[Content Note: Ads, Disability]
And they don't just limit you to one version: you can get mobi (Kindle), epub, and pdf versions, as well as a zip file download of code examples. Which means that he can read the epub version on his secondhand Nook, and later mark up the PDF version with a stylus on our Galaxy Note. And this is obviously freaking awesome. Best of all, the Manning downloads appear to be DRM-free. (They may have social DRM or watermarking; I haven't checked. Note that those do carry privacy issues.)
This isn't just a nice bonus for everyone. For many people, being able to switch between a print version and an electronic version is a disability issue. If your wrist breaks or you hurt your back or you develop a hernia or your arthritis starts flaring up or any number of other ailments suddenly drop in like they do, you are still able to enjoy your hobbies and/or perform your work without knowing that you're going to have to shell out thousands just to replicate your library into a format that's compatible with your disability. I cannot describe how psychologically important that is.
So here's a shout out to Manning Publications Co. for being awesome.
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eReader: Companion eBooks at Manning |
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eReader: eReaderIQ Watchlist |
If you buy from Amazon Kindle and aren't already aware of it, ereaderiq has a really great "watchlist" service for Kindle books. All you have to do is load the Kindle books you want into your Amazon wishlist, make the wishlist public for a one-time sync (you can make the list private again afterwards), and then eReaderIQ will send you notifications when the book price drops by whatever amount or percentage you set. (I usually set for $1 drops.)
The service is free; the site makes its money by embedding an affiliate code in all its links, which you don't have to use but are certainly convenient for one-click access. The email alerts look like this:
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eReader: Cloud Kindle Notes |
[Content Note: Potential Privacy Invasion]
I'm also somewhat pleased with the ability to share your profile and follow other peoples', which is why I'm sharing the link to my own profile both here and permanently in the About Ana blog page. What I'm way less enthused by is that apparently it's an Amazon default to mark all purchased and even wishlist-ed books as "public" for people to view on your profile and it's up to you to go into the system and turn books off individually. That's a stupid default for lots of obvious privacy and marginalization reasons, and I really hope there's a way to change it somewhere in a setting I haven't found, because privacy should be the system default, not a constant opt-in chore for the customer.
So if you've purchased any books from Amazon -- eBook or otherwise -- I recommend checking the kindle.amazon.com link above to see (a) if they made a profile for you and (b) if it has anything public that you'd rather not be. And then you might want to contact Amazon Help (there's a Contact Us button on the lower right) and ask them to make privacy the default behavior of the system. (You don't have to sign in to send a phone call or email.)
Aside from that, though, it's a nice feature and I like it.
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eReader: 1DollarScan Interview |
[Content Note: Disability, Infertility]
So I'm still not at the level of fame required to be asked to do a RiffTrax with Mike Nelson -- my ultimate blogging dream-goal, placing me alongside the Comics Curmudgeon and the Something Awful guy in the immortal pantheon of amusing bloggers -- but 1DollarScan did kindly notice that I talk them up online a lot and also sent about one million books to them in the post, so they asked me for an interview! And they made up nice questions for me and everything, which was really awesome of them! SO I AM VERY EXCITED!
You can read the whole thing here on their pretty green site, or you can read below in my usual peanut butter colors.
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eReader: Device Comparison Site |
An acquaintance on Mobile Read has put together what zie calls "the site I wish existed when I was choosing" an eReader. It's a device comparison site and it's actually pretty good, so I thought I'd reblog it here: ereaderlookup.
The value of a site like this is that most of us already know where to find the big names -- Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc. -- but it can be quite a bit harder to comparison shop the third party devices. I've been looking at the Onyx Boox M92 for awhile because it has a 9.7" screen, (semi-) touch support, and handles epub and pdf formats, but it took awhile to find the device back before this site existed. So it's pretty cool.
The downside to a site like this is that since the big booksellers -- Amazon, B&N, Kobo, etc. -- largely use DRM, a lot of third-party devices aren't necessarily automatically compatible with these stores. So the site could probably still use a little work, but the creator is definitely interested in feedback, so there's that.
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eReader: ePub Tools |
Let's talk a little about eReaders today, specifically the ePub format (that pretty much all eReaders use except the Kindle) and some ePub modification tools that can make your life easier.
If you don't know what an ePub file is then a great place to start would be the Wikipedia write-up. My two-second non-techno-babble explanation would be that it's a eBook file that works on non-Kindle readers (B&N, Kobo, Sony, pretty much every third-party device currently on the market) and which is closely related to an HTML file. The ePub format differs from, say, PDF in that the ePub format contains text information and can be resized/reflowed easily on most eReaders.
If you publish an eBook, your readers are going to want and expect an ePub version.* (Or at least I will.)
* They will also want a Kindle (mobi) version, but once you have an ePub version getting a mobi version is pretty easy.
More on that in another post.
So let's talk about some tools that I like, love, and use on a near-daily basis.
Sigil
Sigil is a free What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor for ePubs. It is incredibly powerful and is a super-sweet, super-easy to use program. Take it home to Mom and give it some good loving. I seriously use Sigil once a day. I love it so much.
Here is what you can do with Sigil. You can copy-and-paste text into the Book View (or type directly into it) and save it as an ePub. Once you get a little more comfy with ePub code (and you will, because a good ePub is a clean ePub and clean code is minimal code so basically "getting comfy with ePub code" means "learning what to strip out" which is fun in a tidying sort of way) you can switch back and forth to the Code View and tinker directly with the code. And if you mess the code up, like by leaving an end tag off, when you switch to Book View Sigil cleans that up for you. Thank you, Sigil, you're such a sweetheart!
