Saving trees

So I've jumped on e-reader train. The breaking point was an announcement of Amazon about worldwide availability of Kindle. But I've decided to avoid Kindle, instead I have bought BeBook One. It took me only 35 hours to get from being ignorant of e-readers to select particular type and to buy it.

There were several reasons why I decided as I did:

• I prefer a possibility to buy books in different shops, lock-in to one (even the cheapest one) seems to be limiting
• I prefer to decide myself when I update firmware (and what version I will use). In case of Kindle Amazon decides instead of me
• Open formats vs. closed formats is easy pick for me
• Wide range of supported formats is better than limited one
• Existence of independent open source firmware for BeBook is nice too (it allows for alternative approaches and it is attractive idea for me)

I am sorry I will shop less at Amazon in the future, because I like Amazon a lot. But Amazon decided they do not want to sell their e-books to me... I am not angry about that, it is their business decision and they follow their vision, not mine.

The first book I have bought just for e-reader was from The Pragmatic Programmers. The decision was simpler this time. Many blogs I am reading talk about it often and I like their non-DRM approach. They are pragmatic and know that DRM causes hassles mostly to those who paid for product, not for those who want to download it illegally. Their approach is to print your name in the book directly and I quite like it. With good books (for geeks) to sell and because they do not consider their customers to be criminals it was easy pick for me to "honour" them with my first e-reader book buy (I have bought PDF books before, but for reading at computer screen).

What's next?

The first idea, even before BeBook arrived was to transform my photoblog to a book (for having something palpable, not for selling of course). Actually, this is not a new idea, because my fiancée asked for it at least 6 months ago, but with my current interest in transforming HTML or other formats to e-books of different formats I have correct mind set and tool set. I had produced something already, but A4 PDF of our Iceland trip has 230 pages which is a bit more than is practical (it was only 10 days trip, how big would be those from longer ones? Not to mention a poor trees it would kill). So I have to tweak it more (use smaller photos and use paper surface more efficiently). Whether I will publish my photo blog in ePub is not decided yet, probably not.

I was thinking about converting Dilbert comics to e-book too. I can fit 2 strips to one page or single from Sunday. Having it on e-reader is more convenient than hauling huge Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert (Hardcover) all the time :-) An issue I see is that the considerable part of fun with publishing my blog as e-book is possibility to share it, while it cannot be done with converted Dilbert. So I am undecided whether I should do it yet. Probably yes...

I have to check how Lonely Planet will be practical on e-reader. You need many of them (even huge) if you want to travel for longer time and they can be bought by individual chapters.

And last but not least - reading books, of course. I am in the middle of the fist one, more will follow. I like googling and looking for the best deal (price, format and size) for a book I would like to read. It is rather challenging and sometimes frustrating :-) For example many books by Matthew Reilly are cheaply available only for USA market. And price of Lost Symbol by Dan Brown is awful! Fortunately I have bought hardcover 3 weeks ago only for 7GBP (from Amazon, of course ;-) ).

Both previously mentioned authors use diagrams, maps or puzzles in their books and that adds additional thrill - will be those pictures available in format I will buy? Mobipocket and ePub support pictures, but that does not mean publisher have done proper job to keep them (or e-reader to show them). PDFs are usually complete, but they are not the best possibility for small screen. So I need to look also for file sizes, but not every shop shows them. And what about text "Adobe" or "Digital Editions"? Is it PDF or ePub? It feels like I am early adopter, but e-books are here for years now, so they should not be in this stage any more.

A deal for you

There was one more reason I have bought BeBook (I could buy an another brand of the same product in UK) - their marketing trick (I know it is trick, because it attracted me :-) ). They offer possibility to register your e-mail address with them to be used as discount coupon for 25€ or £25. Eventually, when (if) 10 people will use it (and pay for their BeBook) I will receive free piece or they refund me money for one I have bought. Sounds nice, doesn't? :-) I do not see it as Ponzi scheme, as it did not cost me anything (compare price of BeBook One at http://mybebook.com with Amazon, Pixmania or others) and in the worst case I will lose something I am not counting with.

So here is mine: DELETED. And if you do not like this, you still can go to http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Bebook to pick other coupon there. Just for the record, I do not hope this page will collect 10 buys, but it is better to try than not. (Note: coupons currently don't work for Slovakia, but they are aware of the situation)