The downside of eBook format

[liems]

I am a fanatic book lover: not only that I read a lot of books, but the format and look and feel of the book matters a lot. So, for example: I will only buy the classic literature published by Penguin and not by --say-- Bantam publisher, because the Penguin books "feels" better in my hand and thus encourage my reading experience. Even when I encountered 2 Penguin editions of the same works, I would pick the one that aesthetically apeals to me more, which means which one I like the cover better.

So obviously all of these experiences are not there when you read an eBook version of those works. So, what I wish the next version of Sony Reader is to enable to re-produce the exact formating and look and feel of the books. Currently, even though, they are nicely formatted, they are not even close to the original traditional book format. This ranges from: font type/size, formating of paragraph, other stylized fonts or graphics, and of course front and back cover (which are absent today in the eBook format).

[Madam Broshkina]

What you could do is to take one of your Penguin books and hollow out the pages so the Sony Reader fits nicely inside. This of course does not solve the font type/size, formating of paragraph problems but you will get the feeling of holding a real book. I would be wary of using this option when going through airport security though because an electronic device hidden in a book might raise suspicion. Also it may also look strange that you are reading a book for hours without turning a page.

[NatCh]

That's an interesting observation, liems -- I seem to remember getting the impression that a lot of the formatting (font and such) were determined by the publisher. The bit I think I'm remembering was something to the effect that they were having to ... encourage the Pubs to give them files that had font sizes large enough to be read on the Reader.

I know a few of the ones I've gotten from Connect include cover art, but no back cover. In any case, I quite agree that the tactile/esthetic effect is very different, though when I'm not wrestling to keep the pages open or to turn them one-handed I count that as a plus.

[liems]

You would imagine that even the traditional books are using digital format to go to the print press, so why can't Sony take this original digital format and "re-formatted" for the Reader. Once you have the right to published it, I would imagine eBook is the cheapest way to mass published them??

[NatCh]

True, but the Pubs have that file, if that's not the file they hand over to Sony ....