Posts Tagged ‘ebooks’

The Numerous Things To Like About Reading E-books

Monday, January 9th, 2012

If, much like me, you are a big book lover, you may have been unwilling to get into e-books. When considering reading, I always thought of myself as a traditionalist, and for some time, I ignored e-books. However, for my last birthday, I received an e-book reader as a present, and since then, I have learned to enjoy e-books. There are numerous advantages to reading e-books, and if you are thinking about those advantages, you’ve obviously come to the right place. Relating to e-books, you’re most likely wondering what benefits there are, and we will discuss precisely that here in this short article.

Carrying numerous books around with you in only one device is the most apparent advantage. Especially when you decide to go on a long trip, you will find that it is rather hassle-free not to have to bring along a number of books with you. You will instead have the ability to have access to numerous books at once with your e-book reader, which will absolutely be a great thing. I know when I go on lengthy trips, I like to bring at the very least three or four books with me, and now I’m able to just pack my e-book reader in my carry-on luggage and not have a lot of additional weight.

Sharing books with family and friends is easier, too, with e-books. For example, let’s imagine you have a good friend from college who lives in a different state, and you read a fantastic book that she might be a fan of. You can easily send her a copy of the e-book within a digital arrangement instead of spending all the money for postage to deliver her a copy in the mail.

Also, you will find numerous excellent reads through cheap e-books. E-books are offering new authors the opportunity to reach out to different people that they may possibly not have the ability to reach out to simply because they are able to sell their e-books on the net, which is convenient for them. It’s nice for all of us readers because we’ve got access to an array of cheap e-books that we might not see in the book store, which is a positive thing if you love to find out new fiction or non-fiction that you love.

With regards to reading e-books, there are a selection of advantages. You have easy accessibility to your books, and you’re able to carry around a number of books with you at one time. You have access to multiple books at once. Additionally, many e-book readers produce other features on them, such as access to the internet or games that you can play, which make them all around entertaining devices to have with you, particularly on long trips. You ought to certainly try out e-books because if I’m able to learn to love them, any book lover will.

It will be recommended that you look at our internet site if you are a fan of reading and you are interested in learning more to do with fiction ebook or books to read.

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How To Get Into The Ebook Writing Business

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Writing is a skill and, like most skills, it can be learned or at least you can greatly improve the writing ability that you have (and everyone has some writing aptitude). You can most easily improve your writing skills by writing. You could supplement that practice by reading and you can go a step further by studying some grammar. There are also writers’ classes or workshops you could attend.

But in essence, the best thing to do is simply write and keep on writing and if you are not sure of something, look it up and pretty soon, you will find that you will spend less and less time looking things up. You could purchase reference books and dictionaries or you could simply use free on line resources.

Never believe that you cannot write well enough to write something. If you are worried about your ability, write in forums, add comments to blogs or create pieces for places like Gather. Whatever you do, you should keep practicing and keep writing. You will find that it gets easier and that ideas begin to flow more readily.

When you feel that you can write well enough, why not try to make some money out of it? You could write ebooks on your favourite topics or on problems that affect a large number of of individuals. You can discover what those issues are by visiting chat sites and forums or reading the ‘Agony Aunt’ columns in the magazines.

Let us assume that you have gone past the comments in forums period and you are writing pieces for Gather. Keep copies of those articles on your hard drive and arrange them in folders by topic.

When you have a couple of hundred, you can look through them and try to assemble a couple of subjects into enough material for a book. You might have 80% of a book doing nothing on your hard drive and you could fill in the gaps and rewrite the old material a little.

In the meantime, add your name to the sites that are searching for writers. They may want to see an instance of your work before they qualify you, but that is no problem - it is nice to pass tests and educational if you fail them.

If you are given a subject to write on as an assignment, concentrate on getting your facts straight and do not copy from others (plagiarize). It is a author’s greatest sin. After writing your article, check it for grammar and spelling.

It is not worth saving a copy of this piece after you have been paid for it, because it will no longer be your property and you could get into trouble for saying that it is yours.

