[Jim the Obscure]

I just joined MobileRead today so my comments are preliminary - for sure! My favourite forum section is going to be Sigil, which I'm just starting to learn how to use, so other people's questions are valuable to me - I'm sure to run into their issues soon enough - and it helps immensely to be able to pose a question to knowledgeable users.

I'm also going to be in the market for an e-reader (currently using Calibre on a 10" Acer-one netbook which is not ideal) and will be looking for something that doesn't have a back door or is proprietary - I'm already a big fan of the ePub format - and most of the books that I'm interested in reading are older classics that are out of copyright anyway; nonetheless, I feel that if I buy a book (e or otherwise) it's mine! So the e-reader forums will be valuable as well.

I have a collection of about 700 (analogue) books in my library, mostly Victorian/Edwardian - and out of copyright - and would like to see them become available, properly edited and formatted (few & far between online) to make people aware of the literature of times past and the digital format is ideal for that purpose.

As I say, I'm new here so I don't have much in the way of criticism but if I could make a suggestion . . . somebody has to deal with the state of older literature that is available for download online at sites like archive.org & Project Gutenberg; e-Pubs and text files are filled with scanning errors that make reading them precarious at times. I appreciate what Google has done in making the initial scans but that is only half the job. Some deep-pocketed corporation/s should step up to see that these old masterpieces are properly edited and formatted on open platforms for the benefit of future generations. Perhaps the MobileRead community could push things along in that direction.