Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
I didn't mean "to show off." I meant, when I've asked someone to come over & watch the kids while husband & I go out to a movie, it's nice to offer her something to read. And "browse this pbook shelf" is much easier than "here's my computer, and here's the folder where most of the ebooks are kept, sorted by author and series, and here's the Sony Reader, and you can scroll through its listings ten at a time and see if one of those catches your interest. No, there's no back cover blurb to read, and no front cover artwork unless you open the book, and then you'll have to navigate back to that space in the listings to look at the next one."
It's harder to share ebooks. There's software that helps (like Calibre's cover view), but it doesn't mesh well with the ebook reader hardware.
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Whether it's 'show off' or to allow a visitor to browse your ebook collection, there are solutions. None perfect, but there are some. Have you tried Mobipocket's Bookshelf view? I find it quite attractive (for those ebooks that have cover images-but the lack of covers on many ebooks is part of the 'maturity' thing, as is the lack of a solution that will similarly display all ebooks no matter what the format-and the Mobipocket library even allows the 'back-cover blurb' that somebody mentioned, just click on the book & a 'synopsis' appears in a sidebar).
And, although again few people probably have the resources I do to accomplish this (I work in the computer field so I always have a number of obsolete PC's around), but I've set up a PC on my 'bookshelf' and dedicated it to displaying the Mobipocket Bookshelf. If a visitor wants to browse my library, there it is. No network connection & nothing private on it (unless you consider my ebooks private, and any that I do consider private I simply leave off that PC).
And by restricting it to DRM-free ebooks I'm even able to lend them to visitors to take home. (Note: I absolutely adhere to the 'lending' concept. If I lend a visitor an ebook then I remove it from my Bookshelf, unless it's a 'freebook'. Technically I still have it, as a backup, but I do my best to adhere to the idea of treating an ebook like I would a pbook, within the limits of the current technology.)