Ebook Store for Fantasy/Sci Fi

[angelyne]

I just got my new Sony Reader and I'm pretty excited!.

Could any one of you recommend good online stores that have large selection of current of Sci Fi and Fantasy books in a format that requires minimal conversion to the Sony format?

I already know about Baen, and I find that their selection is not very current. In any case they don't seem to carry my favorite authors.

[ebookstoregirl]

eBooks About Sci-Fi ,with many of my favorite authors, is part of my sister store www.eBooksAboutEverything. We've heard that Sony and Adobe have made a deal ... Sony is supposed to begin utilizing the Adobe Digital Editions format in their reader. From a

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ebookstoregirl

eBooks About Sci-Fi ,with many of my favorite authors, is part of my sister store www.eBooksAboutEverything. We've heard that Sony and Adobe have made a deal ... Sony is supposed to begin utilizing the Adobe Digital Editions format in their reader. From a

According to the Digital Editions press release Sony is partnering with Adobe for DE. But DE is just in (or about to be) beta for Linux.

How hard would it be to use Book Designer to be able to offer books for the Sony Reader? I think if you did offer DRMless LRF books, you might have more sales.

I just had a look at some of your Star Trek books for sale. What I'd like to know is how the pricing is devised . Some books still in print are $5.99 and some of the newer books are $6.99. Would it not make sense to have the same price for all the regular paperback edition that are still in print? I'm just curious as to how this is handled.

Jon

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by angelyne

I just got my new Sony Reader and I'm pretty excited!.

Could any one of you recommend good online stores that have large selection of current of Sci Fi and Fantasy books in a format that requires minimal conversion to the Sony format?

I already know about Baen, and I find that their selection is not very current. In any case they don't seem to carry my favorite authors.

if you are looking for books you cannot get in the Connect store, then I suggest looking at LIT format books which you can convert to LRF with the right tools (look around the forum, there's lots of info stored here in the depths of the threads). Anyway, I can suggest a couple of shops Fictionwise and Simon & Schuster (Pocket Books)

http://www.fictionwise.com & http://www.simonsays.com

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by angelyne

I just got my new Sony Reader and I'm pretty excited!.

Could any one of you recommend good online stores that have large selection of current of Sci Fi and Fantasy books in a format that requires minimal conversion to the Sony format?

I already know about Baen, and I find that their selection is not very current. In any case they don't seem to carry my favorite authors.

Welcome to the Reader family! I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'a large selection,' but Fictionwise seems to carry a fair bit of SF and Fantasy. Some is really new, some older. It comes from a wide variety of publishers. You'll likely find something there that you like. Just be sure that you stick to what they call 'multi-format' books -- these are the ones with no DRM (which means you can convert them for the Sony Reader with appropriate tools). DRM-full books won't do you any good.

When you say 'I already know about Baen, and I find that their selection is not very current.' you show that you don't really 'know about Baen'... other than their existance, that is.

See, Baen is a publisher, not a bookstore. Thus, the books that they carry are the ones they publish. Selection right up to the moment -- books available there 2 weeks before they hit the shelves. Pretty current! Never out of stock, never out of print. Everything they've published since December 1999. What they don't have -- mostly* -- is books from other publishers. Not 'cause Baen doesn't want to carry them, but 'cause the other guys are not yet clueful enough to realize that Baen's sales model (low prices, no DRM, multi-format) really works. [The mostly* is there because Baen has recently branched out to offer eBooks from the backlists of authors they didn't publish in DTF. They'd be happy to carry your favorite authors too, but can't get the rights. Sigh. If you want an earful, ask about Baen, Tor, and Holzbrink sometime.]

[NatCh]

Heh, "clueful."

[ebookstoregirl]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

According to the Digital Editions press release Sony is partnering with Adobe for DE. But DE is just in (or about to be) beta for Linux.

How hard would it be to use Book Designer to be able to offer books for the Sony Reader? I think if you did offer DRMless LRF books, you might have more sales.

I just had a look at some of your Star Trek books for sale. What I'd like to know is how the pricing is devised . Some books still in print are $5.99 and some of the newer books are $6.99. Would it not make sense to have the same price for all the regular paperback edition that are still in print? I'm just curious as to how this is handled.

