[Calenorn]

For people who love to read, the idea of carrying a library in your pocket can be compelling. It is for me. Some of you here know what I mean.

A few years ago I chose a NOOK Simple Touch to try to do this. Everything about it was suited to the purpose. The epub format expanded the potential sources of books; the memory card slot expanded the storage capacity; the eink screen expanded the battery life. I admired the device so much that I bought a second as a back-up.

But Barnes & Noble isn’t interested in helping customers build personal, portable libraries. They’re interested in revenue streams. First they stopped updating their eink firmware, then they omitted the memory card from the new model, then they removed the download function.

To be fair, B&N is probably equally unhappy with me as a customer, since I don’t provide them much of a revenue stream. Let me just say, without whining, that disposable income is hard to come by.

Okay, that being the case, I explore the free books at the B&N site. Ugh! What a swamp! Copies and copies of the same title, crappy scans from Google Books or archive.org, amateur porn. Disappointing just doesn’t cover it. Disgusting is a better term. The company exerts absolutely no quality control over the things sold on their site.

See, if B&N had provided a good experience for people looking for free books, then I never would have had a reason for climbing over the garden wall. It’s their own fault.

But leave I did. First stop, Project Gutenberg; then, sites like this one. The Gutenbergers are good quality, but they have some quirks. I quickly discovered that if I changed the title of the epub file, that action didn’t change the title as displayed in the ereader. I had discovered metadata.

Mind you, I’m not a computer hobbyist; I have no background in HTML whatever. So it was back to the internet, learning about things like Calibre and Sigil.

Step by step, I started to learn how to change epub files. Tweak, polish, improve; I find it to be very satisfying, making a book display the way I want it to on the ereader.

At the same time I began to discover how much high quality public domain material is available. Free books, far superior to the cruft Barnes & Noble allows in its e-store, were not difficult to find.

Why, this site alone could keep me reading for years and years! Check out the finely crafted, fully illustrated versions of Jules Verne’s Extraordinary Voyages posted here by Tired 'N Grumpy. Visit the handy omnibus editions created and generously contributed by the folks here. If you’re reading this then you know what I mean.

At other sites, smaller vendors don’t seem to have a problem producing quality free epubs. For example, consider the beautifully rendered plays of Shakespeare offered by feedbooks.com.

All told, being able to find quality ebooks from other sources means that I really don’t need to connect to Barnes & Noble at all. And what I hear lately about ‘new and improved’ ADE software convinces me to keep the wifi turned off for good.

So, goodbye mother ship. I hope you survive, and even thrive, but don’t expect me to open a financial vein for you.