From Books to E-books; A Guide to Making the Transition Easier |
Having been an e-book enthusiast for a long time and being obsessed with books in general, I have come to realize that I have a lot of information that I could share to make the transition from books to e-book readers easier. Here’s a break-up of the things you need to know, section wise.
The Number One Tool for ALL E-book Reader Owners:-
Calibre. Download it now. Whether you have a Kindle (especially if you have a Kindle), or a Nook or an iPad or any other tablet, this is one download you won’t regret. Calibre is a conversion, connection and library tool all in one. You can convert books and PDFs of any format to any format, and this is a feature that Kindle owners cannot make do without (unless they are willing to spend thousands of rupees on buying content directly from the Amazon store.) You can directly download a variety of newspapers onto your device, you can organize your entire e-book collection, and Calibre even lets you create and edit your e-books and their look and feel.
Best of all, it’s free to download, legally.
Best Sites for Finding E-books:
If you’re particular about legally downloading books for which the copyrights have expired then, the first place to look for is your own book-reader’s store. Amazon has a staggering number of books which can be purchased for 0 Dollars. Barnes and Noble and the iBookstore have their own free content too.
Other sites:
http://www.projectgutenberg.org
Open Library alone has over 10,00,000 books on the site and a nifty feature where each book is available in a variety of formats as well.
With such a large number of books available for you, you might wonder why anyone would resort to anything else, well sometimes, you just want to read that latest book that isn’t available in your country yet or read that uber expensive book you cannot afford, and for those of you who are okay with leaving your scruples behind for a bit, here are some sites where you have a host of books available. (The formats maybe a bit limited though)
Epub only, but lots of contemporary books available.
There are a lot of other sites which have e-books, but from all my research and experience, these two are the most reliable.
A Few Other Pointers:
If you have a tablet and are too lazy to go through the hassle of connecting to the computer to just transfer one book, my first recommendation would be to download the Kindle app (Nook app) and download books directly from Amazon (Barnes and Noble) onto your device.
There’s another way for iPad owners to do this. You can e-mail yourself the books (in epub or PDF formats), open the e-mail using the standard Apple Mail app, select open in iBooks and voila! the book is ready to be read.
If you depend on an e-reader alone for reading (by this I mean, e-ink ones), you should first invest in a sturdy cover, because otherwise, and sometimes even despite having one, it won’t survive. The forums of major retailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble are full of complaints from users whose e-readers have stopped functioning without any fault on the user’s part. With personal experience of having two e-readers die under mysterious circumstances( also read as: no clue why), I can only tell you to take the utmost care of your e-reader. It looks solid and dependable but trust me, it’s not.
And so, I sign off with a few other resources that you might find helpful-
� Washington State Library’s useful guides
� www.goodreads.com (For finding fantastic book recommendations)
Happy reading!
