iPhone App Store Takes on Amazon Kindle with 99 Cent E-Books (http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/340/C15728/)

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Looks like there is going to be an ebook component to the iTunes Store.

With the arrival of the iTunes App Store, some enterprising individuals have started to populated the virtual shop with a bunch of novels from the public domain. All they have to do is "re-box" them, so to speak, before selling through through the Apple online store for 99 cents each. The e-books that you'll find include stuff like Dickens and Tarzan.

The text is said to look pretty crisp and the relatively large display of the iPhone makes for a pleasurable read as well. And you might look a little sexier staring at your iPhone than at your Kindle.

There are other threads saying that eReader's software, and stanza's, and MobiRead's are available for the iPhone. So you should be able to read the books you've already bought. Or what you've found for free here on MR. (once we or the software people figure out how to download the books to the phone)

Thanks Deb! I don't have an iPhone or plan to have one but I see a lot of folks here do.

There are other threads saying that eReader's software, and stanza's, and MobiRead's are available for the iPhone. So you should be able to read the books you've already bought. Or what you've found for free here on MR. (once we or the software people figure out how to download the books to the phone)

We have software? ;)

Anyway, the Iphone version of MobiReader is not ready yet.

Looks like this particular example doesn't use eReader or Mobipocket. It's offered by these folks:

http://www.appengines.com/bookreader.html

That's right; they're "standalone" applications with a built-in reader app.

"...the relatively large display of the iPhone makes for a pleasurable read as well. And you might look a little sexier staring at your iPhone than at your Kindle."

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

Always in need of a good laugh.

People always compare non-Apple products to the Ipod (whether they play mp3s or not) but I guess you can't do that since the Iphone is an Apple product. Relatively large compared to what, non-smart cell phones? :rolleyes:

Many Smartphones have a 2.5" screen, so it is large compared to that.

There is a FREE ereader in the iTunes App store. You can read pdf, txt, even mobi on it. There is also an App for Fictionwise ebooks. I already have thousands of free books both in Mobi and TXT format so its nice to also use my iphone as a reader. However my Kindle is my main reader and my Macbook at home because I have a ton of pdf classic books and I use Zinio to read magazines. By the way, Zinio also has books.

I wonder why Apple let these developpers publish dozens of public domain books this way. It clutters the App Store, on almost every screen of the Entertainment section you get a few of these books.

I thought Mr. Jobs said iPeople can't read? I'm not sure the free book market is the place to "take on" Kindle or that these devices overlap that much really. Does anyone out there really think... hmmm... iPhone or Kindle???

I thought Mr. Jobs said iPeople can't read? I'm not sure the free book market is the place to "take on" Kindle or that these devices overlap that much really. Does anyone out there really think... hmmm... iPhone or Kindle???

It is not Mr. Jobs that is releasing this stuff. iPhone is taking on the PDA and Smartphone market by opening up their phone to third party tools and taking the additional step of using iTunes to support it. It just happens that some of those tools support eBooks just like the case of PDAs and Smartphones.

Dale

Yeah I know I'm just being silly in the first sentence in response to Steve's silly marketing driven drivel. I've always thought of Steve as a control freak but then the Kindle is even less open. Again I don't see much overlap in these devices. Might as well compare the iPhone to my Nikon D80. ;-)

Might as well compare the iPhone to my Nikon D80. ;-)

There actually is, believe it or not, a reading app (for text files) available for Canon DSLRs :).

There actually is, believe it or not, a reading app (for text files) available for Canon DSLRs :).

So does that mean if I say yes, and have used it am I in bad Shape???

JJ

There actually is, believe it or not, a reading app (for text files) available for Canon DSLRs :).

Lol, should I ask Nikon when they'll have a mobi reader app? Maybe I could ditch my Kindle ;)

OK .... here are my questions for whoever wrote that article ...

1. How well are you able to read from the iPhone in direct sunlight?
2. How long does the battery last when you are reading?
3. Since books in the public domain are generally available for free elsewhere, how is selling them for 99 cents supposed to be a good deal?
4. What different font sizes are available, and how well do large fonts display on the iPhone screen (with respect to reading)?
5. How is staring at any piece of electronic equipment supposed to make someone look "sexy."?

I can answer some of your questions.

OK .... here are my questions for whoever wrote that article ...

