Who here has an electronic-book reader thingy?

[FirstLight]

i.e. Nook, Kindle, Ipad...

I am looking into self-publishing, and wanted to ask a general question about the technology...

-Are there links in some of the text, so you can follow a reference or something interesting?

-How many 'pages' is your average book? Does it matter?

-Do you only read "known" authors...or do you look for new things in the 99-cent store?

Just curious, I would love to know ... as much as I am a dyed-in-the-wool Librarian and loooove my paper books, I want to write for e-publishing, so I figure i will cave and get one soon...

[handmade34]

1. info on publishing

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help

I have the Kindle Fire (love it) but probably can't answer the questions you need answers for... I wish you best of luck though! (and I imagine there are others here who can answer)

[OriginalGeek]

2. My wife just got me a Kindle touch last night

so far the only two books I've downloaded were A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (read them in high school and wanted to revisit them 30 years later) and they were free.

1. I have not used it but I see in my documentation that some books are "X-Ray enabled" which is just what you describe if I'm understanding it correctly - Links to further explore unfamiliar terms or words or notes by others and various online research to study the work further.

2. Charles Dickens is wordy but I expect as I gather more books the page count trend down. But it doesn't matter to me. I love long books and short books and will probably have many of both and in between.

3. I will scour the cheap and free stuff eventually - I just got it lol. Haven't even figured out if I can sort by price or if I just have to type in what I'm looking for and hope it is free. Hoping this thread will point me at some good links to lists of interesting things to read...cheap and free are especially neat.


My wife already had the Kindle Fire but I wanted the Touch because I would rather read the e-ink. Much easier on the eyes. If I just HAVE to play angry birds I'll steal hers for a bit or play on my phone lol. She's had hers less than 2 weeks and is thinking of taking it back and waiting til the next version comes out and hoping that the power button is not on the bottom. She accidentally hits the button several times a reading session.

[seabeyond]

3. i am on my fire now. but i dont like to read books on it.

Last edited Fri Jan 6, 2012, 10:52 AM - Edit history (1)

Just play on net. Too heavy to read a book. I use kindle reader. Way lighter. I don't know what you are talking about on your first question, so maybe, maybe not.

Mostly I like books about 300-400, give or take. But I will pick up shorter books which takes us to your last question. I buy the free. Sometimes 99. 99 I have to have a bigger book, instead of a short free story.

I love my real books, too. But I love my kindle reader. Very easy to read. I do still go to the library for the more expensive published books.

on edit... but i like typing my posts on my lap top the best. not the fire. really really hard and i dont try often. you saw the result, lol

[FirstLight]

4. thanks guys, keep the info coming!

I appreciate knowing more about the platforms, and how you like using it too

[hunter]

5. I have a kobo.

Mostly I grab books from http://www.gutenberg.org in the epub format.

I've bought a few books, mostly science fiction.

I've created a few books using sigil. http://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=203. Sigil is not the easiest program to use, but if you master it you can make a gorgeous e-book.

I write most everything using markdown, and then convert it to html, epub, or any other of the various e-book formats, mostly using pandoc.

Markdown: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown

Pandoc: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc

You'll most certainly want to check out http://www.mobileread.com and http://calibre-ebook.com.

Calibre does fairly decent conversions from text or between the other e-book formats if not copy-protected.

[FirstLight]

7. ever heard of Book Baby?

it's a service that publishes you and markets you to all 4 platforms...

thought it's an easy way to start...without having to learn too much programming, etc...

http://www.bookbaby.com/

[hunter]

10. There's a couple of services that will convert a book for free...

There are also plugins for LibreOffice (Open Office) that allow you to save your work as e-books.

Lulu has a wide range of services for self publishing, including paper books.

http://www.lulu.com/publish/ebooks/?cid=us_pubpage_ebooks

Lulu is one of many. That's simply one I happened to have in my bookmark. Mobileread forums has the scoop.

I don't know anything about bookbaby.

Selling books is all in the marketing. Check out a place like feedbooks ( http://www.feedbooks.com ) and try to imagine how you would get noticed in all of that before you put any of your own money in...

And check out the writing forum here on DU!

[retread]

13. Atlantis Word Processor can save to epub format.

http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/help/index.php?page=html/ebook.htm

[CaraB]

14. BookBaby is great

BookBaby is through the same company that does CD and music distribution (CD Baby http://members.cdbaby.com).

I think they are great!

Cara

[dimbear]

6. The easiest way to choose among the various readers is to try the versions for PCs.

Amazon and various other sources have them which they are glad to give away to encourage book sales.