You know what else you can do with Sigil? You can load in an HTML file and save it directly as an ePub. So clean, so neat. You can go through and create new chapters through a honking big HTML file by pressing CTRL+ENTER at the end of a line. You can do so many groovy things. If you are ever, ever, ever going to modify an ePub, you should download and install Sigil. If you are using ABBYY Fine Reader and 1DollarScan to convert paper book to PDFs to ePubs, you should be saving the Fine Reader output into HTML (not Word) and loading that into Sigil. Seriously, it's the difference between an hour's worth of clean-up and a day's.
dotEPUB
dotEPUB is a free plugin for Firefox and Chrome browsers. It lets you create an ePub file directly from a webpage with the press of a button. Super-useful if you like to save things for offline reading -- go to a site, press the dotEPUB button on your browser toolbar, save the file into Calibre, and away you go. Wheeeeee!
epubCreator
The one major downside to dotEPUB is that it's not quite smart enough to gobble up page links, so if the article you want to save is spread across multiple pages and there's not an all-on-one-page-for-printing option anywhere, you'll have to make multiple ePub files to save everything. But never fear! epubCreator is a not-free tool that can merge and concatenate ePub files into one. So far, based on my runs with the software, it works great with dotEPUB outputs if you open the files with Sigil first and save them once before conversion. (Sigil cleans up any nasty code artifacts. Who's a good software program? Sigil is a good software program! YES, YOU ARE.)
Modify ePub Calibre Plugin
This Calubre plugin by KiwiDude is worth mentioning because it's great for force-stripping out publisher dross like embedded fonts (no, I don't want to read things in serif font, thank you) and ridiculously huge margins. It's a powerful tool, but like all conversions should be handled with care. Make a copy of your original file before you start automatically stripping out code.
I think that's probably enough gushing out of my system for one post. I'm pretty fluent in most of these tools at this point -- especially Sigil -- and am happy to field questions in the comments.
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e-Reader: pBook to eBook Conversion (The Lazy Way!) |
A couple of months ago, I blogged about a home-method to cut and scan a book into a PDF file. The method was, I noted, a laborious time-sink best suited for folks like myself who were absolutely fanatical about converting their library into electronic form. It was also best for "image" books -- even with an OCR software like FineReader it was very likely that a home scanner's results for a mass market paperback book would be just dark enough or skewed enough to seriously lower your OCR accuracy rate.
Well, 1DollarScan is here to save the day. You take the number of pages in a book, round up, and then divide by 100 and that's your cost for the cutting, scanning, and PDF emailing goodness for that book. So if your book is 236 pages long, that's rounded to 300, so it's $3. If another book is 367 pages long, it's rounded to 400, so $4 for that book. Both books mailed together would be $7 total.
I've used this service for a "test" book and the results are above. They supposedly don't scan front and back covers, but in this case they did. (I think they just say they don't in case your cover is a hardcover that won't fit through their scanner's feed. And yes, they do accept hardcover books.) The scans are super crisp and very clear and bright, although as you can see there is some bleed-through from the previous page.
The service also claims to layer the PDF with text conversion (so that it's searchable), but in my sample the conversion was iffy -- searches found some instances of a word, but not all. One thing that is very good about this service is that if you are OCRing your PDFs into text for epub or mobi or Word or whatever conversion, the bright scans and perfectly-aligned pages are very easy for FineReader to handle and there are a lot fewer errors to be corrected after a scan-and-convert.
The downside to the service, of course, is that you don't get your book back. Since I've been cutting, scanning, and recycling anyway, that's fine with me, but it won't be fine with everyone. Something to keep in mind.
One dollar per 100 pages (rounded up) does add up, especially when the burden of shipping is on the buyer. I will say, though, that I've been able to send the following groups in USPS flat rate post boxes (the largest one is $15):
$73 for 23 books at $15 shipping = $3.82 per book
$66 for 28 books at $15 shipping (with 30% discount coupon) = $2.18 per book
$64 for 26 books at $15 shipping (with 10% discount coupon) = $2.79 per book
It's not a magic bullet for cheaply converting the books you've already bought once into electronic format, but it is significantly cheaper than re-buying everything in a new format for your e-Reader. What's more, it's an attractive option for books stuck in "orphan" status, such as when the author is dead but the owner of the rights is in question and the public domain cutoff is increasingly further away.
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eReader: Device Comparison Shopping |
One of the things that people often ask me is, "I'm thinking about buying an eReader. Can I ask you a few questions?" I'm not sure why they ask me this, but Husband says it might have to do with the fact that I own five or six of them. I can quit anytime, you know.
Ahem. Anyway. The answer is always: "YES!" I love talking about eReaders. It's getting me to shut up about eReaders that's the hard thing. However, sometimes I think I should write all this down into a nice big blog post so that people can read all this at their leisure.
The problem with writing about eReaders, though, is that there is always a new line coming out. And even if I do have five or six, that's such a minuscule portion of the market that it's still very safe to say that (a) I don't know everything about what's out there and (b) even if I did, my knowledge would very quickly be out of date. So understanding that, let's talk about some general stuff.
1. Device Form Factor
So first let's talk about the form factor of the devices out there. The big differences out there are screen size, screen type, navigation type, weight, and integrated reading software. Don't worry, it's not nearly as confusing as it sounds and I want to say right now that your best friend for comparison shopping is going to be this Wikipedia link here on the comparisons between eReaders. So now what does this all mean?
1.1 Screen Size
Screen Size simply means how big is the reading area. Most eReader screens are 6", which is about the size of a mass market paperback book. There are a few dedicated 7" (notably the Sony PRS-950
1.2 Device Weight
Device Weight is equally pretty simple -- it basically comes down to how much the device weighs. This will vary widely, in part because screen size is not the same as device size; there's going to be space around the screen for holding it, and that space can add a lot of weight quickly. In general, lighter is better -- the plastics that eReaders are made from are pretty darn sturdy, and you're going to want to be able to hold your reader with one hand without getting wrist fatigue. Anything under 7 oz is probably fine for the average user, and even I can use the 10 oz Sony PRS-950 without trouble.
