Writerland » nook

Library E-books

Meghan Ward — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:23:52 +0000

I love my iPad, and I’m reading more books now that I can download them instantly and read them in bed at night with the lights off, but one of the downsides (besides the difficulty of reading in bright sunlight of buying ebooks is that you can’t resell them, buy them used, or lend them to friends (unless you use the B&N (nook) eReader, in which case you can lend them to someone else with a B&N e-reader for two weeks.)

But you CAN borrow e-books—from your local library. First I checked out the Berkeley Public Library, which has a huge downtown branch and several satellite branches, but all they have are Safari Tech Books Online, no literature. Then I went to the San Francisco Public Library and signed up for a library card. It turns out that you need to apply in person for a library card, so you can’t, for example, use the New York Public Library e-book system unless you go to New York, show them your New York ID, and get a New York Public Library card. In California, you don’t have to live in the city of the library, just in the state. So even though I live in Berkeley, I got myself a San Francisco library card. There I found three databases of e-books: Safari Tech Books again, NetLibrary Books, and Overdrive eBooks. Someone on staff (a librarian perhaps?) said Overdrive works best with iPads, so that’s where I began. If you’re interested, you can watch the tutorial here.

First I found a page that says I can listen to audio library books on my iPad but cannot read e-library books from Overdrive because it doesn’t support the ePub format. Here is a list of compatible devices, including the B&N nook, the Sony Reader, and the Kobo eReader. I haven’t gotten a clear feel yet for what books are available. Through Overdrive, when I click on “Most Popular,” I get a list of authors/books that begin with Stephanie Meyer, Stieg Larsson, Dan Brown, and page after page of romance novels. Since none of these books will work on my iPad, I lost interest in searching through the database. I’m working on finding out if library e-books will eventually work on the iPad or whether, thanks for Apple’s proprietary measures, I’ll be stuck paying $9.99 for every book forever. (Does anyone know the answer to this? I’ve queried Overdrive and am waiting for an answer.)

Meanwhile, what about you? Have you ever read a library e-books on your e-reader? Which database did you use? What was the selection like? And how easy/pleasant was the experience?

By the way, for those of you who look forward to Link Love on Fridays, I am headed off on my third camping trip in five weeks today (with a toddler and an infant) and have yet to pack, so I’ll be posting links next week. In the meantime, be sure to check out Nathan Bransford and Sierra Godfrey, who always have great roundups of links on Fridays.

An in case you wonder how I spend my free time, yesterday it was learning about the different Caterpillar trucks after my toddler saw a bunch doing construction on a Berkeley street. After perusing the website, I found this one pretty cool. I know it’s not environmentally friendly, but look at the way it slices and gathers trees! Now I understand why kids get excited about trucks.

Have a great weekend!

iPad Update

Meghan Ward — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 16:00:05 +0000

So now that I’ve had a little more time to read books on the iPad, here are some thoughts:

Pros

It’s VERY easy to buy a book. It’s easier through iBooks, but it’s not difficult through Amazon either. I haven’t tried the B&N app yet. Just one click and you own it. And you’re reading. Right there in the palm of your hand.

It’s great at night. If you’re in bed and don’t want to turn the light on because a baby is sleeping or your husband is sleeping or you’re in a tent and it’s really not comfortable to read with the battery pack of a headlamp behind your head, it’s fantastic.

Full color photos! I bought a cookbook through iBooks (you can’t do this with Amazon or B&N) and it has all the same graphics and color photos that the real book does.

Cons

It’s VERY easy to buy a book. Just one click and you own it. And you can’t return it. And it’s charged to your credit card. And you can’t pass it on afterward. I bought two books that I probably shouldn’t have. One I already owned in the paperback version but wanted to be able to read at night with the lights out. The other was a cookbook I wanted to take traveling without packing it in my suitcase. I used both for about five minutes each. It’s just too easy to make impulse purchases, and $10 here, $5 there, and $15 over there add up fast.

It’s great that there are so many things the iPad can do, but the drawback is that only one person can use it at a time. When I was on a four-hour plane ride and gave my iPad to my toddler to play games and watch Kipper to keep him from screaming and kicking the seat in front of him all flight, it was a godsend. Except that I couldn’t read any of my books. Fortunately, my 10-month-old was too busy jumping on my lap to let me read anyway. Still, on the return flight, I took a paperback along.

