Showing posts with label epub. Show all posts
Showing posts with label epub. Show all posts

Friday, April 8, 2011

Free Kindle Books -Special links, English-only, Contemporary - UPDATE9

From the Top 100 Free Kindle Books list, U.S.   (UK: here)

UPDATES 1-9. - Am updating lists and links because Amazon added tons of German books to pages 2 and on.  Have done them for U.S. and later revised the UK list somewhat, explained in the updates.

  NOTE: I'm trying to include only free full, contemporary books.  But in the UK, they also include, from what I can see, the classics also.

NEW experiment:   Amazon has new Kindle books in various categories and they don't all get caught in the various lists.  Here are attempts at still-free ones in  Last 30+ days and  Apr 2011.  I'll need to change these at the start of each month.
  These will be near the top of the A Kindle World blog's reference column at the right, and kept up to date each month.

  Have updated quite a bit today the ongoing Guide to Free Books and Resources and am moving it up to the top, as the changes are fairly extensive.  Will reorganize it later to remove Logged detail, as it confuses eyes and mind.


Original Post, with revisions
About 70% of visitors here each day are new to the page, arriving after a search on a specific topic, and won't know about the popular Top 100 free listing on Amazon.  The top-selling free Kindle books are shown alongside those that are not free, but Amazon gives them equal space on that page.

  I've included just a few at the top which have had a good number of customer reviews, which guarantees many of them will be identified as an 'Amazon Verified Purchase.'  Some were added to the Kindle store too recently to have much customer feedback yet despite receiving many downloads.

  Click on any image above to get details on the specific book.

  Backstage Pass was added as a free book about 3 days ago, probably as a temporary promotional listing, so if interested, get that one earlier.  A good number of contemporary books, non-classics, tend to be free for a short time.

  Last week, Amazon had about 16,000 free Kindle books, and they have doubled that this week, as now there are about 33,600 free.   Most would be new versions of public-domain classics and it's reported that the formatting tends to be somewhat better than on the earlier ones submitted to Amazon.
  Amazon currently has over 905,000 Kindle books.

Less known is the section for Foreign Language eBooks.

There's also a probably fairly lucrative section for Oprah's Book Club Series for Kindle.   :-)

  At the Kindle Store, browse the left column to see a lot more.


ONGOING LINKS TO TEMPORARILY FREE BOOKS AND 99 CENT PAGES
On this webpage, there are always links at the top right to temporarily free non-classics (contemporary) sorted by latest or bestselling.  I'll include some here, for those who spend more time with the Kindle Edition of this blog, which doesn't include the reference column on the right:

Kindle-Edition subscribers should go to the website via computer to use these:
    http://kindleworld.blogspot.com
Any of these can be bookmarked on your computer if you find them useful.
  Thanks very much for the subscription support.

TEMPORARILY-free books -
Non-classics
- USA: by monyh and special sortings.

  As mentioned above, these will be near the top of the reference column of the A Kindle World blog so they can be accessed at any time and are changing

Also, the 99c Amazon Kindle books page
99c Notepad, for Kindle

  UK:
  Am flying blind in the U.S.- Can't see prices, but free ones seem to be at the front of the long list, which doesn't use U.S. search process.  Also, I can't see the number of stars for highest rating, so removed that link.  Have added one for 5 GBP and under, as many ask how to find these at the Amazon-UK Forum.  By:
    PubDate   Popular   £5 Max


Also check out the 30,000+ Project Gutenberg books and the "Magic Catalog" that you can download directly to the Kindle, where it can be browsed or searched, and ebooks of interest downloaded directly to the Kindle also.

Another blog article to bookmark shows you how to either get a free conversion to Kindle format of any free book(s) from Google's 1.5 million or more ePub books, as well as describing how you can do it yourself and customize it to your preferences, a conversion that after a set-up takes only a few minutes.

The footer of each article will have some of these links, plus one to to the guide to many sources for free books as well as pre-made searches for Amazon's Kindle books in the lower-cost ranges.  It's a lot of information, quite jumbled and will be reorganized soon.


