Greg,
It seems that ebooks will be a major path for publishers in the
future. Unfortunately there are some 30 ebook formats available (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_readers
) fortunately, most handle the .epub and .pdf formats. All the file
formats can be stored on a hard drive and loaded onto your ereader as
required, though most readers have a pretty good capacity. The reader
I use, Kobo Touch, can hold some 1,000 books as is and if you use a
memory card, up to 10,000 titles. Ebook files are as portable as any
other digital file and can be emailed, carried in a thumb drive or
burnt to disk.
The price of ebooks varies a great deal. I have seen some which are
cheaper than a hard copy and some which are dearer than buying the
same title from vendors such as Fishpond or Book Depository. The great
advantage of ebooks is that there are so many free titles. I reckon I
could keep myself in reading material for life, just by reading free
titles. My education was quite lacking when it came to the classics.
Now that I can obtain them for free, I intend to remedy that.
One of the great things about ebooks is that there are so many out of
print titles and obscure titles becoming available on free sites such
as the Gutenberg Project. This will be a boon for researchers relying
on inter-library loans, as many libraries, including the National
Library of Australia, are beginning to offer their holdings in ebook
format.
With Sony announcing their developing a "roll-up" TV, I think that we
will see some interesting developments in the near future for ebooks.
Ebook readers have far less circuitry than a TV, so the future looks
very interesting for ebooks.
Hope this answers your questions. I am by no means an expert on the
subject, having only taken delivery of my Kobo at the end of November,
but I surely like the idea.
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
On 19/12/2011, at 7:36 PM, Greg Little wrote:
Carl
Can you please enlighten on how these ebooks work. They sound
interesting
but I have concerns. I am unlikely to buy an ereader of some sort if the
ebooks are only marginally cheaper than or as expensive as a hard copy
and
if the ebooks cannot be stored safely somewhere on a hard drive,
separate
from the ereader. Can people move them around as a simple file, swap
them
etc by email?
Greg Little
-----Original Message-----
From:
On Behalf Of Carl
Clifford
Sent: Monday, 19 December 2011 7:17 PM
To: Peter Shute
Cc:
Subject: eBook Management Program
Peter, unfortunately I have not kept a list. Here are a few sites that
offer free ebooks http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en
http://www.digitalbookindex.com
http://www.gutenberg.org/ http://www.mobileread.com/ This list
of sites is by no means complete, I am finding new sites all the time.
In the few weeks I have had my ereader, I have been more involved in
an orgy of science fiction. Baen books, one of the main SF publishers
has a great library of free books, and I have been working on
downloading most of their free library.
There is an rapidly growing number of sites offering so many books
(Project Gutenberg alone has some 36,000 titles) that finding what
interests you entails a fair bit of dredging.
Have fun dredging.
Cheers,
Carl Clifford
On 19/12/2011, at 6:13 PM, Peter Shute wrote:
Carl, any chance of a list of bird related eBooks you've found that
are free or cheap?
Peter Shute
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