You sold the rights to it, just as good as if you sold your car. The best thing to do with your own copies of sold pieces is to erase them after being paid, then there is no enticement and no risk of mistakes.

When you have written articles for others, you could register to write ebooks as well. If you are being paid to do it, get all the relevant details before you begin and stick to them. You will have to know: the title of the book; the minimum and maximum length of it in words; the delivery date and how much you will be paid. There might be other details too such as: font type, font size and line spacing, but they can all be adjusted later.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on a variety of topics, but is now involved with Kindle screen size. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Kindle vs Book

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Amazon Introduces The Ability To Lend Kindle Books To Other Kindle Owners

Saturday, November 13th, 2010

A significant factor in the success of Amazon’s Kindle reader has always been the enormous number of Kindle titles on offer for customers to choose from. At the moment, Kindle owners can take their pick from more than 725,000 paid titles. Amazon also offer 1.8 million books which are now out of copyright and can be downloaded to the Kindle for free.

Apart from making huge volumes of reading material available for Kindle owners, Amazon has also gone out of its way to make it easy to read Kindle books without a Kindle reader. This has been done by making a number of Kindle apps which allow Kindle books to be read on a range of different devices freely available.

At the moment, free Kindle apps exist for the Windows PC, the Apple Mac, any device which runs the Android Operating System, the iPhone, the iPad and Blackberry’s smart phone. At first glance, it almost appears as if Amazon is setting up in competition to itself, but the truth of the matter is that each of these apps acts as a retail outlet for Kindle books.

Amazon has just announced that, in the near future, Kindle owners will be able to “lend” each other Kindle books. Amazon has not yet confirmed the exact date - but it should start prior to the year end.

Kindle users will have the option of lending Kindle books to their family and friends for a couple of weeks at a time. The “borrower” can read the book on their Kindle reader - just as if it was one of their own purchases. The original purchaser will be unable to access the book whilst it is “lent out”. Just the same as real book in point of fact.

It won’t be possible to lend every book. The publishers will have the final decision as to whether or not books may be lent. It will be interesting to learn how different publishing houses respond to this.

Amazon has also confirmed that its currently existing free Kindle apps will be extended to include magazines and newspapers in addition to Kindle books. The Apple devices will be activated first, followed by desktop applications and Android devices.

Over the last couple of years or so, the ebook reader and ebooks have really taken off. Although the ebook market is still developing and is at an early stage, the public already seems to have accepted ebooks. This latest development by Amazon brings ebooks even closer to the functionality of conventional books. Apart from balancing the leg of a wobbly table or pressing flowers, ebooks can now do just about anything that conventional books can. It’s another major step forward for ebooks and ebook readers, and it will help them to become even more widely accepted by the reading public.

Learn more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

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Points To Consider When Choosing An Ebook Reader

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

It’s now been three years since Amazon released their original Kindle reader. Notwithstanding the huge influence of the Kindle, it’s worth recalling that it wasn’t the first ebook reader to be launched. However, ebooks are now becoming accepted by the public - mainly due to the influence of the Kindle. Whether traditional printed books could eventually become obsolete or not is debatable - but it looks as if ebooks are here to stay.

However, many people are getting themselves an ebook reader. The recent ebook reader price cuts from Sony, Amazon and Barnes and Noble has made ebook readers a much more affordable option for a lot of consumers. The Kindle may well be the market leader, but there are other readers to choose from. So what should you look for if you’re considering buying your first ebook reader?

One of the most important factors that you need to consider is the quality of the display. Special e-ink technology displays are used in most ebook readers. This gives a reading experience that is surprisingly similar to reading text printed on paper. It’s considerably easier on your eyes than reading on a back-lit computer screen. It is also easy to read in direct sunlight or even glare from fluorescent lighting. A further advantage of e-ink technology displays is that they use power only when “turning the page” - so battery life is extended.

