My Kindle Stuff

There was a flurry of articles this week on how the partnership between Sony and Google offering 500,000 free public domain was going to challenge the Kindle’s dominance and headlines went so far as to call it a Kindle Killer.  My first reaction was a very puzzled “Huh?”. 

Its great to be able to get to all that free content from one location, and the eReader has a easy on the eyes interface; sometimes a better user experience than slogging thru the Project Gutenberg’s website. Amazon has many of the same public domain books, but they make it way too hard to easily find them unless you know exactly what you’re looking for. (Can I say it again–Way too hard.  Hey Amazon–add a category!)

Why exactly is this supposed to be a Kindle Killer?  So far the main reason seems to be the number of books; this partnership gives Sony a grand total of more than 600,000 titles.  Are they crazy?!  500,000 free books that can be downloaded from other sources are supposed to kill the Kindle?  Doing the math, that means that only about 100,000 mainstream books are available in the Sony store.  Since most of those are priced higher than the same Kindle books on Amazon, I think Jeff Bezos is still laughing his head off at the Kindle Killer claim.  Kind of like Steve Jobs did at the iPhone killer Blackberry Storm (snicker)

The only thing which the Sony device can do which I wish Kindle could is read .PDF files. Viewing some of the threads in forums out there, however, suggest that .PDFs in general probably should be converted to other formats for better ereading, no matter what the device.

Okay, what can Kindlers do who want easier access to those Googled books?  Install the eReader software, create a free account and download to your heart’s content!  The books download in .EPUB format and you can use Calibre to convert for use on your Kindle.  (They canNOT be delivered via email to Amazon for conversion).  In some instances, it may be easier to either download the text only version from Project Gutenberg or get a really cheap version from Amazon.

I tested one of each type after listening to the The Kindle Chronicles podcast.  Len said he had problems with Sense and Sensibility so I decided to use that book and compare to the same book from Project Gutenberg and an $ .80 Jane Austin bundle from Amazon (Emma, Lady Susan, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Pride & Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility).

Both the Google and Project Gutenberg versions have disclaimers at the beginning of the book about how it was scanned, etc.

The following images is a view of the book downloaded from the Sony bookstore in their native app, Calibre and converted (Calibre conversion)/uploaded to my Kindle 2. 

Click any image for a larger view

eReader	Calibre
Kindle

Additional Images

eReader 1st Chapter	Converted 1st Chapter
Gutenberg Version	Amazon Version

The above is a long way round to demonstrate that other than what is admittadly a nice interface, there is nothing in the ‘big’ announcement that lets Sony eReader users do anything more than Kindlers (or other ebook readers) can do.  In fact, for Kindle users, it offers a single interface to find public domain books which is a nice plus.

I have a few recommendations.  Use the eReader store in conjunction with Project Gutenberg to get your public domain books.  If either has crappy formatting, head on over the Amazon to try to find the book as well.  (Note if Amazon formatting is bad also, you can get a refund within 7 days of purchase).  Use Calibre to convert both the eReader and Project Gutenberg files to Kindle format.  

If you need additional information on converting books in Calibre, see the instructions here.  You can use the Calibre instructions when converting eReader books.

Download Calibre
Download Sony eReader
Amazon Public Domain Books
Calibre Conversion Instructions