1. How well are you able to read from the iPhone in direct sunlight?

Reasonably well. Not great, but it's OK.


2. How long does the battery last when you are reading?

About 6h.

3. Since books in the public domain are generally available for free elsewhere, how is selling them for 99 cents supposed to be a good deal?

Er, why are bookshops full of books by authors like Dickens and Shakespeare? For many people the convenience of buying a book that someone else has created outweighs being able to get it "for free" for themselves.

4. What different font sizes are available, and how well do large fonts display on the iPhone screen (with respect to reading)?

Can't help you with that one, I'm afraid.

5. How is staring at any piece of electronic equipment supposed to make someone look "sexy."?

Depends what else you're wearing at the time?

OK .... here are my questions for whoever wrote that article ...

1. How well are you able to read from the iPhone in direct sunlight?
2. How long does the battery last when you are reading?
3. Since books in the public domain are generally available for free elsewhere, how is selling them for 99 cents supposed to be a good deal?
4. What different font sizes are available, and how well do large fonts display on the iPhone screen (with respect to reading)?
5. How is staring at any piece of electronic equipment supposed to make someone look "sexy."?

Yeah what she said, (I am seeing a trend of me riding your coat tails Rick)
As for the looking sexy some people need all the help you I mean they can get! :)

JJ

Depends what else you're wearing at the time?

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

3. Since books in the public domain are generally available for free elsewhere, how is selling them for 99 cents supposed to be a good deal?


I think $.99 is reasonable for assemblying the book, formating it, uploading it to apples servers. That's not really bad. Amazon sells Pride and Prejudice for Kindle for about $.25 - $3.00.

BOb

Well I tried eReader on my iPhone, I got 2 free books, Last of the Mohicans and Tarzan of the Apes. Both look great. It does use your bookshelf from, in my case, Fictionwise. It will not replace my Kindle but it's nice to have.

Well I tried eReader on my iPhone, I got 2 free books, Last of the Mohicans and Tarzan of the Apes. Both look great. It does use your bookshelf from, in my case, Fictionwise. It will not replace my Kindle but it's nice to have.

SO would you say that it is a nice interim solution until one can buy an actual Reader?

JJ

I think $.99 is reasonable for assemblying the book, formating it, uploading it to apples servers. That's not really bad. Amazon sells Pride and Prejudice for Kindle for about $.25 - $3.00.

BOb

Yes, but then I don't generally purchase books in the public domain. And, the article makes it sound as if the 99 cent price will apply to all books, such that it is a better deal than can be found at Amazon or at another bookstore.

So, if Amazon has the public domain book at say .... 25 cents, then that would make it a better deal than the Apple version. And, if that same PD book is here for free ... that makes it a really great deal.

My thought is that the article is maybe just a bit biased ... more like an advertisement than an article.

However, the iPhone is not my thing ... touch screens can be nice, but they get grungy way too quickly. Heck ... my sunglasses are almost opaque with smudges and goop at the end of the day, and I'm trying hard NOT to touch them.

But, for people who like touch screens, and don't want to tote around a regular ebook reader, it may be just perfect. I just wish the article had been a bit less evangalistic in the review.

You appear to be implying that work done in producing a nice edition of a public domain book is completely without value. Those of us who have spend many hundreds - probably thousands - of hours creating books which we're uploaded to this site might beg to differ :(.

You appear to be implying that work done in producing a nice edition of a public domain book is completely without value. Those of us who have spend many hundreds - probably thousands - of hours creating books which we're uploaded to this site might beg to differ :(.

Harry,

I'd say the quality of the books found here are generally better than the quality of the public domain books found on the Amazon site or pretty much any other site. I always look here first. Thanks for all your hard work and that done by others who have formatted and uploaded books here. Your work is VERY valuable :-)

That was rather the point that I was making. The source material may be "free", but time taken to nicely format them, etc, certainly isn't. To complain about someone charging 99c for such a book does seem a little churlish.

You appear to be implying that work done in producing a nice edition of a public domain book is completely without value. Those of us who have spend many hundreds - probably thousands - of hours creating books which we're uploaded to this site might beg to differ :(.

No, Harry, I am not implying that, or inferring that, or even saying that. What I am saying is, why would anyone write in an article that reading on an iPhone is a great thing because they can get public domain books for 99 cents .... when people (thanks to the volunteers here and at Gutenberg and other sites) can get public domain books for FREE for their ebook readers??