Kindle 3's   (UK: Kindle 3's),   DX Graphite

Check often: Temporarily-free late-listed non-classics or recently published ones
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.
UK-Only: recently published non-classics, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle


(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Kindle and ePub: A Million Free Google Books in ePub - UPDATE4

FROM EPUB TO KINDLE
UPDATE2-4, on 2/6/11
- Original posting was 8/27/09, Update #1 was made 4/22/10.

This explains how to get and use Calibre to easily convert any free ePub Google file to Kindle format OR use a conversion site to have it done for you if the book is in the public domain.

(10/23/11)
SEE THE UPDATED VERSION OF THIS OLDER POST, WITH AN ADDED SOLUTION AND CLEARER PRESENTATION AT THIS LINK:  (bit.ly/epub-to-kindle )

The below blog article below is now outdated and has too many off-topic sections due to chronological updates about Google Books, not particularly germane to the topic.


Original Posting on How to Convert free Google ePub books to Kindle format

Aug. 27, 2009 -- Yesterday Google offered over a million free e-books in EPUB format as well as in PDF format.  (Many don't know that the Kindle 2, 3, and DX Kindles can read PDFs direct -- but this isn't ideal on the 6" screens.)

  These ePub files are easier to work with than the PDF ones because they involve text-reflow instead of keeping a page exactly as originally laid out and therefore with words too tiny  on small screens.

  Also, Google has done, in that ePub file, the text-reflow for us, which should bring more reliable to-MOBI conversions for books with complex layouts .

  This will also allow the Kindle features of highlighting, note-adding, font-size adjustments, and will be included in search results when the full Kindle is searched for key words.  We just need to convert them to MOBI files.

  Some newspapers have reported that the million+ free Google files are not usable on the Kindle.
  They are.  They just need a simple conversion.

  There are currently at least three popular free tools that can convert ePub files to Kindle-compatible MOBI files:  (1) mobigen.exe (not intuitive);  (2) Mobipocket Reader 6.2  (loses some of the styling); and (3) Calibre, which has a nice interface, is easy to use, works with pc's and Macs, and gets the best results.

So, Calibre it is.  Many use it already for organized computer records of their Kindle files or for retrieving combinations of newspaper feeds for their Kindles (not as easily navigated as the paid subscrptions).
  This blog article focuses only on converting the ePub file-format to a Kindle-readable one.

  If you don't already have this free software, created and maintained by Kovid Goyal, download Calibre here.

GET A FREE GOOGLE BOOK OR TWO
  To get a free Google book (most written before 1923 but there are some nice older magazines there as well), go to Google's "Best of the Free" page and select one.

  To find a free book (they are all mixed with $$$-books), click on "Full Preview" as those tend to be the free ones.  Then do a search for what you want.

  At the top right, once you choose a book, you'll see "Download" which will be a pull-down menu showing a choice of PDF or ePub.
(See update of Feb. 6, 2011, above.)

  If you have a Kindle DXG, you might prefer to just get the PDF.  If the words on the PDF are too small though, then get the ePub file.  IF you download an ePub file, then:

CALIBRE
  Open and run Calibre.  On the LEFT will be your choices for set-up when you're converting a document.  Hovering over anything will usually bring a help tip.

  Accepting defaults is fine.  The ability to change the "meta information" is nice - so you can have names and authors as you like them.  If there is no Table of Contents you can 'force' Calibre to create one.

  At the top are choices to "Edit meta information: as well as "Convert E-books." Follow the instructions, and then press the 'OK' button and the conversion will take a few minutes.  I did one and moved it to the Kindle DX and it looks great.

Oh, Calibre gives you the option to optimize your converted file for the Kindle 2 or the Kindle DX.

So, yes, those million+ free Google books are fully useable on the Kindle - it just needs this added step, but it's also great to be able to customize so much of the layout if you want.  Play with the software a bit.


Also see:
  Read foreign-language Google-books in English online
  Google describes the book conversion process
  How to download any of the 30,000 Project Gutenberg books to your Kindle, direct. -->


UPDATE1, 4/22/10 - Original posting was 8/27/09
I've added, below, a section about a new service that will convert a Google Book for you (using the method below) and send it to your Kindle if you want (Amazon charges 15 cents per megabyte of a file if 3G Whispernet delivery is used to send the file) OR will send it instead to the email address you use for correspondence with Amazon (no cost involved). That's RetroRead.

