Quote:
Originally Posted by BrickyBrian
As a new to E-Books person its only just become obvious to me that my primary interest is not E-Book readers but E-Book publications which I can access on my computer so I have to ask the following question:
Will I be able to open any and all E-Books on my computer or will I require different applications to do so. My apologies for being so stupid.
|
For "any and all" ebooks, the answer is yes.
If you *only* look at DRM-free, Calibre can do almost all ebooks. It is an extremely powerful and flexible tool that takes a while to master but if you just want to use it to read ebooks you can be running in minutes: you just select a book in the file manager and tell Windows you want to open it with the Calibre ereader. You do it once for every ebook format you run into.
There are also several free and paid-but-cheap apps that can handle DRM-free Ebooks in most formats plus ADOBE DRM epubs. Slicker and smoother than the calibre reader app.
You almost certainly will need more than one application if you are looking to buy contemporary, commercial books. Especially the non-fiction books you've said you're interested in.
It's not a big problem: all the apps are free and easy to find and they all do most of the same things in very similar ways. They're easy to learn and become easier as you go along.
You will definitely need a separate App for Commercial ebooks via Amazon. Either one of the free Kindle Reader Apps or the main Calibre Management App with appropriate deDRM Plugins. That will require some upfront work to set up and an extra step of Kindle-to-epub conversion between buying and reading.
The simplest approach is to start with two reader apps; one for DRM'ed books and one for DRM-free. Then later, when you have enough books that managing them is an issue, you can add Calibre.
A good way to start is to go to the BAEN Free Library and pickup a book or ten and download them in a couple of the supported formats. Say, epub, kindle/mobi, and HTML. 1632 is a nice, accessible adventure book to start with.
http://www.baen.com/categories/free-library.html
Then you can try different reader applications to see which one suits you best. Different people have different preferences: some prefer animated paging, some prefer scrolling or paging without animation. Some prefer single column displays, some dual column. You can try different fonts. (You mentioned dylexia. There are a couple of free, installable fonts that claim to be easier to read for dyslexics. Some reader apps come with such a font. Most will let you add one.)
Once you start customizing things to get it exactly right you'll be tweaking things left and right.
But getting started is easy.
If you have a Windows 10 pc you already have everything you need to get started: the Edge browser.
Just go to the Gutenberg or Baen website and download an Epub book.
Then you go to the browser's Downloads pane and click on the name of the downloaded file.
Then you can start reading.
Just take it one step at a time.
Once you're comfortable with that you can try the Kindle or Kobo apps. Run the App and tell it to search for free ebooks (or free non-fiction) and download one.
See how it works for you, what you like and don't like. Play with the settings.
It's your eyeballs, go with whatever app/settings suit you.
Above all, try to have fun.
Ebooks are a useful tool but they can also be a lot of fun. Don't neglect the fiction side.