I could see it being a big deal if they had the current best sellers on Apple for 99 cents. Now that would be a deal compared to Amazon's $9.99. Even purchased at Amazon (as you have noted) public domain books are available for as low as 25 cents. So, again, why would it be a "deal" to get them for 99 cents from Apple??

Certainly I think there is value in the work that volunteers do. I am amazed that you all are able to do as many books as you do. But, if you expect monetary recognition for your work, then you should not be doing it as a volunteer.

I'm sure Apple will make a nice profit off of 99 cent public domain books ... from those people who read an article like that and think that 99 cents for a book they could get for free elsewhere is a "deal." Me .... not so much.

why would anyone write in an article that reading on an iPhone is a great thing because they can get public domain books for 99 cents ....

Here's my Letterman style top 5 reasons:

5. They don't know that you can download PD books for free.

4. The don't know that public domain means 100 years old.

3. They felt $.99 is a good value for the books.

2. They want people under 30 to real Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Stevenson, Szu, etc.

1. The person that wrote the article works for AppEngines, LLC and wants to sell public domain books to make some money.

[BTW: This isn't Apple.... yes Apple takes 30% of any app store sale]

BOb

Here's my Letterman style top 5 reasons:

5. They don't know that you can download PD books for free.

4. The don't know that public domain means 100 years old.

3. They felt $.99 is a good value for the books.

2. They want people under 30 to real Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Stevenson, Szu, etc.

1. The person that wrote the article works for AppEngines, LLC and wants to sell public domain books to make some money.

[BTW: This isn't Apple.... yes Apple takes 30% of any app store sale]

BOb

How many public domain eBooks are formatted specifically for the iPhone? That is a value add in my mind. Reading PG text is not fun on any small device.

Dale

How many public domain eBooks are formatted specifically for the iPhone? That is a value add in my mind. Reading PG text is not fun on any small device.
I concur. You aren't paying for the content of the book. You're paying for the time and trouble someone took to get that content into a form you can conveniently read on your device.

Since I can do that sort of thing myself, I have no need to pay for it, but I have no objection to anyone else charging a nominal fee for doing it.
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Dennis

How many public domain eBooks are formatted specifically for the iPhone?

I just checked. There are currently 4 from AppEngines... not sure if there is another company doing it...

1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Art of War
3. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
4. A Tale of Two Cities

BOb

Here's my Letterman style top 5 reasons:

5. They don't know that you can download PD books for free.

4. The don't know that public domain means 100 years old.

3. They felt $.99 is a good value for the books.

2. They want people under 30 to real Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Stevenson, Szu, etc.

1. The person that wrote the article works for AppEngines, LLC and wants to sell public domain books to make some money.
[BTW: This isn't Apple.... yes Apple takes 30% of any app store sale]

BOb

And your number one top reason is the biggie. It's a "great deal" because they say so and they are selling the product. So, it really isn't so much an article, as it is an advertisement, geared at people who don't know much about public domain books. As long as people understand that it's an ad, and that ads spin the truth in order to push the product, I have no problem with it .... :)

And your number one top reason is the biggie. It's a "great deal" because they say so and they are selling the product. So, it really isn't so much an article, as it is an advertisement, geared at people who don't know much about public domain books. As long as people understand that it's an ad, and that ads spin the truth in order to push the product, I have no problem with it .... :)
Sure, you can download PD books for free. But can you get them in a format you can conveniently read on your mobile device?

I have the ability to get PD texts and reformat them, but if I got an iPhone (and I've no plans to do so), I might go for a deal like this. If the books were at all well adapted for the iPhone, it might make sense to buy them at 99 cents. I tend to place a decent value on my time, and using that measure, it would cost me more than 99 cents to do it myself.
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Dennis

What I would like to see is a section, like the free section, just for ebooks on the iphone and not mix them up with the other apps. I'm sure in time, someone will create a program that converts txt/mobi/pdf/whatever into something that looks good on the iphone for $9.99 and I will but it. I already have thousands of Public Domain books on my MacPro that make it to my Kindle and Mobireader.

No conversion required. There's already an iPhone/Touch App called "Bookshelf" which apparently does a very nice job of displaying DRM-free Mobi, Plucker, PalmDoc, Text, HTML, and several other formats too.

