The E-Reader Wars

A recent publication regarding the "war" between e-book readers has left me scratching my head.

Hey, guys! This isn't Highlander, where "there can be only one". To me, e-readers are like cars. Some people prefer FORD, some want their Toyotas, and others go for the BMWs. If there can be a multitude of car dealers all selling basically the same item, why can't e-book readers be the same?

However, there is one major bump in the road with this analogy. All those cars use regular unleaded gasoline. The same can't be said of e-readers when it comes to formats.

I remember back in the days of BETA tapes vs VHS standard. One wouldn't play on the other. So if you bought into BETA, you soon found yourself out a lot of $$ when the norm became VHS. Same for Blu-Ray DVDs.

Why can't e-readers adopt one basic "standard" for their e-books, and let the public make their own decision as to which vehicle they want to drive? Sometimes the public may want to buy Book One by Author A, but can't find it in the format that their e-reader demands. Result? A lost sale. If enough of that occurs, then the public may ditch that e-reader and/or buy another one that the book they want is available in.

Maybe I'm seeing this all wrong, but to me these so-called wars sound an awful lot like high school football teams bragging and battling it out over who is better. And we the reading public are sitting in the bleachers, awaiting the outcome so we can go home.

For the Love of Books - Formats and Fonts

I buy my ebooks in PDF because I can boost the font. Period.

I once had a friend comment that it was very hard for her to read the tiny font of one of my books. The 8 pt. font made her eyes water, as well as gave her a headache.

"Why don't you boost the font so it's easier to read?" I suggested.

"You can do that?"

Yes, you can if you're using Adobe (or any 0ther PDF reader, I would imagine.) Another neat trick I learned -- when it's time to scroll down, DON'T use the mouse. Put your cursor on the empty space ABOVE the bottom arrow, in that little "gutter" your scroll bar runs down. Then click once to advance the page down. The last line you finished will automatically become the first line at the top of the next page. :D

Ain't technology wonderful?

Coming in the Back Door - My Take on E-Readers

Has anyone else noticed the phenomenon regarding e-readers? I mean, seriously, I'm not talking about the availability or types of e-readers. It's the fact that the READERS are having to comply with with the BOOK FORMATS already out there!

Think about it, folks! This is different!

For those of you who are old coots like me, NONcompatibility issues have been around since MAC programs and formatted disks couldn't be run on PC computers, and vice versa. Remember when VHS and Beta were fighting for the video recording market? A Beta tape wouldn't fit, much less run in a VHS machine. More recently there's been the battle of HiDef DVDs vs BluRay. If you bought one machine, you could use only their kind of product to use with/on that machine.

So why are there ebook formats like Mobi and HTML, you ask? It's due to the fact that ebooks can now be read on Blackberries and Palm Pilots, and the like. Those mini-computers/phones aren't specifically e-readers. They CAN allow you to read ebooks, but initially that's not their primary function.

So the next time you hear about a new kind of e-reader being introduced, take a good look at what it can do, and be happy you can download all your PDFs onto it without any trouble.

Ain't it great? :D