Sony and Google e-books

[GBC]

I was just looking at the Sony e-book store. Now when you buy a Sony Reader instead of getting access to 100 free e-books for a limited time, you have unlimited access to 500,000 e-books from the Google e-bookstore. These books are in the Epub format.
I wonder if you can still get 100 free e-books in Sony's e-book format?

[pilotbob]

This topic is being discussed at this thread:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42707

BOb

[frabjous]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

This topic is being discussed at this thread:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42707

Actually GBC was asking a more specific question about the continued availability of the free classics in Sony's format.

Originally Posted by GBC

I wonder if you can still get 100 free e-books in Sony's e-book format?

The Sony Classics are certainly still there in their store, in LRX format. Whether you can still get 100 of them free when you register your reader... I don't know... but I'd suspect you still can. [EDIT: Poking around a bit further, I'm almost positive you can, if you register your reader by March 31st.] I'm not sure why you'd want them in DRMed Sony format when you get them in non-DRMed ePub... do you have PRS-500 instead of a 505?

[GBC]

I have both a PRS 500 and a PRS 505. I actually prefer the Epub format for the 505, and of course 500 can't use anything but LRF. If for some reason I ever wanted to use the PRS 500 again it would be nice to have the free e-books in LRF format.

GBC

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by GBC

I have both a PRS 500 and a PRS 505. I actually prefer the Epub format for the 505, and of course 500 can't use anything but LRF. If for some reason I ever wanted to use the PRS 500 again it would be nice to have the free e-books in LRF format.

GBC

You should download the Epub, and use calibre to convert to lrf.
http://calibre.kovidgoyal.net/

[frabjous]

Actually, I'm not so sure that getting the ePubs and then converting to lrf is better than getting Sony's versions.

I've been browsing the Google ePubs and their quality is simply terrible. The "Sony Classics" aren't great quality either (compared to, e.g., the public domain classics available uploaded here at MobileRead), but they do seem better than the Google ones. I suppose with some TLC from someone willing to do the work of cleaning them up, having the non-DRMed ePubs will facillitate getting some quality versions available, but if you don't have time to do this yourself, the Sony versions might be preferable.

Then again, most of the Sony classics titles are already available here at MobileRead in LRF in higher quality format than available directly from Sony; I'd get them from here instead, personally.

[gardenstate]

How about 12,000 public domain books in Sony Reader lrf format for less than $20USD...

http://www.silkpagoda.com/catalog/pr...roducts_id=674

Some time ago, I bought their 10,000 book version which was just incredible!

from their website...
Back for a Limited Time By Popular Demand!

1 DVD containing 12,000 books in .lrf format, searchable, sorted by category, and specially configured for fast reading on your Sony 500, 505 or 700! This is the legendary Blackmask DVD, available again for a limited time this holiday season.

[SteveK]

Gardenstate - I have seen comments that seem to indicate that some of these massive collections of books are somewhat inconvenient to use. For example, I've read that a single LARGE file may contain ALL of an author's works, so you can't transfer individual titles. Is the SilkPagoda/Blackmask DVD set up that way, or do you have multiple thousands of files, each with one book?

I've seen these mega-collections and am always intrigued by the very low price for thousands of titles, but I am concerned about the convenience of actually using them.

Thanks.

SteveK

[frabjous]

I don't get it. I'm fairly sure all these titles are available online. What's the point of having them all on DVD? Or paying $20 for what you can get for free? Did they actually do a good job OCRing them and cleaning up the results?

[Jgalvez918]

Why Pay when you could get all these .lrf for free? Actually, it even gives you a choice of format... check it out.. there's over 20k ebooks that you could download to your device...

http://manybooks.net/

ENJOY!
Judy

[mjh215]

GBC; Go with the classics available on MobileRead, they are handmade ebooks and are nicely formatted. I believe all the 100 free classics are available here for download in a better format. And yes, they are free.

Plus AcidZebra made a nice conversion of 11,000 PD Gutenberg ebooks to LRF, and put up a torrent for them. There was originally some concern that it included some copywritten texts off of Gutenberg and the link was removed, but that was eventually debunked. However the link was never put back to reflect this. Mind you, this was a 100% legal torrent for anyone that is interested. Just Google "11,000+ Project Gutenberg ebooks for Sony Reader " and send a TY to AcidZebra for doing the mass conversion. This is in response to ordering a CD/DVD.

-MJ

[GBC]

Thank you for the information. I'll try the AcidZebra website. In the meantime I've downloaded Calibre and am enjoying converting books to my own preference.

GBC