Sure, you can download PD books for free. But can you get them in a format you can conveniently read on your mobile device?

I have the ability to get PD texts and reformat them, but if I got an iPhone (and I've no plans to do so), I might go for a deal like this. If the books were at all well adapted for the iPhone, it might make sense to buy them at 99 cents. I tend to place a decent value on my time, and using that measure, it would cost me more than 99 cents to do it myself.
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Dennis

I was under the impression that the format being used for the iPhone ebooks was one of the ones already being used for conversion at sites like this. Is it something else??

I was under the impression that the format being used for the iPhone ebooks was one of the ones already being used for conversion at sites like this. Is it something else??
AFAIK, something else, displayed by an iPhone app the folks doing the conversion wrote. From what I can tell, they are creating self-displaying books, with the display code bundled with the content. Each one you download is essentially a separate program.

There used to be hacks like that for the PC years ago, that would let you create a self-displaying text file. the user didn't have to have anything installed to read it -- all they had to do was run the program.
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Dennis

I thought Mobipocket wouldn't license their DRM on any platform that also supported a different DRM scheme? That was what the Astak folks were saying.

Though if I were them, I'd make an exception for anything being marketed by Apple with i- at the beginning of the name, at this point.

I thought Mobipocket wouldn't license their DRM on any platform that also supported a different DRM scheme? That was what the Astak folks were saying.

Though if I were them, I'd make an exception for anything being marketed by Apple with i- at the beginning of the name, at this point.

Bookeen told me the same thing about Mobipocket.

I thought Mobipocket wouldn't license their DRM on any platform that also supported a different DRM scheme? That was what the Astak folks were saying.

Though if I were them, I'd make an exception for anything being marketed by Apple with i- at the beginning of the name, at this point.

This is different. I can run Mobipocket and MS Reader and eReader DRMed files all on my PC. Also, in this case it is Mobipocket providing the app for the iPhone/iPod platform rather than apple licensing the software/DRM to bundle with the devices.

BOb

This is different. I can run Mobipocket and MS Reader and eReader DRMed files all on my PC. Also, in this case it is Mobipocket providing the app for the iPhone/iPod platform rather than apple licensing the software/DRM to bundle with the devices.
Which makes me curious about Mobipocket's reasoning.

They provide the reader free for a variety of platforms, includingg PCs, PocketPC/Windows Mobile devices, Palm OS devices, Symbian based smartphones, and Blackberries, most of which can run applications that use other foirms of DRM as well, but won't license thier DRM to hardware vendors who want to embed their app if they intend to support any other form of DRM?

Sounds like an attempt to lock in market share for their DRM protected commercial ebook offerings.

Of course, things might get interesting if the market decides DRM is counter productive and stops applying it... :p

(I don't expect to see that happen any time soon, mind you.)
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Dennis

Sounds like an attempt to lock in market share for their DRM protected commercial ebook offerings.


I agree... it doesn't make sense. But, then again Mobipocket is the most prevelently supported format in the means of content availability and supporting stores. So, they have a bit of leverage.


Of course, things might get interesting if the market decides DRM is counter productive and stops applying it... :p


If only. Although it won't be interesting it will be moot. If I can buy books sans DRM I can pretty much convert them to the format my device needs. There really is no "one true format" like MP3 is for audio files. Although many hope ePub will become that format.

BOb

With the arrival of the iTunes App Store, some enterprising individuals have started to populated the virtual shop with a bunch of novels from the public domain. All they have to do is "re-box" them, so to speak, before selling through through the Apple online store for 99 cents each. The e-books that you'll find include stuff like Dickens and Tarzan.

The text is said to look pretty crisp and the relatively large display of the iPhone makes for a pleasurable read as well. And you might look a little sexier staring at your iPhone than at your Kindle.

Some of us need all the help we can get!

JJ

AFAIK, something else, displayed by an iPhone app the folks doing the conversion wrote. From what I can tell, they are creating self-displaying books, with the display code bundled with the content. Each one you download is essentially a separate program.

There used to be hacks like that for the PC years ago, that would let you create a self-displaying text file. the user didn't have to have anything installed to read it -- all they had to do was run the program.
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Dennis

In which case I don't see that going that route would be much of a benefit, unless they provide a free conversion program ... but I imagine for something self displaying that might be difficult.

