Canadian grad student choice

[bendable]

Hey everyone. Looks like a great community. I stumbled across it as I have been looking into whether it is worth getting an ebook reader as a grad student.

Being a grad student, ebook readers have attracted me for a number of reasons, but I have some questions that I cannot seem to find good answers for. Until I find these answers it will be difficult for me to pick a reader. So if you fine people would be able to help me out, I would really appreciate it.

1. Do ebook readers allow a user to search content? If I'm looking for passages that use a specific phrase/word, can I search for it among all my books or even just within one book?
2. Being in Canada, which ebook stores do not sell to me? I have noticed that Amazon limits which books are available in Canada, but I haven't figured out the rest.
3. From any of the sites available in Canada, am I able to buy books from any of them and put them on basically any device? (granted, using Calibre or something similar). For example, if I buy a Kobo, can I still buy from Sony's store and get it onto my device?
4. How easy is it to be in Canada and buy books that are not available in Canada, but only in the US? (for example, Kindle's books that are only available in US) Is there any way to spoof Amazon and get those books still?

So, based on all my above questions, which reader is best for me? Let's assume that I have access to the readers that are only available in the US as well as any available in Canada.

If it's around $150 or less, that'd be even sweeter.

Sorry for the long post. Thanks for the advice/answers in advance!

Oh yeah...one more question/thought. I'd love to be able to access any ebook libraries. Does anyone know how easy that is in Canada? Which libraries?

[ATDrake]

Always nice to see another Canadian on board. There are a couple of location polls you can go vote in, if you feel so inclined.

1) It depends whether your reader has a search function to begin with. But yes, if it does, then it seems you can usually search across both a single book and all of them (I'm not sure whether anyone has yet put in a function to search within a selection).

My Kindle does this readily. Well, more like slowly if it's across all the books.

2) Of the majors, B&N officially sells only a tiny fraction of its titles to Canada. You'd basically have to pretend to be located in the US in order to buy books there.

Amazon, Sony, and Kobo all officially sell to Canada in quantity, but the selection can be geo-restricted because of regional rights or publisher issues.

Smaller outlets and specialty stores depend, but pretty much all the ones that sell DRM-free books are generous about out-of-country customers. Ones that are region-specific, like Waterstones or WH Smith in the UK, or Borders (US and Australia), will not sell to you without major hoop-jumping to disguise your origins.

3) It depends on which device you get, because of the competing file formats. Here's a brief rundown of which can read/buy from what, without taking into account the horizons potentially opened up by removal of DRM (not yet illegal in Canada, despite the best efforts of our corporate-pandering current Conservative government) and conversion.

Kindle: can only buy from Amazon and non-DRM stores (may have to convert, since Kindle reads only Topaz, Mobi, PDF, and plain text formats).

Cannot buy "Secure" Mobipocket books without modifying them despite Amazon's owning the Mobipocket format, because they decided not to include support for the old Mobi-DRM in the Kindle, for reasons best known to themselves. Have also not licensed out the new DRM-scheme now used to anyone else, so only non-copy-protected files from any other source will work "out of the box".

Nook and JetBook Lite: supports both Adobe Digital Editions and Barnes & Noble-DRM ePub and PDF, and also eReader formats both plain and "Secure" (except the Nook Color model dropped support for eReader).

Can buy from B&N, any ADE-DRM supporting store like Kobo, Sony, and any number of small specialty stores (also library books), the slowly-doomed Fictionwise ("Secure" selections; their MultiFormat stuff is DRM-free and will work on anything) and eReader.com, and non-DRM books, of course (will probably not have to convert, as ePub is pretty common these days).

Sony/Kobo/other ADE-supporting readers: supports ADE-DRM ePub and PDF, may also read plain text/RTF/LRF/other depending on model.

Can buy at any ADE-DRM supporting store or library (you can put Sony books on your Kobo reader and vice versa), and of course non-DRM books. May also buy the few non-DRM ePubs available at B&N (but generally you can't tell in advance which publishers don't use it, though if you happen to like erotic romance, you're in luck).

4) Depends on how strict the site is about things. You can't even browse Kobo for books outside your real country unless you route it through an IP hosted in your target locale and/or fill in a billing address for that area into your account.

