"Premium" ebooks, anyone? - was Re: OT: Physical Book Prices

[Joseph Lenox]

On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Peter Corlett <abuse at cabal.org.uk> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2014 at 03:58:44PM -0600, Joseph Lenox wrote:
> > For a partial solution to library management, there's Calibre (
> > calibre-ebook.com). It's free.
>
> It's also a massive pile of crap that makes iTunes look good.  The only
> good
> use-case for it is pretty much to use it as an iTunes-alike for sideloading
> data onto a Kindle.
>
>
I thought it worked just fine for the purpose of permitting a searchable
"library" of eBooks in multiple formats. The conversion tools are usable
and the program itself is pretty unobtrusive. The eBook viewer packaged
with it is nothing to write home about, but it works.


> > The poor random access is a pain, and usually why I don't use eBooks for
> > technical works (or anything where it's helpful to be able to flip
> around in
> > the text).
>
> MacOS's Preview.app is actually a pretty goof PDF renderer, and will open
> multiple files side-by-side, but not the same file twice. Apple-[ works in
> a
> similar manner to a browser back button, so can be used to return to the
> table-of-contents, index, or other cross-reference I've followed.  Sadly, I
> don't have anything that will display ePubs since my iPad took a coffee
> bath,
> but fortunately I have limited content in that format.
>
>
ePubs are pretty easy to read as a format, given that they're just a ZIP
archive of HTML files. I don't have any Apple products myself, though. I do
know that B&N's Nook smartphone application will happily read most
ePub-format titles, as will Moon Reader (which reads pretty much anything,
but may be Android-only).