It’s tempting to go for the largest display possible. Obviously readers with larger screens have a higher ticket price than those with smaller displays. They are also physically larger of course - and they weigh more. This will impact upon the portability of the device. That may not represent a problem for you if it’s your intent to read mainly at home. However, a larger reader will be harder to operate with one hand - something which many users like to do.

One of the key factors in the success of the Kindle was its ability to browse for, buy and download books in less than sixty seconds from practically anywhere. Nevertheless, both Amazon and Barnes and Noble have now launched Wi-Fi only entry level models of their readers. These cost a little less than the 3G readers and could be a good option for anyone who doesn’t foresee the need to download books without using a computer or connecting via a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Obviously there’s not much point in having an ebook reader unless there’s a good selection of books to read on it. At the moment, no standard format for ebooks has been agreed. Google uses the ePub format - but Kindle books are in a format which is proprietary to the Kindle. However, Amazon has made free apps - which allow users to read Kindle books on a variety of different devices (e.g. the Windows PC, the Apple Mac, the iPhone, the iPad) - freely available.

Ebook prices can be vary dramatically across different readers. In fact, If you read a lot of books, then picking the right reader could potentially save you enough money on ebooks to make the reader pay for itself in a just a few months. Before you decide which reader to choose, it’s well worth checking.

Discover the Kindle reader for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

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Lower E-Book Reader Prices Could Signal The Start Of A New Pricing Policy In The Digital Publishing World

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Amazon has been an important, quite possibly the most important, player in the development of digital publishing using both their Kindle reader family and their huge library of Kindle books as development and marketing tools. November 2007 saw the launch of the original Kindle. Amazon followed up with the upgraded Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009, and the large display Kindle DX model launched in the summer of 2009.

The Kindle readers dominated the market and took a 60% share of all e-book reader sales in the USA. The Sony reader, which was actually launched in 2006 before the Kindle, followed in second place with a share of around 35%. Other companies saw the potential of the e-book reader market and launched or updated their own readers to get a slice of the pie.

Companies such as Sony, Barnes and Noble, Bookeen, Plastic Logic and iRex did their best to get their share of the new and fast developing e-book market, but the Kindle’s dominance looked to be pretty much unassailable. It wasn’t until the launch of the Apple iPad that the Kindle had any credible competition - even although the two devices were very different and would appeal, you would imagine, to different audiences.

Nevertheless, since the release of the iPad, e-book reader prices have pretty much gone into free fall. The Kindle 2.0, which retailed for $ 359 at its February 2009 launch is now priced at just $ 189. The Kindle DX, which has just had a mini makeover and now sports a new higher contrast screen, has had its price slashed from $ 489 to $ 379. Still a pricey piece of kit, but a lot cheaper than before and also way cheaper than even the entry level iPad (which also has a monthly connection fee associated with it). The price of the Barnes and Noble Nook reader has also dropped to just $ 199.

Whilst the price of e-book readers may be falling, the same cannot be said about the price of the e-books which these devices are used to read. Again, Apple had a hand in this. Apple had, in advance of the launch of the iPad, set up their own book store and negotiated a pricing deal with the major publishing houses which basically allowed them to fix the price of their e-book editions at whatever level they wished. The only rider being that they could not offer the same e-book version at a lower price on any other platform. This effectively put paid to Amazon’s policy of pricing e-books at $ 9.99 or lower and was very popular amongst the publishing companies.

Amazon may have had to abandon their low e-book price policy - but that wasn’t necessarily a disaster for them. Considering the way that Amazon have made it possible to read Kindle books on such a wide variety of different devices - you can use the PC, the Mac, the iPod Touch, the iPhone, the iPad, your Blackberry and any device which runs Android to read Kindle books right now (and no doubt there will be further additions in future) - it must be obvious that Amazon are more interested in book sales than hardware sales. The latest downward price movement for e-book readers and simultaneous price increase for e-books means that they can now sell the hardware for less and make their profit by selling e-books over the life of the hardware. The same will apply for Barnes and Noble and Apple themselves of course.