1.3 Screen Type: LCD or eInk?
Screen Type is something of a biggie. The first big question is: LCD or eInk? LCD is basically a computer screen: it glows in the dark, it shows color, it works poorly in full sunlight, and some people find it straining on the eyes. eInk is basically grayscale paper: it doesn't glow in the dark, it doesn't show color, it works perfectly in full sunlight, and some people find it relaxing to the eyes. If you go LCD, your options are a tablet (like the Nook Color
1.4 Screen Type: eInk Regular or eInk Pearl?
With eInk, there are a couple more choices, notably: eInk Regular or eInk Pearl. Most new devices -- the Sony PRS line, the Kindle 3
eInk Pearl creates a cleaner, sharper image than eInk Regular. Since Pearl screens are available on most newer devices, it's usually just as cheap and easy to get a Pearl screen than a Regular one. However, if the device you have your heart set on isn't a Pearl device, you may not end up noticing or caring -- for most people the difference is only noticeable for books with pictures. Here are some photographs I took to demonstrate the difference:
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| eInk Regular (PocketBook 360) |
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| eInk Pearl (Sony PRS-950) |
1.5 Navigation Type: Touch or Keys?
There are two types of screens: touch screens and non-touch screens. Touch screens mean that you can use your finger (and possibly a stylus, depending on device) to navigate your library; non-touch screens come with keys or keyboards for device navigation.
Of the non-touch eInk devices, the biggies would be the Kindle 3 and the PocketBook 360. The Kindle 3 has a built in physical keyboard that is used for device navigation; the PocketBook 360 has a direction pad and 3 dedicated buttons, all of which can pull double duty via short-press and long-press and which are customizable in terms of which key does what.
Of the touch eInk devices, the biggies would be the Nook Simple Touch and the Kobo Touch. The Nook Simple Touch has two page turn buttons (right and left side); the Kobo Touch has no buttons whatsoever. (Well, except a power button, I suppose. Those don't count.)
Of the hybrid eInk devices, the Sony PRS line has both touch screen navigation and dedicated buttons across the bottom, which can be customized if you load the PRS+ environment to the device. This is the device style that I personally prefer -- touch for easy library navigation and buttons for options menus and page turns.
NOTE: Since the Sony PRS touch screens are infrared, they can be used with a fine-tip stylus and they can be placed in a water-proof pouch (and then navigated via the button interface). I'm not sure if this is possible with the Nook Simple Touch or Kobo Touch models.
Of the LCD devices, you get touch, period. And it's probably going to be capacitive touch, which means the wide rounded-tip styluses.
2. Library Management
So now that you've had a moment to ogle the pretty readers, it's time to talk about how you plan to load books and navigate to them. There are a lot of different ways to approach library management, and this is one area where the devices are very different but not always clearly articulated.
Do you like to buy one book, read it, archive it forever, and then go on to the next one? If so, then just about any reader will work for you, and probably your biggest priority will be buying one that integrates easily with your store of choice and maybe even has WiFi or 3G support.
Do you own hundreds or thousands of books and the appeal of an eReader is being able to carry around your entire library with you at all times? Do you care intensely about tweaking the covers and shelf tags until they're perfect and being able to organize books by series or genre or any number of other criteria? If so, then my advice to you is to go straight to the Sony PRS models (not the PRS-350, though, because it doesn't have an expandable SD slot) or the PocketBook models.
Why do I say that? Well, the Nook readers and the Kobo readers and -- to the best of my knowledge -- the Kindle readers all basically dump your entire library into a big old bucket. Some of those readers, most notably the Nook, do support shelving books on the device itself, but the process is slow and tedious and can't be backed up and you will lose all your tagging during a firmware update. I. Have. Done. This.
The Sony PRS readers, in contrast, allow Calibre (which you should totally use to store your 1,000 book library) to send metadata to the device with the books, and this metadata is organized into "Sony Collections". Currently I send several types of metadata with each book to my Sony device: whether or not I own the audio book, whether or not I've reviewed the book yet, where I bought the book (or if it was sent for free in exchange for review), the genre of the book, and the series and series number of the book.
This means that I can go into my Collections view and see a list that looks like this:
Clicking on "fiction (adult literature)" will show me all the books in that category. (I have a whole bunch of these that I named myself because I'm OCD about library management and "fiction (adult literature)" needed to group closely with "fiction (children literature)" and NOT be split by "non-fiction (arts and crafts)".) Clicking on "audio (yes) (Audiobook)" will show me all the books in that category -- some of which are also included in the "fiction (adult literature)" category. This is a very powerful way to use and access a large library, and it's something that -- as far as I know -- is unique to the Sony readers.
Now, I also mentioned PocketBook above, and that's because PocketBook models support folder browsing (as does Sony if you've loaded the PRS+ environment). Folder browsing can get you the same thing that Sony Collections gets you if you don't have a lot of nested folders. Folder browsing worked for me when I only organized books by genre, but once I started adding extra layers like "reviewed?" and "audio book?" then it became cumbersome.
Obviously I'm in favor of Sony readers because of the Collections capability. Will you need collections? Possibly not. My husband does fine without collections, partly because he has a very small library of eBooks so far, and partly because he only loads what he knows he wants to read soon to the device. I'm the sort of person who feels like she has to have her entire library with her at all times because god forbid I not be instantly gratified the second I want to read The Picture of Dorian Gray on a whim. But it's worth pointing out that the Sony line-up makes you pay more for this privilege.
3. Other Stuff To Think About
OK, so now we've talked about library management and device form factor, here are some miscellaneous things to keep in mind. None of these will (probably) be deal-breakers, but they're things you want to think about moving forward so as to not get taken by surprise.
