Be Book
- Thread starter Gottaa
- Start date
Corwin
The Burninator
I think fictionwise is a good site
http://fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook42269.htm
this great book is only 7 dollars, you can even get it in adobe pdf format which is portable...
Generally .lit/.pdf files should be portable (.pdf files will be quite large, .lit files are microsoft reader format) but I'm not sure how the industry will take to people selling books in that format because of this. Certainly the waterstones book site link above doesn't appear to sell the ebook version , but I may have been looking in the wrong place.
http://fictionwise.com/ebooks/eBook42269.htm
this great book is only 7 dollars, you can even get it in adobe pdf format which is portable...
Generally .lit/.pdf files should be portable (.pdf files will be quite large, .lit files are microsoft reader format) but I'm not sure how the industry will take to people selling books in that format because of this. Certainly the waterstones book site link above doesn't appear to sell the ebook version , but I may have been looking in the wrong place.
Am I right in saying Sony dropped the stupid setup they have in america of it only support sony format books then ?
I'd love to find a Sony one to try, once I confirm the zoom is enough I'm ready to splash the cash ! (would be nice to see it soon and get it on pre-order to get the extra bits)
I'd love to find a Sony one to try, once I confirm the zoom is enough I'm ready to splash the cash ! (would be nice to see it soon and get it on pre-order to get the extra bits)
I emailed Waterstones about their ebook list and got this response:
Thanks for your enquiry to Ask a bookseller. At this point in time we are not in the position to give a full list of eBooks that will be available to download on our site. The eBooks themselves won't actually be visible on Waterstones.com until early September, but the banners currently on our site and the posters in some of our stores will give an indication of what types of books to expect.
I have also listed below the 100 Classic eBooks that will on the free CD that accompanies the Reader from Sony. We are working very closely with our publishing colleagues to ensure an exciting selection of eBooks will be available to our customers for the launch of the Reader from Sony and well beyond
It seems to me that the only reason for withholding the list is because it isn't much of a list - otherwise they'd be ranting about it.
Holding off on the pre-order til I know more.
And Gottaa, the reader does support more formats now, this is from the tech specs on the Sony site:
Compatible Formats
Unsecured / free eBooks & text files:
EPUB eBook, BBeB Book, Adobe� PDF, Microsoft� Word, TXT, RTF
DRM (Secure / purchased) eBooks and text files:
EPUB eBooks (Adept) BBeB eBooks (Marlin)
Unsecured Audio files:
mp3, AAC (not most DRM audio)
Image & Photo files:
JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
Thanks for your enquiry to Ask a bookseller. At this point in time we are not in the position to give a full list of eBooks that will be available to download on our site. The eBooks themselves won't actually be visible on Waterstones.com until early September, but the banners currently on our site and the posters in some of our stores will give an indication of what types of books to expect.
I have also listed below the 100 Classic eBooks that will on the free CD that accompanies the Reader from Sony. We are working very closely with our publishing colleagues to ensure an exciting selection of eBooks will be available to our customers for the launch of the Reader from Sony and well beyond
It seems to me that the only reason for withholding the list is because it isn't much of a list - otherwise they'd be ranting about it.
Holding off on the pre-order til I know more.
And Gottaa, the reader does support more formats now, this is from the tech specs on the Sony site:
Compatible Formats
Unsecured / free eBooks & text files:
EPUB eBook, BBeB Book, Adobe� PDF, Microsoft� Word, TXT, RTF
DRM (Secure / purchased) eBooks and text files:
EPUB eBooks (Adept) BBeB eBooks (Marlin)
Unsecured Audio files:
mp3, AAC (not most DRM audio)
Image & Photo files:
JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP
Doesn't that mean you could buy your ebooks from pretty much anywhere and load them onto the sony reader then ? I know the Be Book can do that. but I have to admit the Sony one does look a little neater than the Be Book one, though the price now I look properly the Be Book one is still cheaper as it's leather cover is included free, with Sony it's an optional extra :/
There are others out there, but the Be Book does seem to offer the most compatibilty while the Sony offers the best looks, the other one's I've looked at seem to be trying to be more of a notebook than just an eBook reader which seems abit silly, I just want a reader with good battery life that zooms enough and can hold enough books
The iLiad is specifically the one which appears to be trying to do too much, with touch screen and writing notes on your book .... it's also I think limited in what format's it will support
The iLiad is specifically the one which appears to be trying to do too much, with touch screen and writing notes on your book .... it's also I think limited in what format's it will support
Pit.Sweat
Full Member
Hmm, just wondering... could I download and read comics on one of these things? A book reader in itself is of little use to me - as my phone is good enuff for that - but since I've recently stopped my comic order this would be an invaluable space saver and let me continue one of those hobbies my wife thinks she's knocked out of me...
