Chapter 7: How Do I Manage My E-book Library?
Chances are good that, as you read these words, you’re holding a physical book in your hands. Physical books are an awesome invention: they’re portable and fully showoffable. Books aren’t going away anytime soon, but the age of e-books is upon us. The Amazon Kindle lit a fire under the e-book category, but it’s clunky and tied to Amazon. The iPhone and iPod touch are actually the most popular eReaders, but they’re a bit too small. The iPad and iPad mini fill in these gaps by supporting an open e-book format and having screens that are tailor-made for reading.
Reading Magazines with Newsstand
Understanding E-book Formats
If there was one reason why e-books took a long time to take off (in the same way that, say, digital music now rules the planet), it would be because the e-book world started out as hopelessly, headachingly confusing. At its worst, at least two dozen (yes, two dozen!) e-book formats were available, and new formats jumped on the e-book bandwagon with distressing frequency.
That was bad enough, but it got worse when you considered that some of these formats required a specific eReading device or program. For example, the Kindle e-book format required either the Kindle eReader or the Kindle app. Similarly, the Microsoft LIT format required the Microsoft Reader program. Finally, things turned positively chaotic ...
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