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Ebooks and Cruising - the ebook revolution goes to sea
Ebooks are THE way to read while cruising.
Paper books are big, bulky, take alot of room, get bugs and mildew, and you can't always find the ones you want even when it is aboard - somewhere. Plus if you trade one with someone - well, it's gone isn't it?
eBooks take practically no space at all, never mildew, you can download tens of thousands of titles, often for free, on every subject imaginable and if you want to trade with someone you keep yours as well. You can keep all your ebooks neatly catalogued and sort them by author or subject and even search the whole collection for particular kinds of information.
I have some favorite authors (don't we all?) and some of them have published over 20 books. I painfully collected a couple of these series over many years and they filled up two whole book shelves aboard the Moira. One series (E.E. Doc Smith) I gave away because I just didn't have the room. Now I have every book my favorite authors ever wrote, every one, plus over 500 ebooks more, and they all occupy a tiny SD chip for my BeBook e-book reader and a small part of my notebook drive as well.
EBook Readers - which is the best for cruising sailors?
Freddy reads our ebooks on her new tablet OR on her Smart phone and can read them even in the dark - but she can't read them in bright sunlight.
I, on the other hand, bought a Kindle after endless hours of researching the subject of eBook readers on the Internet. The Kindle uses e-Ink, easy to read in the brightest of sunlight and just as easy to read as a normal book in the evening. I got the 6" screen which is just about the same size as a normal paperback book page.
Another benefit is that it uses no battery power to keep on displaying the page so I can put it down and pick it up later and start reading again, just like a book. It only uses power when it turns a page - and I can do that 7000 times before needing to plug it in to a USB port or power adapter to recharge.
There are a heap of ebook readers available but many only read their own special format. You can read about the problem of eBook Babble here.
Adobe's Digital Editions is the worst software product I have ever seen - bar none. Adobe should be ashamed of it - or better yet fix it. The Amazon ebook format and reader is far surperior but they only allow you to read books you have downloaded from their site and on their own ebook reader - the Kindle (very limiting for cruisers).
Mobipocket is probably the best software product I've ever found - it's free :-) and it is terrific for organizing, downloading, transfering files to your BeBook, making notes about the books, and reading them. Strangely, Mobipocket is an Amazon company but won't read the Amazon digital rights protected books. But it will convert and use any other kind of ebook file. I don't know why Amazon does not use this for it's own digital rights management - their DRM format is actually a very slightly modified version of the Mobipocket format and their reader will read Mobipocket files with no problem (as long as they are not DRM protected).
Kindly, Amazon's ebook and also Nook, the Barns and Noble ebook use 3G and WiFi to let you download books and magazines and news - but that's of no use at all unless you live in the US or if you have deep pockets for the download costs on these services. Cruisers can't use this feature unless they are in a Marina in the USA so the added problems of DRM restrictions on these eBook readers make them less useful to cruising sailors.
Calibre ebook Library
Another useful free software is Calibre. This is an amazing program. It can convert any ebook format, pdf, text file, word document, html or whatever from one format to another. Plus it organises your ebooks and can download cover photos and detailed meta data about every ebook. It is a must have, especially if you expect to trade books with other boats.
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