Is it useful to a reader for electronic books for technical books? When I bought the Kindle, I assumed that I would enjoy reading novels, but I would be totally useless for computer books. A pity, because the option of reading this books on the computer is not comfortable and hardly a drop PDF 300 pages. The paper version has the disadvantage of price but also that books are usually very bulky, heavy and inconvenient to read lying down. The paper format also lost against the ebook when searching or copying snippets of code to an editor.
If someone asks what that is read a PDF of a book on the Kindle, I tell you quite badly. As expected, read a PDF in the normal mode of Kindle (vertical) is directly feasible because the letters are tiny even with a magnifying glass, not unusual when comparing the 6 "Kindle the size of most computer books. The option to switch to landscape mode and go from page to scroll vertically (up to three times per physical page) is only useful for an emergency or a quick reference, because the letter is still readable although very small, few people could write by hand a "cheat sheet" with the font size. Needless to say, to expand the page to increase the font size is not useful, because then there also scroll horizontally and if this on a computer with LCD screen is quite uncomfortable, in a device with electronic ink is unbearable. It is true that besides the normal Kindle is a large size may be more appropriate to read PDFs (Though Amazon should greatly enhance your PDF reader), but is very expensive and also to read novels is less comfortable than the normal Kindle.
Fortunately there are books in ebook format for Kindle, or ePub, in which text flows freely (as in an HTML page) instead of having a fixed size and therefore can do with a reasonable size font. And I must say that I have been a surprise to these books, as some are formatted very well and effectively when you have to read for a while I prefer the convenience of electronic ink and Kindle to read on a laptop or tablet.
Of course, in books with many listings, especially if they are long, that part better read on your computer as PDF, in fact the optimal choice listed is to copy the text in an editor and is the only event that is more comfortable scrolling, as we have used in browsers, rather than scroll through pages. There is more to think of any book of information on paper, how uncomfortable it is to read a list that spans several pages, especially every time you need to rewind or fast forward or whether to switch between the list and notes. For if it is uncomfortable in the original paper format, much more in the eBook, to fit a lot less content per page.
In short, my conclusion is that I find interesting the option of reading books on a reader like the Kindle, because it is very convenient to the parties "over read" but as long as we deliver the book both in ebook format and in PDF format for the PC. This implies that we should not buy the book on the Amazon store, because Amazon only offers the Kindle version, not the PDF. Amazon also many books have DRM, so if one day change of e-ink reader lose the book. One would think that as an alternative to having the PDF to read it from the PC, you could open the file directly to the Kindle or tablet PC application that provides Amazon. Besides that this application does not exist for Linux, in many cases we will be more useful (besides being visually rich) and we're on the PC using the PDF format.
What publishers sell books in both electronic version suitable for electronic readers (ie free flow text) and PDF and are without DRM? For now I've found two, luckily they publish more books that interest me. If anyone knows of others, please add a comment to this post.
The first I knew is O'Reilly (
www.oreilly.com / ebooks ). Buying a book you can download it whenever you want in various formats, typically includes at least PDF, mobipocket (Kindle) and EPUB. You can not download a part of the book to see if you like it is formatted as in the Amazon store, but you can return the book if you do not like after purchase. Ojo, O'Reilly books are usually cheaper in the Amazon store (non-download version EPUB and PDF) than the publishers, but if you register as users see the O'Reilly web offerings like which to buy two e-books there is a 50% discount, with what they get cheaper. How is it possible that if not for this discount to purchase two price was lower at Amazon than O'Reilly? Apparently no sense: in his shop O'Reilly has a lot more leeway, since it takes entire amount of the sale, while in the Amazon store gets as much 70% if the buyer is from USA or UK and only 35% if the customer is in another country. The explanation is that Amazon, like Apple, it allows publishers to set a selling price for your store than or less than any other store, but then reserve the right to sell discounted (although in that If the discount is eaten part of his sales commission, not the party receiving the editorial, which remains its percentage of the price they set).
The other store I've found is Packt (
http://www.packtpub.com/) only have the books in PDF and EPUB (also without DRM) for As for the Kindle to be converted to mobipocket EPUB gauge, the result is not optimal, much space is wasted in the listings, but it is immensely better than converting to PDF (I personally think that converting a PDF book from work involves both Decent normally leave not worth).
In short, here is an example of going directly to publishers and intermediaries skip
not only helps the creators but ourselves. Okay, but what about books from other publishers that are available on the Amazon store but their websites do not offer the possibility to get their books in multiple formats without DRM? The first suggestion is to write and expose the situation politely, informing others of their competitors have better adapted to our needs and they will see what they do. Then there is the option, if you pay for the book, buy the Kindle version (after dropping a test to see the quality of adaptation) and get the PDF of any of the websites or torrents existenes on the Internet, but there each. No longer a paradox that has to do this weird stuff when you pay for the book.
