... Well, the Southern Highlands, 100Kms south west of Sydney but in Sydney terms that makes us outer metropolitan fringe dwellers! LOL
I have had an iPaq provided from work for ages and decided to get some real use out of it by using it as an eBook reader - it fails as an mp3 player but I still hold out hopes for it as a video player.
I write a fanzine (more accurately a
Blogzine) and <gasp> Star Trek fan fiction as well as being a moderator on a couple of writers groups. I would like to encourage writers to experiment with different mediums of distribution so I'm experimenting with the entry level eBooks, looking for something that scores on two points ...
- Widest distribution
- easiest construction/compilation procedure
Frankly html wins out on both points. I've saved fan fiction from forums as html and been able to read them instantly with the MobiPocket reader I have installed on my iPaq. In some cases you can get them as a html download eg from
Deviantart
However with html you seem to loose all the cool add-on capabilities of a dedicated eReader, such as table of contents, bookcover, integration into the readers database functions and - most importantly for a writer of original fiction - integration into commercial sites.
Call me lazy, but the MobiPocket format seems to have the a strong lead on both of my criteria in that the compilation procedure seems to be very simple and the format seems to accept input from a wide range of formats and be read on a wide number of platforms.
... as a total tyro on the subject, I'm open to suggestions though.
Which forum should I post questions about how to format a document for html? Is there one for MobiPocket? Is there a preferred font, font size, rules of indentation? Should I use a line space between paragraphs or rely on leading and trailing spaces?
On a totally different note, I heard on an ABC podcast recently that the Nintendo DS was a popular eBook reader in Asia - is this true? What format does this use?
Looks like an active, supportive forum you have here. I hope I can contribute.
Cheers
Kirok of L'Stok