Say you want to get into ebooks but you’re not sure what reading device you want to buy yet. Don’t worry, you’re not out of luck! If you’re reading this post at all you still have the ability to read ebooks right in front of you: i.e., on your computer. This post is all about your options for doing so, with a final addendum about the incredibly helpful ebook management program Calibre.
Readers, please feel free to drop comments on this post with your own recommendations for ereading clients!
This is the (overdue) part 4 of my series of posts on how to choose what you want in a reading device. This particular post’s topic: do you want a device that just focuses on reading books? Or do you want it to do other things as well?
I was pretty happy with my iPhone as a reading device until I got the nook and made a hugely important discovery. The fact that the nook focuses on being a reader, for me, means that it comes closer to the experience of reading a physical book.
The nook does actually have other functionality–it’s got rudimentary web access and a couple of games on it, for example, and you’re supposed to be able to listen to music and audiobooks as well. But since these functions aren’t as obvious as the reading functions, I can pretty much safely ignore them. I don’t have the impulse of “oh hey I’ll just check Facebook/Twitter/my email/whatever for a minute” to distract me from the book I’m reading.
The e-ink screen contributes to this for me as well. I see the e-ink, and it looks a lot more like a printed page to me. So I’m much better able to think of the nook as a “book-like thing” rather than a “gadget I can do various nifty things on”. If I open the nook’s cover, reading will ensue, just like with a printed book.
On the other hand, one of the reasons I resisted getting an ereader for so long was because I disliked the idea of carrying around multiple gadgets. I had already condensed the cell phone, iPod, and PDA I’d been carrying before into one iPhone, and I didn’t want to bump my gadget count back up–extra gadgets, of course, meaning extra things to have to keep track of so that they don’t get lost or stolen as you carry them around.
And there’s also the very real question of budget. If your finances are an issue, you’ll want to think seriously about the dedicated ereaders just because they’ll be significantly cheaper than an iPad or any smartphone that’s also capable of reading books.
In short, what do you need your device to do, and what are you able to spend? The answer to these questions for me was certainly “I want and can afford a dedicated ereader in addition to my smartphone”. For others, it’s a harder call.
But what about if you want to read ebooks even if you don’t have an ereader? Part 5 will be all about how to read an ebook on your computer.
Apologies for the hiatus on the ebook posts, y’all; they ran into a roadblock when Seattle got smacked upside the head with winter early last week, and then the holidays kicked in, so!
As of tomorrow I will resume the rest of the ebook posts, though! If you missed the previous ones, here are their links:
Come back tomorrow for Part 4: Do you want a dedicated reading device?
Depending on where you get your ebooks from, they’ll come in several different and often proprietary formats. If you’ve been an ebook reader for a while, you’ll know as well that several formats that used to be in play have fallen out of favor. It can get pretty confusing pretty fast. So this post is about what formats are currently in favor, who sells what, and what devices you can buy that’ll read ’em.
As y’all know, I’m an e-author as well as a voracious reader of ebooks. So I get asked about this semi-regularly, and just this afternoon 
keethrax
So I thought I’d do me a series of posts about ebooks and e-reading devices. I don’t have firsthand experience with all of them, so I’m going to focus on what e-reading experience I’ve had, and try to give as clear a picture as I can to folks. I’ll break it down roughly into the following topics:
That should get me started and give me plenty to post about, but if anyone has any specific requests or questions they’d like to see me address, please drop a comment! I’ll be linking off to the various excellent reviews of various devices that the fine ladies at Smart Bitches Trashy Books have done, too. However, y’all please feel free to link me up with any reviews that have influenced you in favor of specific devices as well.
Ready? Next post to come: ebook formats!