Another Aussie from Sydney

[Kirok]

... Well, the Southern Highlands, 100Kms south west of Sydney but in Sydney terms that makes us outer metropolitan fringe dwellers! LOL

I have had an iPaq provided from work for ages and decided to get some real use out of it by using it as an eBook reader - it fails as an mp3 player but I still hold out hopes for it as a video player.

I write a fanzine (more accurately a Blogzine) and <gasp> Star Trek fan fiction as well as being a moderator on a couple of writers groups. I would like to encourage writers to experiment with different mediums of distribution so I'm experimenting with the entry level eBooks, looking for something that scores on two points ...

• Widest distribution
• easiest construction/compilation procedure

Frankly html wins out on both points. I've saved fan fiction from forums as html and been able to read them instantly with the MobiPocket reader I have installed on my iPaq. In some cases you can get them as a html download eg from Deviantart

However with html you seem to loose all the cool add-on capabilities of a dedicated eReader, such as table of contents, bookcover, integration into the readers database functions and - most importantly for a writer of original fiction - integration into commercial sites.

Call me lazy, but the MobiPocket format seems to have the a strong lead on both of my criteria in that the compilation procedure seems to be very simple and the format seems to accept input from a wide range of formats and be read on a wide number of platforms.

... as a total tyro on the subject, I'm open to suggestions though.

Which forum should I post questions about how to format a document for html? Is there one for MobiPocket? Is there a preferred font, font size, rules of indentation? Should I use a line space between paragraphs or rely on leading and trailing spaces?

On a totally different note, I heard on an ABC podcast recently that the Nintendo DS was a popular eBook reader in Asia - is this true? What format does this use?

Looks like an active, supportive forum you have here. I hope I can contribute.

Cheers

Kirok of L'Stok

[NatCh]

Welcome to MobileRead, Kirok!

Originally Posted by Kirok

Which forum should I post questions about how to format a document for html? Is there one for MobiPocket?

For matters that general, probably the Content subforum would be a good place to start, but if you see one in the list that seems to fit better, by all means go for that one.

Originally Posted by Kirok

Is there a preferred font, font size, rules of indentation? Should I use a line space between paragraphs or rely on leading and trailing spaces?

Sure there are preferences on those, but ... we all seem to have different preferences. A lot of it depends on the target reading device, but the rest is pure personal preference. I wouldn't worry about it too much. However, the General Book Uploads Posting Guidelines thread in the eBooks Upload area might be some help to you, both as general approaches as well as if you're thinking about posting any books yourself.

Originally Posted by Kirok

On a totally different note, I heard on an ABC podcast recently that the Nintendo DS was a popular eBook reader in Asia - is this true? What format does this use?

I think that's been mentioned here before, but I don't recall off-hand what format they were using. I'm not even sure what formats the DS supports, actually. If I had to guess I'd go with either fairly plain text, or some sort of "picture" of text formatted for the DS's display. But as many folks as we have around here and the broadness of that communities knowledge and experiences, I wouldn't be surprised if someone came along with that answer.

[MickeyC]

G'Day mate and welcome to the Forum.