Hello, everyone, I'd like to talk seriously about e-readers, and what they're doing to our reading habits.
I have a fairly extensive collection of e-books from various authors, and I have always thought that it would be logical that each of the books from each author would look best if they displayed consistently. Now, whether you're finding your e-books from an online resource for little or no cost; or buying them from the big publishing houses, you're likely to get a devil's-brew of formatting, ranging from the elegant to what I call "word soup" with no formatting or chapter breaks at all. Therefore, I undertook the process of trying to reformat some of my more favorite ones into a consistent format.
Now, my pick-up app for reading is Moon+ Reader because I like the formatting options it offers. I also often make notes within the book, and Moon+ offers this feature. The app also provides reading stats, and keeps track of those books that have already bitten the dust.
Now, I noticed that much of my careful formatting was lost in Moon+, and I began to be curious about what the display would look like on other e-reader apps. So I went to the Play Store, and I loaded another e-reader that I had seen recommended in this forum; then loaded several more by using the scientific selection process of choosing the first one at the bottom of the Play Store screen labeled "People who loaded this also loaded..."
Then, I slapped the ebook that I created to hold the formats that I use regularly in my upgrading process onto my venerable Samsung tablet, and started comparing the results. I was aghast! I discovered that there was absolutely no consistency across software platforms whatsoever. One e-reader would give fairly good results on one of my favorite formats; and look horrible when displaying another.
Then I began to be curious about how these favorite formats would look on some of the dedicated e-readers discussed in this forum. I realized that to find the answer to that question, I would have to invest in a couple-hundred different e-readers. I tapped my rich uncle for the funds to do this, but he is mouldering away in a debtors prison in Argentina, and wasn't able to help me, and I don't have the skills (or desire) to create a go-fund-me site to finance this project. (I'd probably use the money to spend a couple of weeks--or months--or the rest of my life--in idyllic bliss in some out-of-the-way spot like Cancun if it were successful anyway.)
Instead, along with posting screenshots of the results of my research so far, I'm also making my format book available to you, whom I assume already
have one of those aforementioned dedicated e-readers. I'd love it if you could take screenshots of the format that you get and post them here. Maybe from this, others could be guided in their choice of their next e-reader.
One thing I have concluded from this little project (hobbies and other time-wasters sound
SO much more important and meaningful if you call them "projects") is that there needs to be an establishment of some kind of standards for e-readers, just as the electronics industry managed to develop a standard for video recorders way back in the '80s; just to prevent us from having to choke down the occasional dinner of word soup.
Anybody want to post their results?
Now, if I can get this forum to cooperate with me, I'm going to post the screenshots for the various readers for each of the more important formats I have developed, below. They are, in order, a screenshot of how it looks in Sigil; next a screenshot of the presentation within Calibre on my computer. Not surprisingly, those are pretty much the way I
wanted the pages to look. Following that, in order, are the results for Aldiko Reader, Cool Reader, FBReader, Gitden Reader, Lithium, Moon+ Reader, PocketBook, Supreader, and UB Reader. You judge for yourself which of those give the best presentation.
This first is a title page I use for all my e-books, with the title, author, a short description, and a thumbnail of the cover. Below the separator, I can add any copyright information, dedications, and epigraphs.
If there's any interest in this thread, and if the mods don't come in and torch this post because I did something wrong, I'll come back and post some screenshots of other pages. But at the bottom (I think), there's a link for my stylebook. Give it a shot on your favorite e-reader, and I'd be interested in seeing what it looks like there.