Jo Walton Ebook Article: A Library in Your Pocket

[dandelioncottage]

Jo Walton expresses my love for ereading perfectly in this article:

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/03/how...=9780765332653

My favorite quote: "First, the eternal calculus of 'what am I going to read, what am I going to read next after it, is there enough of this book left for today or should I take another' is solved—I take it, if I finish the book, I start another. I don’t have to think about it."

[AlbertaCowboy]

Originally Posted by dandelioncottage

Jo Walton expresses my love for ereading perfectly in this article:

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/03/how...=9780765332653

My favorite quote: "First, the eternal calculus of 'what am I going to read, what am I going to read next after it, is there enough of this book left for today or should I take another' is solved—I take it, if I finish the book, I start another. I don’t have to think about it."

Great article. Thank for the link.

[crich70]

Indeed, thanks for sharing.

[Gazella]

A wonderful article. Thank you for sharing. I have one of her novels, Tooth and Claw, on my Kindle which I've yet to read.

[John K]

It’s terrible for maps and pictures. I think they should email you the maps and pictures separately when you buy a book so you can see them at a reasonable scale on a big screen.

That's a great idea. I love maps. Even with my DXG they're to small. It'll never happen though...

Might be an idea for a web entrepreneur? Searchable list of maps from novels paid for with ad revenue?

[Gazella]

Originally Posted by John K

That's a great idea. I love maps. Even with my DXG they're to small. It'll never happen though...

Might be an idea for a web entrepreneur? Searchable list of maps from novels paid for with ad revenue?

I agree. It would be nice but will never happen.

[jandrew]

Nice article, thanks.

I haven't had my ereader long enough to truly appreciate it as a "library in my pocket". I have perhaps 40 books or so on it now, but I've only read a couple of those as I have been finishing my paper stack.

I do, however, normally consume a fair bit of non-book reading material online, and my ereader has become important in that respect. I now use Calibre to convert a few science and news rss feeds into ebook/emagazine form and load them on the ereader. As well, when doing online research I now simply put articles of any appreciable length into my Pocket.com account and sync to my ereader (kobo). It is a huge bonus to offload a lot of necessary online reading to an e-ink device that is more comfortable to read with and which I can take with me anywhere, regardless of connectivity.

Indeed, I now read more online material for pleasure as well -- articles and prose from tor.com, longreads.com, and edge.org for example. Stuff I have often bypassed as I already spend too much time in front of a computer screen I now also just Pocket and read on the ereader (when taking my mother to the doctor, getting an oil change, and soon (but not soon enough) while sitting in the sun on the balcony and having a beer)

[mojos]

Great read! Thank you very much for sharing!

[AnemicOak]

I have some books with maps and pics that work just fine in digital format, they're high rez and you can zoom in to get even more detail. The problem with most books is that the publishers only include small low rez versions (which often look like a scan of a scan of a photocopy) instead of larger higher rez images. That's the publishers fault, not the fault of ebooks.

[Marcy]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

I have some books with maps and pics that work just fine in digital format, they're high rez and you can zoom in to get even more detail. The problem with most books is that the publishers only include small low rez versions (which often look like a scan of a scan of a photocopy) instead of larger higher rez images. That's the publishers fault, not the fault of ebooks.

Yes. This.

I have some books that include high-res pictures so that I can open them on my computer and zoom in on them. And others have really crappy pictures, so that even though I can open my book on the computer, all zooming in does is give you a big huge blurry mess.

I read a lot of fantasy with world maps included and I find most of them are totally unviewable, even on the computer.

As an example I've attached a picture of the map of the Well World that came with my copy of Exiles at the Well of Souls that I bought from Baen. There is really no excuse for such a crappy image which is unreadable at any size. I would think a company like Baen that embraced ebooks so early and fully would have done a better job.

As AnemicOak said, it is clear they just scanned the page from the book and stuck it in here.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Marcy

Yes. This.

As an example I've attached a picture of the map of the Well World that came with my copy of Exiles at the Well of Souls that I bought from Baen. There is really no excuse for such a crappy image which is unreadable at any size. I would think a company like Baen that embraced ebooks so early and fully would have done a better job.

As AnemicOak said, it is clear they just scanned the page from the book and stuck it in here.

I attach the same from Quest for the Well of Souls which seems as good as could be expected. I got it from the Baen HTML download and it is dated 17/‎Jun/‎2003 ‏‎13:56

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

I attach the same from Quest for the Well of Souls which seems as good as could be expected.

They could have easily included a larger image than 576x488, although I've seen worse than that in other books.

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

They could have easily included a larger image than 576x488, although I've seen worse than that in other books.

Having just checked my copies of Exiles... and Quest... I suspect that the scans were the same but the one in Exiles exhibits all the marks of an over-compressed jpg which usually results in fuzzy text in the image... Perhaps someone thought that they were being clever to keep file sizes down - a little knowledge and even less checking...

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Having just checked my copies of Exiles... and Quest... I suspect that the scans were the same but the one in Exiles exhibits all the marks of an over-compressed jpg which usually results in fuzzy text in the image... Perhaps someone thought that they were being clever to keep file sizes down - a little knowledge and even less checking...

But Marcy posted a .png - do you see a .png in Exiles ?

Which ebook format are you looking at ?

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

But Marcy posted a .png - do you see a .png in Exiles ?

Which ebook format are you looking at ?

Whoops, didn't noticed .png but probably no difference as I looked at my image in Exiles (on screen) side-by-side with Marcy's... and I'm using epubs - you mean there are other formats...