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To my surprise, one of the most important functions I wanted in a book reader was not there -- I could not import my own documents. So it's still useful, but it's not exactly what I want.

Take a look over at eReader or fictionwise.com. You can create your own docs for the eReader software, and import them through eReader itself, either through one of those site's content servers, or your own webserver. It's not the smoothest system on Earth, but it's not particularly difficult to set up. If you're talking about books, it should work pretty well....

There's eReader for Android. Don't know how it compares...

(But remember the cautionary note B&N struck six years back when they got out of the e-book business.)

That may be, but they've been back in for a little while now.

As an aside, I've been using eReader for years, first on Windows Mobile, and now on my iPod touch. It's a nice reader, they have a decent selection of books, and it's easy to make your own from converted text or html files.

I've been a customer of eReader.com since 2004. Back then I had a Palm device and eReader sold .pdb ebooks.
I am still using those books, they are still accessible, I have copies of books on my server, my phone and my (xp)desktop. They don't have the capability of deleting my copies, or removing them remotely. The only encryption used is my own credit card number, which I am unlikely to share on TPB, and while I know of no cracks, I really wouldn't be interested anyway. So what if I can't copy the text directly into another document. I couldn't do that with a real book (apart from OCR) so what's the big deal. It's my copy of a book. The same copy that ran on my Palm runs perfectly the same on my HTC running WM5, or XP.

OK, their prices could use a dressing down, but otherwise they are a lot like windows mobile. Berated, laughed at and overlooked but still plugging away in the background, "just working". You could do a lot worse. The only niggle is no linux version, but on the plus side, their pdb creator software runs in wine, and the old version is java, with command line batching. Another plus is most Gutenburg texts are available in .pdb format and Manybooks.net offers an RSS feed of the newest editions, available in 24 different formats. Why hack a file just to share it when a made to measure copy exists on the net for free ?

As for the device, I don't want a paperback book sized object, or I would carry a book. My HTC is good enough for mobile use, and the files are available on my desktop anyway. Nor do I want *another* device in addition to my phone. It's taken me years to get things reduced down to one object, I'm not throwing all that away. If they start selling flexible epaper, which, when fitted to the side of your phone can be pulled out, and read and manipulated like a touch screen, get back to me. Sort of like a roller blind or projector screen, but it locks in the extended position - maybe have touch controls on the ends of the "bar" that the loose end terminates in. I picture a cylinder of about 20mm diameter and about 90mm long, black with a mike and speaker at either end. A smaller cylinder roughly 5mm in diameter mostly recessed in the main cylinder when at rest, would hold the end of the epaper rollout mechanism, and hold the hardware controls. If it acted as a colour monitor, there is nothing you couldn't do with it. The trick of course is getting all that radio, video, cpu, memory and battery inside a 20 mm diameter tube. We MUST be close by now.

Oh, and the restriction mentioned would be to residents, not citizens. A US citizen living abroad would be restricted just like anyone else in their country of residence, while foreigners in the United States would not be.

according to Ereader its your billing address of your credit card:

How do you determine what country a customer is in? We look at the billing country of your credit card to determine your location.

source- http://mobile.ereader.com/ereader/mobile/help/GeographicRestrictionsFAQ.htm

as long as your credit card is resolving to the US/Canada or another non-restricted country you are in the clear.

(Right now, the link that should display these new geographic restrictions returns an error message that says the page is being updated.)

Well, they still have their (what I assume to be their old) Geographic Restrictions page here up and it says:

We are legally bound to restrict sale of titles that have these limitations to the allowed countries. If we did not, we would lose the books and nobody would be able to buy them from us. We don't like it any more than you do, believe us when we tell you that. It causes us not only to lose sales, but also to get complaints from customers, and we like to keep our customers happy.

I don't think they're taking a cue from anybody, they're just following distribution laws so they don't lose their license to distribute ... and possibly face a lawsuit. Once you get big enough, you become a target. I wouldn't blame eReader or B&N ... blame a shitty distribution system.

I just bought a Palm Centro and use it to read. MobiPocket has many free books that I have downloaded, those classics we all dreaded in high school somehow become more tolerable when we don't have to write book reports on them. I've also paid for a couple of electronic books. They have software for Blackberrys, Windows Mobile and Symbian also. Oddly, no software for iPhones. There are also other products like eReader that do work on the iPhone. But that's not my point.

It's really nice having my library in my pocket. I was at the dentist last week. As they were waiting for the x-rays, I pulled my phone out, and read a few pages. Plus I don't have to scrounge around for out-of-date magazines anymore in the waiting room. If I get tired of reading, there are always games.