3.1 Fonts
You might want to check out what kind of fonts come with your proposed eReader. Most readers will come with a serif font and a sans serif font, but they may not be good versions of either. Some readers will let you load new fonts -- the PocketBook models do this, and the Sony PRS models do after you've loaded PRS+ to the environment. (Before that, you're stuck with a whopping ONE font and Sony expects you to like it. *eyeroll*)
3.2 Key Mapping
If your device has keys, you might want to check out the key mapping options available to you -- i.e., how customizable is the device? I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but the PocketBook 360 lets you do this, as does the Sony PRS models after you've loaded PRS+ to the environment. One nice thing that you can do with the Sony models is map "take a screenshot" to a key -- I use this a lot when I want to remember a page or quote from it later. (Sony supports good highlighting and note-taking and export of same, but I just kind of like screenshots for some weird reason.)
3.3 Book Formats
There are about a billion ebook formats, but unless you've been hoarding old Microsoft LIT files and the like, you will really only care about three: mobi, epub, and pdf. So let's talk about those for a second.
The mobi format is the format that the Amazon books come in (for the most part). A rule of thumb is that no readers can read these books except the Amazon readers. (PocketBooks can, but only if they are DRM free. We'll get to that in the Storefront section below.) The mobi format is slightly less sophisticated than the epub format in terms of what can technically be done with them, but for 99% of books, this will not matter. The important thing for you is that mobi converts (via Calibre) cleanly to epub with pretty much no loss or clean-up needed.
The epub format is the format that everyone else's books come in (for the most part). A good rule of thumb is that all readers can read these books except Amazon readers. The epub format is slightly better than the mobi format for reasons that will be invisible to most readers who aren't tech heads. The important thing for you is that epub converts (via Calibre) cleanly to mobi with pretty much no loss or clean-up needed.
The pdf format is the format still used for books that have very specific layout needs (columns, images in relation to text, and so forth). As a general rule of thumb, you really want to avoid reading pdf on your eReader, but if you simply must, the Sony PRS-950 is your best bet (large screen and great zooming options). The Nook and Kobo try to reflow the pdf and the result is pretty dreadful, in my opinion. The important thing for you is that pdf converts terribly -- very messy and with lots of clean-up needed. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either flat-out wrong or thinking of a special type of pdf file that most pdfs aren't.
3.4 Battery Life
The rule of thumb here is that you can get maybe 8 dedicated hours out of an LCD device. The eInk readers last a lot longer, but not as long as you'd think. The Nook Classic, for instance, will tell you it has a week of battery life, but it really has about 16 hours, which is about two days on a long car trip. The trick here is that a "week" of reading is measured in only about 2 hours a day. So while you may hear "week" and think that's more than enough for me! just understand that doesn't take into account what your actual use may be on, say, a long plane trip or something. Overall, though, battery is pretty unimportant to most users -- buy a wall charger or a car charger and you'll never have to think about it.
4. Store Integration
Last thing, and this is a bit of a biggie: where are you going to buy your books from? It's potentially a major question or possibly not a big deal at all to you -- but whichever way you swing will depend on a few factors: namely, delivery and DRM. But let's cover a couple of general rules.
- You do not have to buy eBooks from the store associated with your reader.
- You can -- theoretically -- match any reader with any store. But some stores have more management overhead than others.
Delivery is something that a lot of stores offer to sweeten your link with them through the device. Amazon Kindle books can be bought directly from the Amazon Kindle reader and delivered to your device over the WiFi or 3G; this is true for the four major stores and their readers -- Nook, Kobo, and Sony PRS-950.
Sounds convenient, right? Well, it can be if you're just wanting to buy, read, and archive. Lots of people do that and it works great. But if you want to buy, tweak the cover to be just right, tweak the metadata and tagging, read, and retain on your device forever, the direct delivery is going to be useless to you because you will have to download the book to your computer, tweak it in Calibre, and side-load it to your device by plugging to your computer. So whether delivery is a useful feature will depend on you.
4.2 Digital Rights Management
DRM essentially means that the book is locked down and you have to have a key to open and read the book. Most books come from a bookstore with DRM in place, but not all. Not all eReaders can read the same DRM formats -- i.e., not all eReaders carry the same key types. Here's a quick chart:
- Amazon: Books have Amazon DRM applied. Kindle can read Amazon DRM only.
- B&N: Books have B&N DRM applied. Nook can read B&N DRM and Adobe DRM.
- Kobo: Books have Adobe DRM applied. Kobo can read Adobe DRM only.
- Sony: Books have Adobe DRM applied. Sony can read Adobe DRM only.
Then, also, there are a lot of independent stores -- like Baen and Smashwords -- that provide DRM-free books that you can buy and support.
But let's say you won't want to remove DRM but you still want a specific DRM-wrapped book. So where should you buy from in that case? Well, if you don't want to remove DRM, you have two choices: You can go with the Amazon store if you want an Amazon reader or you could go with the Kobo store for the B&N/Sony/Kobo readers.
Why the Kobo store? The Adobe DRM they carry can be read on the B&N, Kobo, and Sony readers. The B&N store, in contrast, can only be reader on B&N readers. The Sony store also carried the Adobe DRM, but the Sony store is (currently) quite awful and all right-thinking people hate it. OK, that's an exaggeration, but I don't like it myself, plus I don't like that you need the Sony Reader software to download the books you buy.
So now let's break down the stores:
4.3 Amazon
Most eBooks are priced the same regardless of store because of Agency Pricing, but Amazon seems to be able to coax a sale out once and awhile. I definitely recommend using Amazon to store your Wishlist and using eReaderIQ to send you alerts when the price comes down: generally, when the price goes down at Amazon, it goes down at all the stores. An odd quirk of the Amazon store is that it doesn't download your books to all your registered Kindle devices (computer, eReader, phone, etc.) but rather only to the one you select. Note that Amazon has page syncing and note syncing across devices.
