Apr 28 2009
My First E-Book Experience
I have been thinking about getting an e-book reader for a while now. The Amazon Kindle is very intriguing but the price is pretty steep so I have been holding off. Recently Amazon released Kindle software for the iPhone. Now the Kindle looks like something I could read with, but the iPhone? How could anyone enjoy reading a novel on that tiny screen? Ridiculous! But recently one of my professors, Dr. David Loertscher, posted a link to a Wall Street journal article about ebooks (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123980920727621353.html). The article got me thinking about the experience of reading and how electronic device will change (are already changing) that. I decided I should try reading, really reading, some etext.
Now I have been using smart phones for about 4 years. Given that I have the memory of a fruitfly the personal organizer part is essential. But aside from the calendar, address book, and phone functions I don’t use my Blackberry Pearl for much. It has a mediocre camera and I have a few games on it but I just don’t get into electronic games. I also do not have a data plan or text messages on my AT&T account so I don’t do any web browsing or e-mail on it. So I am not used to spending more than a few seconds at a time looking at the 1 ½” x 1 ½” screen.
For my first e-reading experience I copied and pasted the 2nd half of the WSJ article onto the primitive text editor in the phone. Surprisingly it was not too uncomfortable reading from the phone. But what about an entire novel? There are plenty of free books available on the Web but copying and pasting chapters into a text editor would be ridiculous. So I looked for an e-book reader for the Blackberry. And just like for the iPhone, there’s an app for that. I found Mobipocket (see review below), a free program, and installed it. For my first book I chose Infected by Scott Sigler. First it is science fiction—totally appropriate for entering a new age of literature, and second I heard about it while listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Escapepod, a science fiction story site—doubly appropriate.
The Verdict: I was prepared to hate reading on my phone but I actually enjoy it. Reading a good paperback is great but the convenience of always having a book with me is pretty hard to beat. I find I am reading more often (though some of that is in small increments). If I have a few minutes to spare I always have a book handy, whether it is waiting for a class to arrive in the library, warming up on the stationary bike at the gym, or if I have a few minutes before I need to pick up my son, the book is always there. In that respect it has the Kindle beat. Mobipocket also allows you to subscribe to tons of newsfeeds in many different languages so also have news articles in English and Spanish on my device. And I have not really been that bothered by the small screen. Once you master the navigation the text flows pretty easily. A bigger screen would be better but I really like being able to put my phone in my pocket. I won’t stop reading ink-on-paper books anytime soon but I will be downloading more e-books and continuing to read on my phone.
Next steps:
• Figuring out how to download e-books from the public library to my phone
• Figuring out how I can use e-books to get kids to read more
2 responses so far
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Tony, It’s likely that there will be a variety of modes in which to read e-books. We (BalonaBooks) are trying the simplest and I think the most straighforward: .pdf that is downloaded from email and read on one’s computer screen via Adobe Reader. We have sent out only a dozen .pdfs of Bandits!, but the response has been (almost 100%) positive. The advantage of .pdf is that the size of the type can be controlled on the screen. Another advantage is that the cost of a .pdf is much,much lower than a paper print version. A disadvantage is that the computer screen is not very portable, although one can read a .pdf on any device that accepts them.
Jonathan
One problem with the .pdf files is that they tend to be about twice as large as other text files such as the mobipocket ebook files. Although the universality is a big advantage.
Tony