From memory all the ereaders (amazon, sony, be book, iLiad) I've really looked at support PDF format as well as the specific e-book formats, and some support word documents, and while the current gen don't upcoming one's will come with wifi, rss readers, etc which tends to lead to better web integration.
Also worth bareing in mind from all I've read all the eInk readers (all those listed above) are greyscale only, so I'm not sure how good a comic would look in black and white with limited greyscale options :/ eInk is good for book reading but it is fairly new tech and while great for reading in sunlight and on how much battery it uses it's still fairly basic
Also worth bareing in mind from all I've read all the eInk readers (all those listed above) are greyscale only, so I'm not sure how good a comic would look in black and white with limited greyscale options :/ eInk is good for book reading but it is fairly new tech and while great for reading in sunlight and on how much battery it uses it's still fairly basic
I've done a 180 here, downloaded Mobipocket for the phone and converted all my MS Reader books cos it doesn't even support its own OS (WM6)!!
Will get the Bebook or PRS505 when someone works out which one is better, I am having difficulty finding unbiased comparisons of the two.
Will get the Bebook or PRS505 when someone works out which one is better, I am having difficulty finding unbiased comparisons of the two.
I've tried various places, I've had no replies at all about a demo unit of the Be Book being in any stores (or indeed being stocked anywhere outside the mybebook.com website), and finding a store with a demo unit of the sony e-reader looks like it might be impossible as well, my local waterstones won't ever actually hold stock of them and will just order them in, I'm just waiting to hear from the larger waterstones around to see if they will have demo units then will post an update.
For me the winner will simply be the one that zooms enough for me to be able to read a book I buy
For me the winner will simply be the one that zooms enough for me to be able to read a book I buy
I've been looking at some formats for eBooks and I think I've come to the conclusion I don't think .pdf will work as an eBooks reader format. PDF was originally designed to print not read, admittedly a lot of people use pdf to read these days and there have been a lot of improvements in acrobat to make this easier but you're still at the mercy of the person creating the file for them to make it viewable properly. These new ebook readers are great, but pdf just scales up and down and I'm not sure if it would wrap the text so reading it would be very hard. The BeBook has a function to rotate the display 90deg and I'm sure the sony prs-505 one probably does too which would help but you'd end up scrolling a lot and still couldn't adjust the font size.
I don't know if you guys know any other formats but when I was playing around with eBooks a year or two ago I found .lit (Microsoft's open reader format) to be the best, but there wasn't as many formats as there are now.
Examples:
I've downloaded Alice's adventures in wonderland (a free book) in both pdf and .lit formats for you guys to try and see. The pdf file was from BeBooks web site and as you can see does not look like a standard pdf format as has has large fonts, small page size etc...
Anyway I just wanted you guys to see and have some test files if you are serious about looking at these readers at least you can take these along for a test.
http://polaris.king.ac.uk/pauls/download/alice-s-adventures-in-wonderland.lit
http://polaris.king.ac.uk/pauls/dow...832-1898_alice-s-adventures-in-wonderland.pdf
You will obviously need a .lit reader to read that file if you want to read it on your pc.
I'd certainly be interested in hearing your views on other file formats for these readers as this technology certainly looks very interesting and the BeBook is only a fraction more expensive than the Sony reader on Amazon at �260, and would be my choice from available readers atm.
I don't know if you guys know any other formats but when I was playing around with eBooks a year or two ago I found .lit (Microsoft's open reader format) to be the best, but there wasn't as many formats as there are now.
Examples:
I've downloaded Alice's adventures in wonderland (a free book) in both pdf and .lit formats for you guys to try and see. The pdf file was from BeBooks web site and as you can see does not look like a standard pdf format as has has large fonts, small page size etc...
Anyway I just wanted you guys to see and have some test files if you are serious about looking at these readers at least you can take these along for a test.
http://polaris.king.ac.uk/pauls/download/alice-s-adventures-in-wonderland.lit
http://polaris.king.ac.uk/pauls/dow...832-1898_alice-s-adventures-in-wonderland.pdf
You will obviously need a .lit reader to read that file if you want to read it on your pc.
I'd certainly be interested in hearing your views on other file formats for these readers as this technology certainly looks very interesting and the BeBook is only a fraction more expensive than the Sony reader on Amazon at �260, and would be my choice from available readers atm.
The Sony reader to pre-order from Waterstones is only �199, and the same direct from sony, what on earth are Amazon up to !
I'd get the sony one as well, but I'm not gonna buy either until I can see one and try it in person, and I think that pretty much means it'll be the Sony I get assuming Waterstones or any a Sony store lets me see it before I buy
I'd get the sony one as well, but I'm not gonna buy either until I can see one and try it in person, and I think that pretty much means it'll be the Sony I get assuming Waterstones or any a Sony store lets me see it before I buy