RETROREAD'S AUTOMATED GOOGLE BOOK CONVERSIONS
RetroRead (BLTC Press) offers free conversion of any free ePub Google Book to Amazon Kindle format for delivery to your Kindle or to your computer via your normal email address.  As RetroRead's David Eyes describes in his Blitzes at BLTC blog you will be able to create an account through which you may upload any free Google ePub book (but ONLY Google book files), and have it converted and forwarded directly to you.  He adds that the quality of the converted book can vary greatly depending on the quality of Google’s optical character recognition (OCR) conversion.  The site is self-explanatory.

  Once you've registered and read the Terms of Use, you can go to http://books.google.com and choose a free Google book to read, downloading the ePub version to your computer, at which point you're given the option to have that downloaded file automatically uploaded to Retroread for immediate conversion to Kindle format (using RetroReadhelper -- Windows for that though) and then either sent to your Kindle* or to your email address or linked at the Retroread site where you can download the converted file and then move it to your Kindle via the USB cable.

* If you do want the direct-to-Kindle option, you need to have created earlier a special address for files to your Kindle -- [you]@kindle.com ...
  So be sure you've set up a [you]@kindle.com address first.  This setup is done at your Amazon "Manage Your Kindle" page.  Here's a guide for using that management page.
 This would involve letting RetroRead have your [you]@kindle.com address and, as mentioned, the Amazon fee for whispernet delivery would apply (15 cents per megabyte of a book -- with most ePub books under 1 megabyte -- but the one I uploaded tonight was over 2 megs because some pages were image scans).  However, you can also choose to just get the converted file and move it to the Kindle yourself.  Read his blog for the additions he's made to the site's capabilities.  Lots of good things.

 You can also choose recently converted Google books that are listed as available for download on the left side of the RetroRead page.

For those looking for interesting less-seen free books, it's hard to do better than David's list of the Latest Converted files.

 At any rate, this is a quick intro.  I tried it last night and it works well.  The book I converted for this blog article was used at Retroread, and the results were the 99% the same, since RetroRead uses Calibre also, although the last half of the final page, which happened to be the Table of Contents page at the end, was missing.

  Many will find this service very convenient.  But the service is not offered for any ePub books other than the Google books.  However, you can use this blog guide to do that yourself as needed.  Your own conversion from ePub to Amazon format should take about three minutes after you've had a chance to work with it.


LATER UPDATES - THE COMBINED GOOGLE BOOKS STORE
After Google combined its free Google books with ones they sell now in a general Google Books store, and the earlier instructions (above) on how to find downloadable, free files no longer apply, I used "strikeout" for those.  The rest of it remained the same, however.

Google now may require you to  (1) have a Google account for downloading Google e-books as well as  (2) a credit card even to download a free book *IF it's not a public-domain book* (corrected information from @mikecane).

  I had a credit card with Google already because I had experimented with buying a web-version of a paid Google Book when the Google web Bookstore was launched, and I was asked for it when I tried to download "The eBook Insider" - which is free but is NOT a public domain book.

  I used it to 'buy' a $0.00 Google eBook to test whether these are still easily convertible to Kindle format AND uploadable to Retroread (see details below), who will convert free *public-domain* Google files for the Kindle community, at no cost.  If someone else has already requested a particular free Public Domain Google eBook, it'll be listed on the Retroread site as downloadable by everyone else for their Kindles.

The basic steps when I 'bought' this currently-free NON-public-domain book:
. Click on a book you want and it'll give you the option to 'buy' it even if its $0.00 AND if it's NOT a public-domain book.  It'll give you the option to "Get" it if it's in the public domain, and you can then click to download it.
. After 'buying' it, I received these alerts:
    "This book has been added to My Google eBooks" and
    "Access all your Google eBooks at books.google.com"
. After clicking on "My Google Books," you can see the books you've downloaded, both paid and free.
. Click on the book you just received and you're given options to
    "Read now" (which would be in web-browser version) OR
    "Read on your device" (Nook, Sony, Kobo etc but not Kindle)

Google then offers you the following choices to be able to read the new book:
1. Installing a Smartphones app (Android) or a Tablet app (iPhone & iPad)
2. Laptop and computers (reading in web browser)
3. eReader and other devices
    a. ePub
    b. Adobe PDF (*IF* included)
Choose "ePub"

*NOTE*:  Retroread could NOT convert my free Google book because it isn't a public-domain book and is therefore not successfully searchable on their site.  I then converted it via Calibre as described below.

