e-books a few points for discussion?

[stewartingram]

Firstly, I'm really not sure which area to post this in, so Mods - apologies if wrong & please move as you see fit!

 

For a number of years I have been scanning items into my home PC, with backups, from all sorts of media. Principally these have been photographic in content from all manner of sources, (slides, negs, prints, books, internet etc), but I have done some written material too. In recent times there has been out there an upsurge in interest in what I will generically call "e-books", ie the book in electronic format, with the likes of Kindle gaining popularity.

 

I have at this time no interest in getting a Kindle or similar, but am wondering what format the books are filed in. Is there a common standard, such as PDF or does each supplier use a different one? If so can they be converted.

 

I have scanned a number of magazine articles, and standardised on PDF files. I use Adobe Acrobat (an old version) so I am able to edit these; a whole article is constructed as a complete file rather than individual scans for each page, for example.

I have also scanned a few books in the same manner, and now realised the immense saving in shelf space! So have I used the correct file format or should I change to a "standard" as used in e-book publishing? Not that I will ever get through my whole collection due to the time involved!

 

(I would add this is for personal use only, not for illegal copying etc, and would prefer the discussion not to divert that way).

 

I know some magazines (in general, not only railway interests) are available on subscription by dowload, and there are apparently plenty of book titles out there, but I have to honestly say I have never come across them being available, unlike music tracks which are now popular as downloads as an alternative to CD etc. So where does one find them? Are their any of "our" subjects out there at all?

 

Stewart

[spamcan61]

There's a useful summary of ebook file formats on Wikipedia:-

 

http://en.wikipedia...._e-book_formats

 

 

Most common in my experience are azw (Kindle) and epub(most others)

 

Personally I'd stick to scanning into pdf as it's pretty much a de-facto standard and handles line drawing & colour photos way better than the current Kindle format at least.

 

I haven't seen a ebook focussed internet bookshop, but then I haven't looked hard, Amazon make it easy to buy books for the Kindle of course.

[Andy Y]

Personally I'd stick to scanning into pdf as it's pretty much a de-facto standard and handles line drawing & colour photos way better than the current Kindle format at least.

 

I'd certainly agree with this viewpoint as pdfs can be read across various devices and operating systems and will be supported for many years to come. It's amazing the level of detail compared to filesize that can be achieved with a bit of thought.

[RedgateModels]

Agreed, I've been using Acrobat since version 5 at work, we adopted their digital signature format early on as our staff are based all over the country. It also supports javascript so we can do all sorts of clever stuff like PDF forms with an upload button that stuffs the data into a database - OTM operators fill in their fault log form, email it to base and it all gets uploaded into the database

 

Just background info for you really, but yes, stick to pdf - platform independent

[stewartingram]

Well I'm glad you've all said PDF so far, must admit I like the ones I've done so far. Would be nice to come across an online source of railway related titles though. Are books any cheaper as electronic versions compared to paper? My guess is they would be, as it is in the music side of things. I have a habit of seeing new books in Ian Allan at Waterloo (just outside my office) so it can get expensive!

 

Stewart

[spamcan61]

Well I'm glad you've all said PDF so far, must admit I like the ones I've done so far. Would be nice to come across an online source of railway related titles though. Are books any cheaper as electronic versions compared to paper? My guess is they would be, as it is in the music side of things. I have a habit of seeing new books in Ian Allan at Waterloo (just outside my office) so it can get expensive!

 

Stewart

 

 

eBooks can be more expensive than the physical versions, for starters there's the small matter of VAT on the former - pricing can be all over the place though, there's no consistent pattern - the market decides I guess.

 

Must admit although I find PDFs very useful for collecting info from disparate sources and keeping it in one place/file, I'm not personally a fan of reading books electronically, I still prefer the dead tree versions.