After trying them you'll choose a favorite. Right now EPUB has become my favorite, but I drift.

As far as self publishing goes, it seems likely the best thing to do is write a trilogy and give away the first volume. At least that's a common dodge you see. Give away a few winners and then you're established.

[sarge43]

8. First, I loves my Kindle

Yes, you can bookmark and link.

Size of book doesn't seem to matter. I have the complete Shakespeare, a short newspaper article and everything in between on mine. Not even close to filling it up.

One of the selling points. You can get a sample of a book sent before you purchase.

Biggest drawback IMO is pictures and maps. Screen size just doesn't allow for the necessary detail. A problem with histories, technicals and art books

One other thing. You don't have to give up on paper books. You can have both.

[TreasonousBastard]

9. I have the original Nook and downloaded everything from individual lectures to...

Augustine's "City of God" and the thousand or so pages of Mark Twain's autobiography and works and the complete Oz series. I get the NY Times on it, too, and will get some other subscriptions when I get the Nook Tablet.

I just wish I had pockets big enough to carry it in-- winter coats have 'em, but in good weather it's a bit to lug around without some kind of bag.

Paid the full e-price for some things, others got from free sources. Paid a buck for yet others that I could get for free, but it's worth a buck or so to get a set or series of properly formatted public domain books.

Links? So far not in ePub or PDF formats that I've noticed, but maybe soon and maybe in HTML docs now. Can't see the need for it in fiction as hyperlinks in good fiction would really screw up the flow. Nonfiction would have good use for it, particularly with notes and indexing. All of the readers include some sort of browser, though, so it would be a bit kludgey but looking up something wouldn't be too difficult.

E-publishing schemes abound, but I wouldn't trust Amazon as far as I could throw them for publishing anything-- they have a reputation for screwing authors and publishers. Barnes&Noble has a self publishing operation that I don't know much about, but it I believe it does include e-publishing.

(Whatever you get

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

11. I have a basic Kindle.

I like it pretty well because it saves bookshelf space (though I still kind of prefer paper books). You can search within the text quite easily. The number of pages varies because you can adjust the size and style of the type; there's a progress bar along the bottom of the "page" to show how far along you are. I have bought both new books and some of the 99-cent and free books; it's nice to be able to get new best-sellers faster and a bit more cheaply.

[TuxedoKat]

12. I have a Nook

which I LOVE. I buy regular priced E-books, but watch for specials in genres I like. B&N sometimes offers Ebooks for $2.99 or .99. I buy all kinds of books, including self-help and different types of fiction. Length isn't that important, but if I'm paying the usual full E-book price, usually $9.99, I'd like the book to have 300+ pages at a minumum. I like longer books in general, especially for historical fiction, my favorite genre. I just bought The Forsyth Saga for .99 cents, it includes the first three volumes which are 2188 pages total (!). My Nook is set on a slightly bigger type setting -- not out of necessity, but I haven't figured out how to change it back, so there are probably less pages in regular type. A few series where I've gotten the authors' first book for free in a series, I've gone on and paid for the other books in a series -- so that is an excellent way to get a following of readers. One author Jayden Woods, offered a bunch of short stories for free called the Lost Tales of Mercia. There were ten, I think, then I bought the first book in her series, Eadric the Grasper for $2.99, the second one in the series is $5.99 (has 377 pages), see what is happening here? Another author whose first book I got for free was Shayne Parkinson's Sentence of Marriage, and I bought the other three books in her series for $2.99 each (they all had 800-1000+ pages).

As a aside, Nook is on FB and they offer a free book every Friday and announce other discounted books there. I get alot of books for free on my Nook too. Hope that helps.

[GeorgeGist]

15. response

1. My Kindle [2yrs old] does not have links.
2. Average book about 400 pg.
3. I've bought some .99-centers. Kindle also has some freebies.

[mrmpa]

16. Nook Color owner here for 16 days..........

I only download the free Friday book offered by Barnes and Noble and borrow the others via download from my library.

[Wait Wut]

17. I have a Kindle!

I love it! And, yes, I do rummage through the cheaper and/or free books, often. There are links, but I ignore them. I'm sure others find them useful, though

No, size...er page count...doesn't matter. I love short stories as much as anything else. The short stories are good for "filler" when I'm having trouble deciding which other book to read next.

I do tend to read more from known authors, but if something from an unknown comes highly recced, it goes on my list.

Have fun!!

[bigwillq]

18. Not me

I have no interest in getting one.