the elibrary revisited, revisited
Jan. 7th, 2014 08:35 pmI seem to be on the verge of acquiring an ereader. Okay, so it's really an iPad mini and a keyboard/cover, and it'll double as a portable writing device (I hope; not entirely sure how well I'll do on the tiny keyboard), but still.
This looks like a pretty good time to get into the ebook market. Charlie Stross has rewritten and compressed his Amber-with-economics marketing-made-me-overwrite-them Merchant Princes books from six down to three; I believe his original plan called for two, but whatever. I remember enjoying the first two of those, and then I never got around to reading the rest of them. The new editions are available as ebooks but won't be in print on this side of the Atlantic until September.
In addition, a number of Samuel R. Delany's books are newly available as ebooks, including his magnum opus, Dhalgren, in a newly corrected and revised edition. The linked post also neatly exemplifies one of my objections to ebooks: you lose nearly all ability to control formatting and layout. For that you really want a PDF, but PDFs are the devil for a long list of other reasons.
Speaking of PDFs, I've also got an awful lot of RPGs that I've acquired in PDF format over the past year or two. Standard ebooks are sufficiently readable on my phone: it's a little awkward, and I'd rather have a bigger screen and thus more words on the screen, but it works. PDFs, though, especially PDFs that were originally 8x10 pages (as most RPG books), are awful on the phone. They really need something more tablet-sized.
I've also acquired a large number of comics, which I refuse to try and read on the phone and would prefer not to read on the computer. For those a tablet is pretty much ideal.
I have no intention of trying to replace my library. That is a fool's errand, especially given the number of books that will never have epub editions. I'm not sure what I'll be buying in electrons rather than paper either: some authors (Brust, Bear, etc) I want dead-tree copies of, and I don't buy all that many new books these days anyway.
I'm telling myself I'm not allowed to go buy the thing until I've finished revisions to the current story. Here's hoping that has some kind of effect.
This looks like a pretty good time to get into the ebook market. Charlie Stross has rewritten and compressed his Amber-with-economics marketing-made-me-overwrite-them Merchant Princes books from six down to three; I believe his original plan called for two, but whatever. I remember enjoying the first two of those, and then I never got around to reading the rest of them. The new editions are available as ebooks but won't be in print on this side of the Atlantic until September.
In addition, a number of Samuel R. Delany's books are newly available as ebooks, including his magnum opus, Dhalgren, in a newly corrected and revised edition. The linked post also neatly exemplifies one of my objections to ebooks: you lose nearly all ability to control formatting and layout. For that you really want a PDF, but PDFs are the devil for a long list of other reasons.
Speaking of PDFs, I've also got an awful lot of RPGs that I've acquired in PDF format over the past year or two. Standard ebooks are sufficiently readable on my phone: it's a little awkward, and I'd rather have a bigger screen and thus more words on the screen, but it works. PDFs, though, especially PDFs that were originally 8x10 pages (as most RPG books), are awful on the phone. They really need something more tablet-sized.
I've also acquired a large number of comics, which I refuse to try and read on the phone and would prefer not to read on the computer. For those a tablet is pretty much ideal.
I have no intention of trying to replace my library. That is a fool's errand, especially given the number of books that will never have epub editions. I'm not sure what I'll be buying in electrons rather than paper either: some authors (Brust, Bear, etc) I want dead-tree copies of, and I don't buy all that many new books these days anyway.
I'm telling myself I'm not allowed to go buy the thing until I've finished revisions to the current story. Here's hoping that has some kind of effect.