It's not something I would use to sit and read for hours at a time, but it's fine for airplane, toilet, and doctor office reading. I suppose the iPhone with it's larger screen would be a little bit better, but I only spent $50 for a refurbished model, and it's good enough.

Bathrooms aside, there's nothing like loading about five or six books into the Palm right before going on a trip to visit the in-laws. They just wonder why I'm in the bathroom so much.

DT

Poor man's ebook reader:
Palm V off ebay (~$20)
Plucker/eReader format books:
http://ereader.com/ ($3 to $23 each)
http://gutenberg.org/ (free!)
Works remarkably well, not terribly easy on the eyes though.

They do have a mechanism to help ensure that you don't share the books, and that is they use your credit card number that you used to purchase the book as a "password" to unlock the book. So as long as you don't mind entering your credit card number into your buddy's Palm (can't be seen otherwise), go ahead and share.

Plus you can find tools -- I think that they want to charge for them, but I have old copies -- to convert text to the eReader format, so you can take content you own and read it. OTOH, I'm sure there are other formats that have freer tools that you can read on your Palm. And there's a free reader for your PC, too.

I'll just keep reading on my Palm for the time being until Amazon figures out that they have to make their razor a lot less expensive before they can sell razor blades.

DT

The interesting thing is that, although I'm in principle against DRM, the DRM scheme used in these books is so user-friendly.. [y]You can install the software in as many computers and handhelds you wish

Shennanigans, call-eth I.

Can this "user friendly" ebook PDF reader be installed on my Linux-powered laptop? Nope. Screw it then, I'll keep buying my tagged-but-DRM-free eBooks from Manning.

Apple should have embedded the purchaser's credit card number into the music, then it would very unlikely to be released into the wild! LOL.

I think the book was Greg Bear's "Slant". http://www.ereader.com/product/detail/5?book=Slant

Most "rare" materials aren't available in DRM form. What causes the copyright infringement isn't the DRM but the fact that you can't get it at all. If they're available with DRM, then the supply is large: just go pay for it and download it.

What is DRMed and also "high-priced"? Songs are a buck on iTunes. Movies are twenty bucks on DVD. It may be more than you want to pay but it's not a vast amount of money.

Most "rare" materials aren't available in DRM form. What causes the copyright infringement isn't the DRM but the fact that you can't get it at all. If they're available with DRM, then the supply is large: just go pay for it and download it.

What is DRMed and also "high-priced"? Songs are a buck on iTunes. Movies are twenty bucks on DVD. It may be more than you want to pay but it's not a vast amount of money.

Certainly there was a time before cell phones or even phones of any kind and we managed to survive. However, a bit more than 10 years ago when I started doing a gig as a Deliverator, there was a pay phone near every major corner and gas station. By the last year I was still without a cell phone, but the number of pay phones had diminished to the point that I kept a list of the eight 'working' pay phones I knew of in a city of more than 100k peoples.

Holeee-shit I remember that book. I was one of my favourites as a kid.. looks like you can even download an electronic copy

I have no problem with purchasing ebooks, and do this all the time from either Fictionwise or eReader to read on my Palm Zire (yes, the older one), which I upgraded to 8 MB. And I use to read many hours on it without any problem.

Before I began reading ebooks I did some research and found eReader's DRM scheme to be very nice, unlike others. The ebook comes encrypted with your name and the number of the credit card you used to purchase it as the decryption key. In other words, the ebook isn't device-locked, so I can open it in any Windows, Mac, Palm, Pocket PC and/or Symbian machine (no Linux version so far) I have access to. Also, the standard versions of the reader software are freeware, and the purchaseable Pro ones also aren't device-locked, so I install and reinstall them anywhere. Thus, so far I've purchase both Windows and Palm eReader Pro. And the Fictionwise store has the advantage of also having DRM-free copyrighted ebooks. These don't come nicely formatted as the DRM'ed ones, but they are as readable as any Project Gutenberg text file, so no big deal there.

However, the main advantage I see on ebooks is that they're much cheaper to purchase than printed versions, at least for me who don't live in USA. The shipping charges practiced on online stores such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble to send printed books to Brazil are outrageous, while on ebooks they're $0.

All in all, my ebook reading experience, with both DRM'ed, DRM-free copyrighted and public domain ebooks, has been almost excelent. I've around 200 ebooks and will keep purchasing them no matter what. :)

'Cept they stopped carrying Asimov's and Analog magazines last year, due to publisher. Dang.