  Again, when a Google eBook IS public domain and free, you are given the option to "GET" the book without purchasing it.  When you click to accept that option, the eBook winds up in your Google library.

(End of Updates)




US:
Kindle Fire  7" tablet - $199
Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $79/$109
Kindle Touch, WiFi
- $99/$139
Kindle Touch, 3G/WiFi - $149/$189
Kindle Keybd 3G - $189, Free, slow web
Kindle DX - $379, Free, slow web
UK:
Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £89
Kindle Touch WiFi, UK - £109
Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi, UK - £169
Kindle Keyboard 3G, UK - £149
  Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB
OTHER International
Kindle NoTouch Basic - $109
Kindle Touch WiFi - $139
Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi - $189
Kindle Keybd 3G - $189
  Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle


(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Interview w/ Amazon Kindle-Content head + How many millions of Kindles?

INTERVIEW WITH AMAZON'S RUSS GRANDINETTI

The Los Angeles Times' Alex Pham gets some interesting responses from Russ Grandinetti, who is in charge of content for the Kindle  (UK: K3).

  After pointing out that Amazon currently controls 76% of the U.S. digital books market, Pham gives a brief history of the tensions between the publishing industry and Amazon's efforts to keep bestselling book prices lower, with a $9.99 or less standard that "infuriated a number of established publishers, who feared that digital sales would undercut the lucrative hardcover market."

  Yes, think "The Big5" who did admit to fears that selling e-books at that price would 'devalue' their books, meaning their hardcover books.

  Here are some excerpts:


Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle


(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!

Saturday, September 18, 2010

TIP: Gutenberg E-Books direct to Kindle - repeat + Update

UPDATE2 - 9/18/10 - Original posting was April 2, 2009

In addition to the convenient Magic Catalog for Project Gutenberg, which is available for use on the Kindle for searches, browsing, and direct downloading of its free books to the Kindle (see below), Project Gutenberg recently made a MOBILE-device-oriented version of its website, which will of course work more quickly than the main website, via wireless conection with all Kindles.  The 'go to' address is http://m.gutenberg.org - but with Kindles it's better not to enter the "http://" part.

UPDATE3 - 9/20/10 for Kindle 3 users (Kindle 2 users experience no problem in this case):
In the comments area, Bart reports that the mobile-device-oriented URL m.gutenberg.org does not recognize input in the search field from a Kindle 3.  It does recognize input from a Kindle 2 or DX.

  However, on the K3, I can successfully go to the main site - gutenberg.org - and search & download a "Kindle" format file, but the webpage print is smaller because that fits the regular screen contents into the space of the 6" Kindle screen.  While you can use Archive Mode to view the lists, I would not as it takes too long to gather and display these and it can SEEM to freeze the K3 although it's just taking its time.   Don't choose it for lists...

The Project Gutenberg MAGIC CATALOG for the Kindle
In my wanderings through online columns about the Kindle, I've found that about 95% of those never mention that the 30,000 free books from Project Gutenberg are instantly available to the Kindle at no added cost for direct download to the device.  Instead, most tend to promulgate the fable that you can get books only from Amazon.

  The 30,000 free Project Gutenberg books are laid out well and proof-read.
  This tip allows you to directly download a Project Gutenberg book to the Kindle, although that will work only where 3G whispernet web-browsing is enabled already or via WiFi.

International Kindle users who live outside the U.S. and who do not have 3G web-browsing enabled in their countries (a gray area right now) and who don't have WiFi capability can download these free books to their computers instead (choosing "Kindle" or "mobi" or "prc" format) and then move them to their Kindles with the USB cable that is part of the Kindle power cord.