4.4 B&N
B&N probably has the best online library management -- you can sort your purchased books by author or title, and you can also archive things as needed. B&N also lets you download books to your computer with the press of a button, which is nice for backing up data. Once a book has been purchased from B&N, it's available for download on any registered Nook device (computer, eReader, phone, etc.). Note that B&N claims to have page syncing (but it doesn't work) and no note syncing across devices.
4.5 Kobo
Kobo's online library management leaves a lot to be desired in terms of sorting functions, but it's basically a poor man's B&N and it's worth noting that the Kobo team seems to be very open to internet forums and consumer suggestion, which bodes well for future growth. They also offer coupons from time to time, although it's worth remembering that coupons don't work with Agency Priced books. Kobo lets you download books as ascm files which are opened in the Adobe Digital Editions program where the "real" download takes place. Once a book has been purchased from Kobo, it's available for download on any registered Kobo device (computer, eReader, phone, etc.). I'm fairly certain that Kobo does not support note syncing.
4.6 Sony
Sony's store can only be accessed through their Sony Reader software. For that reason, I've not really used the store much at all. Sorry about that.
5. Information Overload!!
Please don't be scared by any of the above -- buying an eReader should not be a scary experience for you at all. It should be fun! There's something to remember here: First, pretty much all the eReaders on the market are very nice eReaders and while your first purchase may not be "perfect" for your needs, it will probably do very nicely. Second, you pretty much can't screw up too badly -- if you buy the "wrong" eReader, you can resell it for a fair chunk of your investment online.
So what you really want to know is: what eReader should I buy?
If you want an LCD device for color and backlit reading, I recommend the Nook Color
. It's ~$250, and you can slap an SD card in, run CM7 off of it, and then you have an Android tablet that works very nicely. From there, you can load any store -- Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Sony -- off the Google Market and you've basically got 4 readers in one. If you do get into using Calibre, you can also use the Library in the Cloud function and the Aldiko app supports Adobe DRM.If you want an eInk device and don't intend to ever have more than ~50 books on it at a time, I recommend the Kobo Touch for ~$130 at Best Buy. It's not the most powerful reader on the market, but it's a good price for a "starter" reader, the books you buy at the Kobo store will be delivered to the device, and you'll be able to switch device manufacturers later to Sony or B&N (if you want) without having to worry about DRM issues.
If you want an eInk device and do intend to stock it up with hundreds or thousands of books, I recommend the Sony PRS-950
but it's worth noting that it's about $400 from Amazon (you can find it as low as $200 at some Best Buys) and the model has been discontinued. I *think* the Sony PRS-T1 will be the same functionality but with a 6" screen and a ~$150 price tag, but since those models won't be released for another month or so, nobody actually knows for sure one way or another.So you might wait and see on those. But! This is all just my opinion. What you really want to do, before making any decision, is get a second one from the good folks at Mobile Reads. They even have a forum just for this question: Which Device Should I Buy?
And -- as always -- you are welcome to email me with any questions you might have! (Did I mention I like talking about eReaders?)
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eReader: Book Binding with J.D. |
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| @ jdmontague.com |
I'm not certain if these techniques could be used to rebind a book that was unbound for electronic scanning, but it's theoretically possible. If anyone has any luck with this, report back here -- preferably with pictures! :)
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eReader: Running CM7 on a Nook Color from SD Card (REPOST) |
Recently I noticed that my Running CM7 on a Nook Color from SD Card post has over 100 comments! As far as I'm concerned, that's really awesome, but at the same time, I thought I should start a clean thread for new people coming to the process.
There are two reasons for this:
- With a clean post, I can incorporate some "lessons learned".
- With a clean post, new commentors won't have that sinking "oh dear, do I need to read all these before I go on" feeling. I hate that feeling when I'm starting a new project.
So here we go...
Getting Your Stuff Together
Here is a list of all the things you will need:
- A Nook Color
.
- A micro SD card. There's no mandatory size / format / manufacturer for this process, but quality does matter and I have no idea how you tell the "good" ones from the "bad" ones without buying them first. I use this micro SD card
- I own three of these now, all from this listing on Amazon, and two of them are running CM7 for Nook Colors so I know they work well.
- You'll need a way to connect your micro SD card to your computer - something like this
.
- An image-writing program like WinImage. I used WinImage85 in my tutorial.
- The CM7 installer image here. Note that the ".gz" extension is a compressed format - you'll need to unzip it with a program like WinRar.
- The CM7 build here. (Download the update-cm-ETCETERA-.zip file. Do not unzip - just leave as is.)
- The CM7 google apps installer here. (Scroll to the bottom until you see this download link.)
Prepping Your Nook Color
A lot of people don't need to prep their Nook Color for this method, but several commentors in the initial thread noted issues with starting from scratch on an NC running 1.2.0 firmware. Because of this, I would recommend using the UnLockr method of flashing your Nook Color to the 1.0.1 firmware. The video can be found here (The UnLockr) and it's very quick and easy to follow their video -- the process should take maybe 20 minutes.
Installing CM7 to the SD Card
Now a slew of videos to follow along with:
- Video 1 is an introduction to the process and gets you from "What is this whole CM7 thing that Ana keeps talking about?" to "Mmkay, we're putting the SD card in the computer now."
- Video 2 is a step-by-step computer tutorial showing how to use WinImage to write the CM7 installer to the SD card and how to move the CM7 build file over to the imaged card.
- Video 3 shows you how to put the SD card into your Nook Color so that the CM7 installer can build CM7 onto the SD card for actual use, and what to expect when you boot up CM7 for the first time.
