that last long without recharging. I don't see that technology being replaced by tablets fast.

This is all true: e-ink readers have definite advantages over tablets. But they're only good for reading text (although not as good as print on paper). I don't think there's a big enough market for reading electronic text to sustain a dedicated piece of technology, when more and more people will own things that allow them to read electronic text already. How many Nook owners, once they've also bought themselves a tablet, will buy a new Nook when the old one croaks? Or will be prepared to take their Nook and their iPad with them when they travel?

My own research* into this suggests that most students who read ebooks do so on their mobile phones. I don't think they're likely to spend money on a dedicated e-reader when they already own an e-reader which is also a smartphone.

* i.e. I've asked a few of them, and asked a few tutors too, and this is what they tell me ...

Diziet Sma wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

(there are more households in the UK which own two cars than there are households which own two novels)

Am I the only one who finds this shocking, even frightening?

No, you are not.. and from what friends tell me, I daresay the situation is even worse in the US.

I must be quite the exception then - I have no car and at least 25-30 novels in the house . Maybe I'm just biased, but I find this very hard to believe. But, if it's true, I have to agree with CML - it's about as sadly scary as it gets.

Disembodied wrote:

It's the sort of thing that publishers tell each other, moodily, as the evening wears on and the level in the bottle falls. It's a statistic I've seen quoted about the book trade in the UK - I have to confess though I don't have the attribution for it, and it may not be based on concrete data. But it's not beyond belief: there are huge numbers of households where reading matter doesn't stretch beyond the occasional magazine (there are also a great many households here where parents are skipping meals to make sure their kids have clothes, or shoes, or food: books are not their first priority).

Now this seems like a confounding variable - if people are skipping meals to make ends meet, then books are not going to be any priority, yet alone top priority. This is terrible news though - parents need nutrition too - which I can vouch for. My two year old is a lot of work .

xzanfr wrote:

Cheers disembodied. It was the proprietry file format thing that i was most trying to steer clear from. I also agree that a reader is dead end tech but I do prefer (and i'm probably in the minority here ) to have 1 device for each purpose rather than 1 device that does everything - I think I'm too old / dim to get my head around any other way! (although I do have a record player with an ipod dock ) In particular I detest tablet computers and prefer a computer to have a proper keyboard.

Ultimately I feel that paper books are the best way of reading but more and more the books I like to read are becoming electronic distribution only and for reasons that I totally understand - there's no way that any of the oolite fiction amongst thousands of other works could be published if we relied on paper distribution only and the world would be a worse place for it. Electronic self publishing is as important to the written word as the printing press was in the past.

Anyway, philosophy aside I've had a further think on the subject, whipped out the soldering iron and repaired an old netbook. Its now running callibre on linux mint and I've converted coyote by ElViejo to epub so that it saves my page insted of me having to write it down on a post it stuck to the back! The other bonus is that I'm replying to you using it so I've got an internet ready e-reader for the cost of 10mm of solder (and I'm currently downloading oolite)

I'll consider an e-reader later as a long battery life is vital and this little netbook just munches its way through the battery.

Great choice of distro . I just recently found Calibre when Dizzy turned me on to James Gleick's book on Chaos Theory, it's (calibre) a little heavy-weight, but as mentioned, can convert file types. I agree that I'd rather read a hard copy, but as you say, electronic self publishing is the modern analog of the printing press .