Originally posted April 2, 2009
TIP OF THE DAY: James Adcock tells us how to download chosen Project Gutenbook books direct to our Kindles.  First, you need to get the catalog on to your Kindle, and you can download it by webbing via your Kindle to http://www.freekindlebooks.org/MagicCatalog/magiccatalog.html
(mucho typing on that Kindle keyboard, however).
  On the Kindle, use this shortcut instead: http://bit.ly/gutmagic

After downloading "The Magic Catalog of the Project Gutenberg E-Books (MOBI Edition) to your Kindle (or transferring it from your computer to the Kindle if you don't want to type in the long URL on the Kindle), follow James's instructions which are:
"Use your Kindle's Search Feature to find your favorite Author and/or Title.  Click to go to that page.  Click again on the Author: Title listing and your chosen E-Book will automagically download directly from the Project Gutenberg website to your Kindle..."
Thanks, James!

Added tip from James - How to use mobipocket.com's mobigen.exe, to easily convert EPUB books (at the DOS prompt) to MOBI versions.  Downside, any illustrations in a book are not included at this point.

ADDED UPDATE, along with Sept. 18, 2010 update
Also, the 1 million free Google books in ePub: How to get one converted to Kindle
Not only can you convert any of these to a Kindle book via a free tool (with most illustrations intact), there is also a publishing website that offers to do conversions of free-Google-books for you upon request and will give you a link to the completed Kindle-ready copy, on their website, for you and any other interested parties, to download.  See the details here



US:
Kindle Fire  7" tablet - $199
Kindle NoTouch ("Kindle") - $79/$109
Kindle Touch, WiFi
- $99/$139
Kindle Touch, 3G/WiFi - $149/$189
Kindle Keybd 3G - $189, Free, slow web
Kindle DX - $379, Free, slow web
UK:
Kindle Basic, NoTouch - £89
Kindle Touch WiFi, UK - £109
Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi, UK - £169
Kindle Keyboard 3G, UK - £149
  Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB
OTHER International
Kindle NoTouch Basic - $109
Kindle Touch WiFi - $139
Kindle Touch 3G/WiFi - $189
Kindle Keybd 3G - $189
  Keybd: w/ Free, slow 3G WEB

Check often: Temporarily-free recently published Kindle books
  Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources.  Top 100 free bestsellers.  Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
    Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.

  *Click* to Return to the HOME PAGE.  Or click on the web browser's BACK button

Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle


(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

30,000 free books for iPad are for Kindle too - UPDATE

(Special note:  The March 26 blog entry has not been released by Amazon blogs dept - some kind of glitch.  I hope it comes through along with this post.  Apologies to Kindle Edition subscribers.  The gap is not what it would appear.)

Columns about the Apple iPad are highlighting the 30,000 free Project Gutenberg titles that come with it.
    As many regulars know, that's also available to Kindle owners.
  But for the benefit of those who have become Kindle users in the last 6 months and those who are Kindle Edition subscribers, I'm reposting the information on that as it will have fallen off the current pages.

The below is from a popular Kindleworld blog-article which is being highlighted for newcomers and Kindle-blog edition subscribers (who can reference it on the Kindle for another 25 days or so).

ALL Kindle-compatible books with file extensions ".mobi" or ".prc" that you download to your computers (rather than to your Kindle, which is possible from many places) can be read on the computer by the free Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac software by just clicking on the book file that is on your computer (wherever it is downloaded and kept).

The 30,000 free Project Gutenberg books are laid out well and proof-read.
This tip allows you to directly download a Project Gutenberg book to the Kindle, although that will work only where whispernet web-browsing is enabled already - U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, Mexico.

International Kindle users who live outside the U.S. and do not have web-browsing enabled in their countries can download these free books to their computers instead (choosing "Kindle" or "mobi" or "prc" format) and then move them to their Kindles with the USB cable that is part of their Kindle power cord.

Originally posted April 2, 2009
TIP OF THE DAY: James Adcock tells us how to download chosen Project Gutenbook books direct to our Kindles.  First, you need to get the catalog on to your Kindle, and you can download it by webbing via your Kindle to http://www.freekindlebooks.org/MagicCatalog/magiccatalog.html
(mucho typing on that Kindle keyboard but I did it).
OH, for the Kindle, try this instead: http://tinyurl.com/gutmagic

After downloading "The Magic Catalog of the Project Gutenberg E-Books (MOBI Edition) to your Kindle (or transferring it from your computer to the Kindle if you don't want to type in the long URL on the Kindle), follow James's instructions which are:
"Use your Kindle's Search Feature to find your favorite Author and/or Title.  Click to go to that page.  Click again on the Author: Title listing and your chosen E-Book will automagically download directly from the Project Gutenberg website to your Kindle..."
Thanks, James!