At a minimum, you will usually need to enter a US billing/shipping address (not necessarily one you have any real claim to). A US-based VPN IP proxy is also helpful.

The trick seems to be to keep the façade up at all times. You may find it helpful to establish an entirely separate account for these acquisitions, instead of switching your address back and forth like some people have done.

Always access your "US" account and do your downloads using the proxy for best results. It probably helps avoid getting the "please supply proof of residence" notice that Amazon sometimes sends out.

LIBRARIES: extremely easy, though how good the selection will be will depend on where you live. Calgary, BC, and Manitoba are currently in the lead for # of e-books available, and you can check if someplace in your area offers stuff via the Overdrive search if your library's website doesn't already have a link.

If nothing in your area turns up, and you don't have an enabling friend or relative in a suitable city, then there's always the Philadelphia Free Library, for which you can get a non-resident card for $15 USD per year and access to their e-book catalogue.

The three common e-book formats are Mobipocket, ePub, and PDF, all copy-protected.

Mobipocket books (a dwindling minority) can be read on a Kindle with the help of some scripts to tweak the files. DRM-ed ePubs and PDFs can be read on ADE-compatible readers (Nook/Sony/Kobo/etc.).

In order to get Mobi books on an ADE-reader and ePubs/PDFs onto a Kindle, you'd need to remove the DRM and convert.
____

I think that, given that you want a search function and your budget is around $150, either a Nook or Kindle Wi-Fi-only model would suit you best out of all the e-ink readers (unless you're okay with LCD screens, in which case there are some useful budget-priced devices that I'm sure people will be happy to advise you upon).

Sonys have nifty features, but tend to be quite a bit pricier, and the Kobo is nice but very basic in functionality.

If it weren't for the file format issue, I'd say that the Kindle probably offers the better set of reader supplementary features (user-swappable dictionaries, text-to-speech, exportable highlights and notes) out of the two.

But the Nook really has greater overall compatibility with other vendors and e-book sources and formats whereas the Kindle does rather limit you in that area.

You'll have more shopping/borrowing options with the Nook or any ADE-DRM compatible reader overall, but likely greater convenience and customer service with Amazon, which is generally quite good at responding to issues and will allow you to return an e-book purchase within 7 days for any reason.

However, if you're willing and able to learn to remove DRM (a process which we cannot discuss in detail on this forum because it's considered to be of varying legality in many places), then your reading device is no longer a limiting factor; although ePub is technically capable of more advanced typographical display than Mobipocket is and sometimes you lose stuff during the conversion process.

But sometimes people find this to be confusing or uncomfortable or just too much hassle, so if you think that may be you, then a native ePub-supporting reader is probably your best choice.

For what it's worth, it's easier to remove the various DRM schemes associated with the ePub file formats than the ones for Kindle.

And Kobo often works out to have the best deals overall for Canadians, given the frequent discount coupons they offer which are applicable to most of their store, although Amazon usually has the steepest temporary price drops on selected sale titles.

Hope this helps, and welcome to MobileRead!

[bendable]

Wow! Thanks for the amazing response. I can tell people like you are passionate about helping others. Lots to think about as I look at options.

[GA Russell]

Welcome bendable!

But enough about eBook readers. Where are you from in Canada, and who did you root for in the Grey Cup?

[bendable]

I live out in the woods 2 hours east of Winnipeg. I cheered for Montreal in the Grey Cup, but mostly because I didn't want Saskatchewan fans to have the pleasure of another Cup to throw in the face of other fans across the CFL.

[Care]

Hi Bendable!

The problem that I have found being in Canada is that some books just aren't available here. There is one ebook I have wanted to buy for my niece and it is not at any of the stores available to Canadians. It is available in ebook format at B&N, but they won't sell to Canadians.

I ended up buying a Nook and using an US address for my shipping and billing address. I haven't had to use a vpn proxy as of yet and I order books from B&N that are not supposed to be available in Canada (via my Nook). I have bought two more Nooks since and they all work great here (they all have the same US address).

I am thinking it might be best to use a US address for whatever reader you decide on. I know some are more strict than others (like amazon), so make sure you can get away with it first.

