Books you gave up on ever being ebooks

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by GlennD

In the early days of the Internet, I didn't have any qualms about combing the usenet newsgroups and grabbing .pdb files to read on my palm pilot. After all, there was no way to get electronic files commercially. Nowadays I stick to legitimate copies. I like to think that those of us who were early adopters of ebooks helped to convince the publishers that there was a market for the format.

Palm pilot came out in 1997 (not exactly early days, 1992 to 1994 was early days of Websites and the Internet in various forms existed years before Websites).

Mobipocket was once the biggest ebook seller. At least existed from 2000, but there were some commercial ebooks before then (Gutenberg had PD from 1972).

Amazon bought Mobipocket in 2005, same year Sony eink launched, but the first dedicated ebook devices are from about 1998. The Mobi format was obsolete by 8 years in 2007 then Kindle was launched.

The 1992 Sony Data Discman was almost a real ereader.

Most commercial products in the 1980s and 1990s were reference works on CD (rather than fiction), often using a custom program interface. Wikipedia killed the encyclopedia CD/DVDs.

I only obtained PD material until I had my first Kindle maybe 2011 or 2012. I nearly bought a Sony eink in 2006. But I hardly bought any ebooks till I got a Kobo.

[nana77]

I wasn't using internet on those times, but I'm quite impressed that there are manuals for some RPG videogames (also digital), that contains part of the story, and that are like 834 pages (Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura - 2001).

[DrNefario]

Mobipocket was built on top of Rick Bram's DOC format, I seem to remember. Adding some HTML-style formatting and a bit of image support, but it could still show DOCs, and several other Palm readers could, too.

I didn't read a lot on the Palm - it was more of an emergency backup, like my phone currently is - but I did read a bit of public domain, one or two books from Baen's free library, and what I guess must have been some pirate books, although I wasn't really aware of that at the time.

[JSWolf]

I remember back then buying some LIT format eBooks because I could remove the DRM. I used an old laptop to read with until the Sony Reader first came out.

[Dr. Drib]

Originally Posted by fjdk

and listed as being in this one:
https://www.amazon.com/All-You-Zombies-Classic-Heinlein-ebook/dp/B00EIK1VCE

be careful though...there's also a short story edition for "All You Zombies"

That link is non-working for me.

Other members have posted on this.

[fjdk]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

That link is non-working for me.

Other members have posted on this.

fixed...sorry for the delay

[Cactus Chef]

Reminded of it based on that other thread...

It sure seems like Red Moon and Black Mountain is never getting a proper ebook treatment.

I wonder if anyone has ever contacted the good lady who wrote it to see who owns the publishing rights.

[lera]

if i'm allowed to ramble on a similar but adjacent topic, there are some books i encountered which while yes ebooks of them exist on the internet i don't think the form of an ebook does their contents complete justice, because their original formatting plays a lot with how the words flow! a good-quality pdf can kind of capture the vibe but not quite (especially not when something goes from one page to another) and other formats are Right Out

for an easily-accessible-to-the-public-eye example of this: Principia Discordia. i first encountered these amazing texts in paperback and let me tell you, flipping through that was an experience an internet version cannot even begin to replicate :D