Content Lord of the Rings Now Available! KINDLE, EPUB, PDF, LIT, and MOBI

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

EDIT: They are also available on Fictionwise with a 100% credit.

I've just bought "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" from Fictionwise in Mobipocket format. On a quick look, I'm a little disappointed.

The covers are in black & white.

The illustrations in "The Hobbit" are black & white. Worse - they haven't converted the colour plates to greyscale, they've just left them out! On the plus side, I suppose the illustrations are an OK size - about 600 pixels in largest dimension, and are sharper than I could get from a scan of a hardcover.

The text appears to be from a 2001 revision of the 1995 hardcover text, and from computer files, which is all good.

"The Lord of the Rings" has slightly bigger illustrations - up to 900 pixels in the larger dimension, but also in black & white. It seems to be complete with the appendices, but without the maps of Middle Earth and Gondor - only a map of the Shire (in black & white - no colour highlighting). Nor does it have the leaves from the Book of Mazarbul.

Which is odd, since the text seems to be from the 50th Anniversary Edition, which idoes have those illustrations. (And the text contains lots of corrections to mistakes in earlier versions.)

Hobbit Text: The in-line runes are there, but the graphics used are, perhaps, a little small, and, of course, can't scale with the text. Perhaps in the ePUB they used a special embedded font, but I doubt it.
The songs seem to have been done well. It could do with a little space between text and start of song, and a little less between verses, but not too bad.
The general appearance is good - no indents at the start of chapters, indents at the start of paragraphs instead of space between paragraphs, curly quotes.

LOTR Text: Much like the hobbit in most things. Immediately obvious is a rather strange larger indent after a break in the text, which must be an encoding error, since in the printed book those indents are the same size as normal. Ah - just checked. It might be mobipocket specific, as on normal paragraphs the indent is "27" - bad, because that's in pixels and doesn't scale with the font, and after a break in the text, the indent is "2em" - good, because it scales with the font, but bad because it's a bit too big for my taste, I prefer a 1em indent.
There are some odd links in the text. For example, a link is placed on the first instance of "Gil-galed" (in chapter 11), but the link takes us to the mysterious text "185" and nothing else. There's no footnote in the printed book, so I suspect this is an accidental artifact.

Since this is the Mobipocket version from fictionwise, I suspect that the Kindle version is similar Perhaps the ePub is better.

So - I'm pleased to have legitimate version, but a bit disappointed that the proof-reading for the encoding seems to be a little lacking on such a big release, and that they haven't included all the illustrations.

Paul

Originally Posted by Seabound

The post title says it all. Just got the email from Fictionwise a few minutes ago.

Edited to add: I just checked the Fictionwise site and indeed they are there. The price is right!

[Ea]

Thanks for the updates on quality. Sounds like if you want the reeeally nice version, you still have to do a little tweaking by hand, but still fine for most people.

[All4Fun]

Originally Posted by Neil

I just paid for Children of Hurin on Fictionwise and it refuses to download. When I try to download I get:

Description : Error : Download is not authorized for this retailer.
Source : download.asp
Number : -5

I've let Fictionwise know but I hate being charged for something and not being able to get it!!!

I had the same problem. I let Fictionwise know also. It should work now though.

[Godzil]

No one with an ePub or Lit version for the quality review?

[pagansoul]

Amazon
LOTR Trilogy $15.94, TT $10, RK $10 ...
Harper Collins
LOTR $23.19, ROTK $12, TT $12 ...
Fictionwise (100% Micropay) if you belong to the club + TAXDAY 15%off
LOTR $24.64, FOTR $12.74, TT $12.74, ROTK $12.74

Since I belong to Fictionwise their 100% micropay is the best deal...my problem is I want it as individual books and not the huge LOTR trilogy so I would pay more. If I wait I could lose the 100% micropay but I know these will go down in time and I don't think I'll be reading them soon. I have too much a backlog already.

[pdurrant]

Where's the downside in the combined eBook?

The text is that same. It's no heavier in the hand. The combined volume now includes the appendices (which used not to be the case).

Originally Posted by pagansoul

Amazon
LOTR Trilogy $15.94, TT $10, RK $10 ...
Harper Collins
LOTR $23.19, ROTK $12, TT $12 ...
Fictionwise (100% Micropay) if you belong to the club + TAXDAY 15%off
LOTR $24.64, FOTR $12.74, TT $12.74, ROTK $12.74

Since I belong to Fictionwise their 100% micropay is the best deal...my problem is I want it as individual books and not the huge LOTR trilogy so I would pay more. If I wait I could lose the 100% micropay but I know these will go down in time and I don't think I'll be reading them soon. I have too much a backlog already.

[Godzil]

By the way for thoses who have the combined eBooks, does the cover of the three books are present?

[TallMomof2]

First Tolkien, could Rowling be next?

[Godzil]

For sure

But I hope that there will be no earthquake or anything like this when Rowling will allow ePotter's book

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Elsi

Although Fictionwise doesn't sell these books in a Sony format, you can get them from the Sony store.

Note: Fictionwise doesn't sell Sony-format books with DRM and these books are not available from any retailer without DRM.

But Fictionwise is doing people a disservice. These books are available in ePub and they won't sell that. All Fictionwise sells is eReader and Mobipocket. BooksOnBoard sells the ePub whoch can be read with a 505 and a 700. It is a shame that Fictionwise has gone downhill. They don't even carry the MS Reader editions.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Ea

What to do... what to do...? If I buy at Fictionwise I'll get member rebate + micropay rebate, but they only have mobi and ereader formats. Booksonboard have .lit as well, and I need to convert to lrf in any case so it's nice to have the best possible to work from. So is it worth it to get .lit? Ah, well, something to think about for today

If you do buy from BooksOnBoard, get the ePub.

[All4Fun]

Originally Posted by Godzil

By the way for thoses who have the combined eBooks, does the cover of the three books are present?

No, the cover of the three books are not present. Why would that be important though?

[Godzil]

Because they are prettier than the cover of the "complete" version

[All4Fun]

All things being equal, would one expect differences between the ePUB, ,LIT, and MOBI versions of the ebooks?

[BenG]

I downloaded the sample for the combined trilogy from Amazon. There doesn't seem to be a Table of Contents. It would be hard to navigate the 3 books without one.