A lot of books aren’t available through iBooks yet, so you have to get them through Amazon. Which isn’t a bad thing, but the interface isn’t as nice (no color and the page doesn’t look like a real page.)

As much as I love my iPad, I still kinda prefer reading real books. Something about the feel, something about knowing what page I’m on, something about looking at the spine to see how far along I am in the book, I just love. I’ll keep reading iBooks, but I’ll keep reading real books as well.

What about you? Do you have an iPad? How do you like the e-reader function?

Cons

nook can wait

Meghan Ward — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:10:03 +0000

I tested nook today! And I was disappointed. I thought I wanted one for Christmas, but now I think I’ll wait to see what goodness the Apple Tablet brings. I do think we’ll all have e-readers eventually. But I also think they have a ways to go before they’ll really be able to compete with real live (well, paper) books. I’m fine with the price, $259, because e-books are going for $9.99 and less, so the reader will pay itself off within a year. But here are my griefs:

1. Too slow. The color control screen is supposed to be what slows it down, but I also love the color.

2. Depressing to read. The e-ink has the look of a cheap newspaper, a dark gray on light gray that has no sex appeal at ALL. I want a full-color display, not just a little color control screen at the bottom.

3. Click-it page turn. I want a touch screen page turn feature like the iPhone has, with an image of a real page turning. When I clicked on the side of the nook screen to turn the page, the screen flickered to a dark gray, and then to the new page on top of the old page before settling on the new page for good. NOT cool. (And I’ve heard all e-readers do that, so I don’t mean to pick on nook.)

4. Limited e-books to choose from. Although nook claims to have three times the number of e-books that Amazon has, the one book I wanted to buy was available for the Kindle and not nook. Wassup with that?

5. No Word docs. WHAT? Why doesn’t nook support Word documents? The other e-readers do, and I want to be able to read manuscripts on my e-reader.

To be fair, nook is probably equal if not better than the Kindle 2 and the Sony e-reader. All I’m saying is that as much as I want an e-reader, they still have a ways to go, and with second and third generations likely to be out within the year, I can wait. And now that I’ve tried nook, I am dying to see Apple’s Tablet. Come on, Mac Daddy, show us your stuff!

Scribd

Meghan Ward — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:33:23 +0000

George Consagra, the COO of Scribd.com came to the Grotto for lunch this past June. If you don’t know what Scribd (pronouncd “Scribbed”) is, it started two years ago as a YouTube for documents, and in May transformed into an iTunes for documents as members became able to name their price for material they uploaded. Documents range anywhere from a recipe or a book report to full-length nonfiction books and novels. Scribed takes 20 percent and you get the rest. As of June, they had 68,000,000 (that’s million) users per month, the majority from the U.S., Europe, India and Brazil. (About one third are English speaking.) Two local authors, Kemble Scott and Joe Quirk, both opted to publish their latest books on Scribd instead of going the standard publishing route, and since then Scott’s book, The Sower, has become a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. The downfall of publishing on Scribd? You not only don’t get an advance (but what novelist does anyway?), you have to do ALL of your own marketing. Authors are doing more and more of their own publicity these days anyway, and book tours are a dying beast. So what’s to stop a writer from publishing on Scribd? Prestige. There’s nothing like holding a copy of your published book in your hand (so I’ve heard) and handing it to Dad, who hasn’t yet learned to turn on a computer, and Scribd can’t make that happen. And yet, for self-published authors doing print-on-demand, it’s a way to get your work in print AND in front of 68 million potential readers. Scribed is just two years old, and its store less than six months old, but it has already added reviews and a Facebook-style social network for writers that allows quality documents to get more views. So if you’re determined to see your book in print, hurry up, because with the Kindle and other e-readers gaining in popularity and 86 percent of Japanese teenagers reading books on their PHONES, it won’t be long before bookstores (and not just the indies, all the them) go the way of CD stores—out of business. I came away from the meeting crossing my fingers that it’s not too late to get my book in print, but also making a mental note to put a Kindle (make that nook now) at the top of my Christmas list. Because, like the iPhone (or any smart phone), we’re all going to have one sooner or later. May as well get with the program.