For the majority of cases this isn't true. I buy from two stores, Ereader because I like their format and find their DRM non-intrusive nor limiting.

Your ereader link is broken - try ereader.com :).

EReader is a pretty decent option for ebooks - mainly because the DRM isn't painful, but also because they have a not-too-pathetic range and the prices aren't too unreasonable. But the extra trick you need to keep in mind is to subscribe to their emailed newsletter (every week or so). This always includes a "10% off all purchases" code - so effectively anyone using them gets at least 10% off the listed price on any purchase. This may even be a sneaky back way around publisher "list price" demands. If so, I strongly approve. :)

The downside, for me at least, is that (last I checked) the Windows version of their reader program doesn't work under Wine. Annoying, but I do most of my reading on my Palm, and it works fine on that.

However, now I've said all that, I've found that Fictionwise, as you mentioned, seems to offer a better range at a better price with more formats. I approve even more. Thanks for the tip.

Unfortunately with most ebook sellers pricing themselves higher than equivalent paperbacks

For the majority of cases this isn't true. I buy from two stores, Ereader because I like their format and find their DRM non-intrusive nor limiting.

The other store which will appeal to slashdotters is Fictionwise. Both stores sell books for a comparable price to Amazon. such as The Footprints of God which is cheaper at Ereader. Another example is Blindfold for $8 from Fictionwise or second hand at Amazon. I know which I'd prefer ;)

Having said that, you won't save much money, if anything, buying e-books (I've found Australians will actually save some money though, because our prices are dearer, even once you take exchange rate into account). I still prefer the e-books because I'm running out of room in my house for dead tree books. I'm leaving the rest of the room to comic book collections and books not available electronically (although more and more books are being made available, such as Anne McCaffrey's books).

Having said that, inertia does appear to sometimes cause e-books to be priced dearer for a while longer then the paperbacks. An example is Robert J Sawyer's Hybrids which was kept at the hardcover price for a while after the paperback was released. But it has now finally come down in price. So if you're patient, you will get good prices for your e-books.

Unfortunately with most ebook sellers pricing themselves higher than equivalent paperbacks

For the majority of cases this isn't true. I buy from two stores, Ereader because I like their format and find their DRM non-intrusive nor limiting.

The other store which will appeal to slashdotters is Fictionwise. Both stores sell books for a comparable price to Amazon. such as The Footprints of God which is cheaper at Ereader. Another example is Blindfold for $8 from Fictionwise or second hand at Amazon. I know which I'd prefer ;)

Having said that, you won't save much money, if anything, buying e-books (I've found Australians will actually save some money though, because our prices are dearer, even once you take exchange rate into account). I still prefer the e-books because I'm running out of room in my house for dead tree books. I'm leaving the rest of the room to comic book collections and books not available electronically (although more and more books are being made available, such as Anne McCaffrey's books).

Having said that, inertia does appear to sometimes cause e-books to be priced dearer for a while longer then the paperbacks. An example is Robert J Sawyer's Hybrids which was kept at the hardcover price for a while after the paperback was released. But it has now finally come down in price. So if you're patient, you will get good prices for your e-books.

You've been reading Quicksilver on a screen? That's just wrong on so many levels...

Also, from http://ereader.com/welcome/howtogetstarted2.html, I direct your attention to the following phrase:

enter a credit card number that you'll use to buy eBooks and open them.

Time dilation would be hard to handle, but a relativistic FPS could be fairly cool. Imagine combat in a situation like in the book "Redshift Rendezvous". You have to figure out where the other guy actually is instead of just where you can see him, and you have to aim your shots at where they are going to be.

Distorting perspective and shifting colors could make for some complex gameplay. Difficulty levels could adjust the max speed of light. With 'Easy', relativistic effects are merely annoying (like lag in an online game), by the time you get to 'Hard' speed of light is 10 m/s and your tactics are completely different.

Fictionwise sells ebooks, but they also have free novels, short stories and audio books from time to time. Currently they have 26 items available for free, including a lot of sci-fi.

Audible

Audible sells audio books, but they have some free items also. There is a new free item every week or so for subscribers.

ereader

ereader has a few free ebooks. During December last year, they had a different free ebook each day for a few weeks.

Audio Books for Free

AudioBooksForFree has free audio books, but in a very compressed format. You have to pay to get better quality, but for $100 you can buy everything.

Baen Books

Baen Books has a free library with sci-fi books.

Project Gutenberg

This one has been pointed out a few times, but it is the biggest. It is here and here. I think the first one is the official site.

