Quote:
Originally Posted by marty1990
I'd probably just stick to mainstream bestsellers etc than anything else.
|
In that case, you'll want to read reviews about shopping at the stores associated with ereaders. They almost all carry the same books, and it'll be a matter of which one has better customer service.
Quote:
|
Yeah, that's the thing, the filetypes that are supported by the devices are pretty much the same across the board, more or less. I just don't know which ones are the most popular formats.
|
Epub and mobi are the only two commercial formats to consider right now. Kindle does mobi; everything else does epub; there are apps for other devices that support both. None of the devices associated with a store cover both epub and mobi, although some other devices do. Nothing supports DRM versions of both.
Epub is, from a technical stance, a more powerful & versatile filetype; it's newer, and based on HTML with CSS, and supports more formatting options.
Mobi's been around much longer (about 10 years) and is more limited--but for reading novels, most people will never notice. (Mobi, for example, doesn't support drop-caps, those large first letters in chapters with the remaining text wrapped around them for 2 or 3 lines. Typography nuts care about this; nobody else does. Mobi doesn't support some kinds of wrapped text around pictures... again, unless precision formatting is your thing, you'll never notice.)
Amazon's new format seems to be an "enhanced mobi" that allows for a lot more of the features of epub, but isn't usable on any other device at all.
For reading mainstream bestsellers, most of the devices are about the same. (Or at least, most people who get a device for that purpose, are about equally happy with whatever they got.) Google search for the name of the store and the word "review," and see if any of what's mentioned strikes you as particularly important one way or the other. If not, you can comfortably make your choice based on cost or other convenience.