This trend may tend to favor companies which have a foot in both the book and hardware sales camps. Considering the current number of devices which can be used to read Kindle books, it looks as if Amazon will be a major player in the future of digital publishing for some time to come.

Learn more about Amazon’s Kindle reader for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

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Amazon - Selling Books Is What They Do

Monday, July 19th, 2010

The Kindle reader has been a fantastic product for Amazon since it was first released in November of 2007. Amazon’s strong association with both electronics and books made the Kindle the ideal product for them and, after an upgrade to the Kindle 2.0 in February of 2009, followed by the launch of the large format DX model in the summer of the same year, it went on to become the number one selling product on the Amazon site.

The Kindle became Amazon’s most gifted item ever over the 2009 festive season - and, on Christmas day of the same year, Kindle book downloads outnumbered orders for physical books for the first time ever. This was probably due to those people who were lucky enough to receive a Kindle as a gift trying it out - and a lot of the downloads would have been free - but it was still a landmark event for both Amazon and the Kindle.

However, there were times when it seemed as if Amazon was a somewhat reluctant manufacturer. They went out of their way to make sure that Kindle books could be read - even without a Kindle reader. Currently, Amazon has released Kindle “Apps” for a huge number of alternative devices. These include the PC, the Mac, the iPod Touch, the iPhone, the new iPad, the Blackberry and any device which runs Android. On the face of it, Amazon seemed to be their own main competition.

However, the reasoning behind Amazon’s open policy became clear with the release of the Apple iPad. Among its many features, the iPad can be used to read e-books, and the price of e-book readers went into free fall as Apple enthusiasts rushed to get their hands on Apple’s new device. However, even as e-book reader prices were plummeting, the average price of the e-books for use with them was climbing.

This was chiefly due to a deal struck between Apple and the major publishing houses. Apple agreed to let publishers set the price for their e-book editions at whatever level they liked, as long as they didn’t offer the e-book at a lower price on any other reader. Amazon’s policy of selling all e-books for $ 9.99 or less was in tatters. At first glance it looked as if the iPad was to be Amazon’s nemesis, both in terms of Kindle reader hardware and e-book sales.

However, a more detailed analysis of the situation shows that Amazon’s decision to release Kindle apps for just about every major device going was a stroke of genius on their part. Each App acts as an additional outlet for the sale of Kindle books - and given that e-book prices are rising, Amazon can afford to sell their Kindle hardware at a lower price secure in the knowledge that they will make a profit by selling Kindle books over the lifetime of the reader. If the iPad were to totally decimate the Kindle sales figures - an improbable scenario - Kindle books would continue to sell. No doubt, if another tablet computer or super duper reader launched tomorrow there would be “an App for that” within a couple of weeks. Amazon seem to know what they’re doing after all.

Learn more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

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Kindle Reader Further Price Cuts

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

It looked like Amazon had found the ideal product for their business model in the form of the Amazon Kindle reader. Its domination of the developing e-book reader market was almost complete. It achieved approximately a 60% market share (the Sony reader was second with a 35% market share), and it was difficult to see, despite the fact that almost every new reader that was released was instantly given the title of the “Kindle Killer”, where the competition was going to come from.

Then the Apple iPad came along and, although it is an entirely different device, it did look set to spoil the party somewhat. The iPad is not without some fairly major flaws of its own, and whilst most Apple devices seem to provoke a “love them or loathe them” response, the numbers of people who would buy almost anything with the Apple logo on it are certainly large enough to make a major dent in the sales of the Kindle.

It wasn’t just the fact that Apple were releasing new hardware, they also negotiated a deal with a number of the major publishing houses which allowed them to set the price of the e-book versions of their publications at whatever level they wanted. The only condition was that they could not offer the same e-book edition on any other online retailer for a lower price. This effectively put paid to Amazon’s policy of pricing all Kindle books at $ 9.99 or less and, since this deal was struck, it does look as if the average price of e-books has been edging steadily upwards.

