Chronicles from Hurricane Country: You CAN Do This At Home!

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

You CAN Do This At Home!

My e-books are formatted for multiple e-book readers, but I don't have a reader, myself -- at least not yet. Thanks to Jeffrey A. Carver's website, I've been directed to places that supply free e-book reader and writer software. I've plugged the software into both my Thinkpad and my Ideapad.

One does not need an e-book reader like Kindle to read e-books. All the shots shown here were taken off my Ideapad screen.

When I started converting my work into e-books, my first stop after Carver's site was Mobipocket. There I created MOBI and PRC files suitable for Kindle and other readers. You can find the reader here.

Here's what the opening of Covenant (after the frontmatter) looks like on Mobipocket Reader:

Large view

My next stop was the highly versatile Calibre, with converters and viewers for multiple e-book formats. Here's what Calibre's main screen looks like:

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On Calibre I converted my MOBI file to EPUB (a much-liked format over at the MobileRead forums) and LRF (geared toward Sony readers). You can also get a Sony Library Reader here and access Stanza (for EPUB files) here.

Here's what the EPUB file looks like on Calibre's reader.

Large view

Then it was on to the Microsoft Reader website to create a LIT file. That conversion required the use of MS Word. But even if you don't have Word, you can get the reader, download a LIT file, and click on the file in your directory. It will open in the reader automatically.

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I accessed the Dropbook utility (for PDB files, readable on Palm and other handheld devices) and its free eReader here. This is what the reader looks like:

Large view

My downloads are also available in HTML for direct reading off a browser, and in PDF for reading on Acrobat Reader.

My site includes a link to Ebookhood for iPod conversions. Covenant takes up 139 iPod notes. The formatting leaves a bit to be desired, especially since italics don't show up. Impractical from my standpoint, but still pretty cool.