- Video 4 is another step-by-step computer tutorial for where to put the gapps (Google apps) installer on your SD card for installation to the CM7 build.
- Video 5 shows you how to walk through the Google apps installation process, how to connect to WiFi, and how shiny and cool CM7 is once you've done this final step.
Couple of things to note here:
- First, make sure you're right-clicking WinImage and selecting "Run As Administrator" because that will affect what options are available from inside the image-writing program.
- Second, if you're feeling adventurous you can combine the Google Apps installation into an earlier step, but I think it's best to install everything in "baby steps" to keep it simple.
- Third, if you boot up the NC and just see the little blue CM7 surfer guy but nothing seems to happen: Wait about 5 minutes. The first boot takes awhile. If it doesn't clear up, press the "n" button on the front of the device a few times. Then hold the "n" down. Then graduate to hard-rebooting (holding the power button until it turns off and then rebooting). Then move to the next step section:
Troubleshooting Your Nook Color
Three out of four dentists don't have any trouble with their installation, but some people do have some issues. Let's go through them here.
- It just doesn't work -- it's broken. This is the scariest thing, but we'll see if we can't fix it, ok? Turn the NC off. Pop the SD card out. Boot up the NC. Does it boot up with the B&N software? If no, you'll need to reinstall the firmware by going back to the UnLockr. If yes, then worst case you have to start the CM7 install over again. Wipe the SD card (you'll need a partition manager like this one here) and start over -- or you may consider trying a different SD card brand.
- CM7 boots up but the Google Market is force-closing. Yuck. Can you redo Video 4 and 5 and reinstall the gapps package from within recovery mode? This is your best bet -- probably the first install didn't go right for some reason. Or, if you're having trouble downloading from the market, you may be running into:
- CM7 boots up but the WiFi connection isn't working. The easiest way to test this is to reboot into the stock B&N OS and see if the WiFi works there. If the WiFi works on the B&N environment, but not on the CM7 environment, you may have Cynthia's problem: she managed to clear it up by going into the tablet settings and setting the "save" settings from SD card to external memory.
Backing Up Your Nook Color
You may just want to backup your system data and apps, in which case I strongly recommend the Titanium Backup and Titanium Media Sync apps from the Google Market. However, if you want to back up the entire kit-and-kaboodle of your SD card as an image, you can do so with WinImage.
- Turn off your Nook Color.
- Remove the SD card and insert it into your computer card reader.
- Open the WinImage program as adminstrator.
- Select Disk --> "Creating Virtual Hard Disk image from physical drive..."
- Pick your SD card at the prompt.
- Save the image as an "*.ima" file to your local computer.
- After the image is saved, you'll be able to browse the partitions in WinImage - just ignore this and shut it down.
To restore the image to a new SD card, follow these steps:
- Pop in a new SD card of the same size (or larger).
- Open the WinImage program.
- Select Disk --> "Restore Virtual Hard Disk image on physical drive..."
- Pick your new SD card at the prompt.
- The image will save to the SD card - when you pop it into your Nook Color and boot up, everything should be the same as it was when you backed up the initial SD card.
Credit
As a final note, credits must be given where credit is most definitely due:
- Credit to The Unlockr for the stock firmware 1.0.1 factory reset method.
- Credit to the Cyanogen team for the CM7 build, the gapps install, and their tutorial here.
- Credit to VeryGreen for the size-agnostic SD card CM7 installer.
- Credit to Quinxy von Besiex for his article on SD card vs internal memory rooting.
- Credit to Quinxy von Besiex for his bluetooth keyboard instructions which I use with this keyboard
.
- Credit to the community of MobileRead for introducing me to the concept of CM7.
- Credit to all my commentors for helping me improve this tutorial!
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eReaders: Using the Folder Organizer Android App |
So you've set up your Nook Color with CM7 or you've bought your first Android tablet reader and now you're wondering "how the heck do I organize all my apps?" Very simply: you buy the super-cool Folder Organizer app in the Google marketplace.
Now, Android does have the native ability to create "desktop" folders. But I don't like the native Android folder functionality and neither do most right-thinking people. At least, not the three I've talked to about Android. And one of them may just have been agreeing with me to get me to go away. But that's a big enough sample for me, so tally onward and whatnot.
The Folder Organizer app by Fabio Collini is the best folder organizer for Android that I've tried. You can find it in the Google market by searching for "Folder Organizer"; it should look a little something like this:
The raison d'etre of the Folder Organizer app is to let you create desktop folders for your Android apps, but there's a lot of neat extra functionality included, such as the ability to automatically file "unlabeled" (i.e., new downloads) apps into a specific folder, and the ability to set custom icons for the folder links (check out the iPhone/Android icon sets on Deviant Art for a lot of pretty alternatives). Here's two folders that I keep on my Android devices: Reading apps and Writing apps:
When I click the Reading folder, the folder opens to show all the apps that I've filed under that heading:
That one icon on my desktop -- the Reading folder -- contains twelve apps in it, so the space saving capabilities of this Folder Organizer app should be pretty obvious at this point. ;)
So how do you set up Folder Organizer? Well, after you download it from the Google market, you should be able to access it in your app directory:
There it is, down at the bottom left hand corner. Open that up and you'll find yourself in the Folder Organizer main screen:
"Labels" are what the folders are called in the app; the "label" term was picked -- I assume -- to convey the fact that an app can be in multiple folder/label categories. You don't have any labels yet, but the "New Label" button at the bottom can fix that. The first time you set up the app, you'll probably want to create a bunch of labels first and then go through the "Apps" screen one by one; here's what the "Apps" page looks like:
Of course, my stuff is all labeled already. After you've labeled the majority of your existing stuff, you probably won't want to use the "Apps" page anymore; it's easier to just set up a label for "unlabeled" apps and visit that label through the "Label" page each time you download something new and need to tag it. The "Label" page looks like this:
You can press the little gray arrows to expand the label to see the actual apps in that label; from there you can update those apps to be labeled as you please. The blue arrows let you change the details of the label itself; here are the details for my "#unlabeled" label:
As you can see, there are a LOT of options available with Folder Organizer. I only use labels for holding apps, but if you go into that "Choose" button, you'll see that Folder Organizer can also hold a plethora of other things, including internet bookmarks, people contacts, and app shortcuts.