[ATDrake]

Personally, I'd say maintain accounts for both countries, for maximum selection/pricing advantage.

Even in the Amazon store, books can sometimes be a lot cheaper for Canadians because Agency pricing doesn't apply up here and thus Amazon is free to discount titles across the board, which they occasionally do. Same thing at Kobo, where coupons can be applied to books up here that won't work down in the States (and you'd have to jump through hoops with an IP proxy to buy as a "US" Kobo customer from Canada anyway).

Plus we have access to (mostly Canadian and sometimes UK-authored) books that other countries don't. Geo-restrictions work both ways.

Also, you may want to go and download the official user manuals for any readers you're interested in, to get an idea of exactly what features they officially support.

The people in the forums here are great when it comes to user experience and tips and tricks, but sometimes some of the more obscure things you can do get glossed over because nobody reads the manual and most people just haven't come across it during typical usage.

[Care]

^^ That's a good point. I actually have both US and Canadian accounts. Kobo especially sends me a lot of coupons for ebooks. I only have a US Amazon account though, but I rarely buy ebooks via them as I have to strip the drm.

[bendable]

But other than jumping through some hoops, it seems like the NOOK will be a better fit for me. As long as I am able to buy some books through Amazon US, then the NOOK will work. From what I've been able to see, for the books I'm needing to buy, Amazon US has the most availability.

[Care]

Do you want the Nook then for library books and to be able to buy books at Sony, Kobo, etc...? If you intend to buy a lot of amazon books, maybe the Kindle would be best (except for library access)? If you go to Inkmesh.com you can search for any ebook and it will give you prices from all the stores it is available at. It is a good way to see what is available where without jumping back and forth between sites.

As for library books, go to your library's website and see if they have a e-catalogue. The most common is Overdrive, but my library only uses it for audiobooks and has a different catalogue for ebooks. I had a friend get a library card that I use for Overdrives ebooks and there are places you can buy a membership to get access to Overdrive.

To get an Amazon book to work on the Nook you will have to strip the drm. If you are ok with that, all you'd have to do is convert it with calibre and load it to your Nook (if that is what you decide to go with).

[ATDrake]

I think I read that now people have figured out how to put the Kindle for Android app on a rooted Nook?

So that solves the buying from Amazon issue without having to strip and Nook users can enjoy the use of all three DRM-schemes now. Unless that was just for the rooted Nook Color models.

[Care]

Are you meaning the Nook Color? I must be really missing something if we can do it to the original Nook. I better to find out! I wouldn't have to strip the drm anymore.

[Latinandgreek]

Toronto, Vancouver and Mississauga have ebooks offered from their libraries, if by chance you have library cards from one of these library systems. I don't know offhand what other cities have Overdrive.

As a fellow Canadian grad student, I'd like to suggest the Sony readers to you. If you read journal articles in foreign languages, you can make use of the 12 touch-screen dictionaries that the new Sony models have (German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch and two monolingual English dictionaries.) Sony models also have better PDF support (from what I've seen) than the Kindle and Kobo and Nook (eink) models. With the Sony, you can annotate your PDFs. Personally, I'd go with the PRS-950, but if strapped for cash the PRS-650.

The Nook colour has good PDF support (I've heard), but I find e-ink screens easy to read from (the Nook Colour is backlit) and the Nook colour is a bit pricier than the Sony 650 right now, as the Sony PRS is on sale in many stores this week:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...=110877&page=4

Another new colour reader (if you are interested) is the Pocketbook IQ, and it's in the $150 range.

[bendable]

So after looking into the library books option that excited me about the Nook, I've realized that library selections are quite limited in the field I would be interested in. It would help me pick up books for casual reading, but almost nothing for my studies.

I've also been struggling through the ethics of removing Kindle DRM from books to work on the Nook. Without opening up the debate on this again (I've noticed that there are quite a few threads on that already), does anyone know of a reputable resource that discusses the Canadian laws/views on DRM removal? Not just opinions, but actual analysis of the current law? I'd love if someone could post something on that for me!

[bendable]

Latinandgreek....thanks for your post. Another helpful viewpoint to consider!