I know that my Kindle Store books can only be read on the Kindle, but there is so much free content out there that I can read on my Kindle and on my computer and my PDA (if for one second I wanted to read on my PDA) that it makes up for it.

Ah well ... I have no idea why I even wandered in to this discussion. I'm not going to purchase an iPhone, for reading or anything else. I love my Motorola Q phone too much to give it up (and I already have all the apps for it since it runs on Windows CE).

Let's give the iPhone software market to mature. I think we'll eventually see readers on the iPhone that can get access to and download free content from PG or even MR. Given that the SDK can be downloaded and accessed by anyone,maybe an industrious MR reader can do this?

I myself am planning on getting an iPhone (when my T-Mobile contract expires) and can't wait until I can read my classics while waiting in line or anywhere where I don't have access to my Reader. I have the Mobipocket reader for my Windows Smartphone and it's absolutely terrible.

Let's give the iPhone software market to mature. I think we'll eventually see readers on the iPhone that can get access to and download free content from PG or even MR. Given that the SDK can be downloaded and accessed by anyone,maybe an industrious MR reader can do this?

In case you missed it, there is another thread about this. Stanza for iPhone already does this. It interfaces with Feedbooks to allow you to browse their library and download books directly to the iPhone/iPod. There is a video of it in action on their web site. http://www.lexcycle.com/iphone

BOb

AFAIK, something else, displayed by an iPhone app the folks doing the conversion wrote. From what I can tell, they are creating self-displaying books, with the display code bundled with the content. Each one you download is essentially a separate program.

There used to be hacks like that for the PC years ago, that would let you create a self-displaying text file. the user didn't have to have anything installed to read it -- all they had to do was run the program.
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Dennis

there are still programs like that available on PC's but the fear of trojan viruses has pretty much done them in I think. Most of the companies doing this now allow a separate format for the book itself. These items are in the wiki.

Dale

Which makes me curious about Mobipocket's reasoning.

They provide the reader free for a variety of platforms, includingg PCs, PocketPC/Windows Mobile devices, Palm OS devices, Symbian based smartphones, and Blackberries, most of which can run applications that use other foirms of DRM as well, but won't license thier DRM to hardware vendors who want to embed their app if they intend to support any other form of DRM?

Sounds like an attempt to lock in market share for their DRM protected commercial ebook offerings.

Of course, things might get interesting if the market decides DRM is counter productive and stops applying it... :p

(I don't expect to see that happen any time soon, mind you.)
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Dennis

What they are doing is supplying source code to vendors to use in their eBook readers. This is what the exclusive license is about. If they did the port for their own benefit is selling eBooks then it is a different matter. All the markets with multiple formats are examples of Mobipocket doing the port themselves.

Dale

3. Since books in the public domain are generally available for free elsewhere, how is selling them for 99 cents supposed to be a good deal?

Anyone who buys a free book for 99 cents is stupid, lazy, and deserves to waste their money. Go to project Gutenberg where you can get free ebooks for ...FREE!

Anyone who buys a free book for 99 cents is stupid, lazy, and deserves to waste their money. Go to project Gutenberg where you can get free ebooks for ...FREE!

It can take many hours of work to convert a PG book into a nice readable eBook - I speak from thousands of hours of experience in book conversion. It is not "stupid and lazy" to consider those hours of work to be worth paying 99c for. Indeed, one might consider it "stupid" to spend several hours RATHER than paying 99c. Is your time really worth so little to you?

Anyone who buys a free book for 99 cents is stupid, lazy, and deserves to waste their money. Go to project Gutenberg where you can get free ebooks for ...FREE!
You have not thought this through.

Yes, you can get them free at Project Gutenberg. But can you read them on your dedicated reader or other mobile device?

Project Gutenberg supplies books in plain text and (often) HTML. Getting those converted into the appropraite format for your device takes time, skill, and specialized software the vast majority of folks aren't aware of and don't have.

And even if you have the software and the skill, doing a good conversion is a non-trivial task.

What value do you place on your time? I have the tools and skill to convert PG texts, and do regularly for my device. But I might pay 99 cents for a decent quality conversion for the iPhone (if I had one), because it would be quicker and easier than doing it myself, and I could spend the time doing other things.
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Dennis

It can take many hours of work to convert a PG book into a nice readable eBook

Of course. The question is, do they sell "nice readable eBooks"? or do they sell "crappy automatic conversions"?