Once you have your labels set up, you'll want to slap them onto your desktop. That's what folders are for, after all. Go to your desktop and long-press to add a widget. The exact process will differ a little depending on what launcher you're using; I use Zeam at the moment, so it's actually more like "Long-Press --> Item --> Widget".
Pick the "Folder Organizer Folder Link". There's a whole bunch of Folder Organizer widget options, but you want the "folder link" one at the top of the list.
Then you'll need to pick which folder you want to link to with this widget:
And, easy-peasy, now your folder will appear on your desktop with whatever icon you assigned to it:
Aw... look how happy it is!
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eReader: pBook to eBook Conversion |
So you have a paper book (pBook) that you want in eBook form and you've been poking the publisher in vain for days, weeks, months, or even years and nothing has come of it. And you're looking at that pBook thinking, you know, I could maybe turn that into an eBook myself, but you're not sure how to go about it cheaply. Well, I'm going to walk you through the cheapest, crappiest possible way to turn a pBook into an eBook shy of typing the darn thing in yourself.
WARNINGS!
- You are going to ruin your paper book copy in the process of this method.
- You are not going to get a high quality ePub format out of this method; you're going to get a series of scanned images that will be lumped into an image-based PDF. That means that the final book will have no text reflow and will only be readable on a device that supports image-based PDFs. If you're okay with that, continue on; if you're not okay with it, or you don't know what that means, STOP. The reason you are not going to get a high quality ePub format out of this method and are instead getting an image-based PDF is because the scanners and software that can pull text out of an image and perform OCR (optical character recognition) to render the image-words into text-words are expensive. Most people don't have the cash to invest in really good hardware and software to properly convert paper books, nor to pay for a conversion company to do it. So this method is really for picture books only unless you're prepared to put in the money and muscle to go all the way. (See my note at the end.)
- This method takes a long time and is really only for the obsessive-compulsive eReader.
Okay. Let's check our equipment list. I use:
- Canon PIXMA MX860 Wireless All-In-One Printer. Review here. I use this because it was simply what I had on hand at the time; the most important feature is the stack-feed scanning capabilities.
- X-Acto Knife. This will be useful when cutting the strings for sewn books.
- Bulk rename utility. This is freeware, and will be used to rename your scans.
- Irfanview image editing software. This is freeware, and will be used to batch trim the scans.
- Quick PDF tools. This is freeware, and will be used to compile the final book.
- A book. For this example, we will use James Lilek's delightful Gallery of Regrettable Foods
.
Step 1: Destruction
First we're going to need to separate the book into individual pages. This is a long process that requires patience.
If the book is sewn, flip gently through looking for the straps that occur in the spine every few pages; lay the book flat and slice the straps with the X-Acto knife. This will liberate a few pages; gently disengage them from the spine, but leave them in position as you work through the book. Once you've cut all the straps, flip back to the beginning of the book and gently begin to remove the still-attached pages. The easiest way to do this is hold a hand flat on the rest of the pages while you gently tear or cut with the X-Acto knife the attached page. Pages that came from from the sewn binding are usually TWO pages with the sewing down the center and will have to be torn from their other half -- the easiest way to facilitate a clean tear is to bend the pages along their middle crease. There are YouTube videos for all this, but as long as you are slow and careful, you should be fine.
If the book is glued in place, you will have to get a hairdryer on the lowest setting and gently blow on the spine to loosen the book pages. As the glue softens, pull the pages out one by one. Be careful not to smear the glue on yourself or the other pages; lay the pages aside so that the glue can dry. Once again, there are YouTube videos for this; for some books, it may be easiest to soften the glue to remove the spine and then just cut the edge with all the glue on it with a heavy duty paper cutter. You can find these for use at some libraries and some places that offer lamination services, like Mardel or Hobby Lobby. Kinkos probably has them, too.
Step 2: Scanning
Unless you have a duplex scanner, you'll need to scan one side of the book and then the other side. (I.e., odd numbered pages and then even numbered ones.) The Canon scanner I use does have duplex scanning, but only for 8x11 inch sheets, which most books aren't. Slap a pile of paper on the scanner feed (usually you won't be able to do the whole book in one go -- for this example, I divided the pile into four parts), and let the scanner do its work.
NOTE: Don't leave the room while this is happening. You really want to be able to catch feed jams when they happen, not three hours later when the paper has been permanently creased.
The scanner will have scanned all your odd-numbered sheets, and likely will have named them something like "IMG_01, IMG_02, IMG_03...". This is wrong, and we need to rename them now so that we can add the even-numbered sheets in later.
Create a new folder. Call it "Odd Numbers" or something similar. Put all your scans so far in that folder. Now right click on the folder and choose "Bulk Rename Here". (If you don't see that option, reinstall the Bulk Rename Utility and try again.)
In order to sort everything properly later, we need to give everything the same name plus an appended page number. The Bulk Rename Utility will let us do this easily. You need to set the following fields:
File (2): A fixed name will go here. I used "Lilek - "
Numbering (10): The important things here are the Pad (select 3, for an XXX format) and the Increment (select 2, since we've skipped a page per scan).
Set the Start number to 1, and locate the book's "Page 1" via the page numbers on each sheet. Since book numbers frequently don't show until several pages in, you might (a) have to count backwards (in this case, the first numbered page was Page 9, so I had to count back from there) and (b) you may have some "leftover" front pages that shade back into the negative numbers. You can deal with those later -- the important thing now is to make sure that your file naming matches the book numbers.
