If you are a PDA user like I am, you keep your personal digital assistant with you at all times. What could be a better way to have a good book for those short dead-times in your schedule?
I’m on my fourth PalmOS® PDA. With flash memory, I have 128MB of space for my ebooks and other files. While 128MB is no longer a lot of hard drive space, it is huge when you consider ebook size. Most books will probably top out at 400-600KB, although a paper-based book that is really thick and uses small print can be a megabyte in size.
You can purchase ebooks at a number of sites, depending upon your interests. In a later issue, I’ll talk about Mobipocket as shareware/freeware, but for now, check out www.mobipocket.com if you are a PalmOS or Windows-based PDA user.
I read a lot of science fiction. As a result, I ran across the website of one of the most prominent science fiction publishers today, Baen Books. The very unusual facet about Baen is that many of their authors have put one or more ebooks into the Baen Free Library.
This free libary allows you do download, for free, an unencrypted, unlocked version of any of those books in formats suitable for PalmOS PDA’s, Windows PDA’s and for reading on your computer — in HTML or text formats.
Eric Flint, Baen’s editor and author who coordinates the Baen Free Library, believes that he has sold many more books by putting some of his books into the free library.
Baen also has a web subscription service where you can purchase three monthly ebook installments of upcoming book releases. Of course, these monthly installments are in the proofreading and printing phase, but you also get the finished ebook when the book is published.
Check out Baen.com to see how cool ebooks can be.
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