It’s a different story with the actual e-book reader hardware however. Barnes and Noble have dropped the price of their Nook reader from $ 259 to $ 199. Amazon have now dropped the price of the Kindle 2.0 from $259 to $189 - a very low number considering that it retailed at $ 359 when it was launched in February of 2009. The price of the larger format Kindle DX has also been reduced from $ 489 to $ 379, an event which coincides with the device’s first upgrade which includes a higher contrast screen and a new body color.

Even the pricey DX model is now over $ 100 cheaper than the cheapest of the Apple iPad range. Neither does the iPad come with connection to the internet for free as is the case for the Kindle range. Of course, the iPad is much more than an e-book reader, so it may be that people are prepared to pay more for a more powerful and versatile device - even if it does have much poorer battery life and a less “reading friendly” screen (which excels for other applications).

It will be interesting to see whether this downward price movement of e-book readers is simply a temporary reaction to the iPad or whether it heralds the dawn of a new pricing policy. It could be that companies like Amazon and Barnes and Noble might take advantage of the trend for higher priced e-books by offering lower priced hardware secure in the knowledge that they will make their profit throughout the life of the device. Or it may simply be a stalling tactic until the next generation color Kindle hits the streets later this year.

Find out more about the Amazon Kindle for yourself and view the wide range of Kindle accessories available to help you personalise your reader.

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The Kindle Reader Is The Number One Product On Amazon For Very Good Reasons

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

The Kindle reader has become Amazon’s top seller. It is evident why when you see all the benefits this device provides. With Amazon’s offerings of the number of books available for immediate purchase and download, a very impressive personal library can be built. There are other resources available that provide even more books and many periodicals. You’ll be able to keep on-hand any PDF files you might need. Maybe the best part is the Kindle is ready to be used when received and requires no technical steps to be taken.

Some of the basic features provided include a large, 6″ diagonal “E Ink (a registered trademark) electronic paper display.” This technology uses ink just like is expected with books and newspapers. The ink is electronically displayed so it remains sharp and is not like reading from a computer screen. The text is adjustable with six font sizes.

With the adjustable texts, if you want to have a library of large-print books, it is now yours. A Kindle uses 16 shades of gray so all the images will be clean, clear and detailed. There is the ability to pull them up to full-screen and rotate them if you wish. You will also be able to browse any text-based websites and keep up with the latest scores, access various reference materials or find maps. A built-in dictionary is at your command.

Since there is no back-lighting involved, you will find there is no glare like with typical electronic devices. Users are very impressed with the ability to use a Kindle inside, or out on a sunny beach, with no loss of clarity. There is 2 GB of internal storage. The battery will last for two weeks when you turn off the wireless capability, otherwise the battery life is cut in half, you will be able to carry it with you anywhere.

It can be recharged with the included power adapter or the USB cable which can be plugged into a computer. This will also allow you to download reading material to your computer and transfer it to the Kindle. There are applications that will sync everything for your hand-held devices or personal computer so you can always pick up right where you left off.

You’ll find an incredible amount of material to load unto your Kindle. There are almost two million public domain writings, hundreds of thousands of ebooks, over 50,000 audio books and of course the half-million books available at Amazon. You can download a segment of almost every offering from Amazon before you purchase. If you like it, a single click will secure your purchase and the book is downloaded. Many of the books will have text-to-speech capability for even more flexibility.

Another feature has the buttons used to turn the pages on both sides of the screen. Since it only weighs ten ounces and is about the thickness of a pencil, you will find it made for periods of long reading since it can be held comfortably in either hand. The Kindle will hold about fifteen-hundred books. If you should ever need to add more, all of your library is stored online for immediate access.

A Kindle reader can play MP3 files so you choose background music to listen to as you read. You’ll always have any bookmarks or clips and notes you have saved available, no matter where you might be, or which device you are using at the time. Keeping up with the best-sellers and news will now be something you can take for granted when you have a Kindle in your hand.

Tired of carrying a lot of books that you like to read on your ride? Why not get a amazon kindle? Well, these little electronic books allows downloaded books to be written in it’s memory. We have what you need and a lot of kindle accessories.

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