Jon

The Star Trek books you're looking at are on www.eBooksAboutEverything.com, my sister site. I administer, www.DPPstore.com. The pricing at eBooksAboutEverything is straight from the publisher (excluding the discounts they offer, which directly out of their own margins.)

The most enlightening look I've gotten on the backward seeming eBook pricing model was right here on MobileRead... see the link : why do ebooks... all about pricing models.

Also, the decision to DRM or not to DRM is based on publisher choice as well.... I personally like the non-DRM model, we at DPPstore, sell innovative fiction and non-fiction in a non-DRM format. You can use your file as you see fit (excluding copying content from within the file or printing the file)... you can transfer it to as many computers or devices as you need to for your use. We believe in treating our customers like honest people.

Our sister store, eBooksAboutEverything.com, serves the needs of people who want content from the major publishers - most of whom refuse to fly without DRM - sadly, in my opinion. They are serving eBooks in every format that the publishers choose to make available... they'll be adding mobipocket books to this equation in the next week.

[vvv]

Originally Posted by angelyne

Could any one of you recommend good online stores that have large selection of current of Sci Fi and Fantasy books in a format that requires minimal conversion to the Sony format?

If you are not afraid of torrents, you will find a lot of them here:

Alex: removed, sorry, public links to warez (even if it's just a torrent) hurt us. thanx for your understanding!

[angelyne]

Thank you for the all suggestions so far!

Xenophone, I knew that Baen are a publishing company. There are many Baen books among the hundreds and hundreds of book I bought in the past.

But, I couldn't find the latest series by Lois McMaster Bujold, "The sharing knife". (I bought the first book on Sony Connect). I now realize the books have been published by HarperCollins and not Baen. But they have all of her older Vorkosigan series.

Anyway, that was probably why I got the impression they carry mostly older books. I didn't mean to sound negative about Baen. They are a great company and very forward thinking. I simply meant that I had looked at their website and there was nothing I wanted to buy there right at this moment. But I have by no means crossed them off my list.

And as you mentioned, they are a publishing house not a book store, and so I was looking for suggestions on e-book stores, who might have a wide selection of ebooks in various formats.

I guess I was hoping for something easier than having to convert from LIT files. I've been playing with that, using some of the excellent suggestions and tutorials found here. So far to produce a really professional looking ebook from a LIT file appears to be a rather painstaking process. I'm still playing with BD and trying to figure out the best way to do that.

[Xenophon]

Angelyne --
On re-reading my note, I see that it sounds rather snarkier than I intended. Please accept my apologies for any negativity in that note.

As far as producing professional looking eBook, I've been having excellent luck starting from html and using html2lrf (part of kovidgoyal's libprs500). It does quite a nice job with minimal user intervention. The problem would be taking a book in one of the open formats that (say) Fictionwise sells and converting it into html without too much work. I've heard rumors that there's a convert-lit program that'll do that -- but I don't really know from my own experience.

Hope you find a good solution. And please let us know what you eventually work out!

[angelyne]

No offense taken. I just didn't want to leave an impression that I was being negative about Baen, because that would be unfair to such fair-minded and progressive company.

I'm going to take a second look at at html2lrf. Didn't work for me the first time, but I haven't really put a lot of time into it.

[JSWolf]

html2lrf has also come a long way as well. It's a lot better then it's ever been.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Angelyne --
As far as producing professional looking eBook, I've been having excellent luck starting from html and using html2lrf (part of kovidgoyal's libprs500). It does quite a nice job with minimal user intervention. The problem would be taking a book in one of the open formats that (say) Fictionwise sells and converting it into html without too much work. I've heard rumors that there's a convert-lit program that'll do that -- but I don't really know from my own experience.

Hope you find a good solution. And please let us know what you eventually work out!

libprs500 now includes lit2lrf which will convert non DRMed lit files automatically (It uses html2lrf as the backend)

[angelyne]

Does your lit2lrf have that issue with dropping the leading space before italics? ABC Lit has it and I noticed so does Book Designer. It's the main reason why I always export to html first, so that I can do a search and replace on <i> to restore the missing space.

[kovidgoyal]

Dunno, try it and see, I certainly haven't noticed that. If that does happen, I can fix it easily enough if you send me a sample lit file.