Added tip from James - How to use mobipocket.com's mobigen.exe, to easily convert EPUB books (at the DOS prompt) to MOBI versions.  Downside, any illustrations in a book are not included at this point.

  UPDATE - 3/30/10 This blog entry was first posted 3/27/10.
- It's better now to convert these using Calibre instead.  For detailed info on how to do that, see the Kindleworld article on converting ePub files to Kindle-readable 'prc' files.


See the ongoing Guide to finding Free or Low-Cost Kindle books and Sources
There's also a page of links that confine searches to mid-range priced e-books. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle


(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Borders UK and Barnes & Noble challenge Amazon's Kindle


The Borders "Elonex" e-reader
was launched yesterday in the UK for the equivalent of $310 U.S. (£189)currently).

There are not many details on the specifications for the e-reader yet.

ASTAK EZ READER (not affiliated with any bookstore)
  But the Elonex may not be far from the Astak EZ Reader (EB-06EZ) that Elmo Glick has found buyable from Fry's, advertised on their site for $300 currently but discounted down to $250 locally.

  That's another 6" e-ink reader (and now we can guess why the Kindle DX with its large e-ink screen is out of stock currently) that has native support for PDFs, can read a plethora of languages directly (with the installable upgraded apps), and can handle CHM, DOC, ePub, and HTML directly.

  It has 4 shades of gray relative to the 16-shades of the new Kindles and only a 200Mhz CPU (vs. a 532Mhz one on the Kindle 2) but it can zoom in both portrait and landscape mode, making PDFs more readable (if slow-going when graphics are involved) than they'd normally be on a 6" screen.  That it has an SD card slot up to 4Gigs is a plus.
  Note that the customer photos of the PDF manuals show the 6" to be fully capable of displaying them well.

Now, I stress that despite my talking about it in this space, it's not related to the Border's UK e-reader but it was also just released.  Bruce Bracey of the Gadgets and Hacks site found that it is the same physical device as the Jinke Hanlin V3 e-reader available in China.

QUESTIONS re the Astak EZ
In my questions area on that Gadgets... page, at the bottom but more readable at the comments-posting page, I asked about several of the interactive features in connection with annotations, inline dictionary, and searches within books or of the device, but further reading indicates it doesn't have those, as there's no virtual keyboard mentioned.

  But it certainly has direct support for a lot of file formats, with a rotatable screen, so even without the study-features or wireless it's going to be an attractive choice (if the functions are implemented better than the Cool-er Reader's) for those who want just a pocketable and versatile passive reader.  At $300, I'd think No, but at $250 it starts to sound attractive for those who don't need the study features or the 24/7 wireless.

BARNES & NOBLE'S eReader.com pricing
jkOnTheRun reports that eReader, a company owned by Barnes & Noble's new subsidiary Fictionwise, is challenging Amazon's $9.95 pricing by also offering all NY Times bestsellers at $9.95, newly released e-books (carried by the site) at $9.95 or less, and no e-book priced over $12.95.

They offer iPhone/iPod versions but not the Kindle format but do offer a Windows format so you can read these on your Windows computer (and maybe convert them to .txt for the Kindle).

  In checking out the eReader.com store I looked at the categories, did a search on "photoshop" and got one e-book, for Photoshop Elements, ver. 3 - so that's one way not to sell at prices above $12.95.

  I then looked up a book about traveling in Egypt, "Down the Nile."  It's $12.95 at eReader but $9.95 at Amazon. Below are ways to Share this post if you'd like others to see it.
-- The Send to Kindle button works well only on Firefox currently.

Send to Kindle


(Older posts have older Kindle model info. For latest models, see CURRENT KINDLES page. )
If interested, you can also follow my add'l blog-related news at Facebook and Twitter
Questions & feedback are welcome in the Comment areas (tho' spam is deleted). Thanks!

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