Select all the files in the Bulk Rename gui and see their projected name in green on the right. Once everything lines up properly, hit "Rename" and poof.
Now is a great time for you to actually look through your scans and triple check that the page numbers and file names match. It's entirely possible that your scanner missed a page and it's a lot easier to find it now than later.
Once you're done with the odd-numbered pages, take your stack of pages, turn them over, and slap them back into the scanner to get the even-numbered pages. Once you have all the scans done, create a second folder, name it "Even Numbers", put all the scans in there, and use the Bulk Rename Utility to re-number them properly. Once again, double check that everything is in there and that the scanner didn't miss a page -- mine missed 2 pages of ~200 in this example.
NOTE: Do not combine the two folders yet -- keep the even and odd numbered scans separate.
Step 3: Trimming
So now you've got your scans, but since your printer is cheap, you've got all this white space around the pictures that you don't want or need. You're going to want to trim that space and you're not going to want to do it 200 separate times.
So. First things first. Go through your pictures with Windows Photo Viewer or whatever you have standard on your machine and make sure all the pages are oriented right side up. Sometimes your scanner flips stuff upside down just to make your life interesting.
Now. Look through your even and odd numbered folders for white space patterns. Some of your pictures will have white space on the top of the picture, some will have it on the bottom. In general, this divide will occur between the even numbered scans and the odd ones, but there will probably be a few oddballs that need moving from one side or the other. Isolate all your "white space on top" files in one folder and all your "white space on bottom" files in the other.
Right click one of the images to "Open With" Irfanview.
Select File --> Batch Conversion:
This dialog will open:
Click the "Advanced" tab:
What we're interested in is the CROP option up in the left hand corner. Let's talk about those values. The X-Position/Y-Position simply tells the program where in the OLD image to start the NEW image. The Width/Height determines the width/height TOTAL of the new image.
Width-wise, I've told the program to take the old images and crop off everything to the left of 180 pixels and crop off everything to the right of the old 2410 pixel mark (2410 - 180 = 2230). Height-wise, I've told the program to start at the top of the image and gobble up everything 2460 pixels down, but then to crop everything below that. This is for all my "white space at the bottom and on the sides" images.
So how did I get the pixel widths? Just open the image in MS Paint or something similar, hover your cursor around the sides, and watch the status bar at the bottom:
If you enlarge the image above, you'll see two sets of numbers at the bottom. The 2550x3300 is the picture's total width and height; the 180x2237 is where my cursor was hovering at time of taking the screenshot. That 180 is the same 180 I used for my X-Pos above.
Once you've set the Advanced options, click OK. Select all the images in the Batch Conversion files at the top and hit Add. The Input files dialogue at the bottom should populate. Set the output directory you want (I recommend a third folder called "LilekBatch") and then select "Start Batch". A dialogue will pop up telling you that the files are converting.
Once that's done, we need to do the same thing with the "white space on the bottom and sides" files. It's the same exact process, but with different Y-Pos values. (Your X-Pos values will probably be the same if you used the scanner's physical guide-rails to keep everything centered when you were scanning.)
Note that the only difference here is that the Y-Pos starting position has moved. The total width and height should remain the same. Go ahead and let the batch converter dump the new files in with the last batch conversion ("LilekBatch").
Step 4: Merging
Now you should have a big folder of images that have been scanned in, named according to their page number in the original book, and carefully trimmed of white space. Open the first image in Windows Photo Viewer and start flipping through the images to make sure everything is as it should be. Check this carefully -- an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in this case.
Once you're satisfied that everything is in exactly the correct order and scanned as perfectly as you want them, select every image in the file and right click on the first one in the series. Select Quick PDF Tools --> Convert --> Image to PDF, and select that you want a single PDF file. Give the file a name and presto.
Now you have an image-based PDF format eBook out of your sadly destroyed pBook. Slap that baby into Calibre and back it up to a cloud storage area or something, because you don't want to lose it after all that work!
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| Cover in Adobe Reader |
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| Page 9 in Adobe Reader |
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| Cover on Sony PRS 950 (Portrait View) |
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| Page 9 on Sony PRS 950 (Landscape View) |
There it is in all of its "Meh" glory on my Sony reader. (I warned you that this was a lot of work just to satisfy an obsessive-compulsive need. No sense in complaining now.) Enjoy.
Step 5: Recycling
What do you do with your ruined pBook? Well, you can try to bind it back together if you really want, but in most cases this will be utterly impossible. You can re-purpose the pages into delightful paper crafts. Or you can recycle the pages in the recycle bin and let the city take them to be turned into recycled paper. You can shred them and use them for kitty litter, although now that I say that, it occurs to me that you probably shouldn't because god knows what the dye in the book will do to their little paws. Ditto for using the paper as a firestarter in the fireplace. Just please don't throw the book in the garbage.
NOTE: Going a Step Further with OCR Software
If you are seriously interested in going to the next step in scanning and springing for an OCR (optical character recognition) program to turn your PDF images into Word text documents that can be converted into ePub, the ABBYY software FineReader10 is currently on sale for $170 rather than their usual $400.
I bought this software on the recommendation of a cut-and-scan enthusiast friend, and it does do a surprisingly good job with a really high level of accuracy, but there are still going to be a lot of "hand work" and manual corrections needed before the book is 100% perfect. And an awful lot of the outcome is going to depend on the quality of your scanner -- with my scanner, I have to go back and re-scan 5% of a book to get the best, cleanest OCR results.
I don't really recommend investing in this software unless you're just absolutely fanatical about conversion like I am, but if you *are* like me, the sale is quite a value at the moment and I felt I should mention it.