I don't know, and I'm not willing to spend 99c to find out :).

I'm game to buy one and take a look - unless somebody beats me to it. I just got the phone last night, and am in the setup/sync process now.

Comparing Flatland by Edwin Abbot, I see a few superficial differences, but probably not enough to cause me to spend money again, for the $0.99 cent version.

The standalone $0.99 version has a nice red "leather" cover-page, and also has a blank line between paragraphs instead of paragraph indents. I happen to find the "blank line" version easier to read, and I format my books that way (if I have other reason to bother formatting them).

Stanza allows only left / right side of page touches to turn the page. The standalone ones allow only top / bottom touches. Personally, I like top/bottom better ...

But even with both of those preferences leaning toward the standalone version, I'm not sure there is enough difference to spend money.

Any specific questions?

Oh, and the standalone book takes you straight back into where you left off reading. Stanza opens into its "index" page, you press "Latest reads" and then select which title, and THEN you reach the spot you left off. 2 extra clicks.

But even with both of those preferences leaning toward the standalone version, I'm not sure there is enough difference to spend money.

Any specific questions?



The real issue is the book. Did they improve the book itself by fixing Gutenberg items, curley quotes?, emdash?, italics?, typos?

Dale

It can take many hours of work to convert a PG book into a nice readable eBook - I speak from thousands of hours of experience in book conversion. It is not "stupid and lazy" to consider those hours of work to be worth paying 99c for. Indeed, one might consider it "stupid" to spend several hours RATHER than paying 99c. Is your time really worth so little to you?

I did not mean that the person who created the book was stupid and lazy, such as yourself. And I do not see anything wrong with someone who has spent the time to create and format an ebook to try to sell it. That was not my argument. My argument is that from a consumers point of view it just doesn't make sense because there are already resources out there (such as Project Gutenberg and this website) that offer these same books for free without a subscription or any conditions atached. So when that is the case, why would someone be stupid enough to buy a free ebook for 99 cents, and considering the vastness of the information super highway, that same person is also lazy because they didn't take the time to look and find these free resources which would have allowed them to save themselves 99 cents. Thus they are stupid and lazy.

You have not thought this through.

Yes, you can get them free at Project Gutenberg. But can you read them on your dedicated reader or other mobile device?
Dennis

Yes I have thought this through, and yes my device does read plain text, and to my knowledge, there are not many ebooks that don't read plain text. And I would even go further by saying that if someone bought an ebook that did not support plain text then that person wasted their money considering that plain text is such a universal and widely used format.

My argument is that from a consumers point of view it just doesn't make sense because there are already resources out there (such as Project Gutenberg and this website) that offer these same books for free without a subscription or any conditions atached. So when that is the case, why would someone be stupid enough to buy a free ebook for 99 cents, and considering the vastness of the information super highway, that same person is also lazy because they didn't take the time to look and find these free resources which would have allowed them to save themselves 99 cents. Thus they are stupid and lazy.
The same objection applies. What value do you place on your time?

You have an iPhone. You are aware of public domain texts you would like to read, that you can get in an iPod version for 99 cents.

You may be aware of Project Gutenberg. You might even have the notion that resources exist like MR where you can get the stuff free. But what will be involved, and how long will it take you to track down the information?

If you just want to read a particular book, it's a lot faster and simpler to just pay 99 cents and download the book from the iTunes store. And depending upon what else you may have to do with your time, it will be neither lazy nor stupid to exercise that option.

We pay people all the time to do things we technically could do ourselves but would prefer to spend the time required doing other things. This is simply one more instance.
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Dennis

Yes I have thought this through, and yes my device does read plain text, and to my knowledge, there are not many ebooks that don't read plain text. And I would even go further by saying that if someone bought an ebook that did not support plain text then that person wasted their money considering that plain text is such a universal and widely used format.
It's a little more complicated than that, especially if you have an iPhone.

Yes, just about everything supports plain text. But there's plain text and plain text.

For instance, a plain text file is supposed to contain only 7 bit ASCII characters, and have each line terminated by an end-of-line character. Now we start having fun. Under Unix, the EOL character is the Line Feed -- ASCII 11. Under Mac OS, the EOL character is the Carriage Return -- ASCII 13. Under MD-DOS/Windows, it's both. The EOL marker is a CRLF combination.