Fictionwise sells ebooks, but they also have free novels, short stories and audio books from time to time. Currently they have 26 items available for free, including a lot of sci-fi.

Audible

Audible sells audio books, but they have some free items also. There is a new free item every week or so for subscribers.

ereader

ereader has a few free ebooks. During December last year, they had a different free ebook each day for a few weeks.

Audio Books for Free

AudioBooksForFree has free audio books, but in a very compressed format. You have to pay to get better quality, but for $100 you can buy everything.

Baen Books

Baen Books has a free library with sci-fi books.

Project Gutenberg

This one has been pointed out a few times, but it is the biggest. It is here and here. I think the first one is the official site.

I suppose it's kinda neat that non-PDA phones can read books this way, but downloading bits at a time? The way American phone companies gouge you for data usage, fees would pile up quick.

But for Jhymn, I'd never buy from iTMS. But a very acceptable (for me) DRM for eBooks is from http://www.ereader.com/, which used to be Palm Digital Media. Considering books are much smaller in size and costs more than music, I am happy with the DRM offered there. No centralized server that keeps authenticating the client. The "key" is the Credit Card number that was used to buy the book. That, to some extent disallows putting the book in P2P networks. And the client is available for Win32, OS X, PocketPC and Palm OS. They even have an ebook maker software that can convert txt files to eBooks. http://www.manybooks.net/ makes Gutenberg books available in eReader format. That, I say is even less restrictive form of DRM than iTMS, which many consider to be the least restrictive. (The price of eBooks from ereader.com is not much cheaper and some time higher than the dead tree versions. Odd.)

I agree with you. MS Reader is (sadly?) one of the very best e-book platforms out there. It is unfortunate that they haven't released a Mac version. It would be very well received, I think.
On the other hand, the E-Book reader 'E-Reader' is also very nice, and supports palm, Pocket PC, Mac, and Windows. It's also quite a bit more customizable.
The only "open" ebook stuff I know of is the Open EBook Forum, which is really more of a vendor co-ordination.

manybooks.net has ereader-ized most of Gutenberg, and ereader.com and ebooks.com have lots of modern stuff, so there's lots to read.

With all the DRM on e-books, these days, the best reader is the one that reads your e-books.

My favourite is eReader because most of my books are from their site. They've got a reasonable range of books, including a few mass-market bestsellers. Their software supports Palm OS, Pocket PC, Win32 and Mac.

Another good site is Fictionwise, they sell a variety of books, some are DRM-free and come in a range of formats like PDF; some are encrypted and come in eReader or Microsoft Reader format.

eReader.com is having a free eBook promo this month, with a new one every day for $0.

It started as PeanutPress, but is now known as http://www.ereader.com/ has a free e-reader that works on Palm and Pocket PC PDA's as well as Mac and Windows desktops/notebooks.

They have a pretty good selection of current titles as well as a lot of classics.

As far as the reading experience goes, I think the current standard of Palm PDA's (320x320 or 320x480) works just fine. In fact I find that I much prefer to read on the PDA than the dead-tree version. It's lighter, smaller, it's always with me (fits in my pocket) (bit of geek factor - sigh). I can change the font size as might sight degrades with age :-). It has a built in back light - no more disturbing the spoulsal overunit.

I read "The Count of Monte Cristo" not long ago which is 1,000 pages or so (on par with "War and Peace"). I never would have finished it if not for the the PDA version. The book is huge. I was able to get a lot of reading done in the kids room while they were drifting off to sleep, or while waiting to pick them up, or while commuting.

There has been this misguided notion that the device needs to have the same look and feel as a book to succeed. Nonsense. In this case, the PDA form factor is much better regarding size and heft. The text width is much like reading a newspaper column - very natural. In fact, when I was sick for a spell, I found I could read much longer with a PDA than a "real" book. It's an easy one handed job (I suppose that may bring up other advantages) and I could roll over an many positions.

I even found their DRM to be pretty much a non-issue. You have a library on their web sight that includes every book that you purchaced. If you ever need to re-download it to a new device, it is all right there. The book is encrypted using your name and credit card number as keys. Thus you can open the book on any device that you have the free e-reader on.

The downsides?

1) Yes, I can't lend it to a friend, or sell it used.

2) I can't impress my friends with my impressive bookshelf when they come over. But how many among us actually have friends that come over :-)

3) They are often a bit less expensive than dead tree versions, but I think that they ought to be even less expensive given the lack of material, manufacturing and storage costs. Then again, shipping is always free - and really d*mn fast.

Cheers,

Steve