E-book for e-book readers

Ruudjah posted on Thursday, March 27, 2008

Rocky,

Are you planning to release any of your books in an optimized version for ebook readers like the Sony PRS-500, PRS-505, Amazon Kindle, Irex Iliad etc?
Would be great to be able to have your books with me on the go :).

Ruud

RockfordLhotka replied on Thursday, March 27, 2008

I don't know. Is there a single standard format for readers like PDF is for PCs?

And if there is, it will depend on the cost of publishing tools. I spent money to buy a PDF publishing tool - though now I need to re-buy it so it works with Vista :(   But I need to determine if enough people will buy any other given format in enough volume to justify purchasing other publishing tools (and taking the time if necessary to do any extra typesetting, etc).

I haven't looked into this area at all, so I don't know the cost/complexity - nor do I have a good idea how many people would purchase in this format?

rasupit replied on Thursday, March 27, 2008

Rocky, that would be nice.  I tried to use it on my sony reader and the margin was so large that make the word become so small and unreadable.

I don't know about kindle but Sony uses their proprietary format BBeB (Broadband eBook)

Ricky

RockfordLhotka replied on Thursday, March 27, 2008

ajj3085 replied on Friday, March 28, 2008

Perhaps Amazon will convert it to their format for you.

Ruudjah replied on Sunday, April 06, 2008

Rocky,

FYI:
-Those ebook readers have either a 2 or 3-bit greyscale color depth.
-The Sony PRS-500 and 505 have a resolution of 800x600, and the Iliad has a resolution of 1024x768.
-Margins are not desirable.
-The physical size of the screen is about A6 for the sony readers, and almost A5 for the Iliad. (See: this )
-All ebooks support some propietary format from the manufacturer of the device, which is not really interesting since its propietary. But they all support also the PDF format.

That said, optimizing an ebook for an e-book reader is nothing more then changing the PDF page size and margins. Testing if the optimized version is correclty optimized is no more then printing a page, with the same size and resolution as the ebook readers. If its readable, it will be readable on the ebook screens. The only hassle I can imagine is optimizing images for the screens: two types of e-paper exist (2-bit and 3-bit). Saving a color, 2-bit greyscale and 3-bit greyscale for every image in a book seems to be monks work. I would imagine future PDF authoring (maybe current software already has functionlity for it) having a function where this is done automatically. Like a "save optimized for ebook" button.

For now, a rudimentary simple optimization in where the page size and margins are set up for ebook devices would be a very nice start (and as far as I can see not much hassle).

And by the way, I think every IT professional (who reads a lot) should have at least a Sony reader, but better: an Irex Iliad. Once you have one, you will never go back to screen reading or printing out emails/articles/books/etc. Right now, I use a PRS-500 on the go but also as fourth screen on my workstation. I just put in in my craddle,which is situated on the keyboard of my laptop. When working, I use it as auxiliary screen to put notes/articles/lists etc on. Very usefull.