Now take that text file and put it on your mobile device. Which line ending convention does it use, and what does your device do with it?

My device is a Palm OS PDA. The default standard plain text file is the Palm "doc" file. It's a plain text file that has been put into Palm Database format (because only Palm Database files can be in memory on a Palm OS device), and compressed to save space in memory (because the format was deigned back when a Palm OS device might have two whole megabytes of memory, and expansion card support didn't exist).

My text files come from DOS/Windows, as do PG's, and use CRLF as the EOL character. Making doc files of them is trivial, but I found out when doing it that they look awful on the PDA, because the available doc viewers all treat the CR part of CRLF as a "hard return". Text doesn't reflow as expected, and becomes annoying to read. I have to explicitly save the text files using Unix line endings in an editor that knows how to do that before converting to a doc file to get a file I can read without annoyance.

And plain text files mean you lose formatting, text attributes, fonts, images, and hyperlinks. That may be acceptable for some PD text, but probably not for all.

And last but not least, how do you get the text file onto your device? If you have an iPod, the current answer seems to be "download from the iTunes store".

Personally, my preferred method is to download the HTML version form PG if there is one, and convert it for the Plucker offline HTML viewer for Palm OS. Plucker gives me formatting, text attributes, images, hyperlinks, and (under OS5) custom fonts. Conversion takes 30 seconds to a minute using utilities I have installed. I then drop them in the appropriate location on my expansion card where Plucker will see them, and off I go.
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Dennis

The same objection applies. What value do you place on your time?

You have an iPhone. You are aware of public domain texts you would like to read, that you can get in an iPod version for 99 cents.

You may be aware of Project Gutenberg. You might even have the notion that resources exist like MR where you can get the stuff free. But what will be involved, and how long will it take you to track down the information?

If you just want to read a particular book, it's a lot faster and simpler to just pay 99 cents and download the book from the iTunes store. And depending upon what else you may have to do with your time, it will be neither lazy nor stupid to exercise that option.

We pay people all the time to do things we technically could do ourselves but would prefer to spend the time required doing other things. This is simply one more instance.______
Dennis

Very true. It's all a cost-benefit analysis. If you are the sort of person who actually enjoys doing conversion and formatting, then it's not only not stupid of you to spend the time doing it (because it is seldom stupid to do something you enjoy), and I think we'd all agree it's not lazy, and if you can benefit others (either gratis or for a very low fee), then more power to you.

However, it is just a teeny bit lazy to start with the results of a lot of volunteer work over at PG. So .. why not be really NOT lazy and type the whole book in yourself?? Oh, but then you'd have to purchase (or borrow) a hard copy of the book ... and then you might as well read that. And ... I suppose if you were going to read (and type in) all of those hard copy books, you wouldn't have time to read them in an ebook format ... so then it would be rather stupid to have purchased an ebook reader.

So ... let's say that Warren Buffet decided to purchase that Kindle he's been talking about getting. He can take 8 seconds to purchase "Pride and Prejudice" for about $4.00 .... or he can spend a half an hour figuring out how to do a conversion from a book at PG .... or he can start from scratch and spend several hours typing it in from a hard copy. How much would we guess Mr. Buffet makes an hour?? If he decides to plunk down the $4.00 so he can read the book .... I'm supposed to think that it makes him lazy or stupid??

No .... I just can't wrap my brain around the enormity of how wrong that supposition is. Maybe it's the paint fumes .... :chinscratch:

The real issue is the book. Did they improve the book itself by fixing Gutenberg items, curley quotes?, emdash?, italics?, typos?

Dale

There are straight up and down quotes - so I imagine there are NOT any curley ones. There are two dashes in a row -- so I suspect NO emdashes.

Haven't read the book on the iPhone yet (someday, but not right now) so I can't say to the other questions. But I doubt they have read each book and found/corrected typos.

There are straight up and down quotes - so I imagine there are NOT any curley ones. There are two dashes in a row -- so I suspect NO emdashes.

Haven't read the book on the iPhone yet (someday, but not right now) so I can't say to the other questions. But I doubt they have read each book and found/corrected typos.

so, no value add except reformatting for the device. too bad.

Dale

LOL. Come on man, That is only opinion from someone. Every people have their own interest and opinion.